Join us for a live-stream race: ‘PC Building Simulator’ vs. building a real PC

By Steven Petite April 4, 2018

If you have never built your own PC, the idea of it may sound daunting. At first, it sort of is, but after you get your bearings, you can get a PC up and running quicker than you would think. How quickly? Well, join us for our weekly gaming stream at 3 p.m. PT today to find out.

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Digital Trends’ Hanif Jackson and Brendan Hesse will race to see who can build a PC the fastest. But wait, this competition has a twist. While Hanif is building a real PC (he has experience), Brendan will be building his in PC Building Simulator, the new simulation game that is doing remarkably well on Steam.

The game, which teaches users the ins and outs of building their own PCs, currently sits at No. 11 on the Steam top sellers chart. Before entering Early Access, more than 500,000 people downloaded the free pre-alpha demo. It’s more than just strong sales, though. The Irregular Corporation’s simulator has racked up a barrage of positive user reviews.

Part of the appeal of PC Building Simulator surely stems from the fact that you can learn how to build a PC in a safe environment, instead of worrying about frying the expensive components you just purchased.

For those interested, Hanif’s real PC will be built using an AMD Ryzen 5 1500 processor, AMD Radeon RX Vega Nano graphics card, and a Samsung 860 Pro 1TB hard drive. The game has license agreements with numerous companies including AMD, so you can actually build a similar PC to the one Hanif is constructing within the game.

As of now, PC Building Simulator serves more as a tutorial for those who want to learn about the process. In the future, however, the developers plan to implement a career mode that adds designated goals and more elaborate features to consider such as cooling and lighting.

You can watch the race right here in this post or over on Facebook. If after watching you’re inspired to build your own PC, make sure to check out our comprehensive guide. We walk you through everything that goes into building a PC, whether you’re a complete novice, or someone looking for ways to improve your rig.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Steven is a writer from Northeast Ohio currently based in Louisiana. He writes about video games and books, and consumes…

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