About a year ago, I bought a used Alienware Alpha off of Craigslist for $200 to make sure that I was actually willing to get back into PC games after a pretty long hiatus. Over the course of the last year I went back and played quite a few games that I had played on my consoles on the PC and found that for the most part on that pretty conservative hardware that I was able to get a better experience on the PC than I was on consoles. So, in January of this year I decided that I was going to forego buying a PSVR and to jump into a solid VR-ready PC build. I started with PC part picker to set up a desired build and came up with what seemed to be a pretty solid set of hardware, however, I ended up not building that PC because of a crazy promotion that Best Buy ran on a pre-built Asus G11CD system. The basic specs are an i5 6400, GTX 1060, 16Gb DDR4, and a 500Gb SSD with a secondary HDD that is a 1Tb. It was almost exactly what I had set out to build and the price was cheaper than I could build it for at that time coming in at only $849.

So, I picked that up with an Oculus/Touch setup. I also ended up getting a Blackwidow keyboard and a Naga mouse. It is absolutely crazy how quickly I went from total console guy to someone who only wants to play games on PC. Don't get me wrong, some games have poor ports or support, etc. But, you get a lot of that with most platforms. The thing that I think can't be understated is the constant stream of great PC game sales. I have ramped up a huge game catalog in a pretty short period of time. The changeover has been super awesome for me.

Has anyone else jumped over to the PC ship recently? What are you playing? I have spent a criminal amount of time on Robo Recall and Doom. But, the most awesome thing is finally having a version of Just Cause 3 that isn't a complete frame-y mess. I once feared the PC. Now, I am a man that owns a "mousing surface". Man, 2017 has been weird.

I made that same jump this generation. I got a GTX 560 Ti back in 2012 and a GTX 970 a year ago. I did end up with a Wii U for Nintendo games and an Xbox One because I'm a big Halo and Gears fan and at the time I thought I needed it for both (Still needed it for Halo 5 and very few other games like FFXV).

My brother also got in on the PC madness and got himself a gaming laptop thats just how he rolls he likes laptops but its a really powerful one (GTX 1080 i7 bla bla)

Consoles are becoming a novelty item for me. It's more about their "charm". But when it comes to where I get my multiplats I go with PC when it's the best option.

I do want a PS4 for the few exclusives but I kinda just wanna upgrade my PC further instead it's crazy! Like say GTX 1080Ti or PS4 and a bunch of exlusive games? Thats the struggle I'm currently facing.

I spent like 1,500 USD a few years ago to get into the PC game. Since then I've spent probably another 600-700 on stuff like monitors, keyboards, mice, etc. I use it all to play a 5 year old game (2,500 hours in CS:GO) and an HD remaster of an almost 20 year old game (AoE2). Totally worth it.

I guess I'm one of those idiots who have always enjoyed having the best of both worlds (PC and console). It's great to have the choice when games release on multiple platforms, particularly with how performance can differ from one to the other. Some games feel better on a couch/TV arrangement, and others better at a desk with KB+M. When it comes to upgrades, going from PS4 to PS4 Pro is such a hard sell compared to upgrading PC hardware.

Basically gamers are spoiled for choice right now with amazing games coming out on every platform.

I was a console gamer for most of my life from NES to PS2 in 05 I got into PC gaming and I never really wanted to go back to console gaming. The freedom that PC gaming has is what appeals to me the most I love going back to old games especially in VR I got a Oculus too.

You just can't beat PC gaming. That's my platform of choice when it comes to gaming and entertainment. Here's my PC gaming setup, by the way, in case anybody is wondering. :D

I have a ps4 for exclusives and that's about it, everything else i get on pc for the most part besides nba 2k.

I mean, CS:GO is like two steps away from being an HD remaster of an HD remaster soooo...

Also my most played game on Steam is CS:GO and my PC is still nothing to turn your nose up yet. It's getting close to time for me to build a new one, but not yet.

Welcome to the dark side. Yeah PC gaming is great. Games look and run better and are usually cheaper. I've always balanced PC and console gaming but I could envision a future where I'm PC only. All the best Xbox games are already on PC and I don't know if it'll be worth owning a PlayStation for its smattering of exclusives.

I built my first gaming PC two years ago and haven't regretted it yet. The GTX970 is starting to show its age and the 250GB SSD never has enough space, but man PC gaming is so great! Now I'm contemplating an upgrade even though I promised myself four years without new parts. The call for ultra settings may be too strong though.

@chunlixiaoyufan said:

You just can't beat PC gaming. That's my platform of choice when it comes to gaming and entertainment. Here's my PC gaming setup, by the way, in case anybody is wondering. :D

Are you using the fax machine to keep your feets warm? :)

Haha, true. The core game is basically the same as a mod released almost 20 years ago as well. I've also been getting an itch to rebuild soon as well, even though I don't really need it. I ended up overclocking my 4670K last night to see if I notice anything big from that.

I made the leap when this generation started, and its been great (although the past few months there's been a growing number of PS4 exclusives that I really would like to play).

What's been in a new experience for me is that because I bought when the generation started, some of my hardware has been getting a little out-dated; so over the past few months I've been doing upgrades myself. Its been quite an adventure since I never dug around inside a PC myself before. But I followed advice online, including some helpful pictures and diagrams, and I successfully replaced my GTX 760 with a GTX 1070, 8GB of RAM with 16GB, and I added a second internal hard drive.

Its actually pretty exciting finally starting to understand what's really happening inside the case. I'm still a bit intimidated by the motherboard and CPU, but the rest of it is actually pretty straightforward.

I've had a GTX 780 and an i5-4670k for three years. I still see no reason to upgrade. I wanna get the most out of my purchase before I upgrade. Most of the new games suck anyway.

Even the supposedly badly optimized NieR: Automata ran mostly fine once I installed the mod and lowered all the settings, except Effects, V-Sync and Texture Filter (8x) and lowered the res to 1920x1080. Anti-aliasing is overrated and blur is terrible. I'm not interested in 4K and higher refresh rates.

Maybe I'll get that rumored GTX 2070 later. I also wanna see what AMD's new graphics cards are capable of. If it's good for the price, I might switch. I've heard they're better about updating older cards. I don't think the new Nvidia updates do anything for my 700 series.

Love playing on PC, yeah there's some rough ports at times but almost always it's still better than the console experience. Faster load times (most notably on SSDs, but even non-SSDs too), more convenient to just fire something up as my PC is always on (and faster to wake from sleep).

A huge thing for me is that it's easier to communicate with friends & other people on PC due to text chat and having apps on my PC like Discord in the background. This is a point people often overlook, if I play a game with random people on PC I can get teamwork going most of the time, on PS4 you don't really get that luxury.

The other key thing for me is that a mouse is so much better than using crappy analog sticks. I always feel like I'm pushing the reticule into the right place when I aim with a pad, with a mouse it's instant with only myself to blame for bad aim. Autoaim sucks too, I have many memories of killcams in Call of Duty on console where their aim snapped onto me.

It's more expensive depending on how you look at it but my PC is not just for gaming, so the cost is not hard to justify. Having a fast PC aids me in many other areas than just gaming! My PS4 Pro plays games, that's it, arguably it's a worse value than my PC is despite being 4x cheaper. I also save a lot of money on games thanks to Steam sales and from buying cdkeys.

@chunlixiaoyufan: Poor lighting in the pic. But, there is a look at mine. :)

@jec03: Feel free to add me on Oculus if you want to play some Ripcoil or Rec Room. It is also nice to have some people to compare scores with in Superhot VR and Robo Recall. My user name is Hosstile17.

I finally spent the money and built my own PC, I spent an hour troubleshooting my build only to realized I plugged my monitor into the wrong port

I went completely PC a few years back after having been a console peasant for 30 years. There really is no going back.

@hosstile17 said:

@chunlixiaoyufan: Poor lighting in the pic. But, there is a look at mine. :)

Damn thats dope.

Building your own PC has definitely gotten way easier recently. But I wish someone would lower the barrier for people even further. Perhaps pre-selected part kits with tutorial videos or something. Even veterans like Jeff and Vinnie had parts issues while building recent PCs on stream. My point being that the barrier to entry is still too high.

The PC having a larger install base, I think helps gaming because that's where the cutting edge technology is. Good developments like SSD's and high refresh rate monitors are unfortunately held hostage by a person needing to know how to apply thermal paste, and not screw up the CPU install. I don't blame people for sticking with console, if they could risk ruining brand new parts by doing it wrong.

I have a GTX 970 running a G-sync monitor and certain games look breathtaking, and that's with a mid-range card from a couple of years ago. I wonder if the PS4 Pro, and even the Scorpio when it comes out will be as good as a GTX 970? The performance gap is insanely wide. Let me just say that when you get used to 70-90fps, and 1440p resolution, playing Zelda at 720p and 15fps in a town on Wii U is VERY painful, LOL!

Nice! I went the other way recently

I would return to PC gaming if the extra cast was available. Although graphics are important on some games, its the mouse and keyboard as controls for FPS that I miss the most.

Back in the 3DFX days, I would spend quite a lot on constantly upgrading my hardware yearly.

@pappafost: tbh i think the barriers jeff and othera have is the knowledge they already have, meaning when looking at instructions it is really easy. If you go into it with preconceived notions built around earlier hardware you can make easy mistakes by over looking simple stuff. For example putting in a water cooler was super easy for me and i had no experience before install. The instructions provided are usually super simple and if not youtube is full of instruction vids these days.

Basically, just read the manual lol :-)

I've always played games on my crappy PC, but getting a newer PC powerful enough to emulate was a big thing for me. I got to play so many games I couldn't afford as a kid.

@pappafost: Another helpful entry point is if there's a speciality computer store nearby (not a Best Buy or something, a real PC-focused store). When I was putting together my PC, I went to a store near me, had their help picking out all the parts and ended up paying them $100 to do the initial build for me. I'm now doing the upgrades myself, but getting eased into the world of PCs like that made it a much smoother experience than if I just bought everything online and tried to do it all myself from the getgo.

I mainly built a PC because my old laptop (a Lenovo T410 with an i5 560M) would thermal throttle and shut down when rendering videos in 480p and would also bluescreen at random moments, along with the usual waning battery life and the eventual death of the AC adapter. So back in 2014, when I was planning to just to replace the laptop with a Celeron G1840 and 4GBs of RAM since I just needed something for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and light video editing with Vegas Pro, but I at some point got enough money to work in a 750 Ti and spent a little over $600 for over 100 games including replacing most of my console library between 2015 and 2016 thanks to Steam and Humble Bundle sales. I'm currently using an i5 4690k, Strix 1060 and 8GBs of system memory, but I'd still call PC gaming a happy accident.

@fezrock: as someone who just last year bought everything online and built their first PC from the get-go: it's really not bad at all. Pcpartpicker.com is your best friend and makes picking and buying all the components easier than you could imagine. The manuals in my experience have all been very clear and simple with easy-to-parse pictures, even. And when all else fails, never forget: there's an instructional YouTube video for everything.