Triple Click - Building A PC Is Super Fun

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Is building a PC really that difficult? Or is it actually SUPER FUN? Maddy, Jason, and Kirk talk about each of their experiences buying PC parts and putting them together like beautiful, brilliant LEGO sets. Jason talks about why his gaming PC wouldn't turn on, Maddy reminisces on carrying her massive PC case to LAN parties, and Kirk espouses the virtues of thermal paste.One More Thing:Kirk: Star Wars SquadronsMaddy: Horizon Zero DawnJason: Baldur’s Gate 3Show Notes:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJason’s PC Building Adventure: https://kotaku.com/my-pc-building-adventure-part-one-picking-the-compone-1821708276Jason's PC Building Adventure part two: https://kotaku.com/my-pc-building-adventure-part-two-something-went-horr-1821879762Kirk’s “The 10 Worst Things About Building a Gaming PC” https://kotaku.com/the-10-worst-things-about-building-a-new-gaming-pc-1606794540And The 10 Best: https://kotaku.com/the-10-best-things-about-building-a-new-gaming-pc-1605434587The end of Kirk’s 2018 CPU cooling obsession: https://kotaku.com/i-put-a-big-air-cooler-in-my-pc-and-it-s-working-pretty-1828394334One PC build for $1,000, from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/dq06nh/will_1000_get_me_a_next_gen_capable_pc/Whitson Gordon’s horror story about his liquid cooling apparatus leaking into his PC: https://lifehacker.com/what-to-do-when-your-water-cooling-leaks-inside-your-pc-1475187833Tom’s Hardware: TomsHardware.comPC Part Picker: PCPartpicker.com Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

If you build it, games will come. If the thing that you built was a gaming PC, that is. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we break down our current gaming PC builds. Look back on the first time each of us built a gaming PC, what went wrong, what went right, and what we've learned. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And we're back. Hey, we're back. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time for some podcasting. Click, click, click. Here we are. Always a highlight of my week recording this show.

I love to talk about video games with my pals. But you know what? If people want to support the show, something that they could do is head to maximum fun.org slash join. It's like a really cool place to go. And if you go there and you become a member, you would get to hear our beans cast about Call of Duty. And in the future, you will get to hear what I think.

about the end of Horizon Zero Dawn because I'm going to beat that freaking game and we're going to record a Beanscast about it. Yes, we definitely are. People should join. Yes, join, become a member and you get all that. And you get to support the show and you get to know, you get that warm, fuzzy feeling that you're supporting your good buddies at Triple Click and yeah, good times. Before we start, just want to give a quick shout out to a listener. We got a very adorable email the other, a few weeks ago from a woman named Kate who lives in Atlanta. And Kate, I won't read the whole email, but she basically, she's a big fan of the show, and she wanted to give a shout out to Alex Rodriguez, her partner.

That's his real name, Alex Rodriguez, and to say, happy birthday. So happy birthday, Alex and Kate, thank you for the lovely, lovely listener email. Happy birthday, Alex. Yay. Kate says then she and Alex call Thursday's Kirk Hamilton Day. and I said, oh, that's funny. I also call Thursdays Kirk Hamilton Day. I don't know why.

I think a lot of people do. Everybody doesn't think of it as like that day of the week. It's kind of a common thing. Oh, Monday, like the worst day. I have to go back to week. Go back to work. Oh, Friday's TJF. Oh, Thursday's Kirk Hamilton Day.

That's just how I roll. Sure, yeah, K-H-D, as they call it. That's right. That's right. This is the Kirk Hamilton show with Jason and Maddie. I think that's also what it's colloquially known as. I believe that's true. Well, yeah, happy birthday to Alex. So here on the Kirk Hamilton show with Maddie and Jason, we're going to talk today about one of Kirk's favorite subjects, but it's also one of Jason and Maddie's favorite subjects.

Really, it's triple click, and there are three clicks and triple click. And we all click on our mice that are plugged into our gaming PCs, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Boom, nailed the segue. How about that? I think that was professional podcasting right there. Can't click on a fucking console. You can't. You sure can't.

You can't. I think that was what we agreed on. Yeah, I guess that. And also the touchpad, the PS4 touchpad. That's cliquy. Yeah, there's some clicks. But the clickiest thing of all is the gaming mouse. We're going to be talking about PC gaming specifically about building a gaming PC,

which is something that all three of us have done. And we thought it would be a fun topic to talk about since it's sort of endlessly frustrating, fascinating, and fun topic. So we're going to start this discussion just talking about our current gaming PCs. All three of us built our gaming PCs. So we're going to go through just like, what's your build? When did you build it? So let's start with Maddie.

Maddie, what is your gaming PC and when did you make it? Okay, so I made my gaming PC, my current one. It's the second time I've ever built a PC. We're not going to go back that far yet. We'll talk about that later. This is my second time building a PC. And I did it in 2017, freshly hired at kataku.com, having that lovely union salary. And what did I spend it on a new game?

gaming PC. And do you want me to just list off all the parts? How are we doing this year? This sort of CPU, GPU, just so people can kind of know what you're operating with. Sure. So the video card, I'll start there. It's a G41080, which at the time was the coolest one. Still kind of a stalwart. So pretty cool. Still pretty cool. The processor is Intel Core I7 and it's a 7700K Quad core 4.2 gigahertz. And I got 32 gigs of RAM in here, and the motherboard is an AISS-Rogg Maximus hero. I remember deciding between different motherboards

and the hero wasn't the best one, but it was like the good enough one at the time. Does it really matter how good your motherboard is? As long as it's compatible with everything else you pick. Right. It can make a difference, but less of a difference. Right. But I feel like the bottle of,

neck for people is like the GPU CPU. I never understood like what a motherboard, like with the, why you have to spend more money on a motherboard. Well, mine lights up and that's what's really important. Yeah, that does make a big difference. Can make a small, a marginal difference, but the CPU and GPU make the biggest difference in the sense that absolutely everything is a speed difference. Right. I just, I like to call mine my mother brain. That's a good name for it. So, okay, that's a, that's a solid bill. That's actually very similar to mine. Jason, what is your PC? Yeah, it's also extremely similar to mine. Just like, Maddie. We probably built around a similar time. So yeah, so I built mine, I built mine in 2018,

and I'll tell the story in a little bit because I have a pretty good PC gaming story. I actually documented it on Kutaku. I have an I7 processor, also I77700 CPU, and then a GTX 1080 GPU, which has been holding up. I mean, I can play pretty much everything at 60 plus frames a second, even like Red Dead 2 has been holding up pretty well. It's not like 60 plus, but like between 50 and 60. One, you can't max every graphic setting, I'm sure. Right. And I turned down, I mean, I found in my last couple years of being like mostly PC

gamer, I found that like usually you turn down the hair effects and the shadows and it really doesn't make a difference. Like these games still look gorgeous. Those are kind of the two, yeah. But like subspace scattering, surface scattering. Although I only have 16 gigabytes of RAM and that actually is sufficed. Like I think 32 might be, how do you know, man? 32 might be future-proofing pretty well.

and yeah I have a solid state drive 3 terabyte hard drive the usual and I have a 750 watt power device PSU which is another part of my PC building story that I'll get to a little bit later I also have a 750 watt one so I have an 850 watt power unit because I am the most hard That's a higher number

That's really futureproofing I bought it because I think I was running two graphics cards in SLI for a while and you need a lot more power for that And I believe that the new and video cards need a lot of power too and that some people are finding that they're buying them and then they need a new power supply. I had never bought a new power supply. It was kind of an intimidating thing to buy, but I bought it.

