building my first (gaming) PC experience :')

Context! I've built office PCs before when I was working an internship. I mean, it didn't need to be anything too nice cause you just had to throw a lot of PCs together and, as long as they worked, it was fine, I guess.

So, I've had my boyfriend's old gaming PC for a while and... oh my god, that thing SUCKS!! So I finally saved up enough to buy some new PC parts! Everything should've worked super well and just slay cause they're pretty good for my needs. 

Here we go...

The building

Like mentioned in the beginning, I've built office PCs and setup small scale servers before.. Nothing fancy, just kind of throwing everything together. Gaming PC parts though I feel like are just super delicate?? Or maybe it was my bf being very protective and not wanting me to accidentally break any of the parts I got lol. Either way, all the fancy pants graphics and RAAAAAH RGB!!!111!!1! is so confusing holy shit. What the hell am I looking at?? LMAO

Everything worked fine in the end... Until it came to cable management.

You've ever gone on a vacation and had to pack a suitcase, yeah? Well, you've most likely also tried overpacking.. Oh, but all the items you packed are essential and you've looked up single of those oversaturated bright youtube videos of girls that are talking like they're held at gunpoint trying to sound so excited about this wonderful DIY project! 😀 help

Yeah, that's what cable management was like. What the shit. Oh well, a little elbow push and desperately trying to tighten the screws while leaning over the case fixed everything!! 

The setup

I already had everything backed up and downloaded all the drivers my boyfriend told me that I needed for it all to work out! Sick, let's start downloading those!

Wait, hold on.. Why is it so slow? Gosh girl, open Explorer, you got this. Okay.. We're still opening... Got it.... Okaaaay, let's open task manager and see what's going on. Okay... You got this, you can open it. Oh god, we're still waiting for explorer. Shit.. Wait, why is the screen flickering?? Shit. WHat IS GOING ON??

Okay, that was a nightmare.. Maybe a fresh copy of Windows will work! Let's go! 

(PC won't reset for whatever reason) + (after much studying on force resetting and at least 4 hours of getting stuck on the reset screen)

Okay, sick, we're here. Let's go again. Oh god, it's just as bad. 

TLDR: It was the wrong graphics drivers + other outdated drives that didn't fully match my components. If your gaming PC sucks, please look into the drives :')

The gaming

I had a copy of Skyrim installed on my backup drive, so I booted up that puppy on the ultra-high graphics settings to try and PUSH MY BABY TO THE MAX!! ... I could not even get 2 seconds in before the cart in the intro started completely glitching out and tossing me far into the air, killing the horse, making the screen flicker and eventually... crash

Okayyyy.. That was something. Let's try again! 

You know, maybe base game Skyrim was a terrible choice for testing this out lmao. Maybe I should've played a more stable game <V< oops

Oh well, it probably works fine until everything gets installed teehee

Final words

Building my first gaming PC has been so wonderful. I love having something I can finally call my own. My old gaming PC was a prebuilt and it just never felt like it was truly mine. I actually hated using it and I had so much impatience with that thing cause it was just so.. Gosh, I can't put my finger on it. When I received that one, it was full of bloatware, so it just felt kinda.. Yucky to use. I think I was just anxious they installed some shady things on there or something.

But this is my PC! My very own! My own Windows License, my own backup, my own everything! What a wonderful thing! 

If you're wanting to build your own gaming PC, prepare for a lot of your gaming plans to be pushed back AND please look into how to do advanced Google Searches and other things like that. Or honestly just use Bing. I know Bing gets so much trash, but it's genuinely getting better than Google; but that's a whole another story lol. 

Definitely give it a go through! You do not need the latest and greatest parts. All of my PC parts except for the power supply are secondhand, so there's obviously a risk that some things might not have been taken as well care of as others, but you can also get something really good for sometimes more less than half the original price. It is a risk to take, but with a massively good outcome if it works out! I got my power supply (technically new) from Amazon as a returned an tested item, so I got about $15 off from that? With an original price of $150? I'd say it's pretty good regardless. That's $15 for a stick of gum! Sick! 

Plus, Amazon has a 30 day return regardless of it being used or not AAAAAND you get to take one more thing out of landfills! It's honestly a wonderful deal. I'm really into sustainability and recycling where I can, so this was honestly perfect for me. We already had a case and just kinda tossed everything in there. 

Thanks a bunch for making it all the way through! This was definitely an experience and, maybe in a couple weeks, I'll clean it out and see if I can find a better solution for all those cables.. Gosh, cable management.. How do people do it