Alora Fane

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:

I don't understand the differences between any of these cases. This one was just suggested to me before. Seems expensive, though?

This is box 2.

This is apparently also box 2. Web design!

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??

5 COMMENTS

kalkra19~3Y

I haven't been diagnosed with any mental issues, and I'm pretty sure I don't have ADHD, but I also feel drained by needing to do things. I'd like to have some diagnosis to blame it on, but I've kinda been assuming that I'm just lazy and I should just get off my rear and do what I need to do. Still, sometimes (but not always) when I do finally decide to work on something, as soon as I actually look at what I'm supposed to working on, I feel an overwhelming sense of despair and exhaustion. It's really debilitating, and I haven't figured out what triggers it, and I have no idea if other people feel the same way or not.

Tobias 1115~3Y

I certainly get that too, but I was just thinking while replying to another comment: maybe a big part of it is down to subconscious fear of negative consequences, or something? Or I think I've read that it's related to competence and confidence, so if we have to do something unfamiliar you don't believe yourself to be good at, we feel like this?

But I get it even when I'm sitting down to play games, so I'm not sure!

MontyCallay101~3Y

I think you made good choices! Just order the bloody thing already :)

For me the tenseness/procrastination is worst when it's a self-directed thing that takes a large amount of focus/mental effort to do - like writing a paper or studying for an imminent exam and so forth. In my experience working side jobs and internships, it's been easier for me when I work on a team or if it's something where there's more immediate feedback or external components. The stable routine and external schedule that those situations have tends to be helpful as well. So perhaps there's hope for you yet!

I can really relate to the regular mental alertness thing. Funnily enough, after a lot of time struggling with that sort of thing myself I'm seriously considering seeking out a diagnosis for adult ADHD... partly due to curiosity as a result of reading of people's experiences with medication on the types of forums that you mentioned ("Things are so much easier to do now", "I feel like I have my brain back", "Finally, I can grow that third arm I always wanted" etc), partly because I was diagnosed as a kid, so I know there's something there... and I ended up spending most of my mental energy budget this week navigating the waters of my local medical infrastructure, which is always fun - though I surely don't need to tell you that! Apparently, a key factor is patience. Hmm.

At any rate, order that computer already! Do it now!!

I think you made good choices! Just order the bloody thing already :)

For me the tenseness/procrastination is worst when it's a self-directed thing that takes a large amount of focus/mental effort to do - like writing a paper or studying for an imminent exam and so forth. In my experience working side jobs and internships, it's been easier for me when I work on a team or if it's something where there's more immediate feedback or external components. The stable routine and external schedule that those situations have tends to be helpful as well. So perhaps there's hope for you yet!

I can really relate to the regular mental alertness thing. Funnily enough, after a lot of time struggling with that sort of thing myself I'm seriously considering seeking out a diagnosis for adult ADHD... partly due to curiosity as a result of reading of people's experiences with medication on the types of forums that you mentioned ("Things are so much easier to do now", "I feel like I have my brain back", "Finally, I can grow that third arm I always wanted" etc), partly because I was diagnosed as a kid, so I know there's something there... and I ended up spending most of my mental energy budget this week navigating the waters of my local medical infrastructure, which is always fun - though I surely don't need to tell you that! Apparently, a key factor is patience. Hmm.

At any rate, order that computer already! Do it now!!

Tobias 1115~3Y

Interesting; I wonder whether this reduction in mental energy is just a natural result of getting older? I've seen a lot of people describe similarish things even outside mental health subreddits. And it seems fairly universal regarding challenges like exams...

I've been able to mostly focus on work for a while, but the stuff I'm currently putting off is unusual and requires more focus and mental effort than my creative work, and - importantly, I think - comes with negative consequences of doing it incorrectly. It's why I'm so damn indecisive about this PC; I'm aware of how little I know, and it's months worth of my meagre income, so it's difficult to make the decision because I have so little confidence that it's 'correct'.

I think what I'll do is just wait until the end of the week, see if anyone else comments on this post - or if I have any new thoughts myself - and then I'll just decide on something next weekend, despite the doubt and reluctance!

