My journey with Computers and building a main stream PC with I5 4570 and MSI GTX 1060 6GT OC

TL;DR I built a new PC in a budget friendly way of upgrading things a few at a time and ended up with a good PC. No numbers in this post. It’s just my experience so far. 

I used to be that guy watching Linus Tech Tips and other tech video channels on YouTube and imagining things. I never had newer technology immediately as it released. My first computer had an Intel Celeron processor at 300MHz with 128MB ram and 4GB HDD. So you can understand how capable it was back then. The only game I remember playing on it was GTA Vice City with terrible lag. 

Later on upgraded to an Intel Dual Core(Initial ones) system with 2GB ram and 500GB HDD and a Asus GT 610. Then on to a HP laptop with AMD A8 APU and 4GB DDR3. All this time I never had an updated setup. Here in India technology is at least 1 year outdated compared to United States. I was at least 3yrs outdated with the systems I had and all of this was a thing until I started saving by working as a freelance developer. From the last November I have been accumulating  components for my dream setup. 

Started off with a CPU, a basic motherboard and ram. I bought an I5 4570, 8GB(4+4) DDR3 Transcend Ram, 500GB HDD and an entry level MSI mobo. Coming from slower processor and that too dual core. The power of I5 felt awesome. And from then on due to worst optimisations of windows 8.1 and 10(I guess) HDD used to be a bottleneck for bootup. Then I added in a 128GB Transcend SSD which reduced boot times to less than 10 seconds no matter how many startup programs were present. It was good and then I started learning blender which laughs at any graphics card you through at it and the NFS Rivals also had a lag even though it is a console game locked at 30fps due to the outdated GT 610. By now my hp laptop life ended and so went with an Asus X555LA with a 5th gen I5 mprocessor, 4gb ram and nothing special. My eyes were at 960 or 970 but never had that budget. So for the time being purchased a second hand AMD HD 7770 1GB graphics card. This was my first ever graphic card with a dedicated cooling fan. This might not sound a lot to many but if you had been in my shoes you could have understood that happiness. 

Then started issues with power supply as it is a cheapo Chinese PSU of 450w without 6pin power and I’ve been using molex to 6 pin adapter. And oh did I mention? This is my first graphic card with a dedicated 6pin power input. This was in August this year and by then I was doing my full time job at an MNC in Bangalore. I can definitely afford a good PSU. I bought a normal Corsair VS550. I picked this one because it can definitely power something at 400W to 450W and looking at trends in technology everybody is interested in reducing power consumption(I’m talking about Intel and Nvidia) so I went with this and getting this one in India is a big deal. I should be thankful to Amazon because it is only due to them I had my hands on latest technology like ssd as local stores never knew there exists a technology other than HDD. I don’t want to criticise but thats the stage my city is in December 2015. 

Now I’m almost upgraded only things left are a monitor and a graphic card. I’m definitely not going to get a 1440p or 4k monitor coz that’s not my budget. I might get a 1080p monitor and I wanted to have a graphic card that never struggles to play any game at 1080p(60fps) on ultra settings. I though of 970 but by then the 1060 has released and it is better than the AMD’s flagship RX480 and 970 by a little bit. So I was just waiting to grab it immediately as it shows up on Amazon and the advantage for me is it will be slightly overpriced and there are not many like me who wants to get it no matter what. And one lucky day found the 1060 6GT OC at around 25k INR. Slightly cheaper than a MSI Gaming x 970 that was enough to make it a deal and just ordered it along with an LG 24inch IPS monitor.

They were ordered with one day delivery guarantee and both were expected to be received on the same day. The monitor arrived first in a huge packing as usual coz it’s Amazon and they care a lot about packaging. I opened it but kept aside coz I’m more interested in my new graphics card. When it comes to buying stuff,  I’m always a kid and getting a mainstream card that released just a month ago was never even in my dreams. And as I was thinking of it, the delivery guy called and I ran out to get the delivery. As expected another solid packing by Amazon. As I tore open the packing then came the graphic card. What a beauty.!

Then I started installing the GPU and the monitor and the first boot was as usual with no problems at all. Both of them never disappointed me, at least not yet. I’ve completed the setup a month ago and no problems yet. I have thrown some AAA titles like Battlefield 4 and everything was as expected, 60fps at 1080p. 

As I said earlier blender can stress any graphics card. I’ve recently rendered a short 40 seconds video with minimal materials at 30fps and it took almost 12 hours to render but the good thing is graphics card never went higher than 70 degrees Celsius and never clocked down due to temperature issues. 70 might be high for people from cooler areas but my room ambient temperatures are always 30 to 35 degrees. So, everything is fine until it goes near 80 for me. 

I’ve never written a post with actual number or reviews but I will try starting it soon. Let me know if you are interested.