My Mid 2020 Gaming Computer Build is Complete!

[Ryuzaki]

Long story short, when I around 20 years old and the Playstation 2 was out, I sold it and all of my games and said I'd skip the next generation and hop back in when the PS4 came out. The goal was to not be distracted and to have a "technology shock" when I got back into it, with a big leap in graphics.

Time came and went and I ended up using Mac computers so I couldn't even really game there, if you're aware of the Mac gaming landscape. Finally with all of the talk of the PS5 and Xbox Series X coming this holiday season, I started looking into them versus building a gaming PC.

What really settled it for me was true backwards compatibility and not paying $60 for old console games I can get for $5 on Steam. So I set about studying the current generation of parts for PC's. After a couple weeks, I understood the lay of the land and put together a build on PCPartsPicker. Unfortunately, they under-estimated the cost by 25%.

Here's what I ended up paying. I know I overpaid for some parts. Like there seems to be a global power supply shortage right now, and GPU prices inflated some degree.

You can tag on another $100 for a USB stick to create a Windows 10 boot drive, some RCA cables, USB extension cables, two USB hubs, an HDMI cable, etc.

I did the whole thing of watching benchmarks, etc. My giant 3840 x 1600p monitor is locked in at 60 fps so I didn't need to worry about doing 144Hz, and I'd rather have the size over the refresh rate at a smaller resolution.

I also looked at the sweet spot between spending extra while getting diminishing returns. I think I dialed it in nicely. I went without some things like the new m.2 SSD's with higher bandwidth because I'd have to then upgrade the motherboard, and games don't benefit from that anyways, it's mainly GPU RAM that makes the difference in that regard.

PCPartsPicker made it easy to see what was compatible or not, though I didn't blindly trust it without verifying.

It's been a nightmare of trying to make a boot drive on a Mac (I ended up using a friend's Windows computer to use the Media Creation Tool). The HDMI cable gave me a scare that it wouldn't support 60fps at this resolution (plugging it into the 2nd port instead of first on the monitor fixed it up).

I'll have it all set up where my Mac Pro and this gaming computer can share the same speakers, mouse and keyboard, same monitor, etc. There will be zero annoyance in popping in back and forth between the two.

Anyways, here's some of the few pics I remembered to take as I was putting it together:

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That's the motherboard before I started slapping in the CPU, CPU cooler, RAM, and GPU. All of that was easy, but plugging in all the cables around the edges of the motherboard was pretty wild. There were very little instructions that came with any of this stuff, which I found strange. If there was any, it was the most surface level crap.

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I took a pic of the extra fan I installed before I had to take it out because the original GPU I wanted wasn't available so I had to get one of the fancier third-party company versions that ended up being too long, thus the fan couldn't fit. I turned it into exhaust fan out the top.

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Here was the first time I turned it on. Unbeknownst to me, the CPU cooler, motherboard, and the GPU had LED's on it. Had I known I'd have gotten LED RAM sticks too. I don't care about this feature. I've yet to install the software to control the colors. I'm either going to set it all to red or blue, or turn it all off.

Anyways, it's been fun putting it together. I've spent maybe one real play session on it and it was on the first South Park RPG that runs at 30fps. I started it before the HDMI cable came in, and I'll probably finish it before jumping on some other games.

Steam was running a sale about a month ago and I picked up:

• every Resident Evil game​
• both South Park RPG's​
• Grand Theft Auto V​
• Doom​
• Far Cry 1-6 plus New Dawn & Primal & Blood Dragon​
• King's Quest Collection​
• Death Stranding (free with GPU)​
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (free with CPU)​

I'll also end up getting:

• more Assassin's Creed games
• the Dark Souls games
• LOTR: Shadow of Mordor
• whatever the newest Dynasty Warriors is

I have already and have played some of them:

• The Witcher 1 & 2
• the three new Tomb Raider games
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Portal 1 & 2
• Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
• Stardew Valley
• Bioshock series

Anyways. How'd I do? What games do you like? I have about 16 years of back catalogue to catch up on. I like Fantasy/Scifi/Horror stuff. I like RPG's. I like story driven shooters and the games that are like the Tomb Raiders and Assassin's Creeds. I know Uncharted fits that bill but I don't think they're on PC.

I'm going to load up on games every time a Steam sale rolls around, and pick through the old stuff first so I'm not just waiting on new games to come out. It's going to be fun to blast through them all on Ultra graphics and not drop below 60fps.

 

[MrSanti]

That's a top build

You can play everything there. If you want to go back, you can play a ton of emulators from ps2, wii, psp, nintendo, there is even a ps3 emulator now I think.

If you like Scifi/Horror stuff combined on a story driven FPS shooter. You are going to freaking love The Metro Saga: Metro 3033, metro Last Light (get the redux version) and Metro Exodus (the last metro, an open-world, I didn't play this one yet). I have the books too, and they are awesome btw.

 

[MightyOwl]

Super sick! If you ever try Call of duty : modern warfare ( the recent one) please add me!

 

[bernard]

You can play with your cat! Pet the damn kitty.