DeNovo4~3Y

Buying a PC is a complex and confusing process! I never really know what most of the options mean. When I bought my last PC, I couldn't find the hard drive! Those new NvME sticks or whatever are new and weird.

In terms of your computer requirements, I think the biggest expense right now is (tragically) the chip shortage driving chip costs up fairly universally. Most new electronics are scarce and more expensive; GPUs these days (curse you blockchain) are way more expensive than they should be! That card you picked looks like it should cost around £529, but it adds £680 to the cost! That might still be a fairish prices, but it seems like significant markup. Not much we can do there except wait for up to 5 months for GPU factory production to catch up, though.

Since you're not getting a second GPU, you don't need a "crossfire" motherboard (that's a silly marketing term for linking two GPUs together for more GPU power), and that saves a teensy bit of cash.

Weirdly, 2 16 gb sticks are cheaper than 4 8 gb sticks, and bigger sticks are better for you since you can easily buy two more to upgrade your RAM further in the future! I'd buy 16 gb x 2 for now, and plan on picking up two more for a total of 64 gb when your machine starts feeling slow. The primary source of speediness tends to be those new-fangled NVmE thingies anyway so you should be fine for now.

Most of the time people get a snappy drive for operating systems and key software. I actually install my big games to a cheaper normal SSD. 1 TB Intel 670p seems to have the same speed and is cheaper!

I think a 4 TB hard drive is a great choice if you don't have one already; you could probably pull out the one in your current machine for extra storage instead. Having a nice big one to move from machine to machine has worked pretty well for me, since they're all so fast now anyway. If you do have a big hard drive you could transfer, then maybe consider getting the 1 TB SSD instead for your productivity software and creative software.

I don't know what the rest of your choices were, so the costs might be coming from somewhere else. I'm looking at £1,623 ex VAT and £1,948 inc. VAT.

The fact of the matter is that CPUs these days aren't getting much faster (they can't, not really) so desktops can go a decade needing only a few specific (and comparatively cheap) parts to run like new. So future proofing a (non-VR gaming) machine is pretty easy!

Hope this helps, and good luck with your purchase!

In terms of your computer requirements, I think the biggest expense right now is (tragically) the chip shortage driving chip costs up fairly universally. Most new electronics are scarce and more expensive; GPUs these days (curse you blockchain) are way more expensive than they should be! That card you picked looks like it should cost around £529, but it adds £680 to the cost! That might still be a fairish prices, but it seems like significant markup. Not much we can do there except wait for up to 5 months for GPU factory production to catch up, though.

Since you're not getting a second GPU, you don't need a "crossfire" motherboard (that's a silly marketing term for linking two GPUs together for more GPU power), and that saves a teensy bit of cash.

Weirdly, 2 16 gb sticks are cheaper than 4 8 gb sticks, and bigger sticks are better for you since you can easily buy two more to upgrade your RAM further in the future! I'd buy 16 gb x 2 for now, and plan on picking up two more for a total of 64 gb when your machine starts feeling slow. The primary source of speediness tends to be those new-fangled NVmE thingies anyway so you should be fine for now.

Most of the time people get a snappy drive for operating systems and key software. I actually install my big games to a cheaper normal SSD. 1 TB Intel 670p seems to have the same speed and is cheaper!

I think a 4 TB hard drive is a great choice if you don't have one already; you could probably pull out the one in your current machine for extra storage instead. Having a nice big one to move from machine to machine has worked pretty well for me, since they're all so fast now anyway. If you do have a big hard drive you could transfer, then maybe consider getting the 1 TB SSD instead for your productivity software and creative software.

I don't know what the rest of your choices were, so the costs might be coming from somewhere else. I'm looking at £1,623 ex VAT and £1,948 inc. VAT.

The fact of the matter is that CPUs these days aren't getting much faster (they can't, not really) so desktops can go a decade needing only a few specific (and comparatively cheap) parts to run like new. So future proofing a (non-VR gaming) machine is pretty easy!

Hope this helps, and good luck with your purchase!