Featured PC: Brandi – Computers and Coffee

For our first episode of Computers and Coffee, I sat down with Brandi to talk about the PC she just built with us. She was using a computer that, at the time, was hanging by the threads of her existing SSD and not much else.

Fortunately, her new build is coming with a new WD SN850 SSD (shoutout to Western Digital for sponsoring this episode), and a few other perks:

Here’s the full spec list of her PC:

Read her extended interview below, or listen to our first episode instead!

About the WD SN850

Brandi, thanks for being on the show!

Thank you for having me!

I wanted to ask what your primary motivations were for buying another PC, and why did you decide on iBUYPOWER?

Well my computer then I just successfully upgraded a year-and-a-half ago unfortunately passed away.

I’m so sorry! How did it go?

The motherboard and processor just didn’t want to provide their services to me anymore (laugh). All of the new components were coming out too- the 30 series graphics cards and all of the updated processors and things like that were starting to drop. I thought to myself, why replace old technology when I could upgrade? And my husband was very adamant, “you know, you may as well just go ahead and build computer you want from scratch brand new with all the bells and whistles.” So that was the motivation for me going the more custom route.

Normally I build my own computers. My father taught me when I was very very young. He’s a retired Electronics tech for the Navy, so he’s been building computers his whole life. But this time was a little different; I couldn’t get my hands on any of the components that I wanted to integrate into my computer. All of this graphics cards are very hard to come by right now. So I started to do some research into custom PC build companies. I actually had an active order with another company that unfortunately did not work out. I posted to Twitter and I said, “Hey! Can anybody recommend a company that does this.” [Someone] from Razer actually tagged King [AUTHOR’S NOTE: King is our community manager! Shoutout to King!] and said, “Hey you need to talk to him.” I reached out to him in Discord, we started talking. A few of my larger streamer friend said that they’d known him for years and that he was a great guy , and that iBuyPower provides excellent customer support and products. So after speaking with King and talking about what I wanted and needed for my job and for my personal gaming preferences, I built the computer.

Glad to hear that our community was able to provide you with an excellent experience. You mentioned to me before it’s interview that you were a software engineer. So that can require some demanding hardware, but what kinds of games do you play when you’re not at work?

It ranges greatly. I grew up in the heyday of the classic point-and-click adventure; Space Quest, Heroes Quest were the very first games that I ever played on PC.  So I still dabble in those; I support a lot of indie developers. But those… will play on this temporary system that I have, that I’m having trouble installing zoom on (laugh). I also play a lot more demanding RPG type games. I play Godfall, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, Kingdoms of Amalur just released a re-reckoning that’s pretty graphically demanding , and the Dragon Age series.

Oh, Dragon Age! That’s near and dear to my heart. I’m so glad you mentioned that.

The new one’s coming out and I’m excited for the Dread Wolf! I play a vast [variety] of games. I’ve got Phasmophobia on here. Honestly my encoder gets overloaded so much playing Phasmophobia over playing Dragon Age Inquisition or God fall when I try to stream it [right now]. It’s the most ridiculous thing, you wouldn’t think that that would be a graphically demanding game, but it puts so much stress on my graphics card. Currently.

Looking at your spec list, you didn’t hold back on this PC, this is really good stuff.

Yeah. When my husband told me to get all the bells and whistles and go all out on this build I took him at his advice. I was like you know what, I might as well just get what I want and I did. And iBUYPOWER was able to deliver.

You’ve mentioned those 30 series GPUs quite a lot. Is that why you’re looking forward to most?

Yeah, I’m most excited about the graphics card (laugh).

Makes sense; they get a lot of hype!

And you can’t – I mean – they have 24 gigs of on-board RAM. I mean, 24 gigs of on-board GPU memory! That’s insane. What game am I going to run that’s going to reach out for other RAM?

I mean you’ve got Corsair Vengeance RAM. Even if it did, you still wouldn’t have an issue.

Yeah I’ve got 64 gigs coming in the build too. And you know, the graphics card is great for my personal gaming, what I do after hours. But it’s really going to help with the rendering of the software that I’m creating, the graphics that I have to create for work. And also, video rendering. It really goes hand-in-hand between what I do for work and what I do in my off time.

What do you think is the first thing you’re going to do when you unbox it, plug it in, and get going?

Honestly? This might be silly, but I love RGB . I have… name the Razer product in Chroma and I have it. And I have a bunch of Nanoleaf tiles behind my setup as well. So honestly, the thing that I’m probably going to do what everything’s turned on is take a bunch of pictures. Turn everything on, show my rainbow, because I went RGB on everything inside the case as well- including the case!

Yeah you got the Lian Li Lancool One which has great Lighting in it.

All of my fans are RGB, the ram is RGB… That’s probably the first thing, I’m going to show it off on all the socials.

I for one cannot wait to see these photos up when everything is delivered and all set up. I’m sure I can speak for the rest of the team as well when I say thank you so much for choosing us, and I’m so excited to get you away from this temporary system that you’ve got, because it sounds like you are having some issues right now (laugh).

(laugh) You know the funny thing is, I have a 4 terabyte SSD right now, that I salvaged out of my machine. I gave my dad the tower for parts. But it’s the most powerful part of this Tower right now (sad laugh)

It’s all just hinging on that SSDs performance ?!(laugh)

Yes! Yes! Thank goodness it’s not a hard drive that has mechanical parts in it . I would hate to see how taxing that would be on my machine as a whole . But that’s a great thing about these SSDs, they’re basically jump drives.

What’s really cool about the SSD [ in your new system] is that it’s got next gen PCIE Gen4 technology, which gives the drive a read speed of up to 7000 mps and a write speed of 5300 mps!

And I mean, it’s about the size of a stick of RAM!

Yeah; the power you get in that tiny form factor is incredible! Well Brandi, this is been such a pleasant conversation. Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about in regards to your computer or your experience with us? 

I would just like to extend another thank you to King and the staff at iBUYPOWER. King is my PC life coach which I’ve never heard of before (laugh) but he’s been very responsive with updates or questions. He’s been a great resource to have and I’m very lucky and appreciative because it’s been a phenomenal experience it really has been.

Thanks again Brandi for coming on the show! It was a pleasure having you. We can’t wait to see those photos when it arrives!

Ready to build your own PC with us? Here’s how to get started:

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