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Back to Work, But I Probably Need A New PC!

3 years ago1,241 words

I got back to work on Atonal Dreams this week, which has been... mixed. A slow, frustrating start, and then various obstacles got in the way, so I wasn't able to get as much done as I wanted (a recurring story, that). One big recurring obstacle was my computer being even laggier than usual, so I've been thinking yet again about replacing it! I'm clueless about hardware though...

(I'm posting this on Friday! Gasp!)



I did do some work, at least! I've continued working on the intro bit in Collie's Psychepelago, and I've almost finished it now. I mostly wrote bits of dialogue - I'm getting more familiar writing the characters, so it's less of a strain than it was previously - and added some important but unexciting things like animations, bug fixes, code for particular events triggering properly, etc. Not a huge amount to show for it, really.

I probably could have finished the intro section this week if not for distractions like annoying amounts of computer lag!



I've been thinking for months that I probably need a new computer! I experience lag regularly; Unity takes like half an hour to load Atonal Dreams in the morning, for one thing, which it never used to, then for the first hour or two of the day I get these 10-second freezes every few minutes while trying to work, and it really disrupts my flow and focus. Ugh.

I've had my current PC since late 2017, or something like that? Even though I spend my life at this thing, my mind's more attuned to 'soft' things like art and psychology than 'hard' ones like, well, hardware, so I've always been clueless about that side of things and have never built my own PC. I've been wondering whether to try it this time, but... eh, honestly I don't have the interest and I assume I'll just mess something up if I try. I can't really afford the money or time to develop skills through trial and error.

I got my current PC after writing a similar post on the older version of this site (I think?), and listening to the suggestions of people who do care about hardware. So since that happened before, I'm hoping someone might be able to suggest something this time too since I don't really know what to look for myself.

It seems as if PCs are typically marketed to two groups: average people who just want to use it for office documents, emails, and maybe youtube or something, and hardcore gamers who want ultra-high-powered gaming rigs to play the latest AAA games on the highest settings.

I'm neither of those. I don't care about super-high-graphics games in general, so I'm not interested in extreme performance, but I primarily use my computer for a bunch of different (probably relatively intensive?) creative programs, usually running all at once.

Unity's the main one, and that's where I'm experiencing the most lag at the moment, but I also do 3D modelling in Blender, music composition in Sibelius, and digital art in Krita (I can't afford Photoshop), plus I open a lot of image, music, and video files in Windows' basic file viewers, which typically lag, and I have a couple of different backup services and antivirus things that seem to be fairly resource-hungry. I've been using a free but powerful program called DaVinci Resolve for video editing, but my current PC can barely run it - plus it takes eons just to start up - so it'd be nice if I could use that more smoothly.

I don't even have an SSD at the moment, because when I got this PC they were all either too expensive or too lacking in capacity. Some quick searching shows that 1TB+ ones are common these days, and I've read they're a lot faster than HDDs (or whatever the old alternative are called), so I'm wondering if that alone would lead to significant improvements in program startups (my main concern). I know little though, so if you do know and have experience with both, I'm curious to know how much of a difference it actually makes.

I'd also like something with as many USB ports as possible - I'm currently having to use an extra hub thing to fit everything in this one - and something that could support 3+ hard drives for additional storage would be great... though I'm currently using two (a main ~1TB C drive which is almost full, and a 2.6TB one for extra storage with tons of room left) and that might be enough, hmm.

I'm vaguely aware that the price of parts - especially or exclusively GPUs? - is hugely inflated at the moment due to supply shortages, and it's a terrible time to be buying because of that. I'd wait it out if not for the constant lag interfering with my work! If it's possible to replace a GPU later, I could always get a decent but hardly top-of-the-line one now and upgrade it later if I need to... though I don't know if that's actually possible or not since my hardware knowledge is so lacking.

I'm not planning to keep any parts of this current machine (other than maybe the D drive if I can remove it without damaging it!), just because there's huge psychological appeal in the idea of something wholly fresh and crisp and new.

I'll look into this more myself over the weekend, though I'd greatly appreciate hearing any thoughts about what I should get!

I should probably get a good one since I do spend my life at the thing, and it's for work rather than just a luxury. But I'm hardly rolling in money here, so I'd say my budget is something like, uh... £2000, maybe? ($2750US, apparently.) That's more than I've ever paid for a computer before, though, and I'm not exactly eager to spend a ton...



Other than that, I've also been struggling with time management recently. I've been meaning to reply to messages, post on Reddit, etc for ages, but I never actually do because I can't find the time for it. I keep wondering whether I need to just assign some slot on my timetable where I force myself to actually engage with the world, but I can never decide what time would work best with all the other stuff I try to cram in (which depression prevents me from sticking to very well anyway). So that's something I'm working on. I should probably be fitting in more time to play games too!

(I still need to write a post about Kingdom Heart: Chain of Memories...)

Speaking of engaging socially, ∞ I saw this r/gamedev thread - "Dealing with Toxic Fans" ∞ this morning, which reminded me of past experiences. It's usually a handful of deranged and persistent individuals that cause most of the issues even if the community overall is fine. Reassuring to know it's not just me being uniquely awful at community management, I suppose, though it adds to the reluctance I already have about building another community if this kind of thing is par for the course... Hmm.

But yes. Getting back into it's been difficult, but I'm getting somewhere, slowly but surely. And I'd appreciate any suggestions about computer stuff from those of you who know about such things!