Chp 914. My Own AI bubble

As we come to yet another end of the year, with hardly any blog updates again this year, I would like to address one thing that has taken the internet by storm in the last one, two years. And that is AI.

Artificial Intelligence is not new, but we have all seen its power grow exponentially this year. People generating crazy, realistic video edits in just a few seconds from their phone, WhatsApp uncles and aunties falling for obviously AI-generated slops and forwarding them to your community or locality groups, even tech-savvy people getting scammed by AI morphs, these past 2 years have been wild.

In fact, AI is one of the reasons why I just don't feel like blogging anymore. When you know that the amount of effort you put into writing a blog can easily be replicated by AI in just a few seconds, suddenly, everything else becomes meaningless.

I did an "AI blog test" earlier this year, where I copy-pasted 20 of my old blog posts to AI, and I asked it to learn my style of writing and humour. After that, I asked AI to write 5 new blog posts as if I were the one writing them, and OMGGG it generated 5 really interesting blog posts in my exact writing style!

I mean, God forbid, if one day I met with an accident and had a head concussion that resulted in memory loss, and I were to read those generated posts, I sincerely wouldn't be able to tell if I wrote them or not. It even included some Mizo phrases here and there in quotes, even though I never even asked it to do that. That was so amazing and... scary at the same time.

Aaand that begs the question, "Why am I even writing when I can just ask GPT to do it for me?"

Of course, if I were monetising my blog, I'd probably let AI do all my writing. But I write not for money, but for passion. I put my heart and soul into my writing, and using AI to do it loses that very purpose. And so... I just kinda stopped writing altogether. :(

But then again, I don’t think it’s fair to blame AI alone. If I’m being honest, some of that blame has to come back to me. When you strip it down, AI tools like GPT or Gemini generating full blog posts may feel like "cheating", but have we not been easing into this for years already?

Browser plugins like Grammarly quietly fix our grammar, auto-correct changes our typos on Microsoft Word, spellcheck underlines our mistakes before anyone else can see them, and the autocomplete prediction on our mobile keyboard creates words before we even type them. Aren’t these also forms of writing assistance we’ve happily accepted as normal? The difference now is not that help exists, but that it has suddenly become capable of doing everything.

Maybe the discomfort isn’t about cheating at all, but about no longer knowing where my own effort ends and the machine begins. What do you think?

Even though I don't write blog posts much now because of AI, I still use AI heavily for work. Today, ChatGPT released their user "Year in review" (like Spotify Wrapped, YouTube Recap, Steam Replay etc.) and according to my stats, I am in the top 3% of all GPT users, lolzzz.

Now hold on, before you judge me, no, I don't use GPT to generate my blog posts, lolz. I use it mainly to research clients, products, target audiences or markets, and to summarise lengthy briefs and long-ass meeting minutes. I also use it heavily to generate reference images for presentation slides I am making, as well as boring ToS and Privacy Policy documents.

Outside of work, I use it to learn new cooking recipes (I have mastered more than 10 this year), answer random plot questions when a movie or TV show I'm watching gets confusing, and even get health and welfare advice for my dogs and puppies when Google just adds to the panic. I also use it a lot when a word is stuck at the back of my head, so I describe what I’m trying to say, and it gives me the exact word I was looking for (again, not cheating, because I already knew that word before).

But yeah, I have been certainly overusing AI, which means I have been spending a lot of money on premium subscriptions. And so I decided to cut down on a few.

Here are my current personal AI subscriptions

• ChatGPT Plus - ₹1,999 / month (plus tax wax)
• Grammarly Pro -  ₹11,799 / annual
• InShot Pro - ₹1,600 / annual
• Adobe Pro (includes everything like Photoshop, etc) - ₹1,915 / month

That's more than ₹5K a month on just AI-related software subscriptions. After a long, hard thought, I decided to let go of Adobe Creative Cloud Pro. After all, my GPT Plus was generating much better images than it anyway, and I also have access to other premium image services like Gemini Pro, FreePik Pro, Midjourney and Canva Pro using my office ID as well.

And so, here is an extremelyyy funny incident that just took place, lolz. 

