I finally got a Gaming PC recently (like Feburary), a story of how I got here.

I've been on here for years. Perhaps longer than most, I came before /r/pcmasterrace exploded and got to a million. I was here before people on here were being funny about the impeding approach to 333,333 subscribers (good ol' Half Life 3 memes).

Yet for many years I didn't have a gaming PC. People that might remember me from a bit back will probably remember my flair of either a Laptop or an "ascending peasant" label, often with the words underneath like some Linux distro, or an old Ivy Bridge mobile i5 with integrated graphics.

That was my PC for quite a long time. That laptop was what I got back in 2014, I think, and I had plans to turn it into a Gaming PC. I did not know much and thought business laptops had upgradable GPUs, so my folly affected me for a long time. It still was a hell of a lot better than my pathetic AMD E1-1200 PC, which was where I started my return to PC gaming from. Speaking of that...

A long time ago, I was a little kid. My parents had an emachines PC with an AMD Athlon 64, and some ATI graphics. Radeon Xpress 200 to be exact. It seems to be integrated. It was either that, or another identical PC with upgraded dedicated Nvidia graphics instead, where I played many games. I often played some kids and flash games, but I also played the Sims (which I was addicted to back then) and some downloadable weird games like one that involves ragdolls bashing each other. I then discovered some now-ancient and dead service called GameTap, and palyed many games like some Tomb Raider games, retro games (how I have nostalgia for Sonic, 16-bit-era games, and SNK games in particular, though I did play Sonic and some other old games also on a Genesis and other old consoles like NES and N64 back then as well) and more. I loved the PC. But then I often easily got malware for no explained reason (thanks early-mid 2000s Microsoft security, thanks Windows XP), so I often got kicked off. One time it was so bad I was permanently kicked off, being regulated to my PlayStation and the Xbox instead. Many years later, in 2010, they got me one of the old PCs back, and let me use it, and then I got it infected again (if it wasn't already). So no PC again for a bit longer.

Finally came 2012, and I got a strange game on Xbox 360 known as Minecraft. I haven't known of the game that much then, and began playing and having lots of fun. I got addicted to it. Why does this matter when it comes to PC Gaming? You'll see. But basically I played, until I learned of a superior PC version. I had to play it.

So I was able to borrow my mom's more modern Windows 7 laptop, and played the game through either bugs or the demo mode, so around 2012-2013. I was so much better than the console version, that I had to get my own PC. I then got one, it was some cheap Gateway with an E1-1200 AMD APU. Butg it had 4GB of RAM, it should be great for Minecraft...

So I played, had some fun, and was gracious to be on PC again. I even played the old games again like Age of Empires and all that. And I didn't get malware, Windows 8 was much more secure than Windows XP, and it was easily repairable by resetting anyways (never had to do it though). However, there was one problem, it was horribly weak. My PC couldn't play many modern games, and its CPU per core was weaker than an Athlon 64. Considering how expensive the PC was, I resigned to chasing after a new console when the PS4 and Xbone was announced. I wanted to go PS4, due to indie games and an exclusive library that I regretted missing when I was on the 360. The Ouya was also announced and naive me wanted that too to play more indie games. I had as problem with MS because they focused so much on AAA games that I couldn't even play or not even interested in, rather than games like Minecraft or Super Meat Boy. Or Japanese games. But I never considered PC because I saw ads of those rigs that were sold for 1000s of dollars. I was a console peasant. But times were about to change soon enough...

The first harbinger of change was GNU/Linux. I have heard of the OS back into the 2000s through Wikipedia, but I thought of it as some strange territory for me. However, I guess Ubuntu 12.04 and some later versions were released, and somehow I've began to hear of Ubuntu. I had a fascnation to get a Mac for the strange Apple OS, but it was too expensive. To see a desktop that looked a bit Mac-like, but unique, andjust being different, made me deeply interested. I even booted it on my Mom's laptop, in secret (she still never knew I did that). I was scared though and shut it off not long after booting, and I was back on Windows, but i was still interested in trying it out. One begging for a Raspberry Pi later and I finally got to try the OS our for real, and I fell in love with its terminal and the OS itself. I was scared of terminals, especially during that weird Ubuntu boot, but now I wanted that terminal. Then I heard that Steam and many games are on Ubuntu now, which was so cool. I got it on my PC after getting permission, and I was happy- and disappointed. Ubuntu was terrible at playing games, due to awful AMD graphics drivers. The proprietary and open source drivers were both trash. On top of that, it was hellish for me to install, thanks to the terrible UEFI implementation. Thus I needed a Linux PC. But I also wanted a PS4 still.

Cue the Internet.

When I was on YouTube commenting, I encountered these snotty "PC Master Race" freaks. They said about how PC is the best and that console sucks. I debated (because somebody has a different opinion on the internet, oh lord), until one nice PC "elitist" showed me a build that was the price of a console, that could game. I couldn't believe my eyes. You could build a gaming PC for $400 and game? My PC was $300-something one year ago and was crap at anything! So this, along with my Linux interests, eventually drove me away from the PS4, to a new path...

I then joined Reddit as I learned more, joining the /r/pcmasterrace subreddit, which was only a mere fraction of its population now. Perhaps a bit more than a hundred thousand? More or less than two-hundred thousand? I became more and more interested, and then suggested building a PC. My parents were not the most accepting of the idea, and instead suggested buying an older PC and upgrading it. We looked at desktops and laptops alike, and that's where I made a big mistake, I got a laptop with the interest to upgrade, when I couldn't without an eGPU. So while this new PC crushed my old one, it was still limited in gaming capabilities. However, I still enjoyed it, it's a great programming, Linux, and even casual gaming PC. I used that thing for a long time. However, I still desired to get a new gaming rig. I just never had the money to do it. I had a hard time gathering $400, especially since I'd often would be impatient and burn it all away. Even going eGPU was expensive, I needed an expensive $50-100 adapter, a case, and a power supply, besides GPU. Finally in 2018, during the mining apocalypse, I got a GTX 1050, and a adapter to connect to the CRT, and some money that would be contributed towards an adapter.

I decided and finally began to make progress. However, something unexpected happened. It was getting close to the end of the year, and my Dad wanted to get me something for college, as I'm in my senior year. He thought about getting me a prebuilt gaming PC, despite me wanting some Ryzen PC or to go handbuilt. But he then just spontaneously gave the PC to me now, instead of later at the end of the year. I was worried I would not get the laptop in the past anyways due to grades, but yet, he gave me it. It was an Omen gaming laptop with an i7-7700HQ (hilariously overpowered for the next part I'm going to mention) and a 1050 Ti. I had some qualms, yet I was happy that finally, I was fully a member of the PC Master Race, not just some supporter with a sub-par PC. Now I'm using it, and I typed this all from that Laptop.

Here's the picture of the laptop: https://imgur.com/a/RT0dLqy

I can now play more intensive indies like Overgrowth, Garry's Mod and Black Mesa without the PC choking, I can play "next-gen" titles like Siege, Rocket League (I could have played it in the past, but it wasn't the best experience), and Fortnite, I got better battery life, and I can do all the same stuff from the past like screwing with GNU/Linux (or Windows 10...) or playing older games as well. I'm even impressed that little rough edges when playing many games I liked, like having to disable dynamic glow in Jedi Academy to achieve 60 FPS, or being able to mostly, if not fully, max out anti-aliasing in games like Half-Life 2 and KOTOR 2.

So that's why I suddenly changed my flair, and how I'm of the PCMR for realz now. :P