From Pixels to Reality: How My Dream PC Became a Reality Through Gaming Skins

Even though I didn't get lots of smiles from my personal life lately, I grew up with the optimism and hope never missing, and when it does, to create moments of happiness and gratitude on my own.

That's how, in a random day before the Christmas holidays, I thought about making a change in my life that for some might seems pointless, while for some it could turn out pretty cool.

I am confident you already know what this post is going to be about but I really want to start with a little background to understand better why it's so important for me.

First, as my name suggests, travelling was one of the biggest passions I have discovered from an early age, but quite at the same period I've also got infected with the gaming bug, after getting to play video games on random friends' computers.

I am coming from a fairly modest family, hence why the computer and personal mobile phone came on a way later date than most of the kids were enjoying on that time, but I've been blessed with friends that were either taking me and my sister at their homeplace to play video games together, or even receive our first ever computer as a donation from a neighbour when he got a better PC from his parents.

It was a boring PC with no Windows at all but with free access on plenty of games that made us realize how much we love this activity.

As time has passed, we realized that a PC could serve for other purposes than gaming, so we received, again, another one as a Christmas gift from our grandmother, that we used our whole youth until making it to the first year of the college where we got laptops since the computer was already running quite slow and we needed a better equipment for projects at school.

We used these for 10 years, including the years spent in the highschool and at the college, and even if we wanted to use them as laptops for gaming, it was literally impossible because of their specs and because laptops in general are never a good idea for gaming purposes.

However, in my last year at the highschool, the luck poped up again on my path, meeting a friend from Canada which I was gaming with, that also made a very random gift and got myself a new computer, that I could play video games on.

So despite the modest life I got to live in general, the luck was never missing from my life, even if it came in random forms, such as winning giveaways, meeting valuable people, or other experiences that turned me into a passionate about Graphic Design, collaborating with people from all over the world.

A disadvantage in this field though, is that you can't use the same equipment many years in a row because both in gaming and graphic design, the resources needed are advancing and if you are not able to keep up with all the upgrades, then you might get into the phase of getting numerous crushes, losing projects you can't complete because of a low PC, or even forget about the passion for video games until a new build occurs.

My biggest luck was that my soul mate is also a gamer and he got a brand new PC in January 2024 so almost forgot about his passion and left me spend time on his computer most of the time I had projects, until being able to get myself a new computer as well.

A thing that I forgot to mention though, is that one of the most played series since I discovered this passion for gaming is Counter-Strike, starting with CS 1.6, CS:GO and lately CS2. While skins for weapons were not available in CS 1.6, I absolutely loved this aspect on CS:GO and they were never missing whether one skin would cost 0.03$ or 300$.

A funnier thing is that I don't consider myself an investor and I rarely invest in something, but as a kid I was always trading some skins for the others just because I was getting bored of my in-game look, so playing around and also collecting and rarely selling the drops I was receiving after a match, got myself a little collection of 950+ items in my virtual inventory.

In 2023, I decided to sell a big part of it and use the money to get my dream setup in terms of CS:GO skins, and one year later I started to realize that, with the price of the items constantly changing, I could sell everything and use those money with a different purpose, which was to get myself a new PC that I could use for both editing and gaming.

Since I don't know much about PC parts and I wanted something very specific rather than an already made build, I gave free hand of creativity to my boyfriend who's a tech enthusiast and also have built more PCs in the past.

But not having all the money upfront, as well as waiting to see the new GPUs announced, we decided to start getting the parts one by one which turned into a long wait of around 4 months before having everything all together and start building my dream PC.

The longest wait was for the CPU Cooler where I really wanted the Deepcool AK620 Digital Pro WH but which is not in the stores of Romania even today. I also contacted Deepcool and asked if a direct purchase would be available from them but it wasn't, so a little over a month both I and my boyfriend were constantly checking out stores from all over the Europe, sending emails where this product was available if it could be shipped to our address, but we faced again the same answer... "No, sorry".

After way too much time of waiting and having our patience tested with each passing day, on 25th February we decided we have waited enough and that it's time to look for a different CPU Cooler, that we also ordered and had it shipped the next day, dedicating 28th February entirely to build "Lucy" (yes, it also got a name).

Just as I don't have much knowledge when it comes to parts, I also make a terrible job thinking of the overall process of assembling a computer, especially that there are a lot of cables and some parts are quite fragile, so everything I could do was to sit by my boyfriend and look excited how everything was slowly taking shape.

The CPU Cooler we opted in to replace the Deepcool AK620 Digital Pro WH we wanted, is Deepcool Assassin IV that it also turned out to be more powerful.

However, as a girl being a girl, I really wanted to have as many lighting and displays inside the computer and that's the single foolish reason I wanted the other CPU Cooler at first, but I realized that having a good computer is a lot more than looking nice on the desk.

Once the CPU Cooler, PSU, RAM and SSD were in, we had the whole motherboard put inside the case, also getting one step closer to how everything will look at the end.

Sky was also very curious about what was going on, so we played and fooled around, almost hoping that the time will pass faster and get to see Lucy all in one piece sooner.

I know cable management is where most of the people lose their patience, but I was really happy to get to arrange them slowly. However, no matter how proud I was about how it turned out, my boyfriend still suggested it's not worth a picture, hahaha.

The next and nearly the last step was to get the GPU in, that I've also postponed the moment of purchasing it thinking that the new generation of GPUs will be a lot better, but to everyone's disappointment the wait did not prove it worth, and it also brought some crazy prices for the past generation of GPUs, ending up to spend almost 200€ extra to get the GPU I wanted before seeing the new generation.

I know the GPU seems like being black, but in reality it's gray and I didn't realize it's going to look so different from the rest of the parts that are all white, but I was still happy with it.

Next up, we had the Windows 11 installed, as well as see Lucy all up and running with plenty of colors shared in the kitchen. Yeah, that's our kitchen because my desk was still busy with the previous build, that I had to use to move all the files on to my new computer. Once that happened, it was Lucy's time to get in the spotlight and reserve her space on my desk for a long while forward, I hope.

Even though I absolutely love colors and RGB, I've never enjoyed seeing all of them at once, so based on my passion for nature and having electric green as one of my favourite shades of green, that's what the lighting currently looks like. I have also 'parked' my dream car inside the computer, which is a Honda Civic Type-R.

I've always dreamed of having a little figure or toy inside the computer, and things aligned perfectly this time, having it in white as well.

As part of the overall setup I also have my Wireless Controller Microsoft Xbox Series X/S, Electric Volt that was gifted by my boyfriend, the Deadpool Controller Holder, but also Logitech G309 Lightspeed mouse, QwertyKey80 Leaf Bluetooth Wireless keyboard and a random mousepad from AliExpress not to forget about being a cat mom.

I don't have much trust into the future of the keyboard as it's the single one out of the 4 we got from the same brand that didn't show any issues one month later since their purchase. I'm happy it works and looks nice, but it's hard to think about it on a long run so most likely I'll start saving for a better one to have just in case.

And here's what my little crib and working space currently looks like.

The main monitor is an LG Gaming UltraGear 27GS75Q-B 27 inch QHD IPS 1 ms 200 Hz while the 2nd one is still from LG but in 4K that I use for editing.

The full list of Lucy's specs is:

I still didn't get lots of time to actually enjoy the build other than working with it, but I am happy to see this finally happing and it's a goal achieved. I know people at my age are getting married and kids, but I am really happy with this and it does feel like a deep breath of fresh air after so much chaos both in my personal life and in the world lately.