I put together the stupidest gaming setup ever from components lying around the office
13.7.2017
Translation: machine translated
If you're putting together a PC, you consider the components, their performance and compatibility. But what happens if you simply combine random components lying around? Can you still play games then? I've been there.
Peripherals of all kinds and a life-size Star Wars Stormtrooper are stocked in the IT Peripherals office. Whether it's so that the product manager can ensure the quality of the parts, or whether it's leftover components from past tests, there's plenty for DIY enthusiasts to enjoy.
However, on closer inspection, the components are all more or less new and often of good quality, but they don't really go together. It was during a discussion with product managers Christian Seeholzer, Quentin Aellen and category manager Osman Erdogan that I came to fiddle with an external graphics card - simply because I can't keep still. I also discovered an NUC in the corner. NUCs are fully functional PCs that fit easily on a desk, but aren't particularly powerful.
"Wouldn't it be fun to put them together and play Doom?" asks Osman.
We all agree that the idea is stupid.
A quarter of an hour later, the messily wired setup sits on my desk and Steam is downloading Doom. I take my lunch break.
The setup
I can already tell you that the setup adds nothing to this article, unless the components just happen to be lying around your house and you have no idea what to do with them. But since that's relatively unlikely, I'm going to tell you how I put together a gaming PC that has no business being there, because that idea is stupid.
A lot of things in this article are going to strike you as unintuitive, let alone clever. So you have every right to disagree. And if you have an idea that would make it better, then let me know in the comments.
Here are the components I've installed:
You're thinking this makes no sense, right? OK, I'm thinking the same thing. In fact, at least fifty simpler, cheaper and cleverer set-ups spring to mind. But hey, while we're at it, let's get straight to it.
The wiring is just as creative as the setup, indeed only two of the components are designed to work together. It's true that ultimately everything can work together, but in this environment only the external graphics card is intended to do that.
- The mouse and keyboard are inexpensive pieces of equipment, but are good products for everyday office work
- The monitor is also designed for office needs
- The external graphics card is actually for videographers and graphics work with similar requirements. I know of at least one case where a gamer has optimised his laptop with an external GPU in order to have the compactness of a laptop combined with the graphics performance of a gaming PC.
The NUC is connected to the external graphics card via a USB-C cable. The whole thing is connected to the screen via HDMI. The power cables are plugged into an old, attractive-looking power strip, which I found somewhere on the fifth floor and inserted into my editorial colleague's power strip Alina Biedermann. I'd already done the same for the 65-inch PC screen, and it hadn't bothered her either. When asked about Doom, she replies, enthusiastically, "I don't know what it is. For me, it's a good bargain.
The whole setup is based on the motto: "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should" and in my opinion, that's right. And yet, Doom is proof to the contrary.
Swallow that, Martian demon zombies!
Despite the absurd idea and hellish cable management, the whole setup is fairly user-friendly. Windows is just a little reluctant and strangely has the impression that a second screen running at 1024x768 resolution is connected in addition to my Philips screen. I have absolutely no idea how the PC recognises a second screen.
On first start-up, the whole setup took a good two minutes to synchronise and, every time the screen went black to adapt the resolution or for some other reason, I freaked out: "Have I fried the PC?"The 40-inch screen I really like would have been a hard loss to take.
Just after the lunch break, all the updates are done and all the drivers installed. The Doom game can begin.
The fans of the external graphics card spin behind a red tube in which lightning flashes. A metallic sound emerges from the screen - I plug in my headphones, because it's unbearable for the others - and I steal my editorial colleague's game save Philipp Rüegg, so I can annihilate the miserable zombies with the Super Shotgun and Plasma Gun from the very first level.
An amusing bug disrupts the game: sometimes the display simply freezes. I then have to quickly call up the task manager with CTRL+ALT+DEL and can return to the game by pressing ALT+TAB.
Conclusion
For the same price as my NUC setup, you can easily put together a better gaming PC. You may not get the pretty flash effects of the external graphics card, but you can be sure that your gaming PC won't let you down.
Whatever you say: putting together a PC like this is really fun, even if the wiring is very simple and could have been done by your five-year-old little brother. Indeed, I never doubted it would work. The only question was how well it would work.
Verdict: yes, pretty well. I'm playing Doom in 4K, the loading times are either relatively long, but once the game starts, nothing stops it.
The whole PC setup still makes no sense though. I'll see what else I can do with the external graphics card. If you absolutely want to reproduce my setup, I'm not going to stop you, but there are more sensible things to do.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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