Is this true to life?

[Mister Shan]

Can you actually learn how to build a PC and fix them by playing this game? Or is it really watered down? This may sound like a naive question, but you learn to fly with sims so why not this.

[Glitch5406]

It's pretty basic you can learn the concepts IMO its best to learn by hand.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Mister Shan:

Can you actually learn how to build a PC and fix them by playing this game? Or is it really watered down? This may sound like a naive question, but you learn to fly with sims so why not this.

No this is not a tutorial and teaching game. This will not teach you everything you need to know to build a real computer in real life. It over-simplifies a lot of things. It will teach you some of the very basic things but you will still have to follow up playing this game with several tutorials on YouTube before you can actually touch computer hardware and be competent in building something without damaging it. And don't watch any videos by "The Virge" by the way.

[spelljammer]

Just watch "Linus Tech Tips" instead. Some of his build videos are quiet nice. But try not to drop anything.

[[FNW] Alpinwolf]

Linus Tech Tips, JayzTwoCents, Gamers Nexus - all great sources (very different flavors).

But this game CAN teach you some watered-down basics. One of the best conceptual lessons (though not always accurate in-game) is planning ahead for parts compatibility. Not everything will fit. Not everything will have the right connections or work together.

NOT realistic: Customers accurately knowing what's broken and just asking you to replace the part – that aspect is laughable. Troubleshooting can be very complex, and if the customer is good enough to know what broke, they're only coming to you to buy the parts to install themselves, LOL.

So, as a "simulation", it's ... "Okay." Not bad. But pretty shallow.

[DJMadMax]

I wouldnt suggest Gamers Nexus to people completely new in the pc building business since Steve is a VERY technical guy and can be quite boring to newbies I guess ^^

But if you really wanna have the highest ammount of experience explained to death into the tiniest of details imaginable, Steve buries Jay, Linus, Kyle and all others out there in a blink of an eye :D

[Erol NL]

I disagree. Having build multiple systems over the years this simulation is nearly identical to the real thing. What you do need to take into account is that the real thing requires you to align components and configure the hardware in your bios and operating system.

Also, you have to match components, for example you cannot put a cpu with socket 1200 in a socket 1151 or connect an M2 drive to a sata port,

[spelljammer]

Originally posted by Erol NL:

...this simulation is nearly identical to the real thing.

Only when you just look at the system assembly part this statement might be partly right.

Here are some examples of missing topics you have to deal with IRL:
- BIOS or firmware updates
- hardware incompatibillity issues, lookup QVL (qualified vendors list) for verified memory modules, every module runs in every motherboard in this game
- driver issues
- Win 10 updates bricking enitre systems that ran fine before the update

The OP asked:

Can you actually learn how to build a PC and fix them by playing this game?

So for assembly the answer is "maybe", but for fixing and trouble-shooting that is a defintie no.

[Uzii]

Originally posted by FNW Alpinwolf:

Linus Tech Tips, JayzTwoCents, Gamers Nexus - all great sources (very different flavors).

But this game CAN teach you some watered-down basics. One of the best conceptual lessons (though not always accurate in-game) is planning ahead for parts compatibility. Not everything will fit. Not everything will have the right connections or work together.

NOT realistic: Customers accurately knowing what's broken and just asking you to replace the part – that aspect is laughable. Troubleshooting can be very complex, and if the customer is good enough to know what broke, they're only coming to you to buy the parts to install themselves, LOL.

So, as a "simulation", it's ... "Okay." Not bad. But pretty shallow.

tbf later in the game all they say is "idk what's wrong with it now, pls fix it" and it'll be probably multiple things.

[bezdak]

Speaking from my experience - playing the game did not teach me anything that would help me with my first build. About 80% of my knowledge preparation was youtube, especially Linus and Jay, however (and this should be communicated much more) the ultimate teacher will be your manual anyways. Expect your first build to take a few hours just cos you will read the manual a lot. First time it's kinda like building legos.
Also a big tip for first time builders - spend a bit extra for modular PSU. After building my first PC with modular one I decided to help my friend out and managing his horrible ketchup&mustard PSU cables was a really an unpleasant experience.

When it comes to "fixing", huge part of it is diagnostics and that you are pretty often unable to do without some extra parts. Fixing in this game is completely unrealistic. If you wanna see it in practice, go to youtube channel Jayztwocents and search for troubleshooting.