So I tried to unsubscribe from Adobe Pro, but I just couldn't find the link or button to do that (you know, corporate greed). And so I asked GPT for help, and it gave me the exact instructions to find the unsubscribe page. I followed that, and when I finally tried to unsubscribe, I had to pay a freaking ₹5,745 cancellation fee!

So apparently, my Adobe annual fee was discounted since I was paying monthly but now that I am cancelling, that discount is void, so I had to pay the balance. Aaargh! And guess what GPT did next????? It told me ways to bypass that even though I never asked it to do so, lololololzzzz.

In short, it told me not to cancel my subscription yet, but to simply switch my plan! I found the cheapest plan available, which was Acrobat PDF Reader for ₹621, lolz. I changed my plan, so the cancellation penalty no longer applied, and I actually got a ₹556 refund for my unused Creative Cloud, lolz. And then I cancelled my new Acrobat subscription and got back the ₹621 refund as well. Bwahahahahaha!

So yes, all hail the AI for saving my money, my time, and my sanity. But when it comes to writing this blog, I’m still stubbornly human. Some things I want done faster, and some things I want done better. But there are also some things I want done slowly, like writing a new blog post, even if no one’s waiting for the result.

AI isn’t the enemy. But silence isn’t either. I’m just somewhere in between, figuring out what still feels like mine, and what feels like a cheat. And maybe that’s enough for now.

 

Chp 913. Who let the dogs out

Mizoram doesn’t have the same stray dog population found in many other parts of India. Most of our four-legged friends here have homes, names, families, and a favourite spot to nap in. 

But every now and then, curiosity (or poor gate-keeping) gets the better of them, and they wander off to explore the neighbourhood, chasing cats, or leaving an unwanted “gift” on someone’s driveway. 

I live in Chaltlang (though I stay at my farm), and every morning, our Chaltlang M-I section’s WhatsApp group is usually filled with complaints about dog poop in front of somebody's gate or garage.

Our Chaltlang Local Council, also known as LC (which is our version of the Municipal Corporation), has tried to tackle this issue before, like capturing and leashing loose dogs and imposing a fine on their owners when they come to collect them. But I guess it is not that effective.

Over here at my farm at Neihbawih, Sihphir, we have the Village Council, also known as VC (which is our version of the Panchayat), and recently, our Sihphir VC came up with a new initiative, and I figured it’s worth sharing here for both my Mizo and non-Mizo readers.

On 15th April this year, the Sihphir VC summoned every dog owner within Sihphir for a meeting at the YMA hall. As a dutiful Neihbawih farmer, I fulfilled my civic responsibility by hiring a 2-wheeler taxi and heading down to Sihphir for the gathering.

By the time I arrived, the YMA hall was already packed.

A cute veterinary doctor spoke passionately about the importance of vaccinations, how parvovirus spreads, ways to prevent it, and general tips on proper dog care.

I think it was a really good talk because most people were listening attentively. She spoke about the importance of getting not just anti-rabies vaccines, but also combined vaccines, regular boosters, and even vitamin shots. I could see the faces of people around me light up. Good job, Sihphir VC.

After that, the VC leaders unveiled their new initiative. 

Every dog owner would have to register and be assigned a unique ID. All dogs belonging to the same owner would share that ID, which would then be printed on a dog tag for each of their pets to wear. That way, if a dog were found wandering around, the owner could be quickly identified.

We were then asked to line up according to our YMA sections to register. Since I’m from Neihbawih, I fall under the Chawngbawla section, so I joined that queue. Eventually, I was registered and assigned the number "324".

Once everyone had their registration numbers, we were told to wait for further instructions and for the tags to arrive. I returned to my freezing, lonely farm on the same 2-wheeler taxi.

And then on May 24th, Sihphir VC announced again that all the dog tags had arrived, and I went down from Neihbawih again to collect my tags. Each tag cost ₹50, so with my five "kids", that came to ₹250.

They were neat, round, white tags with my number “324” printed in bold. I proudly clipped them onto all five collars. Other dog owners of Sihphir too did the same, and a lot of them shared their pet photos featuring their new tags.

