Why a powerful PC spends most of its time idle (which I’m okay with)

I didn’t have a decent gaming computer throughout my childhood. However, I was spending six hours a day playing games that my device could barely run. Now that I have a machine that can handle anything, I rarely push it to its limits. Surprisingly, I’m completely fine with that.

I don’t dabble in resource-intensive tasks and projects

While my old PC was still a good machine with the RX 6600 XT, I just wanted to move on from the AM4 platform and the Frankenstein parts I had slowly bought over several years and put into the machine.

That’s why I decided to start from scratch this year, without any strict restrictions on my budget, but at the same time, trying to get the best value for my money in every single part. Using an AliExpress CPU, eBay RAM, NVMe, and a later used GPU, I built a capable gaming PC for under $1,400.

I won’t bore you with the specs of my machine, other than the core components that run it: an RX 6800 XT graphics card, a Ryzen 7 7700 CPU, and 32GB of 6000MHz CL36 DDR5 RAM.

I know it’s not a high-end RTX 50 series machine, but it’s still a very capable all-around PC that can handle most tasks with ease. However, I’m sure it’s powerful enough to handle many demanding workloads, such as video editing, 3D rendering, animation, and maybe even a light local LLM model.

Credit: Justin Duino/How to Geek

However, the simple fact is that I’m not interested in that kind of thing at the moment. The only type of project I’m even vaguely interested in is running LLMs locally, but I’m actually quite happy with the basic version of ChatGPT.

Also, you can tell by the fact that you’re reading this that I’m a writer, and writers don’t get much use from powerful devices. In fact, I ran a laptop with a 7th gen i5 processor and 4GB of RAM at one point and it performed mostly well, although it struggled to open multiple tabs.

Most of my work is browser-based, and while it’s nice to know that my 32GB of RAM and 8-core CPU can probably handle 50+ Chrome tabs with ease, I rarely have more than six or seven tabs open. Even then, it’s usually because you forgot to close it after searching.

I rarely play demanding games

The real reason I want a good computer is to play games. I waved goodbye to 1080p, and even with framerate generation and upscaling, I still needed a relatively powerful graphics card to run games at 1440p and 4K.

However, in the 10 months I’ve owned this computer, I’ve only played two demanding games —God of War Ragnarok and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Even then, I was mostly skimming through the main story to get it over with, hardly stopping to enjoy all the graphical fidelity the latest games have to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to play some of the popular games from the past few years, e.g The horizon is forbidden west, Ghost of Tsushima, Light and Darkness: Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: The Second Redemption, Death: The Dark Ages, Alan Wake 2and Red Dead Redemption 2 For the second time, but I don’t feel like doing it right now.

Credit: Esmar Hrinjevic / How-To Geek

Damn, I’m not even finished Starfieldalthough I promised myself that I would do my best at this once I got a better PC, because my old PC did not meet my performance expectations. I probably spent more hours playing Balatro On my phone from what I did playing AAA titles this year.

I spend the vast majority of my playing time in online games such as Battlefield V and Marvel competitorsin addition to independent titles such as Hades II. Considering that my old $400 PC was more than capable of handling this stuff at 1080p, I didn’t gain much in terms of graphical fidelity, aside from stepping up from a 24-inch 1080p 144Hz monitor to a 27-inch 1440p 240Hz unit.

Why am I totally fine with it?

Although I undoubtedly would have gotten more enjoyment out of this amazing computer if I had had something of this caliber a decade ago, the real satisfaction comes from knowing that I now have a powerful machine that can run whatever I want.

I haven’t checked the system requirements for any game released this year, because I know my PC will likely handle it at a decent frame rate. I also designed it with future GPU upgrades in mind, so it should remain a capable system for many years to come.

Credit: Lucas Gouveia/GeekHow | Dusan Petkovic / shutterstock

In addition, it is very good to have a powerful computer to work on. While tasks like conducting online searches, typing in a word processor, and uploading images won’t push my system to its limits, it does everything instantly. This makes it great to use, even compared to your previous fairly capable PC or laptop.

Perhaps most importantly, I spent my own money on the computer and built it exactly the way I wanted. I loved every minute spent researching parts, finding the best deals, and carefully assembling this beautiful machine. Even though it’s been sitting on my desk for a while now, I still love looking at it and appreciate the work I put into it.

Credit: Esmar Hrinjevic / How-To Geek

Even though I don’t have much of an excuse for owning a $1,400 computer, and it would be nice to buy a $500 one, I’m still glad I saved the money and got it anyway. I can play any game I want, so if something catches my eye, I can just pick it up and play it right away.

And if I decide to pursue my old ambition of becoming a YouTuber and need to edit videos or start trying out random projects, I’ll already have a decent computer ready for that.