Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

I have just spent €802 on a PNY Triple Fan OC Nvidia  Geforce 5070ti . This is actually a good deal for a card with US sticker price of $750 taking into account Ireland's 23% VAT and the extra costs associated with living on a small island. It is also the most expensive PC component I have ever bought. I am definitely not OK with the fact that enthusiast level GPUs  cost double what equivalent tier cards cost ten years ago.  I chose this version because it is one of the cheaper variants available but it is well built and one of the faster overclocked models with a large 3 slot heatsink that keeps it cool and quiet under pressure. It has no RGB or other frills but I don't care about that.  Initial impressions after playing around with it for about an hour: In 3D Mark, Total Warhammer 3 and Cyberpunk the card does seem quite a bit faster than the 7800Xt particularly at very high graphics settings. On the other hand the Nvidia Control panel still looks archaic. AMD's Ad...

I have been playing PC games for more than thirty years and it is still my favourite hobby. Over that time I have regularly come across questions on forums asking why should someone game on PC rather than console. I have occasionally offered my own opinion on the matter as I did in the reddit comment below. Surprisingly my answer to the question hasn't changed much over they years. If I can find an older answer I gave to a similar question I might post that as well for comparison.  Top reasons to start PC gaming: It is at least two hobbies in one. Tinkering with HW and Software and trying to get the most of out of limited HW is a whole game in itself. If you are nerdy enough you may enjooy it more than actually playing games. PC games are cheaper. AAA gams may start out the same price but prices fall quicker on PC and PC has an enormous back catalogue of free games. You can pick up classics for a few $. PC gamers can quickly amass a library of hundreds of games. Did I mention the e...

 Copied from this Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/zf8x35/what_was_pc_building_like_25_years_ago/izdndkg/ I am late to the party but your question brings back some nostalgic memories I would like to share: I first built a PC in 2002 so only twenty years ago and not twenty five. In 2002 building your own PC was not as common as today but enough people were doing it that guides were readily available and specialised retailers sold components. The actual steps of the build itself were not too different but they probably took a bit longer especially installing windows and drivers. The main components were still CPU, GPU and RAM and you still had multiple choices: Intel or AMD for CPU, Nvidia, ATI and a few few others for GPU. There were a lot more ancillary parts however. You needed a sound card, you needed a hard disk, a floppy disk and a CD/DVD drive. You also needed a dial up modem to get 56kbit ! internet. You needed a wired keyboard and a wired mouse...

The RTX3060ti I "borrowed" from my wife's Dell XPS machine is a great card for 1440p gaming but the twin fan cooler gets quite noisy when it is pushed hard. This post will explain how I managed to reduce the audible noise while maintaining performance using MSI afterburner.  The Parameters First a bit of background information. The three most important parameters are: 1. Fan Speed:  The louder the fan spins the noisier it gets. In my experience anything below 1000rpm is very quiet while anything above 2000rpm is intolerably noisy. I like my fans to idle below 1000rpm when the PC is not being stressed and I like them to stay as far below 2000rpm as possible when being pushed hard. Long ago PC fans ran at fixed speeds but nowadays they are nearly always controlled using a fan curve dependent on GPU temperature (or CPU temperature for CPU fans). The hotter the component gets the faster the fan spins.  2. GPU (core) clock speed. Simply enough the higher the clock speed the...

 I am writing this in early January 2022 and it is almost two years since we first heard about SARS Covid 19,  the virus which caused a pandemic that has wracked the globe in multiple waves since then. Notwithstanding the fact that there are far more serious implications of a life threatening pandemic than its impact on a hobby I still think it would be appropriate to write a few words about how the last couple of years have affected PC gaming.  To misquote Dickens it has been the best of times and the worst of times to be a PC gamer. Virus halting lockdowns forced many to look to digital entertainment and gaming of all types thrived. Of course we all headed outdoors as soon as restrictions lifted but I think the bounce in new players and the increased respectability of gaming as a leisure activity brought about will have lasting consequences. Despite a number of Covid related delays we have also been lucky enough to enjoy many fantastic game releases over the last two ye...