Prologue to Ascension

As my first ever post to reddit and PCMR, this was originally an attempt to display my frustrations with the vast amount of mis/information I had to filter through in my recent effort to ascend. I decided to start by introducing myself. Unintentionally it seems I've written a full page confession of long-standing peasantry. I hope you enjoy.

At 22 years old, I've been interested in computers for more than 75% of my life. That being said, My only experience with “real” pc gaming was a Christmas gift of Fable 2 for pc. only to find out that my parents home computer would not even run the game. Couldn't return the game as I had tried to install it using the disk. As most young peasants would, next birthday I asked for an xbox 360, on which I would later play the infamous Fable 2.

As I was always a social gamer, and xbox live being a terrible experience due to the slow dsl. I was eventually introduced to Runescape, which ran fine on my parent's pc and slow internet, and had a seemingly rich social aspect. The repetitive nature of this game led me to eventually look for a “bot” to play the game for me while I was at school and such, to maximize my aesthetics as I bank stand talking to friends when I actually had time to play. My search for a bot led me to write my first line of code, and for that, this period may have outlined my destiny to one day become a glorious member of the master race.

It wasn't until I was about to graduate high school that I got my first computer, a Samsung laptop with 4gb memory and an i3-550m processor and regular old integrated graphics. Having recently learned about linux, and testing on my parent's pc with some live cd's, I promptly reinstalled windows alongside Ubuntu in a Dual boot configuration. As a matter of fact, that may have been my underlying reason for needing my own “school” laptop, since even though they rarely used the computer, my parents would probably have noticed if their operating system changed. I fell in love with Ubuntu, so much that I never even re-registered Windows. To this day, when I start my laptop, grub gives me the option to boot into a broken windows installation.

This setup has suited me fine, as I don't really consider myself a gamer. Skyrim and Forza 4 were the only games to ever see real time on my Xbox. To be honest, Netflix claimed most of it's use.

Sometime last year, after reading about steam for linux, (Yay! Games!) I was disappointed, although not surprised at the lack of high quality free games. (because linux is free so games should be free, right?)

I did, however, register a steam account and installed Team Fortress, Which looked pretty cool. Success! I was playing a nice looking pc game! Unsurprisingly, it didn't run very well. Low settings <10fps at times...unplayable. This isn't even a “next gen” game! Still, better than the Fable incident.

It was obvious I was going to need a new pc as well as address my Windows situation if i'm going to play games.

Hoping to cash in on some black Friday deals, I embarked on a mission to put together my first ever from-parts build. When I found pcpartpicker I saw it a godsend. It became a daily ritual of selecting the best parts at the best price according to whatever article or blog I was reading at the time. Before I knew it, Black Friday had come and gone, I watched pretty much every “build” I had put together jump 10% in price. Not to mention I ended up getting a ridiculous amount of winter clothes for Christmas, as I could never decide on any parts.

So, prices are up, budget is even lower. Great. What do I do now? Even worse, I can't even decide if I'm a peasant or a master!