There are two things that elevate this simulated experience over the real deal for me. Of course, maybe I’m naturally and inescapably terrible at system building and you never had any of those problems once. But you should also be prepared to go through the looking glass into a world of fiddliness when you try it out in the real world. Please don't take the above to mean that PC Building Simulator isn't a useful tuition tool for anyone looking to get into system building: it totally is. But there will always be one thing you forgot about. It's a simple task in many ways, and so much easier today than it was 20 years ago when case interiors were made from razor blades and 3DFX sharpened all their cards to deadly points just for kicks. That's the reality of putting a computer together: there's always something. Hands shaking, shirt sticky against my back, I eventually found them on the underside of a magnetic bowl we used to keep screws in so that they didn't get lost. In a former life as a staffer for a PC parts magazine whose daily duties involved building and tearing down systems, I spent an entire morning in a panic having lost the case screws to a particularly expensive machine we had in on loan to review. The same goes for losing screws, and forgetting which sizes went where. It might not be accurate to the Nth degree, but then FIFA's not that close to a real game of footballĪttaching the internal power, reset and LED connectors to those tiny 1-pin mobo sockets with a manual in one hand, aiming for a 1mm target, is glossed over here, too. Still, the point stands that nothing can prepare you for these frustrations-they must be experienced firsthand. Particularly with mouse-and-keyboard controls. And who could blame it for glossing over these details? It would be absolutely ridiculous to replicate the inherent fiddliness of the activity on such a granular level. You're generally able to make a cable connection regardless of the order you build in, and cable management is handled automatically so every PC looks immaculate by the time it's finished. PC Building Simulator doesn't punish you for oversights like this. Who lost a screw between the motherboard and the case's mounting plate? Who tried to fit a big air cooler after putting the RAM modules in? Who bought RAM modules with fancy radiators whose clearance was way higher than their cooler? My hands are still up. Hands up who's fitted their huge graphics card before attaching all the SATA cables to the connectors that are now positioned unreachably behind it? I'm putting my hands up. What this game can't do, though, is give you enough information and experience to go and build a PC in the real world-not without falling foul of the same mistakes everyone else makes. One of the most daunting aspects of system-building is the idea that a mistake might break hundreds of dollars worth of kit, so there's value in going through the motions somewhere free from consequences. Using the message on that blue screen and a spot of Googling, it's up to you to fix whatever snafu you created inside the case. If you power a machine on and something's amiss inside, you might boot to the OS and then get a BSOD when you try to run 3DMark. It can even shine a light on troubleshooting. cable management is handled automatically so every PC looks immaculate by the time it's finished. Frankly it's better to learn about frying CPUs in a cost-free simulation via friendly menu messages than it is by learning that smell. Not forgetting about thermal paste, installing RAM properly (down to the fiddly plastic clips at each end of the slot), and the basic order of component fitting. PC Building Simulator teaches the basic procedure and its peculiarities. Do you know where the halfshaft goes? What does a clutch cover plate look like? And as lovable as Euro Truck Simulator is, does it really feel like that to reverse-park an artic? We take the game at its word. My Summer Car (opens in new tab) could be spouting all sorts of nonsense about building a car, for example, and most players would be none the wiser. No small part of the appeal here is that as PC gamers we're perfectly positioned to judge the authenticity of the experience, to a degree that's rarely true of sims in this ilk. Buy components, get them delivered, put them in people's machines. The premise is irresistibly simple: construct PCs in first-person from scratch in a virtual office, running an IT support/repair business as you go. Shrewdly, they called it PC Building Simulator and it's quickly garnered an Early Access fanbase which I'm very much part of. Recently the art of PC building took a turn for the meta when developers Claudiu Kiss and The Irregular Corporation built a fastidious simulation of the activity.
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