Once everyone had collected their dog tags, Sihphir VC rolled out the next set of rules, which I’ll translate and keep as simple as possible:

1. Dogs aren't allowed to roam freely outside their owner’s house, compound, or farm.

2. If you see a dog outside without a leash or its owner, you can take a photo and submit it to the Village Council.

3. If the dog has a registered tag, the owner will be fined ₹500.

4. If the dog isn’t registered, the fine doubles to ₹1,000.

5. The fine amount will be given to the person who submitted the photo, along with the location and time.

And believe me, it actually worked. Overnight, dog owners became far more cautious about letting their pets wander off, knowing there was a fine (and a neighbour with a camera) waiting for them. At the same time, the lure of a little cash reward gave people extra motivation to play "watchdog" for the community. Sihphir’s streets suddenly felt cleaner, quieter, and blissfully free of four-legged traffic accidents.

A truly effective initiative indeed.

Kudos to Sihphir VC.

There was one tiny hiccup, though. The VC-issued dog tags were made of light, plywood-type material, and this wasn't a problem for those people with only one dog at home. But for those of us who have multiple dogs, yeah, you know how rough they sometimes get when playing with each other. In less than a week, my dogs had chewed off most of their brand-new IDs!

And so I turned to my trusted tag-maker on Amazon - JYPR, from whom I’d ordered customised tags a couple of times before.

The VC’s rule required the ID number to display prominently, but none of JYPR’s listed designs matched that requirement. So I contacted them directly, explained the situation, and they told me not to worry. All I had to do was order the number of tags I needed, and they’d custom-design them exactly the way I wanted. A few messages and a design proof later, I gave the green light.

A couple of weeks later, my shiny new dog tags arrived, perfectly in line with the VC's rule. 

And the best part? They’re made of steel. Good luck to my dogs trying to chew through that, lolz.

When some of the other dog owners in Sihphir saw my customised tags, they wanted the same for their pets. So I placed another order with JYPR (at this point, I really should start charging commission, lolz), and soon enough, more dogs in Sihphir were sporting their new indestructible bling.

And that, in a nutshell, is the new Sihphir system for keeping dogs from running wild on the streets.

Do you like this new system? Feel free to leave a comment. 

Perhaps this same method may not work out that well in the city, where it's quite easy now to just superimpose a photo of your neighbour's dog on the street using AI, lolz, but for a quiet hamlet like Sihphir where everybody knows everybody, good luck trying to fool anyone. Here, community is its own watchdog, and no amount of fancy tech can outsmart the close-knit eyes of the village.

Cheers.

Chp 912. Buying games without spending!

The Steam Summer Sale 2025 just got over, and I did something wild and crazy. For the first time in my life, I bought tons of new games WITHOUT spending a single rupee!

Yup, you read that right.

In fact, I purchased games that came to a whopping total of more than 10,000 rupees (that too, after the Summer sale discount prices), and yet my bank account remained unchanged.

How did I pull this off?

By hacking Steam!

Just kidding.

So, every year, a large chunk of my money would be spent during Steam Sales. I would transfer a substantial amount of funds from my credit card to my Steam wallet, and then spend those funds to purchase all the glorious, deeply discounted games.

However, with my recent misfortune of purchasing a really expensive new rig, only to have it destroyed by lightning and then spending even more on replacements, I was devastated when the Steam Summer Sale started this month, as I realised I couldn't afford to spend more money again. :(

I thought this would be the first Steam Summer Sale where I would not purchase anything, as my Steam wallet had just ₹60/- in it.

Super sad. Poor me. 60 bucks. I couldn't even buy a packet of Farstar ciggies with that. :(

And then it struck me. Heyyyy, why don't I sell some of my rare items on the Community Market?

There was this game I used to play a lot called Team Fortress 2 (TF2). It is a fast-paced, team-based multiplayer FPS, kinda like Counter-Strike, except it is more cartoony and you have different classes, each with their own abilities, advantages and counters. 

The huge success of this game inspired many others like Overwatch, Paladins, Dirty Bomb, Garden Warfare, Marvel Rivals, Valorant, etc., all of which followed the same class-based strategy.