[DJMadMax]

Originally posted by Erol NL:

I disagree. Having build multiple systems over the years this simulation is nearly identical to the real thing. What you do need to take into account is that the real thing requires you to align components and configure the hardware in your bios and operating system.

Also, you have to match components, for example you cannot put a cpu with socket 1200 in a socket 1151 or connect an M2 drive to a sata port,

And I totally disagree with your disagreement ^^

PCBS is a nice way to teach newbies how a PC is built in general, of which components it is made of and of at least SOME technical details as to how powerfull a power supply should be and that a case needs to be big enough for the parts fitting that should go into it. But basically thats it.

What about ALL those pretty important things you totally can and WILL do wrong - as perfectly demonstrated by The Verge's notorious PC building guide-video.

For example: There's NO way ingame to tell what kind of M.2 drives exist - not in terms of electrical connection (SATA or PCIe -> the latter could be even more detailed by PCIe 3.0, 4.0, the ammount of lanes used and so on). Oh, and then: lanes, what are those? What are lanes in terms of PCIe? What is PCIe itself and why are there 3.0/4.0 (and obviously beyond)?

What about Dual Channel memory? Or even having the RAM installed in the correct slots? Most PCs wont even boot when the RAM slots are distributed incorrectly.

Another problem would be that almost any AMD processor works on almost any mainboard wich - at least out of the box - doesnt reflect reality at all! As we all know, mostly all of the mainboards out there need to be BIOS-flashed before they can fit most of the newer AMD processors, otherwise it wont boot.

There are so much more details you could (and in reality SHOULD) go into.

Please do understand:
I am NOT blaming the game for not taking all those things in consideration! This would be a tedious and unworthy ammount of work to be done on the dev's side and obviously would take out the "fun" of this game even for most experienced computer geeks as I would consider one myself (after building PCs since 1995).

So: Learning the bloody basics of which parts a computer needs and roughly how they're connected to each other? YES, PCBS is a fine example of showing that.
Learning of how exactly a computer needs to be build IRL with all its not so obvious problems: Consider a youtube tutorial!

[[FNW] Alpinwolf]

Originally posted by Uzii:

tbf later in the game all they say is "idk what's wrong with it now, pls fix it" and it'll be probably multiple things.

Yeah, already had a couple of those. But it still has Cheat Mode On cuz you can remove a part, look in your inventory, and it will declare itself broken (or not)... LOL.. A bit more realistic might be if everything passes tests but only fails in a game (I've seen WoW trigger a VRAM fault), or there some glitch in BIOS that needs pulling the battery because the CLR_CMOS isn't sufficient (seen that too). But at that point, the game becomes too much like my work. I'll gladly take it on easy-mode, hahaha

[ZeniaC]

Daddles \o/

[Hidden Legend]

In fairness there are things that you will only learn from doing in real life and gaining that experience as it either wasn't covered in training or it is so obscure you will not come across that thing until you forgot about it. Other times it might not be obscure, but you don't work on problems that might bring about the error as your work and use lie elsewhere.

If you want to learn how to lego build a PC, this is a great game for that and it would be good in free build for illustration purposes where an experienced PC builder would be able to point out the finer points as to what would happen in a real PC build and how the Motherboard Bios and drivers are dealt with.

I do agree that M.2 does need better criteria noting in the game as well. If you are building an Intel and an AMD build in Free Build you could notice that the same M.2 are not available for each build. But you might dismiss it or not look it up. The game could do with generational M.2 versions and socket version. [Sometimes the RAM would do with generational versions as well, even though it is in the name of some RAM and not others].

That said it is a fantastic, fun game to play and is enjoyable for the generic simplistic problem solving.

[Sifer2]

This game explains the "Adult Legos" part. It highlights where everything plugs in. The software side of PC building is completely glossed over for the most part. You just plug in a USB, and magically you have a working PC in like 20 seconds. No BIOS stuff, no hard drive partitioning or any of that.

So yeah if your confused on where to plug stuff in it can be useful. It recently helped me locate where the hard drives go on my new case I got. But you will have to follow online vids for the rest like calculating voltage/software. They need to update that aspect of the game in a hard mode or something.

[Hidden Legend]

Perhaps that would be "Very Hard Mode" as hard mode currently just takes away the orange highlights of where the screws are. I would welcome a mode where you have to deal with the bios aspect and drivers first before the OS is installed. But that would need to be its own separate hard core mode.