A lot of different game projects go into the release literally every day. Among them there are frankly unsuccessful, made beautifully, but without a soul, atmospheric and interesting, but poorly optimized.
Sometimes games remain in the memory of gamers for many years. And only the rarest projects manage to suddenly find and fill a gap, which no one initially guessed, but after their appearance the game world can no longer imagine its existence “before”. Just a few days have passed since the appearance of PC Building Simulator in the Steam service, but I’m sure nothing will be the same.
Developers succeeded simply impossible. It would seem, because this idea was on the surface. A lot of people want to have a powerful beautiful personal computer. And every year, the number of those who want to understand the details of the selection of components and their subsequent assembling is increasing together. Well, thirsty, rejoice – PC Building Simulator is now ready to provide a tool for the realization of your desires. Let it be virtual.
The game provides the choice of two modes: free construction, which immediately available all the components, as well as career mode. In addition, an interactive instruction on assembling a PC is available here.
And, of course, first of all we are interested in the career regime. It will allow you to smoothly plunge into your role – the sole owner of the business of repair, maintenance and assembly of personal computers. Our office consists of a corridor and, in fact, a working room.
Under the desktop is a system unit, and on the table – a monitor and a keyboard. It’s not clear where to put the mouse, because when the monitor is activated, the control is made with the help of the cursor. Anyway.
When we approach the monitor, we get access directly to the operating system and applications installed on the PC. In the case of a work computer, it is primarily e-mail, for which applications for repairs, complaints, notifications about the expansion of the assortment in stores come.
The story begins with the simplest. The client requests that the PC be cleaned of viruses.
After accepting the order for work, the next day the box with the system unit inside appears next to the entrance door to the office.
Well, then everything is in our caring hands. The system unit must be assigned to one of the empty desktops and put there. In the case of a “viral” PC, it’s enough to connect it to the periphery and power, and then insert your USB flash drive with utilities and install an antivirus. After cleaning the system from viruses, you must leave the systemist at the door and receive payment in an e-mail.
For the performance of each task we get experience and a certain payment. With the growth of levels, access to a more advanced “hardware” in stores opens. In addition, we can buy a couple more desktops in order to repair several systems at the same time.
But most of all they are pleased with miracle-instruments, which really do not suffice in real life: instant screwing, batch cable connection, accelerated installation of components. And do not think – this is not a joke. After all, every bolt in the game must be screwed in real time. The only thing that is not enough for a full immersion, so it’s QTE combinations. So would be added more dynamics and realism, because who among us did not swear, dropping the bolt to the bottom of the system unit? It’s a pity that you need to gain a lot of experience and money to buy these extremely necessary tools.
With the growth of experience, the complexity of assignments also increases, they become complex. One of the clients believes that he needs to add RAM, someone does not like the dust in the system, someone wants to put the processor stronger. One day a dissatisfied customer wrote to me, demanding to smear thermal paste on the processor, because during the assembly it was forgotten. True, it turned out that the claim was still to the previous owner of the business, and for speed and responsiveness I will now be recommended to friends and acquaintances. So things went up the hill.
Later, there are requests to bring computers into line with the minimum / recommended requirements of certain games. To do this, we need to purchase the software “Will it run?”, Which scans the current hardware and suggests that it does not meet the requirements of a particular game.
And of course, there is work with the store. When we see the task and the customer’s desire to replace a certain spare part or add “something to draw my fishing simulator”, then we go to the corresponding application on the working PC. In the store there are categories of goods and even certain filters. Unfortunately, not all vendors have connected to the developers’ initiative, and therefore the assortment is still rather meager. This is especially noticeable in the cooling category.
Interestingly, often in the upgrade tasks, you should also run a benchmark on the updated system, in our case the only available is 3D Mark Time Spy. And it really starts and goes in real time. At such times, the second desktop will be useful for working on the next order.
By the way, it should be noted that the benchmark is not easy to play as an in-game video on the monitor, it actually reacts to the change of components, giving out different fps and different numbers of “parrots” at the end. But, for the sake of justice, the objectivity of the demonstrated fps leaves much to be desired. For example, a system with a Core i7-8700K processor and a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti produced only 30 frames per second. Replacing the processor with a twelve-core Ryzen Threadripper 1920X changed the frame rate to 45, and the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X hexadecoder produced 60 frames, although the video card remained the same.
Free play mode does not impose restrictions on the player. Here everything is possible, though within the cash in the game assortment. All components are available initially in full, and the office already has all the tables and a cabinet for storing computers. And at this moment everything rests only on our imagination. You can assemble a PC within any budget. Each of the fans of this or that camp will remain “in their own”.
Assembly begins with opening the side walls of the case, and, if necessary, removing decorative panels and other things.
Further, gradually, we begin to fill the PC with components. When installing the motherboard in the pallet, the pillars are first screwed, and then the fixing bolts are screwed into them.
To install the processor, it is necessary to open the mounting frame, and after closing the “stone” in the socket, close it accordingly. Installing the memory slots involves pre-opening the latches on the slots.
By the way, before installing the cooling system for the CPU to its rightful place, in no case should we forget about applying the thermal paste that lies in the inventory.
The installation of drives depends on the features of a particular case – somewhere they need to be put in the front rack, somewhere behind the pallet and so on. By the way, depressing the total absence of SSD-drives in M.2 form factor, in fact, as well as those that are installed in the slots PCI-Express. Yes, and those that are available are represented only by the brand “nounaym” and a meager choice of volumes. But the HDD is a bit bigger. Sincerely I hope that these are just consequences of the pre-release version 0.7.5
Among the manufacturers of video cards are MSI, Gigabyte and EVGA. From the gaps in the game – the impossibility of installing several video cards, in fact, as well as installing the video card in any other PCI-Express slot, except the nearest one to the socket.
The choice of power supplies is also not very large, even among those manufacturers that are available in the game.
After installing the components, you need to connect them. For this, there is a separate sub-mode for connecting cables. All unconnected nests and elements are highlighted in it. So, everything will be simple enough and forget to connect something that is unlikely to come out. Here the following problem of the game is manifested: cable management is missing as a given. Of course part of the cables are held behind the pallet, but often bundles of wires hang right in the middle of the system and callus eyes. Several times the wire even went through the details right through.
After the completion of the assembly, we can only connect its cherished USB flash drive and wait for the installation of the operating system Omega OS.
The final touch is the adjustment of the highlight color of all the elements that the system has.
And of course it is necessary to run the benchmark. Only an ill luck, only one cooler-type cooler got into my case, but it could not cool the zeitgehnuclear Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, so I got BSOD. As though in a life they do not suffice… The truth the error CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT usually has to do with overclocking of the processor, in any way to an overheat, but it is visible here developers did not become wise. The blue screen – it’s in Africa blue screen.
As an overclocker, I can not help noticing the following. In the game there is a different iron, there is a benchmark (even if only one), which displays the performance of this very iron. Maybe you should offer a new tournament on HWbot.org?
In general, as I said at the beginning of the review, PC Building Simulator is something that will turn the lives of many. How often did you think about wanting to build a computer, but do not have the necessary skills? Any of us would like to have a business that allows you to clean other people’s PCs from viruses and get paid for it. All these moments are so often found in life, especially among visitors to our resource. Because now, for the miserable chervonets of American money, anyone who wants can realize his dream into reality, without departing from the PC.
