News
The Joy Of Building A Gaming PC
When people talk gaming PCs, they usually focus on the raw
benefits in performance and upgradeability. While we’ll touch on
that here, we also want to discuss something else: the genuine
joy that comes with building a gaming PC, especially doing it
with a friend or family member. So what makes building a gaming
PC such a special experience?
Familiarity
When you’re responsible for building your own PC, you’ll become
intimately familiar with every one of your components and how
they fit together to make your PC function. This familiarity
will also make the act of opening up your PC much less scary,
since you assembled it in the first place. When it comes time to
clean your PC, diagnose or upgrade it, you’ll have the
familiarity and knowledge to do all of this successfully.
Making It Yours
Customization is another important aspect of PC building. Cases
come in all different colors, shapes and sizes, and
customization doesn’t stop there. With things like RGB lighting,
LED fans and full-blown case mods, there’s no limit to what you
can do to make your PC truly yours. If you’re so inclined, you
could even do something completely crazy, like
use an NES
shell as your case!
That’s just aesthetics. Once you’ve build your PC, you have a
ton of different choices in software. Windows or Linux? Steam or
GOG? Chrome or FireFox? In fact, since you aren’t on a console
locked to a particular manufacturer, you don’t even need to
choose! You can buy PC games from any storefront you want, run
as many operating systems as you like, and switch between
browsers as you please. Consoles offer a very controlled,
limited experience that can’t come close to the variety that PCs
offer.
The Work
Whether you’re a lone gamer building their first beast, a father
assembling a PC with his son, or anything in-between, PC
building is a truly unique experience. It can be intimidating
for a first-timer, but with the right safety measures there’s
little to worry about, and mistakes can often be fixed. It’ll
take time: new builders may take an hour or more, while
experienced builders can strip apart and assemble PCs in half
that time.
But once you’ve put everything together, plugged in all the
right cables and powered on your PC for the first time, all that
exhaustion will turn into pride. Buying a console, plugging it
in and turning it on is one thing. Buying your components,
assembling them yourself and powering on your PC for the first
time is another entirely.
What Else?
Those are the main benefits of the actual building and setup
process. Past that, you’ll be enjoying the numerous benefits
unique to PC gaming. In short terms, these are:
Competition. On PlayStation, you get the PS Store and that’s it.
On PC, you get Steam, Origin, UPlay, GOG, Humble Bundle,
Amazon...this competition means that prices are low and
competing sales are frequent. If you want a game, you don’t need
to wait long to get it for much cheaper on PC than you would on
console.
Freedom and accessibility. PC offers all kinds of accessibility
and customization options, so everyone can have a gaming
experience tailored to their needs. Special keybindings and
configurations are available for disabled players, and most
games support gamepads if mouse/keyboard isn’t comfortable for
you. And performance, and upgradeability, and...
Well, you get the point. Building a gaming PC is an enriching
experience from start to finish, and establishes long-term
rewards for doing so. If you’re interested in learning more
about building gaming PCs, check out our builds over at
www.thegreatsetup.com.