About 7 years ago, I had the experience to build my first computer, by myself. I was only 8 years old. Today, I am 16 years old, and am here to reflect on my glorious achievements as a true PC Master.
Never have I thought a computer as a gaming device in my childhood years, I thought the browser was the gateway, and pleasured myself with the original Xbox, and enjoyed the Xbox 360. Now I was not a non-gamer, mind you, one of my first passions was found on Knights of the Old Republic II, on the Xbox. Then, after I had built that computer, which, was not my property, I had an epiphany. I started watching more YouTube, as a 9 year old I watched many comedic youtubers (Where they had smaller audiences and great content), and then discovered the beginnings of minecraft, where yes, I was entertained. When I started playing Minecraft, I was on a computer, and also played Roblox with my little brothers (I had NO idea of the bigger games out there, at ALL...). Another concept I absolutely LOVED, was computer technology on YouTube, where I found LinusTechTips. When I had subscribed he was a side member at NCIX, in Canada. I watched many videos, and my father took me MicroCenter one day, where things escalated. There, I picked up two issues of Maximum PC and a single issue of PC Gamer. All 3 issues were centered around building a first, or capable gaming computer. There, I didn't need to read through the lines, everything click, everything from that first time just made 100% sense, despite me only being 10 years old.
The next year, my father and mother gave me a proposal: Build the absolute BEST gaming PC, for under $400. Now those 3 magazines helped, but only to a degree, as all of the gaming PCs in them...were not even close to budget oriented. It was 2011, and I was ready and excited as any 10 year old. Now in the day (yes, I must) there probably was not PcPartPicker or any similar tool used to easily compile a part list for price and compatibility. But my self just had it all planned: I picked up a brochure from my last time at MicroCenter, and spent the next few months researching, HOURS of my free time (All of it), the best combination. My first choices: AMD CPU with an NVIDIA GPU. I saw they performed fine for 720P60FPS on low settings. I also had my first 'valedictorian' moment, where I found out, the Radeon HD 6570, was priced exactly the same as the GT 630, at $70. With LOTS of research, and HEAVY patience, I found I could buy a motherboard, CPU, and the 6570 for $200. If you did the math correctly, I've got $200 left. Somehow, I did it, I crammed a $70 CPU and a $70 GPU into a $300 build, and by the luck of the master, found 8 Gigabytes of RAM for $25, and a hard drive for $80 (They were VERY expensive) and a PSU for $80...and a hand-me-down PacMan case for free, I cut close. Later that year I got a Wi-fi adapter, but I used Ethernet before it because of the $400 limit. When I built my FIRST personal computer, everything booted, and was configured rather nice, despite the case being out of standard for a modern PC in 2011.
My First PC's Part List: CPU - Athlon 2 X4 640 ($70) Motherboard - MSI 760GM P-34(FX) ($55) GPU - XFX Radeon HD 6570 2GB ($70) Memory - G. Skill Ripjaws 8GB DDR3-1600 ($25) HDD - WD Black 1TB 64MB Cache Drive ($80) Case - PacMan Computer Case (FREE) PSU - Corsair CX600M 80+ Bronze Semi-Modular ($80)
My first upgrade was given on my birthday of 2012, an Antec GX700 rugged Mid ATX case. I did tons of research over the years, learned pretty much every aspect of building a standard PC, and lately dabbled in custom water cooling, I can build a custom water-cooled PC with little effort and with efficiency. On my birthday in 2015, I got my 2nd upgrade, where NVIDIA's maxwell lineup came out, and with that, one of my favorite games, the Witcher 3. I was given the gift of EVGA's GTX 960 FTW 4GB card, a 1080P Ultra BEAST. I knew exactly what a bottleneck was, but NEVER thought the effects would be this bad. For a whole year I had to live under 30 FPS and stuttering and overheating, especially on low settings and low resolution. I found an inverse effect, where I could run some games fine on 2560x1440 using DSR. Now Christmas of 2015, I received the Skylake dream, a Z170 motherboard and 8 Gigabytes of DDR4, for a Skylake beast. I only had to wait till May of 2016, on my birthday, to receive the King: The Intel Core i5-6500 Little did I know, I would win the Silicon lottery.
For a day, I spent time in an artisan craft...cleaning and deconstructing my computer. Then came the installations: Again, my expert knowledge, while still a 16 year boy, had my PC running perfect on the first try, and saw no obstacles that I couldn't overcome.
Currently, my PC's side panel is still open. I see my CPU and GFX card eating the games I throw at it for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Before, with my bottleneck, my Athlon ran at around 45-50 degrees Celsius on idle, with my graphics card running rather cool, under 70 degrees on 100% load (Though it ran at 100 very rarely) despite a 1367MHz boost clock. I look at thermals, and find temperatures at 24 degrees on idle for the CPU, using the standard preset of the Intel Stock cooler. My GPU, running equally cool with 25% fan speed (I set a custom fan curve, so my fans never went above 50% to stay quiet, and still kept the card cool). I turn on Battlefield 4, turn the game up to Ultra, turn the resolution scale to 150% (2560x1440) and watch as load gets higher, and temperatures doubling for the CPU, yes, doubling. ONLY DOUBLING, I was running at 50 degrees celsius under load on an Intel Core i5-6500 running at 3.2GHz. I push in the 3.10 version of BIOS, where my AsRock motherboard still supports SkyOC, I overclock: 4.4 GHz on an Intel stock cooler...and under 75 degrees under load on Battlefield 4, Battlefield 3, the Witcher 3, Far Cry 4, and (of course) CSGO. Today, at 16 year old, I sit with a near perfect 1080P60FPS Ultra gaming PC build that runs cool and quiet on stock clocks and voltages, barely draws power from the wall, and absolutely satisfies. I cannot wait to progress, I'm thinking a new case, CPU cooler, SSD, and a new monitor.
-Leerox
Submitted by Captain_Leerox | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016
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