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PC Gamer Team's Personal Gaming Setup

PC Gamer Team’s Personal Gaming Setup

PC Gamer Team’s Personal Gaming Setup

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Building a gaming PC is almost as satisfying as playing games on it—perhaps more. The feel of plugging a new CPU into its socket, the sensuous snap of the RAM stick, and that moment you realize the damn M.2 socket you just filled has no screws. Makes you want to build one now, doesn’t it?

There are countless ways to configure and design a gaming PC, and to inspire each other and our readers, we wanted to see how members of the PC Gamer team approached the hobby.

Regardless of the content, there is a lot of love here. Love all things gaming, love the technology that makes all these frames per second possible. That’s what PC Gamer is about today – you can decide if our confidence in writing is reflected in our gear, or if we might be compensated.

Nat Clayton – Feature Producer

Nat’s game settings. (Image credit: Future)

Nat’s PC Specifications

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Graphics card: RTX 2070 Super
motherboard: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX
RAM: 2x8GB Crucial Ballistix RGB 3600 DDR4
SSD: WD Blue SN550 1TB High Performance M.2 PCIe NVMe
hard disk: Do not.
power supply: Corsair RM750
case: NZXT H510
show: Acer, uh, what
keyboard: Steelseries Apex [RAW]
mouse: steel series competitor
earphone: Logitech G432

Tell us about your computer.
I hate building computers. There’s nothing more stressful for me than buying PC parts and putting them together, so when I was tasked with replacing aging student PCs the previous year, I gave my smartest friends a budget and told them to figure it out.

I got lucky with the timing, and while it was a bit of a pain to buy a 20-series graphics card before the 30-series came out, it also preempted the severe shortage of GPUs, so I can’t get too frustrated. Also, it ran almost everything I threw at it perfectly, and the upscaling from a 1080 screen to a 1440 was enough to make me feel like my eyes couldn’t handle 4K, even if they wanted it.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t care too much about making a statement with my setup. The rig is in a white box under the table with just a few unintentional RGBs. Monitors and peripherals try to avoid the jagged glowing gaming rig aesthetic. It works, that’s enough.

what are you playing?
Literally, only Apex Legends.

What upgrades are planned next?
I think I should probably get a drive with some actual bloody storage. 1TB doesn’t go very far these days.

Phil Savage – Editor-in-Chief

Phil’s game settings. (Image credit: Future)

Phil’s Computer Specifications

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700X
Graphics card: ASYS RTX 3080Ti ROG Strix
motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS
RAM: 2x16GB Corsair DDR4 Revengeance
SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2, 2TB Samsung 860 EVO
hard disk: Western Digital Black 2TB
power supply: 850W Corsair RMx Series RM850x
case: Fractal Design Meshify C
show: ASUS PG279Q 27″, Dell U2410 24″
keyboard: Razer Black Widow Chroma
mouse: Razer Viper V2
earphone: HyperX Cloud Alpha Pro

Tell us about your computer.
About halfway through 2020, I decided I needed a new CPU. My i5-6600K feels a bit long, and with the new generation of consoles out, it seems like a good time to prepare for the inevitable jump in system requirements. Here’s the thing: you don’t just upgrade the CPU. I also need a new, compatible motherboard.

If I did, I might as well replace my increasingly worn Fractal Design Define R3 case with something more modern—its top USB port is long gone. By the end of my spending spree, all that’s left is the graphics card and PSU. A year later, they too were gone. I still insist it’s an upgrade and not a new build, even Plato couldn’t convince me.

Peripherals are mostly older. Back in 2016, I invested in a 165Hz 1440p monitor, and I don’t plan to upgrade to 4K anytime soon. My second monitor is older: a 16:10 ratio Dell monitor that acts as a second screen. I also recently enhanced my Razer Chroma keyboard and mouse with the included RGB mouse pad. They all flash in sync, which makes me happier than I should be.

what are you playing?
Currently I’m mostly torn between Destiny 2 and Guild Wars 2, with vague plans to finally launch Elden Ring sometime in the near future. “None of these games need an RTX 3080 Ti,” you say? This may be true, but my decision to suggest that I buy one is neither reasonable nor bad. But I was able to find one at the height of the GPU shortage, and I’m not going to let reason or common sense get in my way.

