Recently, I was browsing the interwebs in search of a memory upgrade for my gaming rig. I have upgraded parts in the past, graphics card, CPU, even my motherboard. I would stand proudly and say none of them went as planned. When I say that PC Gaming has one hell of a learning curve I am not lying. For those of us, like myself, that do not have a friend that has already gone through the stresses of upgrading or building a rig, doing it ourselves is full of unexpected and not so pleasant surprises. As I was browsing memory for my rig, I had to check that the frequency was compatible with my motherboard. Was the voltage too high? Was it the correct type of memory? Could my motherboard overclock it if I wanted to? This is when I realized a simple truth: PC Gaming is, in fact, hard.
Now, do not get me wrong. For those of us that demand the highest performance for the very best experience, PC Gaming is the only option. It is more flexible than console gaming. You can upgrade individual parts as often as you like, and trust me, there is no cap to the amount of money one can spend on PC gaming rigs. This is because PC gaming is a black hole of money. You can always buy a graphics card that is a slightly better or a CPU that is a bit faster. Hell, you can throw money at all the storage you want. In half a year, it is all obsolete anyway. The newest, bestest, shiniest, fastest, coolest thing is always around the corner. Now, as you spend more money on the super gaming rig of your dreams, the price to performance increase slowly dwindles. Most modern video games only utilize four cores at a time so spending $2000 on a 10 core CPU really won’t get you that much of an approvement. Unless you are developing games, video processing, or password hashing, you really don’t need a super CPU. Oh, but those sweet sweet bragging rights.
Compatibility can be a harsh mistress. Luckly for those of us that have not quite aquired the talent, there are helpful websites like pcpartpicker.com that only matches parts that are compatible. However, I always take these websites with a grain of salt. I still have a liquid CPU cooler on my dresser from half a year ago because everything told me it would fit. Unfortunately, I have a weird tower that places the power supply at the top.
Sometimes I do envy console gaming. The safety of buying a game and knowing it will work must be nice. But I demand better performance than consoles cannot deliver. Risk it for the biscuit.
I, personally, love PC gaming. After all the stress and research is done it can be fun and satisfying.
Bluecow Radio 