How classic Windows games got me into building PCs

Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central

I've been building PCs since 2003 and have been enjoying games on the platform since 1998, after moving from the SEGA Genesis. The very first PC game I laid eyes on was Dungeons & Dragons: The Forgotten Realms Archive, which included 12 titles from that era. But since earlier building my first PC at the age of 13, I was spring to rules set up down past parents on how much fourth dimension could be spent lost in virtual worlds.

Fast forrard to 2006 and it was the acme of Unreal Tournament 2004. I was the community lead for one of the most popular servers around at the fourth dimension, one that featured assault and racing maps. When not at college studying, I would spend countless hours each day online with hundreds of people. It was awesome every bit a 16-year-one-time at the fourth dimension with null better to do.

From there, I entered the working world and today I'm fortunate plenty to become paid writing most technology I admire. I take so many fond memories of gaming on PC, coupled with experimenting on older hardware with different system builds, server deployment for games, and more than.

The early on days of PC gaming

Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central

Starting with Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance, I was instantly hooked even before I entered the game. In order to gain admission to it, you were required to use these translation wheels, which were effectively a really cool DRM implementation. Nosotros barely had working internet, so I had to use these concrete discs else I'd take to try and hunt someone else downward with a copy of the game.

My first PC was powered by an Intel Pentium P55C with a clock speed of approximately 200MHz.

The gameplay was spectacular at the time. This was the offset PC Dungeons & Dragons game and I was instantly hooked. The only issue was lack of time to enjoy it while attending schoolhouse and having but i hour every other solar day on the family PC. In 2001, my male parent had a custom PC built for him by a colleague from work and I was amazed at what was delivered. It was a masterpiece compared to the Tiny PC we had prior.

This is what got me started in wanting to build PCs. After weeks of begging my quondam human to give me what remained of our old family PC, he agreed and I was able to strip it blank. I remember information technology being powered past an Intel Pentium P55C with a clock speed of approximately 200MHz. RAM was far less than 512MB and the newly-acquired 10GB HDD was the highlight I thought would have me to the next level.

Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Key

I was not simply able to fire up Forgotten Realms, merely as well Championship Manager 98/99 (long before Football Manager was reality) and even Dungeon Siege. Things started to get a niggling messy when I attempted to install and run iTunes on Windows XP while gaming. It worked, but male child was it janky equally hell. Other titles I enjoyed included Age of Empires, DOOM, Escape from Monkey Island, Might & Magic VII, Summoner, The Sims, and RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Migrating to the online world

Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Key

I was fortunate enough to abound up during the menses where cyberspace forums were the striking affair. Besides, MMORPGs were seriously hot. In the UK, Runescape was talked about throughout schoolhouse and information technology was important you had a PC to bring together classmates online and leveling upward skills. Looking back at present, it was a mundane grind — you try sitting there for five hours to proceeds a single level in the mining skill — but it was so much fun as a group.

I played a major role in running one of the more than popular Unreal Tournament 2004 servers for years.

Having internet access completely inverse calculating for me, particularly gaming. Over the years, I managed to save up plenty to put together my own rig, getting rid of that underpowered monstrosity in 2005. This was where I entered into the Intel Celeron game with some amazing ATI (AMD Radeon) graphics. It was time to move on from Runescape and onto Unreal Tournament 2004.

Unreal Tournament 2004 was massively popular during 2004-2008. I helped run ane of the more than popular servers, which provided countless attack and racing maps for upwardly to 32 people at a time to enjoy. It was wild with so many people on TeamSpeak and in-game. Managing a bustling community forum at the side was but the icing on a very delicious cake. (If you played on the BIG server, I went by "Traygon", "RichEdmonds", and "ShinRyuu".)

The only surviving screenshot from my UT2K4 days on the As-PWC-Role map. Source: Windows Fundamental

For me, this was my highest moment with PC gaming. Add on Social club Wars, CS:GO, League of Legends, and enough of other PC titles released in the 00s, and I barely left my immediate four walls. For PC building, in 2006 I worked at a local computer repair shop for work experience, which involved servicing machines sent in by customers. Some of these included custom rigs with h2o-cooling.

This is where my PC building skills took off, alongside my desire to create some special-looking rigs myself. Oh, and Windows Vista launched. Continuing to manage servers, run my own, and dabble in some lawmaking, in 2008 I landed a job at an SEO agency in London every bit a technician — basically running scripts, assisting advisors with data sourcing, and managing infrastructure.

Across 60Hz and realistic visuals

Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Primal

Gaming connected to play a major part in my life, fifty-fifty later leaving Unreal Tournament 2004 behind. From around 2022 onwards it was by and large League of Legends and some various MMORPGs that my friends and other people I knew hopped between. The Elderberry Scrolls V and The Witcher 3 both consumed thousands of hours, but PC building eventually became the forefront of my hobby listing, after spending so many years behind PC gaming.

That's most the same time I joined WMExperts in 2022, which rebranded to Windows Telephone Cardinal. We were primarily a resource for all things Microsoft's mobile platform, but with the end approaching it was time we expanded our coverage. The PC mural improved drastically too. Nosotros had multi-cadre processors, amazing graphics processing cards, and massive storage drives. Advancements made in the modding scene made water-cooling a more highly-seasoned choice for system builders.

I wanted to ramp up our PC content from essentially zero and fast-forward today you tin can find a whole host of topics here from gaming to PC building, networking to NAS servers. I've now lost count every bit to how many machines I've congenital. It's well into the three digits, but I wouldn't have built a single PC if it wasn't for gaming. And the best part is I tin can return to and enjoy all those old classics that got me doing what I do today.

How did y'all become into PC gaming and did it help motivate you into edifice your ain rigs? I'd dear to read your stories!

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-windows-gaming-helped-rich-build-pcs

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