My PC Hardware Ramble

My PC Hardware Ramble

PC hardware, it is one of the most infuriating things about being a PC gamer at times, but it is also one of the most rewarding. Earlier this year I built myself a nice new system, I got myself a Quad-Core (Q6600) with 2GB RAM on a nice shiny new Asus P5K motherboard. However I kept my old 250GB HD and my nVidia 7900GS. Oooh talking about all these things makes me want to tinker away!

This build was the first time I had done everything from scratch since I was a young nipper on a work experience placement in Year 10 High School (14-15 I guess I was) working with the School IT Support in my home town of Cardiff. I got to do some fiddling about inside of a PC, however that was a long time and I was a bit nervous when I was setting up my current machine. However, despite my worries I got it all working, I may have nearly fried some stuff by not getting the fans working correctly, but it all worked fine.

The first thing I came to do upon booting up the machine was to install Windows. XP was, at the time, my system of choice yet for some reason I partitioned the hard drive. I installed XP on the slightly larger one and left the other one empty. I had fun with my fancy new system, but eventually I desired change, so I got out a Vista disc and put Vista on the other partition. This was a measley 120GB and the cause of my desire to tinker away again.

You see, I have a Press Account on Steam, this pretty much gives me a whole heap of great games to play and write about. In addition to this I have a pretty large collection of PC games. I am now starting to struggle for space, I find myself uninstalling games just to be able to download a demo without having to worry about running out of memory. I have another problem; I feel that I am falling behind graphically, I was playing Call of Duty: World at War on average settings and was getting awful frame rates and stuttering. I yearn for a new graphics card to come along and end my grahpical woes.

You see, that first experience I had with fiddling with the insides of a PC, and my latest issues leave me wanting to splurge the cash and improve my PC. I want to get inside it, figure out what goes where, install a nice new component. I want to get involved with the hardware of my PC right now, but I can’t.

Am I the only one who feels a desire to actually start messing around with the hardware in my PC? Is this something many people feel, or are you often scared of what you will find in there? Or is it the rapidly changing state of the hardware world that causes you to pause and just buy a pre-built machine? Personally after building my current one, I just can’t face getting a pre-built one.

Final note, I shall be getting a nice new 19″ monitor for Christmas, I also plan on buying a new graphics card. I can’t wait to get back inside my case.

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