Ask Slashdot: Making a 'Wife Friendly' Gaming PC?

shadeshope writes Having just gotten married, I find that for some inexplicable reason my wife doesn't like my huge, noisy, 'ugly' gaming PC being in the living room. I have tried hiding it in a TV cabinet: still too noisy. I have placed it in another room and run HDMI and USB cables, but the propagation delay caused horrible tearing and lag when playing games. Have any other slashdotters encountered this problem? I don't want to buy a console (Steam sales let me game so cheaply), or mess with water cooling. Ideally I would just hide it in the attic, is there some wireless technology that would be fast enough for gaming use? I have become quite attached to 'behemoth.' I have been upgrading him for years and he is the centre of my digital life. I run plex home theatre, media centre, steam, iTunes and air server. Will I have to do my gaming in the spare room? Once I have sorted this small problem going to try and make a case for the efficacy of a projector to replace the television..... it takes up less space, motorized screen could be hidden when not in use, etc.

Comments

Don't fight it

[eneville]

Your wife just wants to make the house more kiddie friendly. Get a laptop.

Re:Don't fight it

[sabri]

New phase of your life. I think all of married mankind will agree with this:

Happy wife, happy life.

Seriously. Keep her happy.

Re:Don't fight it

[sundog61]

This is horrible advice. Giving up something you really love doing because the partner doesn't like it sows the seeds of resentment. OP needs to find a technical solution to the noise issue so he can still play and she can get relief from the computer noise.

Re:Don't fight it

[Pablew Nopl]

Apparently it doesn't work the other way around, though. There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make all sorts of completely unnecessary sacrifices to appease some control freak partner, but the partner doesn't take into account the other person's feelings, as if their own are any more important.

Re:Don't fight it

[bazmonkey]

Apparently it doesn't work the other way around, though. There seems to be a double standard where people are expected to make all sorts of completely unnecessary sacrifices to appease some control freak partner, but the partner doesn't take into account the other person's feelings, as if their own are any more important.

Welcome to reality, my friend. When you find someone who expects sacrifices out of you that you can afford to make, and will sacrifice for you unnecessarily when it matters more to you, marry that person.

Re:Don't fight it

[russotto]

This is horrible advice. Giving up something you really love doing because the partner doesn't like it sows the seeds of resentment. OP needs to find a technical solution to the noise issue so he can still play and she can get relief from the computer noise.

It's not the noise.

WTF ?

[vlad30]

You have a wife learn to read the signals its not the noisy machine but the fact your spending too much time gaming. Or like a former friend of mine you will have the best gaming machine but No wife or kids and quite likely no real friends

Re:Simple

[Isquiesque]

I love how this thread is increasingly turning into a gender thing, when in fact this issue could come up with any roommate. Or even in reverse...

My computer's noise was driving my husband up the wall recently. So after a fair amount of pestering from him I finally armed myself with some canned air and carried the system out to the patio, opened up the case, and found... that it was fairly clean inside. All I really needed to do was clean the air intakes on the *exterior* of the case. It was that simple and took seconds. The noise level dropped considerably. It went from being all we could hear in the living room to running near-silent.

So clean the outside. If that doesn't work, open 'er up and dust. And then yeah, if that doesn't work, I think this comment above is great. Consider a case with better airflow and/or different fans. I also can't say enough good things about having your OS on a SSD -- far quieter and much quicker. I did that on my latest build and it's fantastic; well worth the trouble of reconfiguring your files.

Marriage is 80%/80%

[raymorris]

If you expect a marriage to be 50/50, you'll probably be disappointed. Because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, two people who are equally giving will probably feel that they're doing 80%. I do a lot for my wife, and she does for me. Mostly, we do for us. We want time together, so we make time for that, etc.