I’m actually really enjoying having the option to play all these indie games but I’m starting to pine for something that will really benchmark my new system. That DiRT 2 demo running quite smoothly (1680×1050 Ultra settings DX11 = 34 FPS) scratched some of that itch but I’m still pining for something long term. Maybe the next Steam sale will throw up some goodies for me to download, something else that I’m really enjoying.

This whole experience has made me realise how much I miss PC gaming. Messing around with a ton of settings I’ll never really understand before playing a game, messing around with patching and reading release details. Some things that are just quintessentially related to PC gaming.

In my two year absence I used to moan about all that, it turns out I missed all that faffing around more than I thought.

You might have noticed that the last few posts have been about a PC I’ve speced out and bought. Well today, within 3 minutes of each other, my two orders arrived from different couriers and soon I was knee deep in screwdrivers and computer components.

The build didn’t go without a hitch but it never does. Although for what was my first PC build from scratch, I thought I did alright. It would have been flawless if it wasn’t for the flimsiest CPU cooler that snapped and probably won’t support itself if I put the PC up on the side. Otherwise the build went smoothly.

I guess I had some problems while installing Windows 7 because of the default BIOS settings. Windows 7 was looking for a floppy disk drive and instead of telling me it was having problems, it just kept looking for it while showing me nothing. Not a please wait message, not a loading bar, nothing. Google fixes all though.

The entire thing was worth it when I started to play Colin McRae Rally 2.0 on the highest settings. Yes, I know but the only PC games I actually own now are from my retro PC gaming fad of 2007 because at the time that’s all my PC could handle.

Naturally I downloaded Trackmania soon after along with my Steam version of Audiosurf – the only game I own on Steam, something that I look to remedy pretty soon – and ran them at the highest settings. Surprisingly I haven’t done much tweaking and they run at a smooth 30 and 40 frames per second, respectively.

I’m waiting until I can get some serious gaming on though, I’ll get downloading some demos tomorrow. For now, sleep.

I’ve just been told that both my Dabs and Overclockers orders are on the way meaning that tomorrow I should be set up with a desktop PC. Well providing nothing goes wrong while building it. I’m not really sure what to expect, I’ve installed every part of a computer before, but never from scratch.

The only thing I’m expecting is photos, loads of photos, tons of photos… Don’t worry I’ll post them on here. I know you want them.

Bare with me if you’re not interested in computers, it’s about to get incredibly geeky up in here because today I finally decided to pony up the £347 and buy a new computer.

I’ve always been an avid PC gamer but the combination of MacBook and Xbox 360 just outweighed tweaking settings and frame watching. I mean, the 360 would play games much better than my PC could and the MacBook did the rest without the faffing around with Norton or generally bad operating systems. That combination left me with two years of a PC-less existence.

That will soon change though, I’ve finally taken the plunge and spec’d out and bought the computer of my… well not dreams, I don’t dream about that kind of stuff.

The thing I love about consoles is that they’re incredibly small and well designed. I admit the original Playstation 3 isn’t to everyone’s taste but it looks better than gaming PCs with spikes and glowing bits on them. So because of this I’ve always wanted to build a micro ATX – that’s really small for those who don’t speak computer – in the vein of consoles. I bailed out of getting the £100 Lian Li case that would have achieved that but considering I don’t want to overspend, I’ve done alright.

So what will £347 buy you?

• Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 £85
• Intel Core i3 530 2.93Ghz £72
• Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H £56
• Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU Cooler £8
• Western Digital 250Gb 7200RPM Sata Hard Drive £25
• Best Value S001 Micro ATX Desktop with 450W PSU £30
• Sony DVDRW 24x SATA £16
• Postage £xx
  

I’m still missing the most vital piece though, the Graphics Card. I’ve been debating what one to get for a while, anyone got any recommendations? The cheaper the better, I only want to have the option to play recent games.

As per Twitter recommendation I picked up some Sennheiser CX300 earphones. They sound pretty good and I managed to pick them up for a fiver – no they aren’t fake, or at least they’re the most convincing fakes ever – which isn’t so bad.

The problem is that the iPod Touch headphone jack seems to be optimised for the slightly shorted Apple earphones. This means that all non-Apple ones are a millimetre too long which equates to the garbled sound, like it’s coming from the next room over or something. You could get it working by pushing really hard on the headphone jack but that’s really impractical.

The solution, ram a dart in it until you’ve warn away some of the plastic inside. It works fine now although I’m not sure if I’d be able to sell it with a clear conscience.