Last week, after a temporary hiccup thanks to a power supply that was dead out of the box, I finished building my first gaming PC. For the past few days I’ve been using it extensively, and as a result, I’ve experienced a number of brand new feelings that I’d like to share.




These feelings include:

Obsession with reading about PC parts and other people’s PC building stories. I never thought I would care this much about motherboards, but somehow I’ve become addicted to the r/buildapc subreddit, where people share their specs and ask all sorts of mundane questions about computer building. Why yes, I do want to read about the ant crawling in your monitor.




Realization that suddenly you need to care about PC port news. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is coming to PC? Oh yes. Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t? What the hell, Rockstar? Wait, what do you mean some games aren’t optimized for PC?



Anxiety over how hot your CPU is running. OK, CPU-Z tells me it’s running at 65 degrees Celsius. Is that too hot? Wait, I just downloaded CPU Temp and that says that all four cores are running between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius. That’s fine, right? Is this all fine? Is my CPU going to melt?

Anxiety over whether the thermal paste is applied properly. Should I take the PC open and check the thermal paste? My cooler came with pre-applied paste but I took the heatsink off at one point when I was troubleshooting—was I supposed to apply more? Should I order thermal paste and stick it on there? Are my fans working properly? AHHHH.

Anxiety that the computer will just randomly turn off. Oh god, that would suck.



Anxiety that the PSU might blow up and set your apartment building on fire. Think about all of the PC parts I’d lose.


Anxiety that you’re not taking proper advantage of your machine. Turns out I bought a Freesync monitor, which works with AMD, instead of a G-sync monitor, which works with NVIDIA. And I have an NVIDIA GTX 1080. So my games aren’t looking as good as they should. Which leads to...

An insatiable desire to buy new things.


Paranoia that you bought the wrong things. Uh oh, should I have spent $200 more for an IPS screen? Or is TN fine? What do all of these things even mean?



Video game choice paralysis, because suddenly I can play pretty much anything ever made. Why not dive into The Witcher 3 again? Or maybe I should finally check out XCOM 2? What if I just download an old classic like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and screw around for a while? Or I could get an emulator and revisit one of those classic Mac games I used to love? Or or or or or or or.


Triumph over that paralysis, because instead I just spent an entire week playing Divinity Original Sin 2.

Realization that Divinity Original Sin 2 is one of the best games you’ve ever played. It was worth building a PC just for this.


Anxiety that Divinity Original Sin 2 doesn’t look as good as it could, even though it still looks incredible. When is that new monitor gonna get here already?

Sudden interest in other people’s PC problems. Kotaku just ordered a pre-built PC that arrived broken, and as the proud builder of one (1) PC, I’m sure I can diagnose the problem!


Pride that, even when you’re doing the most mundane thing, it’s on a machine that you built from scratch. Man, nothing compares.