Tag Archives: pc gaming

PC Gaming is DEAD, Long Live PC Gaming!

Posted on by

It’s been a fun week for me regarding PC Gaming. First was a text from my daughters friend. She helped my daughter a lot in school and would come over the house a lot to play Overwatch together. She would play on my back up PC. The one in my previous post where I took some unemployed components and put them together and gave them a second life. The kid had it tough regarding having nice things. So I gave the PC to her and she very appreciative. It’s nice to give happiness to someone who deserves it. When I got the text it made me smile. Not only was she still using it, she upgraded it herself! New motherboard, ram, processor, cooler, and graphics card! I’m really proud of her.

The second was upgrading my friend’s son’s computer with components he got for Christmas. We tried to upgrade it on Christmas Eve but we ran into a snag with a bad motherboard. I felt so bad bad this kid was not going to have a working PC for Christmas day. To make matters worse I was going to be out of state for the next week and wouldn’t be able to get to it until I got back.

So when I returned I went to helping them right away. With the new motherboard it was a breeze. Everything went together without a hitch. Hit the power button loaded the drivers and we were ready to go. They came over to pick up the unit and I showed them what to do when it came to driver updates and care for the machine. His son was so happy he gave me a huge hug. The next day when I saw my friend at work he said his son loved it and was playing games all night.

Building PCs is fun and rewarding. Not only for yourself but when you do it for others as well. Sometimes the PC hobby feels like this solitary thing. Like you are the only one into it irl. Sure I’m involved with many groups online and have many friends there. But as much as I like to play the character of the basement dwelling tech recluse, it is fun to interact irl with people who are into the hobby. Knowing I made some ones day a little bit brighter is a reward in itself.

Laptop Upgrades

Posted on by

I recently went on vacation and had the opportunity to bring my gaming laptop. I got his as a present from my wife for my 50th birthday during the height of the pandemic. I don’t use it much but this was an opportunity that forced me into a situation where I had to if I wanted to game. I thought about getting a Steam Deck but I’m still on the fence about getting one. But being I already had the Laptop I decided to stick with it. It is a MSI GE75 Raider, one of those you always see pallets of at Costco. Nothing Ground breaking but very capable with some obvious caveats. The 16 gigs of ram and mechanical hard disk would prove to be the things that were frustrating. Playing Cyberpunk 77 at medium settings gave me a solid 70fps and it actually looked really good. Games like Forza looked great on high with about the same FPS. But loading times for games were horrendous. Click the icon, walk away boil some water, and make some coffee kind of bad. Now that I look back I think this was a reason I didn’t use this machine as much as I should have. I was use to such a snappy response on my desktop it was more of a pleasure to use.

So I bit the bullet and ordered 32 gigs of ram, a 2 terabyte NVME, and a one gig SATA SSD. The brands I picked were for nothing else other than the convenience of getting the same day delivery off of Amazon. But TEAMGROUP, Crucial, and PNY are solid brands so I had confidence in ordering them.

Out with the old and in with the new.

I usually hate working on laptops, but taking the back cover off the MSI was quick and easy. For the most part it used the same screws all around with the exception of 2 of them, and the back cover easily snapped off. I knew there was an empty NVME slot and planned to one day to fill it. But being that I was going to take it apart I figured I might as well upgrade everything while I was there. Replacing all the old components with the new ones turned out to be a breeze. I then put everything back together, turned on the machine, and formatted the new drives.

Now I don’t do any science based testing. My perceived experience is worth more than numbers on a spread sheet. I want to click on an icon and have the program open instantaneously. I didn’t have that feeling before the upgrades, now I do. It doesn’t even feel like the same machine, it feels like something new. Programs load fast and stutter in games is gone. It really is a pleasure to use now.

I wish this is something I could have done sooner but to be honest would have been out of my price range at the time. The total cost of the upgrades was just over $200.00 Three years ago a 2 Terabyte NVME would have been well over $300.00 on it’s own. The initial cost of the laptop was $1,500.00, as it is now would been over $2,200.00 with the upgrades. Like I mentioned before not only do I like gaming but building and upgrading computers is also part of the fun. This turned out to be a project in which not only was it fun, it also brought a capable machine into a great gaming machine.

With a little inspiration, I updated my gaming setup.

Posted on by

For me, the one thing which makes PC gaming so fun there is always something new. New tech, games, and peripherals are always exciting. When I first got a PC back in 1992, I didn’t know what to expect. I wanted to play games but I also wanted productivity like making art. And once I connected to the internet, it seemed like I entered a world that was a living and breathing entity. It was an exciting time.

The inspiration.

In Cyberpunk 2077, V’s Northside apartment inspired me to change things up. For the longest time I rocked the color red, now I embraced the full RGB spectrum of color. I’ve been going through this eighties renaissance, such as synthwave music and art. We had some really rad arcades back in the day and I wanted to capture that feeling. This arcade called Spaceplex was peak eighties performance. There was nothing else like it. To get in you to walk through a neon lit tunnel. It felt like getting transported to this futuristic place, an ultimate escape. Lights and sounds caused a sensory overload. No matter which direction you turned or looked you could not get away from the fun and excitement.

It’s nice to have a place where I can unplug from the world and relax. I love basking in the neon glow of a reality I created and surrounded by things I like. I don’t think of myself as a gamer. I’m just a guy who likes to play games. But I do embrace the idea of game or computer culture. Such as Playing games online, streaming games and watching streams for instance. Sharing memes and trolling relatives on social media is also a lot of fun.

Final words.

Pc gaming in my opinion allows creative individuality while uniting like minded people. In a time where it seems like division is stronger than ever, gaming and computer culture unites us. Stay true to yourself and have fun. Trolling is ok too, such as in the case of fake gamer site Kotaku, but try to be excellent to each other.