Last week I got all the parts for my new PC.
My last pc was a HP Pavilion Elite from the 100 or 010 series, a few years old anyway. So it was about time for an upgrade again, especially since I started hitting the limit of what I could do with it. Streaming at a high quality would tax the machine a lot and I had to play games in low quality while streaming. Recording was still okay, but even then at intense moments it would show FPS drops.

So I started looking at decent parts for a nice price. I am not interested in the high-end of the computers since these have a higher chance of not being fully supported yet or having some bugs in them still. Instead I want parts that are still very good, but have all their bugs worked out. It also has the benefit of being quite a bit cheaper.

Here’s a list of the new hardware.
Case: Silverstone Fortress FT02B-W
Mainboard: MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3)
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K Boxed
GPU: MSI N580GTX Twin Frozr II/OC
Memory: Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4X1600C9
HDD1: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
HDD2: Hitachi HDS721010DLE630, 1TB
PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 850W
Soundcard: Asus Xonar DX/XD

The best part about the machine so far for me is the SSD. Things load so nice and fast now. I click, and it pops up.
There is still waiting from time to time, but that’s okay, games need to initialize or connect to the server. But at least I’m not waiting for long times any more because files are becoming so large.

The first challenge I encountered was having to remember how machines fit together again. The last time I fully built a pc was well over 5 years ago.
Things are roughly still the same, but there were some small differences.
But, due to an excellent manual for most of the pieces and extensive labelling on the PSU I managed to get all cables connected properly.
I only had one scare when I turned it on and didn’t hear the CPU fan. I had to power down, get a flash light and turn it on again to check if it was running.

After this I discovered that the temporary DVD Drive no longer worked, so I had to get this out of my old pc before I could install Windows.
Installing Windows was the easy part, but after this comes the long and tedious job of getting all drivers up-to-date and reinstalling all your applications. Downloading several games and reconfiguring everything took me a few days.

But it was all worth it. My pc now has a performance rating of 7.6 for CPU and RAM while Graphics and Hard Drive have a 7.9.

I can now run World of Warcraft smoothly in full Ultra settings. Even heavy AoE phases only drop the FPS to about 40-45. During recording and streaming I am still at a steady 25-30, I am very happy with this machine!

- Uhm

Recently I made the switch from 4-day raider in World of Warcraft to casual gamer. I made this switch before but didn’t have terribly much to do with all the free time back then, so I was lured back in.

This time, however, I have some plans. I’ve been streaming, recording and editing alot regarding games the past few months, but rarely to never published or finalized those things.
I want that to change.

In comes the old name Uhmnet I’ve been wielding for years already. It is the origin of the nickname Uhm, currently Mr. Uhm since I’m older now. During my times in school I used the name for a small website linking to random flash games that me and my classmates enjoyed playing. Since then it has been unused.
This time I will be using this name as an outlet of my urge to record and edit, as well as an incentive for myself to finish small projects.

There are many others who do the same thing. Record and upload videos of games they play, join betas, show off their games. Most however seem to have one or more of the following problems;
- irritating voice
- no direction or planned goal before a commentary, alot of thinking during narations, many silences
- bad video or sound quality
- starting with an apology for bad sound due to temporary problems
- repeatedly asking for favourite or subscribe
- heavy usage of annotations on youtube

These are all things that put me off from watching a video, the lack of time and thought in the video bugs me too much.
So for me the above problems are a part of a simple quality check, I can’t allow myself to give out something that isn’t of a at least a certain minimum quality.

I will aim to supply edited playthroughs of new and old games, showing the bits that are interesting. I will stream whenever I plan to play something specific for a decently long time. I will not bring out something for the sake of meeting x-videos-per-week.
Instead, I wish to bring you quality. Something you will encounter from time to time in your searches and possibly enjoy watching.

- Mr. Uhm