As someone who enjoys playing video games, from time to time I am confronted with a sad reality: the gaming industry eventually outruns the capabilities of my computer. Every now and then a new machine either has to be bought or built.
My parents bought their first PC in 1997 or 1998 I believe. They locked it with a password to limit my time. In 2000, I bought my first PC for DM200 (~€100) from a schoolmate. The machine was totally outdated, but I opened it up and it helped me a lot to understand how a computer works. In 2001, I tried to build my own Gaming PC, but I made a mistake. I tried to run a Pentium CPU on a Celeron motherboard, both used the same socket. This got fixed with the help of a local computer store. I played countless hours THPS 2 and Diablo 2 on it.
When I bought World of Warcraft, I needed a new machine. This time I went for a Laptop and it lasted 3 years before falling apart. Then I bought another PC in 2008, but a couple years later in 2011 it had a problem I couldn’t fix at the time. So I bought the cheapest replacement on the market, something for less than €500. This PC had also so many problems and when Diablo 3 got announced it rebooted out of nowhere. I replaced the PSU without any change. Then I used the GPU from the older PC and it finally worked again. But the system was too slow and in 2013 I built another computer. This one lasted for over 10 years until January 2024 when I built my current system.
My experience is, as an ambitious gamer you always want to build your own computer. Then you know what is in there and then you know the system will last. There is not a single exception, every PC I built lasted until it had to be replaced due to performance issues, and every PC I bought fell apart or stopped working.
Which parts are required and what I actually went for
This question is very easy to answer: a gaming computer only needs 8 components. The following list shows what I bought specifically.
• Case be quiet! Silent Base 802
• PSU be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000W
• Motherboard Asus ROG STRIX X670E-A
• CPU AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
• CPU Cooler be quiet! Silent Loop II 360
• RAM G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32GB 5600MHz
• GPU Sapphire Nitro+ 7800XT
• SSDs I used my old ones but will upgrade with Samsung 990 Pro soon
Usually, I check benchmarks what is currently good and then I read reviews and see which parts fit together. For example motherboard and CPU have to be a match, and the RAM should also be supported by your motherboard. Here in this case I decided for a very powerful case, PSU, motherboard and CPU cooler. These are all premium with the objective to upgrade further. The CPU is pretty weak and will be replaced with the last generation of AMD CPUs which run on this motherboard. The GPU is good but not overkill. This one can also be replaced later. There are more things I want to buy. First a couple of SSDs, because I still run my old drives from 2013 and then I want to improve the airflow with premium Case Fans.
It took €1,998.51 and 11 months to buy and gather all the parts. With the intention to upgrade further this is not the end, but I think I positioned myself for the first time to not have to worry about outdated hardware anymore. There is a clear path on how to improve this machine and make it run for at least another 8 to 10 years.
Thanks for your time!