x86 gaming
I’ve been happy with my 2016 HTPC, but the situation has changed, largely because of something I mentioned in passing back in November: The Xbox One and PS4 are effectively plain old PCs, built on: * Intel Atom class (aka slow) AMD 8-core x86 CPU * 8 GB RAM * AMD Radeon
graphics cards
Almost nobody should do what I am about to describe – that is, install and use more than one video card. Nobody really needs that much graphics performance. It's also technically complex and a little expensive. But sometimes you gotta say to hell with rationality and embrace the overkill.
hardware
The last sound card I purchased was in 2006, and that's only because I'm (occasionally) a bleeding edge PC gamer. The very same card was still in my current PC until a few days ago. It's perhaps too generous to describe PC sound hardware
gaming
One of my favorite things to play on Verticade, our full size MAME arcade machine, is pinball simulators. There's something about the completely digital simulation of analog gameplay that fascinates me. Plus, it's easy to take five or ten minutes out for a quick game of
racing games
I've been a PC racing game enthusiast since the day I wrapped my hands around my first force-feedback wheel in 1999-- the classic wire driven Logitech Formula Force [http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=61]. There's something about a quality steering wheel with physics-driven force