My Gaming Setup Is Ready. Too Bad the Internet Isn’t (Series)

The Gamer's Dream Hits a Wall—My Awesome PC vs. the Terrible Wi-Fi

Part 1 

Building my gaming PC felt like a dream come true, no joke. I didn't just grab whatever was on the shelf. I spent ages researching parts, saving every penny, and waiting for the best deals. I ended up with a Ryzen 7 1700X. It’s a solid mid-range CPU that I thought would handle anything I threw at it. I paired that with an RX 5700 XT graphics card, which I heard was great for high frame rates without costing a fortune. I threw in 16 gigs of RAM to keep everything running smoothly.

Storage-wise, I went all out. A 260GB SSD for the operating system made things boot up super fast. Then, a 500GB NVMe drive just for my games. I wasn't taking any chances there. And the monitors? Three of them! I set them up like a cockpit so I could really get into the game, whether I was playing an RPG, streaming, or just keeping up with chat and stats.

I had this whole thing planned out in my head. Hours spent streaming, talking to viewers, building a community. I saw myself as more than just a gamer. I wanted to be a content creator that people knew.

But here's the reality: I haven’t streamed even once. Not even a little bit! I couldn't even get started.

The reason? The internet, of course.

Out here in Botswana, good internet is not easy to find. Some days, it felt like I was trying to catch smoke. On the worst days, my internet speed would drop to 0.98kbps. Seriously, it was slower than watching paint dry!

On good days—if you could even call them that—it might hit 1 megabit per second. And if I was really lucky, and no one else was using the internet, I might see 5 Mbps. Still super slow for any kind of decent streaming.

My gaming PC could handle anything. It was a beast. But the internet? That was the problem. It was holding everything back.

I’d turn on my PC, start up the streaming software, and just stare at the loading icon. Or the buffering symbol. Or even worse, the Connection Lost message. Lag would kick me out of games and stop me from talking with anyone, totally stopping me from building the community I wanted. It was super annoying.

I kept wondering, how did things get to this point? How could I have all this power in my PC, but be held back by something you can't even see?

Was it my fault? Was I expecting too much? Was my dream too big for where I live?

Every loading wheel was like a reminder that my dream was only halfway real. The internet was preventing me from doing what I wanted to do.

 

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