So, okay, my PC is... It's a strange concept. It's like, okay, wait a minute, I need to buy this box that is, like, terrifying. And, like, electricity... Has, like, a million things coming out of it, yeah. A bottle of electricity. It's like a bottle of electricity inside a box. It's like, that's something the scariest part of building a PC is

knowing that you have to put this power supply in. the back of it. It's also the most, I mean, that's also where all of the weird, the weirdest connections that you have to make go. Yeah, I guess that's true. I feel like seating things on the motherboard is also really stressful. Like, things can really go wrong. Like, let's not, let's not say that's the most terrifying part, because there's too many terrifying parts of building a PC for us to possibly rank. Actually, and I'm thinking it through, and it's actually, it's connecting the case to the motherboard is the scariest thing. That's where the little tiny plugs come in, but we'll get there. So really, just really quickly, my people,

is very similar to yours. I'm now using an I-7-77-7-700, whatever, K. I do have it over-clocked. I have a very complicated cooling system. I'm using a Naktua fan cooler now. I used to use an all-in-one. I went through a whole kind of weird, obsessive process that I documented on

Kataku, and we'll link some of these articles in the show notes. Do we have the same cooler? I also have a Naktua. It's a big daddy cooler. It's like freaking big. It's great, because I overclock, so I'm running it, like, I think 4.7 gigahertz. It's like a little faster than stock just because I like wanted to.

Because you can. Yeah, because I can't. I was like, I'm going to get into this because I'm a gaming journalist. At the time I was like, this is for work. I'm going to learn this thing. And now you just do it for like saxophone stuff. Just making sure that's going really long. I don't know if I'll overclock my next CPU.

But and I have a, when we start telling specific stories, I have a whole story about my motherboard in CPU because I built this in 2015, but it was not with any of these parts. It was in this case, but I totally ripped the gun. butts out and built a new one with the same hard drives. And it actually worked. When? Like over time, incrementally? That was in this, kind of incrementally with graphics cards. And then I did a whole motherboard CPU swap at one point.

Wow. That then just kind of worked way better than it should have. I'm kind of giving a, that's the end of that story is that it went really well. But I'll tell that story a little bit. But anyways, yeah, pretty standard. It's in a huge case. It's like this cooler master case that is ludicrous. It's called a stormtrooper.

I don't think they make it anymore. And it is just obelisk. It's so big. I hate how big it is. But it works and it holds everything in place. I'm like, well, whatever. I guess it can stay. But I kind of wish I had a different case.

Well, you also recently upgraded your GPU, right? Like you got a new GPU. Yeah, we talked about that. Oh, yeah. I'm using a 2080, I should say. RTX 2080. So I want to give a shout-out to my case, which is a Fantex Eclipse series P-400.

You have a nice case. I really love it for a couple reasons. One is that it has the motherboard, like, standing things built into it, so you don't have to worry about that. The things that keep the motherboard away from, so they don't fry from touching the case. And also, it's just, like, super sleek and nice looking. It's not huge. Maddie, do you have a huge gaming case to go with your huge gamer chair? So the first time I built a PC, I had a huge case for it.

And it was terrible. Because I was still going to land part. back then and like carrying a huge case to a land party it was like embarrassing and ostentatious which are not qualities I possess like it was very like a look at me computer in a way that I despised and when was this when did you build your first PC? Yeah let's just talk about our first PC builds Maddie go ahead and tell us about this so I want to say it was 2009 I should have I should have gone back and found like old emails tracking this but that would have been the time period so I would have been 23, 22.

And I remember even at the time I was like, I can't believe I'm only now building my first PC because I had already played games on PC for years by that point and had never built one. And I'd had so many problems with PCs as a teenager and in college, just breaking and like not having a way to replace the parts incrementally because if you have a Dell or whatever, you can't, I mean, you could break it open, I guess,

but like it's kind of ludicrous to do that. And I just hadn't gotten around to building one. And I was dating a guy at the time who also had never built a PC either. And he just was like, I feel like you should have a PC that you build yourself. And so as a Christmas gift for me, he like put together a list of all the parts we would need for it. And like asked different people we knew to buy me each of the parts, which was a very kind Christmas gift way back when. And so I... Extremely nice.

Very kind. And then we built it together. And I'd like to emphasize, like, neither of us had any idea how to build a PC. This was not, like, a significant other doing something for me that he was guiding me through. Like, it was blind leading the blind. Like, we were both learning how to build this PC together. And my formative moment then was that it was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. And I would be curious, Jason, to hear your story.

But even back in 2009, I was like, I thought this was going to be so hard. I had put off doing it for so long. but there were YouTube tutorials. This was before PC Part Picker had been like redesigned and it was the website that it was today. So it was at least a little bit harder to figure out like which parts went together and so on. But putting it together, it wasn't that bad. Like I, there's certainly aspects of it that are terrifying and like things can go wrong. But if you're smart enough to put together like a complex Lego set and like you have the dexterity to put it together, then you're good.

And that's, that's all you need. And I, I don't know. as compared to some of the other cosplay projects and like bizarre hardware modifications that I've done to fight six since then out of a cockiness and thinking, I built a PC, how hard could this be? Building a PC is way easier than a lot of the other dumb shit I've tried to do over the years. And so I'm hoping listeners will hear that and be like, huh, maybe it's not actually that bad. Like once you pick out the parts, you know? So I actually want to zoom out for a second. And Maddie, I asked you this before the show and you said you had found an answer.

