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Wasted Week, Buying a New PC - Round 4

3 years ago1,785 words

I hoped to use this week to first get some non-game-dev things out of the way, then to do a bit of work on Atonal Dreams... but I didn't do either! One of those non-dev things was finally deciding on a new PC, so I've at least written about that here a bit?? Any help from those of you who know and care about this stuff would be appreciated (again)!

My parents were away again this week, so I hoped to use the time to see to some things I've been unable to attend to while focused on work (or distracted by depression), like replying to messages, deciding on a new PC, and a couple of other things that have been hanging over me for months... But ugh. Instead I just completely wasted most of my time.

Part of it was because of the needy dog I had to look after - which wouldn't sit still unless I sat with it, which I couldn't comfortably do while at my computer - but I feel like that's an excuse more than anything.

Mostly I've just been feeling physically exhausted and incredibly tense - the worst I've felt in ages - because this is how I get when there's something I have to do. It's how I got whenever I had university assignments. I dread to think how I'd be in a work setting.

Do other people get like this? This visceral feeling of resistance and being weighed down and robbed of all energy, like trying to push through some mental wall? Seems other people with Avoidant Personality do, based on posts I've seen in the related subreddit I've been trying to frequent lately, and I've heard people with ADHD explain similar symptoms, so I'm assuming it's primarily a result of my various mental issues. Ugh. I suppose there's no point going on about it.

My parents are back now, so the dog's no longer a distraction... but even typing this feels like a gruelling chore. I want to at least have done something though!



So. As I said, one of the things I wanted to do this week was finally decide on a new PC to get, which is something I first mentioned three or four months ago??? (Uggghhh.) I wrote three separate blog posts about it, the ∞ the latest of which was from last November ∞.

I got some great comments from people who know and care about this stuff more than I do - I really wish I could explain how much I don't enjoy even thinking about computer hardware and the subtle differences between different varieties of components - and refined my mostly-ignorant choices a bit based on them, so I'm posting again hoping for the same.

IMPORTANTLY, while I'm not buying something completely prebuilt off Amazon this time, I'm also not buying separate components and building my own PC. I found (or was directed to? I forget) this website called PC Specialist last time, and what I'm doing is selecting options on ∞ this page ∞ from what they offer, which they assemble into a PC. I think?

So if you're interested in helping out, the best way you could do so is to visit that link, and go through the many dropdowns and selecting what you think would be best. Most of them have tons of options that I can't distinguish between because they're just clusters of meaningless numbers and names to me.

Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be any easy way to export or import a list of selected parts as far as I can see, so what I'll do - because I really want to stress that I'm using this specific website and I get the feeling a lot of people skim the words in the post, at best - is use screenshots:










There are many more options, but these are the ones I'm most ignorant and concerned about.

Last time, I talked about having no specific budget - I'll just pay whatever it costs, I thought, because it's something I use all day every day so it might as well be as good as it can be - but the price here feels unpleasantly steep to me now (different state of mind, I suppose):



I think a couple of people pointed out that some of my choices were more powerful than my needs, which is very likely true, and that cheaper, less powerful options might be a good idea. I agree with that, but - and I know I keep saying this, but I get the feeling that people who love hardware stuff don't really get it, in the way I'd be unable to truly get it if someone said they had zero interest in, say, personality psychology - I really don't know or enjoy learning about all the minutiae of this domain, and even thinking about researching it gives me a headache. I did try! I couldn't get through one youtube video (specifically about the best PC parts for creators) without completely zoning out, and I retained none of the information.

A refresher about what my needs actually are:

I assume most people use their PCs either for mundane office work and web browsing, and/or for playing hardcore AAA games on the highest settings for hours on end, neither of which is the case for me. I use mine for making a lot of different things across several programs, which I often have several of open at once. Unwise, I know, and I get a issues with lag a lot. My PC also takes like half an hour to fully start up. And some tasks in Unity lag for minutes at a time.

My main hopes for a new PC are something that could keep up running several fairly heavy creative applications at the same time, ideally with minimal processing time for things like saving, loading, or whatever. Minimising program and general OS startup times - which are lengthy for me on this PC - would be great too. I want to wait around less than I do now.

I rarely play games - and when I do, it's for an hour or two a day to finish a single playthrough, then it's done - but I'd like to be able to keep up to some degree with modern games if I ever do decide to play them (I think the FF7 Remake - which I never got to play because I don't have a PS4, or whatever it was on - will be coming to PC soon, so I'd like to play that, for example). I'm not all that concerned with running everything at ridiculous framerates with everything at the max settings, but nor would I be happy with the minimum necessary settings. I don't know what '4k gaming' is (I can guess, but I mean I'm not familiar with it).

I have two monitors (or three, kind of, since I have a cheapish artists' drawing tablet that seems to be counted as a third monitor). One's a bit wider than the other. I know their resolutions (2560x1080 and 1920x1080) because that's what's relevant to me as a creator, but it seems other people have '4k monitors' and such, which I didn't even know was a thing, so these monitors are surely not that. I'm not planning to replace them immediately; I can always do that later if I decide to.

I want something at least somewhat futureproof.

Beyond this, I'm not sure what to say that'd be helpful to someone in the know. I was thinking about this, and maybe it's like me asking someone to describe their personality, hoping to get an idea of their Big Five traits, to which they say "uhhh... I like Minecraft and listen to Eskimo Throat Singing?", because they've not built relevant mental schemata for the domain I'm trying to explore... or something like that? The point is that I don't know what information is relevant when it comes to deciding on hardware components.



But yes. Ugh. I just want to get at least one of this week's tasks out of the way, but I'm paralysed by indecisiveness because of all the choices that I don't understand the differences between (I wish all I had to do was choose between Grass, Fire, and Water computers!!), and the high cost that makes 'getting it wrong' feel particularly aversive. Then of course I just end up avoiding it all for weeks, then months...

So, as I said, the best way to help me out here would be to visit the specific site I linked to, and look at the list of available options for anything more cost-effective or generally better than what I've chosen here which would still be powerful enough to meet my needs for several years!



I hoped with my parents back and the dog no longer a distraction, I'd be able to focus again... but they've only been back an hour, and already it feels like a pall's fallen over me, like the relatively peaceful temporary ownership I had over this space has been replaced with the sense of being trapped, dependent, inferior, an intruder... or something I'm struggling to find words for. Bleh.

Maybe I'll be alright tomorrow and can tackle some of the other tasks over the weekend.

...And already my parents are inviting their various friends over, as they often do (or it's more like my extremely extroverted step-dad does while my mum complains about it to me). So that adds a layer of stress. I'd love to continue looking into moving out once I feel more secure about money. Maybe a lot of these issues would dissipate - at least a bit - if I could afford to have my own space. Too bad it's so hard to earn money from games...

Well, unless you're a huge company. Pokemon Legends of Arceus sold millions of copies, apparently! Which is well-deserved; I've played it for around a dozen hours so far, and I'm really impressed and inspired. I wrote out some notes of my impressions, which I'd like to turn into a blog post... but I haven't had a good track record writing about games I've played recently, so... ehhh.

I wonder what it's like to feel regularly mentally alert??