So, before we talk about PCs did you ever think why did we need a computer in the first place? Now I am not listing any names or dates because this is a book written by someone who also hates memorizing history. But the actual reason why we needed a computer was to do math. Yeah, I know it is boring to talk about math but hear me out. By the time you are reading it, your machine has already made millions or more calculations. Yes. Reading an E-Book also needs math. But things are different now. You could do pretty much anything with the right machine. Modern computers are used for a ton of stuff by some very nerdy people. But we will ignore them (for now). Since the NERDY gang is out now, we have two main contenders.
• The Workstation User
• The Gamer
So, the workstation user is basically the type of person who wouldn’t use their PCs to chill and game. For them, PCs are an investment. So the main checklist here is "Are you planning on making money out of this PC?" If your answer is yes, then you are a workstation user (*there are some exceptions but we will talk about them later). Now the internet associates all workstation users with this software called Blender, which lets you design you know 3D Models and stuff and then sell them. Which is just hot garbage. In fact most of the workstation users use their PCs to do stuff like Video Editing, Training Large Language Models and GPTs, Simulations etc. (If you don't know what they are, its fine. Think of them like jobs. You don’t need to memorize them). Now Workstation Users have different needs than Gamers. The core difference is, unlike gamers, they don’t use their hardware at 85-95% for a short burst. They use it at 100% for a long time, think days or even weeks. So they don’t care about the raw speed as much as a gamer, but they do care about the quantity(mostly).
So, The Gamer is basically the opposite. Most of the gamers don’t
make money with their machine. You buy the machine to have some of the best time of your life in a virtual world, it’s an experience. Now gamers want something called FPS or Frames Per Second. This is basically the single most priority to them(for most of them, although stability matters more, which we will talk about later). Because generally, the higher the number the smoother the experience and lesser the lag between you physically pressing a key and then the computer reading it, we will talk more about FPS and stability in our Monitors part. However, I think you should also know gaming automatically doesn’t mean you can’t make money out of it. This is a weird case, the exception I was talking about. So, if you are incredibly good, like in the top 100 or 1000 players in the globe then you could play tournaments. Gaming is also like a sport (called as E-Sports or Electronic Sports). So if you are planning to play in such tournaments then you are an E-Sports player. Generally, all E Sport tournaments have cash rewards, or something similar. There are some tournaments for fun or respect but most of them give you some form of money. However we don’t consider E Sports legends as a workstation user although they do make money out of their build, because of one simple reason, it still needs the same requirements as a normal gamer and the main purpose is just to Game.
With that said, I want y’all to make one thing clear. No one is superior to the other, you could use your PC to research and do 4K Video editing or play those sweaty E Sport Matches or just be a chill guy and use it for normal gaming. It’s totally fine.
So, before we move any further, I want you to answer me one Question. Which type of person are you? Because this decides everything. The first step in building a PC is not picking the parts, it’s picking the purpose.