So when did the concept? so computers obviously have been around for a very long time. Yes, let's go back to the beginning of the dawn of the age. When was the first computer? So you see, it all started. No, but so when did the concept of like people at home, just hobbyists, like random gamers, building their own PCs, when did that become a thing? And when did it become such that the hardware manufacturers, like, were designing components

that could be pretty easily plugged together to let pretty much anyone, like buy a bunch of stuff and put them together? Yeah. I mean, I think my answer is still 2015 and later is when it got really easy. But even as somebody who was doing it in 2009, I thought it was easy. It's just that the messaging around it during that time period was that it was hard. I think that has changed. And I think some of that is just gamer culture finally changing on this and like more people realizing that things that seem very difficult are just wrapped up in that type of marketing language to make them seem exclusive and cool. But it's actually not that hard to do. a lot of these things. And building a PC, in my mind, is that way. And it was like unlocking something really cool for me to realize that anyone could do this. And then it was just a matter of like finding these five components, making sure they were compatible with each other. And then you put them together. And plug in them. Yeah, it's really, I think what's scary about it is that unlike Legos, where you buy them and you know they're all supposed to fit together a certain way,

there is a little bit of trial and error here in that you don't know exactly what components are supposed to go exactly where. And there's a little bit of, but. But, you know, But okay, so to tell my story. So I was always a PC gamer as a kid. I would play on my parents' computers, whatever. I didn't even think about, like, building PCs back then or anything. And then I had a laptop, and I would play, like, back in the way back in the day, I would play World of Warcraft on my laptop and, like, other random PC games.

But it never occurred to me to build a PC until Kirk started bugging me, like, around 2011, 2012, and he was like, build a PC. But I could never do it because I lived in a Manhattan apartment that was, like, the size of a closet, and there would be no room for my PC until 2017, end of 2017, beginning of 2018, when I moved into my current apartment, which actually has a little bit of space and has enough room for me to have like a little office area.

And so I decided I'm going to do it. It was like January of 2018. I was like, I'm going to do this. First PC, I'm going to build it. At first I consider buying a pre-built, but I was like, no, I'm going to do this. It's going to be so much more satisfying. And so after careful consultation and research and blah, blah,

I, like, wound up getting all the parts, getting together a list of parts, talking to Kirk about it, set aside an entire afternoon, like, five hours to just, like, sit back and, like, tinker away. And it was so much fun. The process of it. Oh, man. It's, like, such a satisfying, like, incredibly fun process of just, like, standing there and putting these pieces together and, like, troubleshooting and Googling things online and watching YouTube videos and being like, okay, first you do the motherboard, and then you plug the GPU and the CPU, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and you learn all these little quirks, like the switches for your power and reset are like in like these super,

super tiny things that you have to like really figure out how to use. There's just a lot of interesting stuff that you learn. And I loved it. And then five hours later, it's like 10 p.m. I haven't eaten anything. I haven't like even drank water.

I'm so fix it in on this thing. I call my wife over and I'm like, uh, hey, I just built this PC. Like check it out and let's watch it turn on. And I press the button. And nothing happens. I'm like,

shit. Nothing happens. And I documented this on Kataku. It's fun to go back and read these stories, my PC adventure log, PC building along. But what turned, wound up happening is I took it to a computer shop and he was immediately like, oh yeah, the power supply is busted and call me back. You had like a failing power supply, right? It was literally like dead on arrival. Like I, there was no way I would even be able to know because it just didn't work. That's uncommon. It is uncommon. It's one of the things that's like a risk of like doing this whole PC building thing. That's right. If your computer doesn't turn on, there's really no way of knowing what the problem is without extensive trial and error. And there's so many little things that like one plug going the wrong way or one.

Especially when it's the first time because you can, it wasn't working before. So you can't even look at what you might have changed. It's like everything just changed because you just built it. Yeah. Yeah. So now so immediately. So I ordered a new power supply. internet, like plugged it in, uh, immediately started working. And I was like, I am, I am a god. I felt like a god. I've made life. Um, yeah, and one of the things that's cool is that like when I took it to the computer supply person, he put in this little tiny thing that makes a beep every time it turns on. So every time the computer turns on, it makes a little beep. And it reminds me of that saga. I'm like building it myself. And it's pretty cool because you like learn what all these

things do. And like if I want to replace something or if I know there's a problem, I can just kind of get in there with screwdriver. And I feel, I'm still a little intimidated. I'm still a little worried about touching something wrong or getting static electricity on it or something. But it's nice to know that I built this thing. It feels pretty good. Every time I started it on, it's like, oh, I built this thing.

So yeah, to all you people out there who are wondering and intimidated, I highly recommend it. It's really cool. Oh, yeah. I've seen people compare it to working on cars and how so many people own cars, but don't think about what's in there. And if you learn to work on a car,

it is fun as a hobby, but also very empowering in that way, where you know what everything is, you can just like change stuff out on your car and you no longer feel like, I don't know, you're beholden to this object that you own that you don't fully understand. I think that's changed so much with cars, though, in the opposite way from PCs

where cars have become more proprietary and, like, harder for you to get in the mix and fix nowadays. I mean, it's true of Max. Like, it is true of a lot of types of computers, just not gaming PCs. It's just cool that PCs have retained that sense that cars used to have

where it's like, yeah, you could just get in here and fix this yourself. if you know how and if you know what to do and that hasn't happened. I don't know. I just think it's something cool and people should know. People should know they can do this. Kirk, you got to tell you your first time.

Yeah, so my history goes back farther than you guys, both because I'm a little older than the two of you and just because I started PC. You're cooler. That's what I was going with that. No, so really like. And the first time he was four years old, you know, I got electrocuted a couple times, but like he was also learning to read at the time. So I wasn't allowed to own games.

gaming console. So I did play my first games on PC and had a PC that I saved up for for like ever when I was, I guess, in middle school or something. So this would have been in the sort of mid to the late 90s. And I, so to answer a question or to give my take on a question you asked a little while ago, Jason, on sort of like when it became a thing to start making gaming PCs, like people who were into computers made computers forever, like for decades. But gaming PCs, I think it was kind of around the advent of the GPU of the standalone graphics card. which was around the turn of the century. Like, when I was playing PC games in the late 90s,

like playing Half-Life, you didn't have a graphics card. It was just like how fast your processor was. That was the main thing that mattered. Right. Dedicate or integrated graphics is what we're called. Right. And then right around when like Unreal first came out and kind of these like, you know, it was like dedicated lighting sources where there would be like a red light rotating in the corner of the room and it would be flashing on your gun or whatever

in a first person should be like that kind of stuff started using a dedicated graphics card. And that was like the first G-Force cards came out in like 1999-2000. So that was when it started, I started to be like, oh, if I really want a gaming PC, because I would like read PC gamer or whatever. I have to get something that has spare PCI bays that I can like plug in a graphics card. So I didn't build a PC throughout that whole period of like the early 2000s, but I did buy like a graphics card and install it. So I would open up, I would buy a PC. I think I like maybe bought one. Like a prefab one. Yeah.