I had played TF2 for more than 500 hours and won many matches, tournaments and rare item drops, but ever since I returned to Mizoram six years ago, I stopped playing, mostly because of the bad internet connection here. Which means that I still had a lot of TF2 items that I no longer used.

Now I’m not gonna bore you with the properties of different items like “quality,” “type,” “grade,” “exterior,” “killstreak,” “unusual effects,” “sheen”, etc., which all affect the rarity and cost of each item. In layman’s terms, let’s just say I have a pretty rare collection that many TF2 players would be envious of.

And so I dived deep into the Community Market and looked at which TF2 items were in demand, how many were being sold, how much they sold for, and which items I was willing to let go of (I still kept the primary weapons and cosmetics of all my main classes in case I do come back to this game one day, lolz).

Finally, I selected the items below and put them up for sale. And boom, they were all sold off within a few days.

Yup, I made a killing in the market. The items I sold were:

Wildwood Revolver (Factory New) - ₹ 611

Coffin Nail Minigun (Factory New) - ₹ 3176

Strange Flash Fryer Flame Thrower - ₹ 805

Strange Half-Zatoichi - ₹ 683

Pyroland Weapons Case x 3 - ₹ 871 each
Warbird Weapons Case x 3 - ₹ 586 each
Warbird Weapons Case x 2 - ₹ 617 each

This came to a grand total of... drumroll please... ₹ 10,877.

KACHING! 10 freaking grand, baby. Bwahahaa.

Hell yeah, it was now time to go on a Steam Summer Sale shopping spreeeee! Let's Goooo. :D

So, the first thing I always do during any Steam Sale (be it Summer Sale, Winter Sale, Autumn Sale, or even Publisher Sale or Bundle Sale) is to visit steamdb.info and log in using my Steam ID.

Once logged in, I look at all my wishlisted games as they're the ones I really want to play. I check their current discounted price, and then compare that with their historical low price. If it’s the lowest it’s ever been, I buy the game. If it’s not, I skip it (unless I really, really want it). Because here’s a trick that some publishers play during big Steam Sales - they don’t give the best discounts because they know people will be spending anyway. They reserve their best discounts during their own Publisher sale or other events.

Once I purchased my wishlisted games, it was time to discover new good games and buy them. :D

For this, again, I use steamdb.info, where I set different filters and criteria, the details of which I will not bore you with, and eventually, these are the games I bought during the recently concluded Steam Summer Sale 2025.

125 new games as well as 3 DLCs. Notable mentions: House Flipper, Borderlands 3, Kerbal Space Program, Tiny Glade, Schedule I, Cloud Gardens, and Path of Giants, just to name a few.

Ahhh, these will keep me busy for the next few months. The perks of not being able to find a girlfriend, I guess.

These purchases had also bumped up my number of Games Owned to 2586. :D

Anyway, now that the sale is over, I have unlisted some of my items from the Community Market (the ones that weren't bought) since I don't need the money that badly now. Some of them, like my Balloonicorn Sniper Rifle (Factory New), are currently selling at around ₹ 6500, lolz. Maybe I'll list them again before the next sale, by which time the price could be even higher. I'm loving this.

So I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and remember to sell off your rare items, especially if you no longer play those games. And do comment on the new games I bought. Cheers, everyone.

EDIT: Since I got a couple of messages from people asking me how I ended up with so many rare (meaning expensive) items in TF2, the trick is to play as "Medic".

TF2 is a game about shooting or sniping or chopping your opponents. Everybody loves to play those roles. And they all need healing during a battle too, but if they all play those roles, then there's nobody to heal them. And so I would usually play as Medic (even though my main is Pyro).

I really enjoyed playing as Medic, running around in the thick of the battle and healing teammates with my Kritzkrieg or shooting a health dart at an injured teammate running at a far distance with my Crusader's Crossbow (FPS skills) or ÜberCharging a Heavy at the perfect moment to win that final push. I may not get many kills, but the satisfaction of knowing you played a very crucial role in your team's victory is amazing.

And so, usually after many sessions of winnings, some of these top global players would sometimes gift me something to show their appreciation. And that's how I ended up with a lot of rare items. In fact, the "Strange RoBro 3000" that I got as a gift from a user called "Mylva" is currently selling for more than ₹ 13,000/- in the Community Market right now. :D

Chp 911. Lightning attack... again!

