Why My Powerful PC Spends Most of Its Time Idle (And I’m OK With It)

I didn't have a decent gaming PC for most of my childhood. However, I spent a full six hours a day playing games that my system had trouble running. Now that I have a machine that can handle anything, I rarely push it to its limits. Surprisingly, I'm quite happy with this.

I am not keen on resource-intensive tasks and projects

While my old RX 6600 XT computer was still an okay machine, I just wanted to move away from the AM4 platform and the Frankenstein of parts I had been slowly buying over the years and installing into the machine.

That's why I decided to start from scratch this year, without the strict constraints of my budget, but at the same time trying to get the best value for money on each individual part. An AliExpress processor, eBay RAM and NVMeAnd GPU used I later built a pretty powerful gaming PC for less than $1,400.

I won't bore you with the technical specs of my machine, except for the main components that power it: the RX 6800 XT graphics card, Ryzen 7 7700 Processor and 32 GB of RAM CL36 DDR5 with a frequency of 6000 MHz.

I know this isn't some high-end RTX 50-series rig, but it's still a very powerful all-around PC that can handle most tasks with ease. However, I'm confident that it's powerful enough to handle many demanding workloads such as video editing, 3D rendering, animation, and maybe even a lightweight local LLM model.

Photo: Justin Duino/How-To Geek

However, the simple truth is that I simply am not interested in such things at the moment. The only type of project I'm vaguely interested in is running local LLMs, but I'm already quite happy with the basic version of ChatGPT.

Also, from the fact that you're reading this, you can tell that I'm a writer, and writers have little use for powerful hardware. In fact, I even worked on a laptop with a 7th gen i5 and 4 GB RAM at one point his performance was mostly good, although he had trouble opening multiple tabs.

Most of my work is done in the browser, and while it's nice to know that my 32GB of RAM and 8-core processor can probably easily handle 50+ Chrome tabs, I rarely have more than six or seven tabs open. Even then, it usually only happens because I forget to close them after exploring.

I rarely play demanding games

The real reason I needed a good computer was to play games. I waved my hand 1080p goodbyeand even with frame generation and scaling I still you need a relatively powerful video card to run games in 1440p and 4K resolution.

However, in the ten months that I had this computer, I only played two demanding games –God of War Ragnarok And The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Update. Even then, I was mostly grinding through the main story to get it over with, hardly stopping to enjoy all the graphical fidelity that the latest games offer.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to play some of the famous games from the last few years, e.g. Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Doom: Dark Ages, Alan Wake 2And Red Dead Redemption 2 This is the second time, but now I just don’t feel like doing it.

Photo: Ismar Hrnicevich/How-To Geek

Damn I ain't even finished Star fielddespite promising myself that I would sink my teeth into it as soon as I got a better computer because my old one didn't meet my performance expectations. I probably spent more hours playing Balatro on my phone than I've played AAA games this year.

The vast majority of my gaming time is actually spent playing online games such as Battlefield V And Marvel Rivalsas well as indie games such as Hades II. Considering my old $400 computer was more than capable of handling them at 1080p, I didn't gain much in terms of graphical fidelity other than upgrading from a 24-inch 1080p 144Hz monitor to a 27-inch 1440p monitor. 240 Hz unit.

Why am I completely okay with this?

While I would undoubtedly have more fun with this amazing PC if I had something of this caliber ten years 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 of any games released this year, as I know my PC can probably handle them at a decent frame rate. I also built it with a future GPU upgrade in mind, so it should remain a capable system for many years to come.

Photo: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | Dusan Petkovic / Shutterstock

In addition, it is very nice to have a powerful computer for work. While tasks like doing online research, typing in a word processor, and downloading images won't push my system to its limits, it does everything instantly. This makes it feel fantastic to use, even compared to my previous PC or fairly capable laptop.

Perhaps the most important thing is that I spent my money on the computer and built it exactly the way I wanted. I loved every minute of researching parts, finding the best deals, and carefully putting together this beautiful machine. Even though it's been sitting on my desk for a long time, I still enjoy looking at it and appreciating the work I put into it.

Photo: Ismar Hrnicevich/How-To Geek

Even though I don't have a good excuse for buying a $1400 computer and I'm more than happy with a $500 computer, I'm still glad I saved up and bought it anyway. I can play any game I want, so if something catches my attention, I can just pick it up and play it right away.

And if I ever decide to pursue my old ambitions of being a YouTuber and need to edit videos or start experimenting with random projects, I'll already have a decent computer ready for it.