buying a pc

I've been wanting to build my own PC for a while. I actually never understood how a PC worked, since my home only consisted of laptops. I believe that last time we owned a desktop PC was back in 2003.

On a side note, my dad purchased a PC for $3000 back in the 90s when they were just starting to enter the consumer market. Apparently the thing was massive, and my mom got pissed at how expensive it was. Of course, our smartphones are exponentially more powerful for a fraction of the price. Crazy how technology evolves, right?

I thought about buying the parts and building myself, but I figured that it woulds be really inconvenient. I am new to online shopping, and from my experience, I find deliveries to be quite inconsistent. Also, I didn't want to buy all the components brand new, as parts like DDR3 RAM sticks and coolers can be bought used on Craigslist for very reasonable prices.

So I just bought a used PC. $500 cold hard cash. How did I pay for it? I sold three sets of Kendo armor lying around in the closet for $800. Plus an old piano keyboard nobody was using for $110. Not too shabby. Maybe I'll write a post on my Craigslist adventures later.

Now that I've owned the PC for a week, I really understand the ins and outs of the inner PC components. It's not so bad. The power supply (ideally at least 750 watts, if you plan on heavy gaming) and the motherboard are attached the the case, and other PC components such as the network card and the graphics card are attached to the PCI / PCIe slots on the motherboard. A cooling solution must also be installed on the CPU, the RAM attached to the RAM slots, and all the cables attached correctly.

To be fully honest, the PC isn't 100% perfect. It was a good value, yes. The seller was very helpful, offered support even after the purchase, kept the PC in great condition (complete with cable management), and most importantly, delivered straight to my house so that I wouldn't have to lug a 40lb (or whatever the weight is) hunk of metal around via public transit.

1) The motherboard only supports first generation Intel Core CPUs.

This is probably the biggest issue I found with the PC, but for my purposes it's not a huge deal. At the moment and in the forseeable future, I don't think I'll be running incredibly processor heavy tasks that the current processor (Intel Core i5 750) cannot handle. Even games like Planetside 2, which is the only recent game in which gamers experienced CPU bottlenecks, runs silky smooth. In the worst case scenario, I could probably find a i7 950 (which surprisingly, still sells for $300 at retail stores despite the fact that the model has been discontinued for at least 2 years). However, I can see the motherboard needing an upgrade in a few years to accommodate the new and relevant processors.

2) The graphics card only supports Directx 10

Normally, this wouldn't bother me at all. Every game in recent memory has supported dx10, heck, sometimes dx9 as well... however, things are going to change with the release of Crysis 3. Crytek has decided to make the game require a dx11 card in order to even run (the application does a check before it starts up). This time, I'll be siding with the conspiracy theorists with the belief that Nvidia paid them off to set dx11 cards as a minimum so that their more recent models will sell. The graphics are nice and all, but it would require minimal effort on the developers side to make the game dx10 compatible.

Well, I guess I'll be skipping on this game.

Well, we all have to start somewhere. Before, I didn't even know that motherboards support limited types of CPUs, or that graphics cards were designed around specific Directx versions. This is technically my first PC, and now that I have gained a huge understanding in how the components work, as well as what components in the market are currently overpriced or worth buying, I can guarantee that my PC upgrade in a year or two will transform this machine into quite the beast.