What upgrades are planned next?
I’m not. Unless something is broken, I won’t touch it for years.

Jacob Ridley – Senior Hardware Editor

Jacob’s personal outfit. (Image credit: Future)

Jacob’s PC Specifications

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
Graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 6900XT
motherboard: MSI MPG X570 is godlike
RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR4 @ 2,666MHz
SSD: WD Black SN750 1TB, Samsung 870 QVO 1TB, Addlink SATA 1TB, Crucial P2 500GB, Samsung PV128 128GB
hard disk: not any
power supply: EVGA 850W Gold G2
case: Corsair iCUE 5000T RGB
show: Gigabyte M28U + ASUS XG32VQ
keyboard: Logitech G915 Wireless (click)
mouse: Logitech G Pro Wireless Ultralight
earphone: Sennheiser HD 650

Tell us about your computer.
As a hardware journalist, I tend to find that my PC builds are constantly spinning parts. I’m constantly receiving new headphones, keyboards, coolers, and other components to test, and there’s no better test than using it myself for a week or two. Access to all the latest equipment is a perk of the job, although I’m running out of cardboard box storage at an alarming rate.

That said, I always use some PC peripherals. I’m so used to typing on the clickable Logitech G915 wireless keyboard that it’s weird to type on something taller now. However, I still have a soft spot for Topre Realforce. Again, the Logitech G Pro was my go-to mouse, so much so that I started to wear down its matte finish to shiny plastic.

For audio, I always have Sennheiser HD 650 headphones on hand with my Schiit DAC and amp combo, although a set of Logitech G560 speakers is useful in a pinch. I also have a Loupedeck on hand at all times and have reviewed my trusty Rode PSA-1 boom.

what are you playing?
I’m a Hunter: Showdown man, and it’s been over a year now. That game takes up most of my time as I usually have an online friend who is keen to play a round or two. Although I sometimes dip my toes back into Destiny 2, and I’m often plugged into the racing wheel for some F1 2021 action.

What upgrades are planned next?
I can use the faster RAM kit because my four sticks are from two different groups and they have to run a little slower than the advertised stability. Although I’m also looking at a bigger 1000+ watt PSU so I can plug this 850W power supply into the tester.

Lauren Morton – Associate Editor

(Image credit: Future)

Lauren’s computer specs

CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Ultra
motherboard: ASUS PRIME Z370-A II
RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) G.Skill DDR4 SDRAM
SSD: 500GB WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD
hard disk: 2TB WD and 6TB SanDisk
power supply: About 1000w EVGA
case: NZXT H710 white
show: 2x ASUS VN279QL 27″ and 1 Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQ 27″
keyboard: Steelseries Apex 7 TKL Ghost
mouse: Steelseries Aerox 3
earphone: The earbuds that came with my phone, sorry.

Tell us about your computer.
My gear is relatively flashy and new these days, but I’ve always thought of it as a shaky facelift for my first pre-built dedicated gaming PC in 2013 – after a boot camp in Guild Wars 2’s first year, I treated Own Mac Laptop.

I’ve never done a full rebuild, so even though the internals of the first machine were non-existent, I always replaced things piecemeal (actually, one of my monitors was from 2013 to a week ago). Due to an indecisive personality, I’ve never been a cutting edge upgrade person, so my system is a few years behind the latest technology.

Aesthetically, I finally got an almost perfectly clear black and white setup with all my RGB (RAM, GPU, motherboard, mouse, keyboard) set to a cool blue.

After about a decade of being a messy wired jungler gamer, I’ve finally subscribed to proper cable management in and out of my machine. My main luxury is my three monitors. I don’t know why I came here, but I will never go back.

what are you playing?
Currently, mainly Elden Ring. After the initial hype passes, I’ll probably go back to Red Dead Online or whatever low-spec indie game becomes the new co-op hotspot.

What upgrades are planned next?
I plan to eventually give up my two secondary monitors, the older, huge bezel Asus creatures I used to have. Then I go ahead and do that and write down my specs. I now finally have a 140Hz and 2K monitor as my main monitor. The next thing on my list is to get rid of the two bulky HDD storage drives I have so that I can finally fully use SSD storage.

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Wilbert Wood
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