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How hard is it to maintain a gaming PC?

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  • Consoles
  • Components
Last response: in Components
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August 19, 2014 1:21:34 PM

I'm about to make the switch to pc gaming instead of consoles. I understand that with a pc you have to clean your fans and do some dusting every once in a while. I'm more concerned about software myself. With a console you have an advantage of not having to worry about viruses, no defragging your hard drive, etc.

My main question is how much you have to spend doing that kind of stuff and what else I have to do. I took care of my xbox, I cleaned dust off the fans of that, stuff like that. But that's really the extent of what you have to worry about.

I'm mainly concerned because this gaming pc is about a thousand dollars, and I've never done this before.

Thanks

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August 19, 2014 1:24:24 PM

Its not hard at all.
I clean my PC every 4 months, but thats due to my location in the mountains, lots of dust. 6 months is great, you can go a year in most cases.

As for software, once you get anti virus it will self perpetuate itself, no need to baby sit it. I run a scan once a month, always comes back clean.
Drivers and updates are most of the time automatic, and the rest are a click of a button.

EDIT: Forgot the defrag part. With an SSD its not needed. For a HDD once every few years can be a bit much even then.
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August 19, 2014 1:32:24 PM

I barely ever do it. 8 updates stuff for me and Avast tells me when other stuff needs doing. As for dust, I clear the vents when I can see the filter is getting caked
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August 19, 2014 1:35:10 PM

As for defragging, never because I'm using an SSD and it's not recommended. Viruses, avas Avast has my back

As a former console only gamer, do it!!! You won't regret it
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August 19, 2014 1:38:14 PM

The biggest difference, in my opinion, is using the PC for things other than gaming. It will become a central repository of photos, audio and video files, etc. Consequently a consistent backup philosophy and appropriate hardware is required. The MINIMUM would be a USB drive and some scheduled backup software which will do unattended backups. Putting your PC to sleep rather than powering off allows backups to happen in the middle of the night (or middle of the day if you are a night owl). Good power protection is another maintenance difference. Again, if you have valuable data on the PC, ensuring clean power with battery backup is important.
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August 19, 2014 1:43:12 PM

So its not as complicated as it looks? That's great. I just keep hearing a bunch of stuff like "back up this every x" and "install this every x". I'm all for learning more about computers, in fact that's where I want to go in my career. But it's a bit overwhelming buying my first pc I gotta say
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August 19, 2014 1:45:26 PM

Buying? O_o
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August 19, 2014 1:45:51 PM

Everyone has a different opinions to what is "right"
Pretty much you will know what needs to be done when it needs to. Temps increasing, remove dust. Things like that.
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August 19, 2014 1:51:54 PM

@unplanned bacon

No building haha. Meant to say building.

Also I'm not sure how to directly quote on my phone
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