I think I bought the parts and then had it made at like computer. USA, like I took it to the people at the computer store because this was like before the internet was like there was, when I was first doing it, there wasn't even YouTube or anything. Like it was really like, like I would have a, I would break the computer or something would stop working. And that was when it was very stressful because you'd be like, oh my God, now I'm going to have to take it to the frigging computer store and it's going to cost me X amount of money to just have the person fix it. And I'll have to wait all this time and what a mess. I can't believe I just broke this connector or whatever. So that for a while was what I did. So that for a while was what I did. And then right around like 2009, maybe. So around the same time as you, Maddie, I built from scratch my first PC. And my brother-in-law, who was an electrical engineer and a really like just sort of brilliant technical mind, helped me do it. So he was kind of my spotter. That's helpful to have an electrical engineer.

It was very helpful. Though I'm sure I could have been looking at YouTube videos. And I remember being struck even then by how kind of regulated everything felt. Like pretty much everything fit. You'll always run into that stuff where like you buy rams. and it has heat sinks that stick up and then the like cooler on your CPU hits up against it and you're like, oh, that happened to me. Yeah.

But then you can, with certain cases, these days, like you can, everything's so modular. You can like put the cooler on the top instead of on the side or something like that. Sometimes you're host and you need to get different RAM. But that's the thing about PC part picker like Maddie mentioned before. Nowadays it has all the compatibility factors. So like it'll tell you when you're doing a PC part picker like, oh, this doesn't fit with this. Like these two things aren't. I would say that PC Part Picker plus the just like Tom's hardware and YouTube, like those three resources are so, make it so much easier now that you can do it.

And then I think that like the component makers have also made everything a lot more standardized and a lot easier. Like I think it's ASS who I've never had an ACE. Maybe I have one now. Somebody makes a thing that connects all of those case, those tiny little case plugs that go onto the corner of the motherboard like your lights. they make like a standalone thing that you plug in first, like off of the motherboard, and then you just slot it down onto the motherboard. So it kind of makes it a lot easier. Like you still have to plug those things in, but it's a lot simpler.

And I wouldn't be surprised if my case now is like 10 years old. If you got a modern case, they just give you like, there's just one thing that you like clip on and it's much more standardized because that's always the thing that stresses people out. Almost as like I guess CPU stuff is still stressful. But it just feels like all of it is becoming a lot, a lot less fraud. We should talk about cash because I know a lot of people out there. How much does this cost? Yeah, well, so a lot of people out there, I'm sure, are considering buying next-gen consoles,

maybe you're thinking about getting into PC gaming, maybe you're listening to us talk right now, and thinking, oh, man, I should go build a PC, but can I really afford it? So my PC, so we all three of us have high-end PCs, and so I imagine all three of us spend a lot more than you really have to, just to make sure that we were totally maxed out. But my PC in case people are curious. I got, I went up getting a graphics card and a motherboard for free. Yeah, that's worth mentioning. Because we had, and a CPU.

The CPU and motherboard were in the office, Kizmoto had an extra one that they gave to me. And the graphics card I got as kind of like extra. Yeah, we would have budget for hardware at Kataku sometimes. So I got a graphics card for that. And even with that stuff for free, the whole thing cost me $1,259 for like Windows. the cooler in the case and blah blah blah all the other stuff so altogether it was probably like two grand if i had had to buy the gp u and cp u and mother war but i think if you weren't if you got like

a cheaper cp u way cheaper gp u like and like cut down on some of this stuff i think you could go way lower um but yeah i'm curious to hear what you guys what you guys did sure i i can say that the guts of my computer at the time cost a thousand five hundred dollars and that does not include the case and it doesn't include the monitor, it doesn't include the keyboard or the mouse that I bought. So it's definitely, it's easily over two grand with including all of those other things. But, you know, at the time, I didn't upgrade my keyboard. I did buy a new case at the time, but I did those other upgrades later down the line. And I also think it's true that, I mean, I definitely could have cut down the cost if I had gotten just less good parts and that would have been fine. Like I just

pick the best possible stuff at the time because I could afford it at the time and also because I was a games journalist. And so I figured I may as well get the best possible parts. But I just, I also think that if you build your own PC, it actually is cheaper. Like if you map out how much it costs to get a prefab machine that's as good as what you could make yourself, you are actually saving money if you, if you build it yourself. And that is something I have always calculated. And I, It's also cheaper to repair it if you know how to repair it yourself. Like it does pay for itself even if there is some sticker shock on hearing that. Like, and if you use PC Part Picker, you can adjust for price and stuff.

Like you can pick cheaper stuff that will still work and still be pretty good. But anyway, Kirk, what did you pay? It's varied. I mean, this PC was, I'm sure, quite expensive. I don't actually know how much everything costs, but I'm sure it's... Yeah, because you've upgraded over time. That's the thing is I've upgraded over time. many times, but I'm sure if I had bought all of this, say, in 2017 and bought a 2080, yeah,

it'd be like probably closing in on two grand. Though I remember that PC I built in 2009 was under a thousand. I don't think I had a monitor for it, but it was a much more sort of modest PC. And it was great. Like you could play like so many games on it. Like you've both said. I mean, at this point, I was like, well, I'm like covering the hardware beat to some extent for Kataku.

Like, it's my job. I'm getting paid for this. So yeah, I'm going to like buy better things. But it is definitely possible, especially now, to get some pretty good stuff for a lot less money than that. I feel like the other thing that I noticed the first time I built a PC was that it was significantly better performance-wise than any PC I had had prior to it. And part of that was probably just because I bought better parts. But I also got a little superstitious about it. And I was like, I feel like since I made it myself and also since I now know how to fix it and like incrementally change different things about it,

I'm saving money and also it lasted for years. Like we're talking about the difference between 2009 and 2017 year. Like that's a really, really long time to have a PC. And like, yeah, I upgraded some things within it. But that's like me spending two grand once as opposed to every three years to upgrade a PC or every four years. And that's a significant difference to me. I agree. And I mean, you kind of have a better gaming experience.

And I think, like, if you want to sacrifice a little bit of frame rate and resolution, that's, I mean, really, that's the tradeoff, right? If you spend less money, then you're not running cyberpunk 2077 at 60 frames a second. But, like, I just Googled a little bit for bills that are, like, under a thousand. You can totally do it. They're probably, like, faster than my computers now. Yeah. You can get some really decent stuff. You can get some really decent stuff.

