leverage
You can build a fabulous PC for not much, but you can also end up feeling disappointed for a few times more. It’s about expectations and targets.
What resolution gaming are you trying to do? Are you wanting insane frame rates or is 60fps enough? There’s a huge difference between 60fps 1080p and 120fps 4k. Since you mentioned PC VR, the target is really high as it’s usually rendering higher than 4k, and smooth, high FPS is critical. You may still want more than a 4080 can give you in some games.
I just built a PC for my nephew, he got my old 2080 (used cost is $200-$300), and some mid-tier AM5 combo deal from Microcenter. He’s super happy with it because it does what he wanted it to do. I helped him keep his expectations within his budget, critically an entry level 1080p gaming monitor as he wanted to get high FPS on Valorant.
Right, huge price difference. Performance isn’t totally linear like this, but it’s still helpful to think of it in terms of pixels and fps. 4k is for times the pixels of 1080p, 120fps is twice the frames. So to go from smooth 1080p 60fps to smooth 4k 120fps you need 16 times more graphics power.
Your screen resolution and fps goals (capped by your screen’s refresh rate) are something you want to nail down. I think the jump to OLED 120hz or higher screen is better than 4k partly because getting high fps out of 4k is much harder.
A $1500 budget can go a long way. Don’t think about future proof, think about meeting your goals in games today, whatever you build will be fine for 8 years as long as your standards don’t change. Outside of pushing 4k and high fps, graphics demands have plateaued compared to 10+ years ago. Ray tracing was the last big wow, and AI processing in the pipeline has done wonders at improving performance. I don’t see the value of a motherboard that costs more than $200, and the best value CPU for gaming is the 7800x3d which is $400 when not on sale. You don’t need more than 32gb of RAM, decent kit is about $100. Cases are looks subjective, airflow objective, runs $30 to $150, up to crazy high for gamerz styles. Any PSU over $100 is a waste of money, even driving a 4080 super. For storage get a well rated NVME within your capacity goals, $100 gets you a good brand with decent space. That would leave $500 for a graphics card, buying new won’t get you top of the line, but you could get last generation’s best with that. If you live near a Microcenter and can wait for a good bundle, you can save a few hundred. Sorry for ballparking, writing from my phone. Use pcpartpicker and have fun with it.
That’s a great deal with all those accessories. You can price all the other stuff new. None of these things degrade really, so functionality will be identical to new.
Only downside if you’re looking for one is the AM4 platform is done. Basically that’s a computer anyone would have recommended you buy 3 years ago new for what you’re budgeting, minus a few hundred for a mid range GPU. If the keyboard, mouse, and headphones are quality you’re getting a steal for someone in your position.
Anecdote, his people didn’t even watch the debate. If they did watch it, they watched some edited version the next day that only had his answers, basically an edited speech. Then they watched some talking go over all the worst bits of what Harris said and did. Then they read about how the moderators were unfair to Trump, and how Harris must have been given the questions ahead of time. I know multiple people that did exactly this, it’s all quite insufferable. Based on the way they talk, it wouldn’t surprise me if some people watched it live and just muted the TV when Harris was talking, because they can’t stand hearing her.
Neat thing is, you can just join another instance, or even setup your own. Instance admins can and already do defederate entirely from other instances, you won’t ever be able to see that content without leaving the site. Hiding on the other hand means you can still see it if you subscribe to it, they just aren’t having it show up on the default feed. This should result in less severe action, like defederation, it’s a great improvement. Downside exists, but it comes with more upside. Join an instance that appears to align with your ideals and you will get the benefit of a feed that allows for content discovery. NSFW content discovery is probably better done on an NSFW centric instance anyway.
If you are trying to compare this system to something like Reddit, lamenting the added effort of picking an instance and needing to move around sometimes, this is just one of those things people need to accept and start pushing for changes that make the process easier. The alternative is going back to big tech and eating whatever shit they decide to serve.
Eventually the science will show ADHD and a slew of other ND psychoclassifications are entirely genetic. It’s very likely one of your parents are driving the same brain around as you, with all its faults and strengths. In their childhood psych didn’t have the labels and treatments, you didn’t really want to mess with those abusers. Society also found it ok to beat children that didn’t behave. The parent with the ND brain was probably beat by their parent until they figured out how to wear the right mask. And not just beaten by their parents, but every single authority figure, teachers, pastors, etc. The cycle of physical abuse was only recently broken. We still haven’t broken the cycle of emotional abuse this society forces on ND people. The majority of psych pseudoscience still ongoing considers ND to be subhuman, excluding us from studies, using derogatory language that only serves to dehumanize and not empathize, recognize, and accommodate. They fail to recognize the positive aspects that are unique and common amongst ND, so we end up not even realizing in ourselves. In your parent’s generation they’d treat perfectly capable ND people with a lobotomy. There are probably more psych professionals practicing today that were taught by books written by the same folks who practiced lobotomies, than those that learned the still incorrect (but at least more correct than a fucking lobotomy fixes everything) science from 10 years ago.
Sorry for the rant.