No joke, I was actually thinking about buying a gaming computer again. I feel that I've outgrown consoles, actually years ago, but I do like the odd game and particularly the kind of strategy games that the PC is great at.

Thanks for the inspiration, I don't think I'll want to spend 2k yet tho.

I like Fantasy/Scifi/Horror stuff. I like RPG's.

Alien Isolation (horror) and my favorite is Prey which is sci-fi, horror and rpg in one.

 

[Ryuzaki]

You can play with your cat! Pet the damn kitty.

If you look in the pic, he's actually looking up at the ceiling fan and lights. I give him his treats on that table and he always looks up at the lights and burns his retinas and then gets scared about it. He's so dumb. My dumb little keekat buddy!

Thanks for the suggestions on games. I actually have a text file that I'm keeping all the suggestions and ones I'm remembering in so I eventually play them all. I'll look into all of them tonight in depth.

Once I wrap up my work tonight I'm going to fire up DOOM with max graphics and get my first real "technology shock" as I mentioned. It's going to be HYPE.

 

[Darth]

I am always tempted to do this (I hate playing shooters on console) but either work or family time would need to suffer. Enjoyable read though.

 

[Potatoe]

@bernard Thanks for reminding me that I need to check out the newer Prey game, did you play the original one from like a decade ago? I thought it was kinda unique at the time, interesting theme etc - they kind of rebooted it or something right?

@Ryuzaki Dead Space is a must-play if you're into Resident Evil. It's one of my favorite games of all time. It was a similar "whoa" experience for me as playing Bioshock for the first time, I'd almost describe it as Bioshock meets RE. I'll hit you up with that code for Frost Punk too, it seems to me you enjoy some strategy/resource management type games, ya?

 

[Ryuzaki]

it seems to me you enjoy some strategy/resource management type games, ya?

I do. I like incremental games (numbers go up, wheeeee). I like city builders, etc. The one thing I don't like is open-ended sandbox games. I'll play them and enjoy them but get bored quicker when I know I'm not working towards an ending and a resolution to some kind of story.

 

[bernard]

Let me recommend another one, survival/resource management game, which would probably be great on PC.

Subnautica, sci-fi, resource management, gorgeous water graphics. It is "open world" though. It was a mindblowing game for me, as I don't really play much, and I imagine it looks amazing on a high end PC.

 

[Potatoe]

@Ryuzaki K sweet, I think you'll really dig Frost Punk. I'll give away some other steam keys I have kicking around, too. I wonder what the best way to do that would be, I've heard of bots snatching up keys for games that are posted in plain text so maybe I'll add in some extra characters or something lol.

Subnautica looks cool, I didn't realize it has resource management elements to it, I'll have to add that to my list too. I'd watched people play it a bit but I just thought it was like a "swimming simulator" lol like that dolphin game from Sega or something.

 

[ItsYoBuddy]

My guy, you got me excited to learn that the whole kings quest collection is on steam! I rarely hear people talk about that series! Most of the KQ games are my favorite and I also love the Monkey Island games. Those 2d pixel games will forever be the best.

 

[bernard]

Did you find the time to play games @Ryuzaki?

I've only been playing NBA2K myself, but I got the Doom Ultimate and Deliver Us The Moon.

 

[DanielS]

Chiming in to recommend Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I played it last April/May (on the Xbox One, mind you) and it sucked me in like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion did back in 2011.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@bernard, I've finished...

• All the Resident Evils
• The first South Park RPG
• Tore through Portal 1 in like 30 mins again
• The Darkside Detective (quick Flash type game)
• Death Stranding
• Doom (1st of the new ones)
• Frostpunk for a few nights
• GemCraft - Chasing Shadows & Frostborn Wrath
• Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor
• and Right now I'm playing Dead Space & GTAV

I think at that point, I'm going to pick up the Dark Souls and Demons Souls games. So much of what I have left that I bought are sequels, and I'm sick of all the same first person shooter types at the moment. I'll return to Dead Space 2 and 3 and all the Far Cry games, etc. Middle Earth 2, South Park 2.... I'll come back to all that. I need a legit RPG fix at this point.

@DanielS, nice, I've seen about that. I played Daggerfall, barely any Oblivion, and most of Skyrim in the past. So that sounds right up my alley. I've thought about Skyrim again with all the high graphic texture packs and fancy graphic add-ons, but I don't know if I want to replay it yet.

I also have The Witcher 1, 2 and 3, but my save game on #1 corrupted 3 times on me over the years. I don't know if I can stomach going through it again. Maybe it'll do better on pure Windows (I was doing that on Bootcamp on a Mac).

I guess worst case scenario I could just watch someone play Witcher 1 on youtube on fast foward so I could at least SEE it happen. Then jump to #2. I hate it. I like to play through all episodes of a series.

 

[bernard]

@Ryuzaki Any of those games you would definitely recommend? I watched someone play Death Stranding and that was actually a very cool and weird experience.

I think you will really like Dark Souls, it's as close to video game art as I've seen. It's genius in that the controls are very simple, but the gameplay is very complex.