Yeah, I should mention, I mean, I guess I don't want to talk too much about price, but there is, like, when you, you become a PC gamer, it is very easy. I wrote these articles, Will Lincoln's shown us that were the 10 best and the 10 worst things about building a PC. And one of the things in the 10 best things is convincing yourself to buy the more expensive thing. The higher end part. Because there is like, as much as we're talking about fiscal responsibility, part of PC gaming, PC gaming is an expensive hobby. Yes. We shouldn't like gloss over that. This is an expensive thing to do. And it's cost prohibitive to like have a lump sum of $2,000 right at the beginning. Sure. Definitely true. for something over time.

And there are a lot of slippery slopes. It is built of slippery slopes. There's just so many times where it's like, well, but you could just get the slightly better version of this thing. And I think about how much better than me. And there's a whole like apparatus. You know, music gear is very similar where it's like, I don't know. You could get like those better shielded cables though.

And paying another, it's just $10. Everything. Kirk, you're describing all of capitalism. Like buying a car, buying a house, everything. Right. I'm just relating it to things that I've been dealing with lately. But yeah, it's all kind of. similar. And so that is, at least worth mentioning, that's psychology. You have to be very

clear on what you want. And once you have a thing that plays most games, I feel like, that's a good goal. And then when you start to hear the clarion call of like, but you could be playing it at 144 hertz. Like, you've got to just be like, no. But doesn't even look that different, really? I mean, we convince ourselves it does. But even at the time, I was like, why am I getting the 1080 graphics guy? Like, what are we doing? And I mean, I'm glad I got it. it's fine, but it would have been fine. Though the monitor thing actually, the high refresh rate monitors are pretty nice. That's true.

And as we discussed many times on sports three. It's worth it. I actually switched monitors. I had a 1080P monitor at first and then switched to a 1440, one of the ones with like g-sync or whatever it is that goes in the video. And it was worth it. It's like a really good monitor. I really like it.

So I found a, this is from Reddit, just a random build that I pulled up. And you could get like, this is like a $1,000 build. You can get a radion. an RX-5700, which is a pretty decent graphics card, and like a Risen 3.6 gigahertz CPU, and like all this other stuff, it's like a package for a thousand dollars. I'll link it in the show notes. And an RX-5700, I mean, you could be doing like a solid like 1440p and good frame rate and stuff like that. Yeah, man, I've heard good things about those rising cards. I'm so like, I'm just like Intel. I feel like a lot of people are Intel and Vida and then other

people just do AMD stuff across the board. And I had an AMD car. in the first PC, that 2009 PC I built, it was great. I feel like AMD is cool, and they don't do as much of that anti-competitive stuff that Nvidia does. I just feel so kind of locked in and I don't like really care too much, so I just use Nvidia. Okay, so we're being very rah, rah, hooray, PC building is great and easy. Something that we haven't talked about yet is CPU installation.

And I do want to at least mention it because if there are people listening to this. Yeah, thermal paste. I do want to talk about thermal paste. I have a whole complex about it. I think that if people listening to this have not built a gaming PC or thinking about maybe doing it, I do think that is one thing that feels kind of intense still. And I just want to share that I have installed many CPUs. It's always gone fine.

Even when like you kind of get it wrong or like you think you maybe put it. Like you're just very careful doing it. But it is something where this whole process, so to explain to anybody who hasn't built a PC, you have your motherboard, you screw it onto your case. That seems pretty straightforward. Usually you'll have the feeling if you've never done it before of like, oh, wow, the holes in the case line up with the holes on my motherboard. Magic, magical. Amazing. They're different brands, but they work.

And so you screw it in, and then it's good. And then there's just this open sort of platform awaiting your CPU. And then you take the CPU and it's like, you're like, okay, because you probably just spent several hundred dollars on it. And it weighs a lot. It's very heavy. When you take it out, it's always like, wow, this thing weighs a lot because it's like a very dense piece of metal. And then you have to resist the temptation to eat it to like dip it in some sauce. bit. Yes, if you're Jason, the difference is also that. Just see how it tastes. There's always like the cutout corner. So it's a square, but then there's one corner cut out and that's what you use to line up, which is always kind of comforting. You're like, okay, I know this is the right corner. And then you're supposed to just drop it down and then you put the little thing over it that like that holds it in place. It kind of like on an amusement park ride, like on a roller coaster ride when they hold the thing down. So you're the attendant who goes around and make sure that everybody you have to. You're the underpaid teenager who probably should.

should be in charge of doing this? That's you in this moment. Right, who has more responsibility than you should. And you feel that responsibility on your shoulders as you prepare to bring the, it's called the tension arm down. And you always have to push it like, you have to push it a little harder than you, you're like, oh God, I'm destroying my CPU. And then it like really, you have to kind of be like, oh, and like push it in. And then you're just like, I just hope I didn't kill my CPU. I hope it's fine. You just hope it worked. That was my description of the process. But was it similar for the two of you? No, I mean, my only big problem was the story I told before with the failing PSU.

But since then, I've had my, it's now October, so I've had my computer for almost three years now. And I haven't had a serious, a single problem. Yeah, yeah. Once it works, it works. Did you not get anxious about the thermal paste at all, Jason, when you had to put it on? Or you felt great. No, it was already applied because the motherboard. You're using like a stock cooling, right?

Well, yeah, it was a stock cool. No, it wasn't a stock cooler. I don't remember. I don't remember exactly. Are you like an all-in-one liquid dude? I can't remember which one. Yeah, which one. My cooler was the Coursair H-100 I V2 liquid cooler. And I'm pretty sure there was already. Yeah, one of those all-on-one liquid things. Thermal paste supplied. I was actually disappointed. I kind of hate those things now. That's funny, because you recommended that I get that. That was a prank. So I advised you to get that. And now I have, so since then, well, since then I went through my whole like cooling thing where I became a, obsessed with airflow and cooling because I was trying to figure out why my CPU was so hot, and I was using one of those. I think it was a corsair. I've used a couple of ones. I think I used a cooler master one for a while. And I always thought they were awesome because they're like, it's liquid cooling. And that, like, for a long time, I just sort of bought the hype and thought that was a good thing to do. Yeah, sounds cool. It's liquid cooling. And I think if you build your own really elaborate, real liquid cooling system where there's like lots of liquid moving. That's so much more dangerous and difficult. Right.

Oh my God. Yeah. Well, that's why I've never done it. Well, that's, I would never do that shit. No, no, no, of course. But I'm drawing a distinction between, I remember Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker did the story of it leaking into his computer. Oh my God. But the all-in ones are just like, it's like a heat sink and there's just some liquid that moves into the heat sink.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway. Those don't work as well as an air cooler is what I'm saying. And I've learned that now. And actually now, if you were asking me now, I would just tell you to get a big air cooler because this are great. My computer gets hot, but it's not like it's normal computer. We're not overclocking it.

Right. I'm not doing any of the fancy stuff. But I will say that when I first got into PC gaming, I was always into PC gaming. When I first got into PC building, one of the big concerns I heard from people, one of the big sentiments I read online was like, I want something that just works. That's why I go with consoles. Like, I don't want to mess up. But I found that in three years of owning and playing a lot of stuff on my PC, it's always

just worked. Like, I've never had a problem. Maybe I'm lucky that I've never had some random blue screen of death or like computer schooling issue. I've had a similar experience. Yeah, I think it's just pretty straightforward. Like, once you get past. the hiccups of like of building and like the CPU thing that Kirk mentioned and like random things

that might go wrong which really could go wrong with the console too as we've seen many times of the past. It's really not that bad. I think a lot of that is based on just people's memories of how hard it used to be to build a PC and like how easy it was to get parts that didn't line up. And like the lore that caused. Yeah. And just the the cultural osmosis of that lore of like, oh, the horror stories are what people remember and like, oh, the parts won't fit together properly or like, I'll have to replace a part after three years and I'll buy the wrong one and my entire PC will have to be replaced. Like those are, those are things that you don't want to happen. But also, I've never had those things happen to me ever. Like I picked the right parts to begin with. They last

in a long time. I've made incremental improvements, but have barely had to because I picked really top of the line parts the first time and then it lasts almost a decade. And that rules. So. Yeah. No, I have a similar experience for me. There's definitely if one can afford the upfront cost, like to mention that as opposed to, which is a tough, a tough thing, especially now. Coronavirus, not a lot of people, like some people have lost their jobs, it's really unfortunate. And like if you want to get into the next gen gaming and you don't have a lot of upfront money, the Xbox financing plan might be a good way to go. But if you do have the upfront cash, it's such a good long-term investment for gaming. And the one thing we haven't talked about, largely because the three of us often get games for free,

is Steam, which has so many friggin discounts all the time that like overall you're saving. And the epic friggin' games store, which gives you free games constantly. Or Xbox Game Pass. And Humble Bundle. Yeah. You're really saving a lot of money long term

if you play a lot of games and buy a lot of games because Sony and Nintendo are not discounting their games nearly as often as the Steam store is. Yeah. No, yeah. It's definitely true that you can get a lot of games for not much or no money. And yeah, just to add my own experience of like when things go wrong, it's almost always self-inflicted with me. Like, I'm always tinkering and trying to upgrade. Or it's just me being like,

I don't know, let's try a different cooling solution. But it was never that there was something wrong. It's just that I wanted it to be better, which is, I think, kind of the curse of the PC gamer in a lot of ways. It's just like that, that hot rotting car thing. Well, I don't know. I've never really felt that, to be honest. Like, I'm happy that I have this 1080 that. hopefully lasts me for like two more years. I would be happy never have to open up my computer. I'm not saying that if you own a PC, you will feel this way. I think that it is a way that a lot of people who play PC games feel.

If you're Kirk Hamilton and you built a PC, then you will feel this time. Maybe I'm just protecting my own experience on everyone else's. Which is totally valid. No, I think there is a subset of PC gamer that feels that way. I would say I feel that way sometimes, but then I talk myself off the ledge because I'm like, it's already working fine. And like are there other incremental improvements I can make that are safer? Which is like part of why I got the new monitor last year was because I was like,

I feel like I want to upgrade something. My stuff is pretty good. But like getting a new monitor. Monitor is a really good upgrade. Yeah, that really makes such a big difference. Kirk, I think I'll feel that way if I start playing like next gen games in 2021 and they run at like 30 frames a second and I can't get them much higher.

They just look like shit. Just total garbage. Yeah. They just look like garbage. but I doubt that what happened. I feel like my 1080 is still going to last a little while longer. Well, PC gaming is fun. We all like doing it.

Feel free, of course, to write us with your own PC gaming stories or recommendations. A lot of our listeners know a lot about PC gaming. So, yeah, we love hearing from you. We're at triple click at maximum fun.org. And you can email us about other things, too. Feel free to write. All right, let's take a break, and then we will be back for one more thing. Macho man to the top rope.

The flying elbow. The cover. We've got a new champion. We're here with Macho Man Randy Savage after his big win to become the new world champion. What are you going to do now, Match? I'm going to go listen to the newest episode of the Tights and Fights Podcast. Tell us more about this podcast. It's the podcast of power, too sweet to be sour, funky like a monkey, woke discussions, man,

and jokes about wrestler's fashion choices, myself excluded. I can't wait to listen. Neither can I. You can find it Saturdays on Maxx. Some of fun. Oh, yeah, dig it. I can't hear myself, but I'm consuming. These are real podcast listeners, not actors.

Hey, thanks for coming. Here's a list of descriptors. What would you choose to describe the perfect podcast? I mean, vulgarity. Dumb. Definitely dumb. And like, right here, this one, meritless. What if I told you there?

There was a podcast that did have all of that. No. Jordan Jesse Go. And it's free. Jordan Jesse Go. Jordan Jesse Go. Jordan Jesse Go. A real podcast.

And we're back and it's time for one more thing when we each talk about one more thing. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Okay. So I'm still playing Horizon Zero Dawn. So excited to beat this game. But I want to talk about the combat a little bit because I've been making a mistake. And I can only assume that our listeners have also been playing along because why not? We've been talking about this game for weeks.

Of course there. You probably picked it up. Maybe you're thinking about what you should be filling out on the old skill tree. Well, here's what you shouldn't do. You shouldn't do what I did, which was max out the stealth skill tree, which Kirk, as you noted, not ideal. Not ideal in this game. Not much of a stealth game, really? Not much of a stealth game.

It's not an Assassin's Creed. This game kind of feels like it's an Assassin's Creed at first. But the more you play, the more you realize that it's kind of like a monster. monster hunter. It's much more of a monster hunter. It's really mad on Assassin's Creed and you really need to be more of a more of a cannon, more of a tank, more of a Samus, if you will. And I, so that was a, that was a big mistake I made. But also another mistake I made, I'd like to emphasize, I'm over 30 hours into this game. Like, I'm really closing it on the home stretch. And I have not been using the time slowdown mechanic like at all. I was about to say that's the key to this game.

Nope, I haven't been doing it. Have not. If you're using in the controller, it's very useful anyways. Yeah. That's how I'm playing the game. I feel very dumb, and I really don't want anyone else to make this mistake. So early on in the game, there's this mode called concentration that you can level up in the skill tree, which is what I'm referring to. And when Aloy is lining up her bow, you can click the right thumbstick down, and it'll slow down time. And that only works when she's lining up a shot. If you click the right thumbstick down the rest of the time, it opens up her, like, Batman Detective mode. and she like uses her smartphone to look at robots and stuff and like see cool stuff around town.

And that's kind of what confused me early on, I think, was that I was like, oh, like the right stick is for detective mode. That's what the right stick is for. And I kind of knew that you could use it for concentration early on, but then I forgot about it. Because in those early battles, you don't really need to slow down time that much. Game's still pretty easy for like a while. But as it goes on, it gets harder and harder. It gets pretty tough. And I just kept on playing it without ever.

slowing down time and just being like, wow, man, I have to line up my shots really freaking fast in this game. These things hit hard. Fighting these birds, these birds freaking suck. Like, how are people? And I would be like Googling and being like, isn't it really hard to fight the birds? Like, they move really fast. Like, am I the only person who thinks this?

And I was like, man, I guess I'm just bad at this game. Like, whatever, fine. Like, I guess I'll just be really good. So then, like, yesterday, I was like looking at the skill tree and reading all my skills because I was like, I feel like I'm doing something wrong here. Like, let me just read every skill description. Like, what's up? And I, like, was reading the concentration skills.

And I was like, oh, yeah, I never used these. Oh. Interesting. What if I slowed down time while I was aiming? The game is so fucking easy now. Like, stupid easy. Like, so easy that I'm mad at it now. And I'm like...

I think it's that you got good, because I actually wouldn't describe this game as easy even with slow mode. But I think that by playing on hard mode for 30 hours, you've become amazing. So now slow mo gives you superpowers. Like I've taken off my weighted armor a la Dragon Ball Z and like now my true power is being released and my aloy is going super sane. I think you need to kick it up to hard difficulty now. Yeah, it's going to say, now you need to crank it up. It's ridiculous. So anyway, I'm just fucking reaping my way through this game now because I'm like, cool, it's easy.

I'm so excited to talk more about it. Play the Frozen Wilds because there's a fight in that. There's some monsters in that thing that are that are not easy. I can just slow down time. How hard could it be? I have superpowers in this video game that I wasn't using this entire time. That combat is so fun. But we will talk more, I'm sure, on the beans.

People should be leveling up, though, that middle skill tree. That is the good skill tree. Just don't even worry about that. Isn't that sliding slowdown? The aerial slowdown? Those are actually very useful, situationally. And the jumping one. The jumping slowdown is pretty decent to.

But really all of them, it's like, if you slow down a game, it's really easy to aim. You guys know about this? Anyway. I've heard. That's my hot. That's my hot time. Yeah,

I feel like this is a pretty common thing in bow games. It is, yeah, slowing down time. It's just a common, I think it's a development just in a lot of games is that they realize

that aiming with the plastic is hard and that they want to give people. It would be easier if you could do it really slowly. Yes, a way to feel more powerful and accurate. Sort of like the end of Call of Judy Modern Warfare. Yes.

They're like, you are not going to miss this show. We're slowing it down for you. You've got to kill all three of them in one shot. You gotta get all those guys. Got to get that handgun. All right, Jason,

what's your one more thing? My one more thing is Balders Gate 3. This is a game I've been anticipating for a long time. It is the next game from Larian Studios,

the company that made Divinity Original Sin 2. Which, by the way, that was the first game I played on my brand new gaming PC. That's such a good first gaming piece.

It's the ultimate PC game in so anyways. It was nice. I didn't have a kid back then so I could literally just like totally different. A hundred hour game. I really,

I spent on an entire weekend just like I did not leave the computer screen. It was amazing. That's such a great experience. Oh man. What a great experience. Yeah, that game is a special game. But anyway, so and Baldur's, that game was awesome. And then Baldur's Gate one and two were some of my favorites growing up back in the day, back on integrated graphics. Didn't need to build a PC for those games. Still hold up, by the way. Belgers Gate 2 still holds it pretty well. But anyway, when I heard that Larian was making Belgers Gate 3, I got incredibly excited. And then it came into early access. week. I played a bunch over the weekend. I got like an early, early access press version. Called double secret early access. Yes. It was actually a different branch. They sent out a new branch on Sunday being like, actually like this says more bugs. That's really the early access experience. Yeah, no, I was also on these emails and remembered how weird this was.

You didn't play it. Did you know? Or you were just figuring, okay. No, I delegated it of course. Naturally. Like a true editor. Got it. Because I was texting with, I was texting with Nathan who was playing it. But anyway, it is called Early Access for a reason, you guys. It is so buggy. I saw a little bit of this. I was like, I want to wait for the finish version. Yeah, it's, I was talking to you about it for a while now. I've been talking to you about it Kirk because you're a huge Divinity fan also and a huge Baldur's Gate fan. And I was like, man, I'm not going to be able to resist playing in Early Access and you should play too. And you were like, yeah, I think I'll check it out. Now I would say, actually, just wait because it is so buggy, at least the version I played. It is so buggy that like you can't even trust.

when you're in dialogue with someone and then suddenly they attack you. Like, you don't know if they were supposed to or if it was a bug or if, like, the quest glitched out or something. There was a point where, like, I was picking an option that I thought would lead to a peaceful agreement and it just led to combat.

That happened a couple of times. And they're just, like, all these random-ass glitches, like characters duplicating and jankiness and dialogue. And it's just, it doesn't feel good to play. It's, like, very unpolished. However, so let me see. say that it's interesting playing Hades, right, which was this very long early access period and now is released as this absolutely beautiful one point of version, we can trust that Larian

will make Baldur's Gate 3 into a good game. That seems like a pretty safe bet. You're talking about apples and demons here because Haiti is many. But Pallis G8 3, yes, I'm not, this is no judgment on the final product. Right. That's the thing that I'm trying to make clear. I do have a couple of concerns that I'll get, but I do have a couple of concerns. So I'll get there a second. But my point is just that this game is so buggy that it's not even pleasant to play in Early Access, and if people out there were also huge fans of both Larian

and Baldur's Gate are wondering if they should play it, I would say, no, hold off. Unless you really want to be part of the development process. Right, I think there probably are a lot of people who do, because you get the game eventually and you get to check it out while it's still in development. That's sort of actually what Early Access is supposed to be. Yes, agreed.

