Like many of you, I was once a guy who either thought he could build his own PC, or knew a guy who knew some stuff and who offered to scrounge some parts together for a bargain price. I lived a formative part of my life like this, and let me tell you, it fuckin sucked.
Whether it was my own bumbling hands or the ultimately unqualified bluster of A Guy, for years my PC gaming life was plagued by hardware conflicts, part failures, a need to constantly be upgrading one part or another and just a general sense I was living on a knife's edge, always one bootup or overclock away from something dying and needing to be replaced. It was stressful when everything was going OK and it was a huge pain in the ass when it wasn't, and considering video games are supposed to be a fun and cool way to relax, I was not having a great time.
So a decade ago (August 2015), with "getting to enjoy The Witcher 3's visuals as God intended" foremost in my mind, I decided I was going to stop being such a tight-fisted weirdo with my time and money, suck it up, risk the ridicule of friends and peers and just buy a prebuilt PC. Yes, they were more expensive, which meant yes, I was getting less PC for my buck, but given the hell I'd been living through for years previously, I figured it would be money well spent.
A decade later I am happy to report that it was indeed money well spent, and that I have finally found peace. I have just bought my third prebuilt PC in that time, and whatever extra money I've poured into having someone else put the things together has been more than worth it. In that decade, do you know how many times I've had a part fail, or had a weird driver conflict, or mystery reboot cycle, or have anything go wrong? Across three computers and a decade spent using them all day for work and playing games all night and on weekends?
Not one! Not a single issue. I paid some guys a premium of probably $300 per PC to make sure everything fit and worked and that the cables were braided nicely and that's exactly what they've done, and I couldn't be happier. I turn my PC on and it works, every time! I play games on it for years at a time and nothing ever goes wrong! All three times a big box got delivered to my door and I opened it up and plugged it in and everything was set up and already running!
I recognise there's a degree of privilege to this scenario; the fact I was scrounging for parts in my 20s then spending extra for the luxury of convenience in my mid-30s and beyond says as much about my income situation as it does my desire for convenience, not to mention the fact I'm lucky enough to be able to claim a new gaming PC as a tax deduction.
Even taking that into account, though, I cannot recommend it enough. I know there are already loads of people reading this more skilled and knowledgeable about this stuff than me, thinking "building a PC isn't hard, you big baby", or that the need to save $300 overrides all other considerations, and I get that. But also: have you ever considered that instead of me "blowing" hundreds of dollars per PC I have actually invested that money in peace-of-mind? One of the best things you can ever spend money on?