@DanielS I do like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but it's too slow for me, but that's how I am now. I can't get around to playing most RPGs these days, because I find it difficult to deal with the go there, do that, go back again, gameplay. Feels like wasting time. It has an amazing atmosphere though.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@bernard, Death Stranding was like... watching movie sequences and in between you're walking or riding a vehicle to the next movie sequence. By the end I wanted it to end, but the story was great, especially if you're into relaxed exploration and a deep story on the weird side.

If you're into fast paced action shooter stuff... like if Resident Evil gave you endless ammo and sent hoards of zombies at you, then Doom is perfect for you. Especially if you like to do the lil challenges and finding the collectibles and getting to 100% completion. I like that gamification, which it had.

The first Middle-Earth had a lot of RPG elements that were cool. GTAV is fun and a great story (I'm doing story mode). Dead Space is pretty solid, too. Very interesting mechanics for how the guns work and the enemies, etc.

 

[mmm91492]

Second for subnautica, that game will make you shit your pants' pants

 

[Ryuzaki]

I need everyone to know that I'm now officially a gamer now...

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For I hath just completed Dark Souls including the even harder DLC bosses.

As I sit on my throne, I wondered what was left for me. I almost listed my gaming computer for sale on Ebay but then I remembered I have Dark Souls 2 and 3 in my Steam account. So the battle wages on.

 

[bernard]

Congrats on finishing Dark Souls, which ending did you get?

I suggest you skip Dark Souls 2, it's not really a Dark Souls game.

Dark Souls 3 is absolutely amazing and as you played DS1 first, you should jump right in to DS3, that game is the GOAT imo.

In similar news, I sold my PS4, because I want to use more time on outside hobbies. I will buy the next gen only when there is a new Soulsbourne game or a new Elder Scrolls game.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Congrats on finishing Dark Souls, which ending did you get?

I kindled the first flame. I thought I was simply lighting another save-point bonfire. I wasn't even aware of a 2nd ending until I saw about it online when I thought I skipped an ending cinematic or something because it kind of ended abruptly.

 

[bernard]

I kindled the first flame. I thought I was simply lighting another save-point bonfire. I wasn't even aware of a 2nd ending until I saw about it online when I thought I skipped an ending cinematic or something because it kind of ended abruptly.

Yes, the game likes to troll.

I would recommend watching some lore videos now on Youtube. Things are not as they seem.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I would recommend watching some lore videos now on Youtube. Things are not as they seem.

I did already, as well as reading about every location in Lordran, every boss, every NPC, the other locations in the world at large, etc.

It was worth it because I didn't bother reading many of the item descriptions, where I assume a lot of the lore was tucked in. They did a really bad job at the world building past the visuals, in terms of explaining things in game. It was very vague, but it definitely was in there to some degree because I did catch onto the highlights. It's definitely a much more rich experience (in retrospect only) now knowing what I know. If I ever replay it, I'm sure it'll be even better. But that'll be many many years from now, seeing as how I have tons of other stuff I want to play as well as the sequels and the impending Demons Souls remaster PC release.

 

[bernard]

I thought that way at first, but come to think of it, I see it as part of the brilliance that is Dark Souls.

It's very meta, you're some random undead plodding through the game, thinking you're saving the world, but you're really being manipulated, seeing illusions. You're not being told that though, without the internet you might never know.

It fits with the way the game works, it breaks with every video game convention, the game wants you to pay attention.

 

[mgeer]

Anyways, it's been fun putting it together. I've spent maybe one real play session on it and it was on the first South Park RPG that runs at 30fps. I started it before the HDMI cable came in, and I'll probably finish it before jumping on some other games.

Steam was running a sale about a month ago and I picked up:

• every Resident Evil game​
• both South Park RPG's​
• Grand Theft Auto V​
• Doom​
• Far Cry 1-6 plus New Dawn & Primal & Blood Dragon​
• King's Quest Collection​
• Death Stranding (free with GPU)​
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (free with CPU)​

A little late, I know, but I was searching for design/graphics software recommendations and came across this, so figured I'd chime in.

If you like the South Park games (and they are good IMO, especially the second one), odds are you'll like South Park Phone Destroyer. It's a mobile card collecting and strategy game. I never played them, but I imagine SPPD is similar to games like Pokemon or Magic.

I have a main account I play on iOS/iPhone and downloaded BlueStacks to my PC recently so that I can have an account on Android as well. Playing a mobile game on PC is SO MUCH better, especially this one, as you want to be precise with your card drops/usage.

Edited to add: My profile picture is the avatar I use in my main account.

 

[Pagey]

Nice rig, welcome to the master race XD

Dead Space 1 and 2 are freaking amazing. That feeling when you get back to the original ship still send me shivers. Oh and the eye surgery hahahaha

Played the first witcher 4 times, all paths, all girlfriends. It was amazing at the time. The gameplay aged a bit tho.

I can recommend you Elex if you are into RPGs, elex 2 is right around the corner. If you like old school RPGs like Gothic 1 and 2, it is made by the same guys.

I'm writing this while listening to the soundtrack, it's my favorite: