So I’m down to the final weeks of this deployment and I decided that I would treat myself to a gaming PC for when I return home. At first I looked long and hard at the Alienware Alpha and Steam Machines, coming really close to picking up an i5 version of the Alpha for $650. However, upon browsing Reddit and Steam message boards I saw an overwhelming amount of negative posts about the Alpha, most regarding hardware failures.

Ultimately I headed to iBuyPower and started putting a desktop together. They were having a sale where basically every component you selected would be upgraded to the next higher version for free. I have to admit, I know absolutely nothing about PC’s (I’ve used a MacBook Pro for the last four years, and it’s done everything I’ve ever needed it to, without ever having any issues) so I kind of went into the ‘building’ process blind. I just picked things that seemed affordable, and ended up with the following build:

AMD FX 8320 processor (with Corsair Hydro Series H55 liquid cooling)
16GB RAM (G.Skill Ripjaws X)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (2GB)
MSI 970 SLI Krait Edition (motherboard)
600W Power Supply
2TB 7200 RPM hard drive

I have no real clue what any of that means, but I’ve heard it’s not a bad start, although many people have said I should have gotten an i5 CPU over the AMD. All I’m hoping for is the ability to run PC games such as Fallout 4 that will look better and run smoother than they do on my Xbox One.

I’m looking forward to getting home in a few weeks and putting the hardware to use!