The enduring appeal of PC building
The love for building your own desktop PC isn’t going anywhere. According to Carlos Andrés Trasviña Moreno, Software Engineering Coordinator at CETYS Ensenada, the spirit of PC building will ensure that gaming machines remain a staple for gamers, even as cloud gaming continues to evolve.
Andrés believes that PC building is more than just a hobby or a culture; it's a way of life. It's about the thrill of modifying, overclocking, and personalizing your own desktop PC. It's not just about the performance, but also the personal attachment and enjoyment of building and owning a desktop PC.
Andrés's perspective echoes the sentiment expressed in a 2019 article by PC Game Spotlight's Jake Newman. Newman passionately defended the personal PC, arguing that the love for building one's own desktop PC is here to stay, despite the emergence of new forms of gaming and the potential impact of cloud computing.
Localized gaming and the importance of PC building
PC building isn't going anywhere because it embodies the essence of localized gaming. Unlike cloud gaming, PC building allows computational power to reside in close proximity to where it's accessed from.
For most of computing history, computational power has always been located close to the user. However, with the advent of the cloud, the line between centralized and local computing has started to blur. The cloud, which essentially refers to computing power located remotely, is the latest form of distributed computing.
While the cloud is changing how we access and interact with our machines, it also presents challenges for gaming. Dr. Hao Zheng, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida, highlights internet connectivity as a major obstacle. Not all areas have reliable internet connections, and even those that do can experience issues with latency or data caps, which can significantly impact gaming performance.
Cloud gaming can work for less demanding games, but for AAA titles like The Elder Scrolls: Eternal Darkness 2, the experience may not be as good as playing locally. Localized gaming offers low latency and immediate response, which are crucial for an optimal gaming experience. This is why having compute power in close proximity to the workload is essential.
The future of PC building and gaming
PC building will continue to be relevant in the foreseeable future because there's nothing quite like the performance and personalization it offers for local computing. While streaming compute power from the cloud may have its advantages, PC building remains superior for gaming purposes. As Andrés points out, silicon is still the dominant material for CPUs, and it's unlikely to be replaced in the short to mid-term.
While the future of gaming may involve a combination of cloud gaming and localized gaming, Andrés emphasizes that the immediate response, rather than just latency, is crucial for an enjoyable gaming experience. Even a slight delay can be extremely frustrating for players.
Intel's Marcus Kennedy, general manager for gaming, agrees that streaming 8K games from the cloud is costly and our infrastructure is not yet capable of supporting it. Streaming 4K at 60fps already poses challenges for most internet connections.
Nevertheless, Kennedy acknowledges that there is a place for cloud gaming in certain situations, such as playing games on a tablet while on the go.
