Living with a Windows computer

To wrap things up, I figured I should do an overview on my experience using Windows so far, compared to using Mac, as well as my overall satisfaction with how the computer is working. 

To be blunt, I struggled several times over the past week attempting to make Windows do what I want, and even had to completely erase and reinstall the OS for one of my games to work. After I did that, however, I haven’t seen much trouble on the Operating System side of things. Many third party apps and games have little quirks that I have had to get used to, especially with how they interact with my monitoring software, but after several hours of playing with settings I seemed to have found a happy medium. 

Obviously, having only used Mac computers before this PC build, I would say that for someone buying their first computer, a Mac may be easier and more intuitive to use for beginners. But I also realize that the amount of people new to MacOS or even Windows is gradually becoming smaller and smaller. So this problem isn’t one I think is relevant to answer for this build. 

Now, for someone building a computer for the first time, I was actually shocked at how easy I was able to install everything and put it together. Like I've said numerous times at this point, my only experience working on computers comes from Mac computers, so this being a first build for me was an awesome welcome into the PC world. With virtually no hiccups throughout the build process [as far as hardware malfunction or improper installation], from start to finish it was about a 10 day total project. That also has largely to do with how fast I was able to get everything shipped to me, so again, shoutout all the vendors working hard to get customers their products!

As far as comparing this PC to specs of my previous XBOX One-S, it is a total game-changer. Graphic and video rendering on this rig really blows any console gaming system out of the water, and that largely has to do with the NVIDIA power-plant of a GPU. Obviously the amount of time and money I put into building a custom PC cannot be compared to simply buying a console off the shelf and having it ready to play, but as far as gaming experience, PC gaming is really on an absolutely different level. 

I did also want to mention why I went with a lower end CPU for this build, which was the 9th generation 6-core Intel i5. Well, value for price simply. This CPU cost less than ⅙ of my entire build, and from the research I did, I would be largely relying on the GPU to achieve the results I wanted. This chip was a great value at $200, and is able to be overclocked if needed down the line. I have yet to see any issues with performance being hindered with this chip, but will continue to verify down the line.

In the near future, I will also test several benchmarks and post results, first without overclocking and then with overclocking, to get an idea of my price for performance. 

So far, I’m enjoying playing my new favorite game, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, on the highest settings that the game allows, with no problems. My cooling seems to be doing extremely well, with all temperatures staying low and nowhere near thermal throttling. Down the line, I may decide to change the AIO fans to sit outside the radiator, but for now keeping them on the inside seems to be working fine. 

As far as home entertainment, obviously the PC works great for any streaming service and drives my 4k TV perfectly. One peripheral I ended up buying was the Pepper Jobs W10 Gyro ‘AirMouse:’ which is essentially a remote mouse I can activate and use while in bed or sitting down watching content. It works great for switching between apps, and even has a full QWERTY keyboard on the back for typing into search fields. At $25.00, I absolutely recommend this to anybody who also uses their PC as an entertainment system. 

For now, I think that largely concludes my build at this time. Down the line, I do plan to fit this build into a smaller form-factor case, making it a real desktop PC. But I am extremely happy with the results I achieved and can’t wait for school to be over to get some real gaming done. 

Feel free to stay connected via email to get notifications about new blog posts in the future, as I will likely carry on with new additions, benchmark results, etc.

Thank You!