But it also kind of like Maris the experience because you're seeing a lot of this stuff for the first time, and it's in a very unpolished state. So it does have its disadvantages. I'm also a little bit concerned. So what's different about this from previous Liring Games is that every single conversation you have is now like this third person, biore RPG style, like cinematic look. And so it'll be a close up of someone's face and then another person's face and then another. And every single time you have any conversation, even with random NPCs, it does this. And it can really drag down the pace because you'll be,

and if you think about Divinity Reggelson too, you have a lot of conversations. You can talk to anyone in the world. You have random conversations with them. Some of them just say one funny line. Some of them just have like a bit of banter with you or whatever. And then some of them are in-depth quests and conversations. To have to do like to have to zoom to what is essentially a new cutscene every single time you talk to someone really, really drags things down. And I'm not sure. Like I'm a little worried about how that'll hold up. But again, because this is an early access and they'll be getting so much feedback from players, I trust those developers to really, really just like fine-tune this thing and get it feeling really great by the time it comes out

and real like 1.0 eventually down the road. But as someone who I see a lot of potential. We're like four butts in now. We've taken like four butts turns and our butt, but, but, but, this is the, but, this is what it's like talking about early access. If triple click, if triple click is is dedicated to anything, it's butts. It's buds. We love it. So yeah, so there is a lot of potential there and I think it could be a really cool game. And that makes excited to play it and I will not be touching the early access field again. Yeah, I played early access divinity original sin one and then regretted it because I'd never played that series and didn't know I would love it. And then the finished game came out in my save didn't carryover.

So I didn't play early access divinity too and then I was really glad for that. But even still played a whole bunch of the regular version and they've released an enhanced edition or whatever and I have to start over. So I'm definitely waiting. Even the regular version is like an early access. I'm going to wait for the enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate 3 in like 2023. assuming that we're all still alive in here. Okay, so my one more thing really quickly is a game

that I'll probably make my one more thing again because I'm really interested in it and think it's really cool, and that is Star Wars Squadrons, which is a big new Star Wars game that's out that I feel like we should at least talk about on triple click. Have either of you played this game at all or no? Nope, you haven't.

Plenty about it. That heard good things. Yeah. It's great. Broadly speaking, fun-ass Star Wars flying game. I loved, speaking of PC gaming, I love Ty Fighter X-X-Vist Thai Fighter. X-Wing Alliance was, I think, the one that I played a bunch of.

These are the old sort of space sim dog-fighting games on PC. They're pretty crunchy, actually, by modern gaming standards. They had a lot of stuff because they were on PC, so you had a keyboard with, you could adjust all the settings on your, you know, your X-wing or your Thai fighter, your A-wing, your interceptor, whatever. It was sort of where I learned all of those ships and what they could each do. So when I watched the movies, now I'm like, oh, nice, a Y-wing, and, you know, kind of, like, know what it is. If you flew the thing and were sat in the cockpit, you kind of really knew. So this game is very much aimed at people who liked those games.

And it's great. I think it's really good. I'm playing on PC. It has some optimization issues. It's always funny. I'm looking at the forums for ways to tweak stuff. And people just seem so angry about a lot of things. And I'm like, okay, but when I'm playing the game, like, it's really fun.

Like, I'm having a great time shooting down tie fighters. That's always the weird thing about reading forums. Like, especially for a game that's, like, pretty well received and good is like, oh, well, I guess we're all complaining about A wing or something? Yeah, there's like things people don't love. So I've been playing it with, I played a bit in VR. This game is completely playable in VR. And I don't, I ordered the new Oculus thing, the Quest 2, which hasn't come, but it comes

apparently in a couple of weeks. So when that comes, I'm really going to like play with it. It's not like totally perfectly optimized for it, but it's pretty freaking cool. Like when you're, I've played a lot of space games in VR, but this one, like, when you're in a friggin' X-wing, like, you're in VR and you're like flying and you look and there's like an R2D2 behind you, and it's just you're looking at the cockpit, and it's just hanging out there, and you're like, a tie fighter goes flying over your head, and you're looking, and like, I mean, it really is cool.

And they'll, I think they'll, it needs a couple patches for optimization stuff, but like, man. And I'm also playing with, um, uh, HOTS hands on throttle and stick, which I got for like elite dangerous a million years ago and I was writing about VR. It's this old crusty one that it took me kind of a while to get working because it's like, I think it's for the PlayStation 3 made by the company, the company thrust Master, which is the unironic name of a gaming hardware company, and I've always enjoyed that. Amazing. But it's so playing it with that is very fun.

I'm all about, I'm learning how to drift right now, which is the move where you, this is a thing you do in a lot of spaceflight games, but it's where you're basically flying forward, and then you go past the thing you're shooting at, and you boost, and then drop and, like, turn at the same time. So you drop your speed right after boosting, and you do a really fast, like, physics flip around. and when you pull it off, this is drifting, you feel cooler than you've ever felt in your entire life. And I'm just like explaining that to people who haven't felt this way,

because if you want to feel cooler than you've ever felt in your entire life, you should try drifting in this game because it's very fun. But if you want to feel really cool, you should build your own X way. That's true, that's true. Then you'll really understand how it all works. And it's way easier than you would think. Honestly, the parts just fit together. It really standardized it since the new trilogy.

Once you plug in the R2D2, the rest just kind of... Right, the R2 really helps you. too to fix it for you honestly. It's true. So I'm still playing through it. There's a cool story. It's pretty straightforward kind of Star Warsy story. You play both sides, so you're like a Thai fighter pilot and also an X-wing pilot.

What if both sides are wrong? Isn't that kind of the vibe? I don't know. It seems to me, no. I mean, it's the empire sucks and her shitheads and like the alliance are good guys. But it just seems like I don't know where it's going with the imperial storyline. I'm guessing you're going to eventually defythe. effect or something or who knows but anyways it's a fun game i'm gonna play more of it i don't have

like super strong take than that but i'm actually really impressed with how good it is and how like the level of complexity and the simulation is like a lot deeper than i was expecting but not so deep that you can't play it on a ps4 with like a regular controller that's awesome two years in a row good star wars games after jett i fall in order last year yeah really good good stuff and nice to see yeah motive have a like you know good game that's cool they seem like they deserve they deserve a win So anyways, that's it. That's it for us. That's it for Triple Click. We did it. We recorded another episode. This was fun. Maybe next week we'll be out of Early Access. Are we still in Early Access? Oh, come on. Yeah, I think so. For a little while. We're still kind of updating. We're in like version. We're patching. 0.9.8.

Always iterating. That's us. All right. I will see the two of you next week. See ya. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I had it mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to Maximumfund.org slash join and consider becoming a member. Doing so helps support us and gets you access to an exclusive triple click episode each month. Find us online at tripleclickpodcast.com on Twitter at triple clickpod and send email to triple click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Comedy and Culture. Artist-owned, audience-supported. Sweet. Is it my weak clap? Yeah, it'll... It'll get us. It's a weak clap. It's just a weak clap.

Sometimes you miss, you know, like when you have a bad high-five. I didn't get it right. Like, I didn't... The timing was off. Like when you try to high-five somebody and the sound is not satisfying and you have to do it again. Same deal. Same principle. My timing was all off.

It happens. Half is the best of us. Are we ready? Can I start? Yes. Yes. Take us away.