I had just started enjoying my new computer setup for barely 3 weeks, which I wrote about in my previous blog post, when lightning struck my farm and fried it!

I suppose you could say my build was so epic that the God of Thunder himself got jealous and smited me. Or at least that's what it felt like.

Now I actually have a long and stormy relationship with lightning here at the farm. I've been living here for five years now, and let’s just say this isn’t my first rodeo with high-voltage drama.

Every year, I end up replacing something, be it my inverter, inverter batteries, fridge, CCTV cameras, or whatever didn’t get unplugged in time. I’ve grounded my system, taken all the precautions, and still, lightning finds a way. 

So then… how did it strike me again? Well, it was partly ignorance on my part, and a classic freak-of-nature.

Here's what happened.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. I was enjoying a good session of Age of Empires IV (with the 4K HDR video pack that my new config now supports with ease) when I heard the first rumble of thunder. It wasn't a big deal because the monsoon season was still going on, and so I calmly saved my campaign, exited the game, and shut down my system.

Then the thunder kept rolling in... louder, closer.

So I did the usual - switched off my UPS and CCTV and unplugged them, then did the same with the main inverter.

But here's the strange part… even though I could see lightning flashes above, it wasn’t even raining properly. Just a gentle pitter-patter on my farmhouse tin roof. Birds were still chirping. The clouds weren’t even that dark. I figured, Eh, probably a false alarm. Or... maybe someone up there is shooting blanks, if you know what I mean. :D :P

And that, dear readers, was a BIG MISTAKE. I should have taken it more seriously.

Suddenly, BOOM! A blinding white flash lit up my room, followed by an instantaneous, deafening blast right next to me. It felt like a grenade had gone off inside my CCTV box (you know, that metal DVR unit where all the camera feeds come in). The explosion had this high-pitched metallic screech that went straight into my eardrums, "kiiiiiiiiiiii!", and my new computer, which was peacefully shut down, gave off a tremendous spark!

Both my farmhouse fuse and the chowkidar's house fuse tripped immediately as well. Just like that, everything went dead. All my dogs too yelped in terror and scrambled under the bed to hide. Yup. I’d been struck by lightning. Again.

So what went wrong?

Turns out, even though I’d unplugged everything, I didn’t unplug the individual CCTV camera cables connected to the DVR unit, since there wasn’t any heavy rain or lightning yet. And through those long exposed wires running around my compound, lightning found its path straight into my office desk (even with the power supply off). Boom!

I learnt two important lessons that day.

1. Dry thunderstorms are way more dangerous than heavy rain ones. Because when there’s no proper rain, there’s no moisture to help discharge the built-up static. The air stays dry, and that makes it supercharged, perfect for lightning to do maximum damage!

2. Lightning travels through Ethernet cables. Yup, if you’re thinking, “Okay, that explains your CCTV setup getting fried. But what about your new PC? You unplugged everything. How was it affected?" Well, the culprit was the LAN cable. I totally forgot to unplug the external line bringing internet into my system from outside. Aaarggh.

So, what was the damage report?

Well, the CCTV system was completely toast. No surprise there after that explosion. A few other appliances like my electric kettle and toaster didn’t make it either (thankfully, my fridge, deep freezer, microwave, and washing machine all survived!).

But the one I was most heartbroken about was my brand-new computer. I had just assembled it less than three weeks ago, after saving nearly five months’ worth of salary to buy all the parts.

Check out the LAN cable fuse that blew up my computer!

Yup. My brand-new computer wouldn’t turn on anymore. That night, I had a long (and rather emotional) heart-to-heart chat with GPT, pouring out every little detail of the incident. It told me that in most lightning strike cases, the PSU is usually the first casualty, but it often acts like a sacrificial goat, absorbing the damage and sparing the rest of the components.

But, in my case, the lightning didn’t enter through the power line, it freaking came through the LAN cable. Which meant the surge probably bypassed the PSU entirely and could have fried everything in its path. Not great at all.

GPT then guided me through the next steps: checking each component one by one using my old system. So I dug out my ancient i3 CPU, unhooked its dusty PSU, and connected my new PSU to it.

The fan spun and started up my old system, meaning, my PSU was fine!

Which, funnily enough, was bad news, because it confirmed the PSU wasn’t the issue. It was something worse. Most likely the motherboard. I also tested my internal drives on the old system, and thankfully, they were all safe.

Then GPT told me to check my GPU using something called a paperclip test, and I was like... bruh. :D

With no other choice, I booked an appointment with Hmingthana, my Montfort senior and the owner of GI Infotech. I also booked a cab to pick me (and my wounded computer) from the farm. Tried sleeping that night, but my dreams were full of sparks and fried circuits.

The next morning, my cab arrived, and I made the long, bumpy journey to Aizawl, clutching my rig like a parent taking their child to the hospital. 

We went straight to GI Infotech, Zarkawt, where Hmingthana's technicians were all over my system immediately, ripping it to pieces and testing each component one by one.

My processor was fine. Phew.

My cooling tower was fine. Phew.

My internal NVMe SSD was fine. Phew.

Both my DDR5s were also fine. Phew.

They also reconfirmed that my PSU was fine. Phew.

And finally... my GPU was fine too! Phew.

So, after a loooong diagnosis that took almost the entire day, turned out, only my motherboard was the casualty. I mean, it's still bloody expensive, but at least all those other components were not affected.

Since I needed to head back to my farm the same day, I decided to get a replacement motherboard right there at GI Infotech. Hmingthana didn’t have the exact model I was using (the MSI PRO Z790-P), but he offered me the next best thing he got: the Gigabyte B760M Gaming AX.

It’s still a solid gaming motherboard, but yeah, a bit of a downgrade. It has only two DDR5 RAM slots instead of four, fewer NVMe slots, and a couple of missing features compared to the Z790-P. But honestly, I was just relieved I didn’t have to replace my CPU or GPU, so I took the deal.

Once the techies assembled everything in and powered it up, they also reinstalled Windows 10 with a proper licensed copy. I had to go through the usual drill of reinstalling all my software, but luckily, it wasn’t much as this PC was only 3 weeks old.

As for my Steam games? All safe and sound on a separate SSD. Bless that little drive.

Hmingthana charged me only for the motherboard and no servicing charge as I'm not just his junior from school but also a regular customer as well, having bought many parts from him in the past. What a great guy.

And that, my friends, is the tale of how I got struck by lightning… again.

Once the new system was up and running, I packed up and headed back to the farm

After reaching farm, I plugged everything in (a little more cautiously this time). Still can’t believe it happened barely three weeks after my upgrade. I also looked up a few LAN surge protectors on Amazon and will be buying them.

In the meantime, I am connecting to the internet using my built-in WIFI only from now on, no more LAN cables to my PC, which begs the question, even my previous motherboard had that feature, why the frick didn't I do that then? Aaarrghh.

Anyhoo, I’m just glad most of my parts survived, and now I’m a bit older and (hopefully) wiser.

Thunderstorms? Bad.

Dry thunderstorms? Even Badder.

LAN cable plugged in during a dry thunderstorm? Super Baddest.

I hope you were able to learn something from my experience and maybe take a few precautions of your own. Until the next post, cheers.

Chp 910. New Rig, Who Dis?

I realised I still have two more reunion blog posts to update, but I'll get back to that later as I've ordered a photo scanner from Amazon to scan some of our wild school days photos, which I want to include in those posts.

So in the meantime, I'll get back to regular blogging.

One notable event that took place recently was when I finally decided to upgrade my computer! 

It was the year 2010, when I was firmly established as a prominent copywriter at Webchutney, that I decided to buy a new PC. What excited me the most (I still remember that day like it was yesterday) was that I was finally going to use a DDR3 RAM instead of my previous DDR2s. Yup, I drooled at the thought of all the better games I could play, lolz.

It was an i3-2100 processor, considered high-end at that time. It didn’t even need a graphics card, and I basked in the glory of having such a good setup.

As the years rolled by, of course, things started getting defunct. I needed better graphics power to play some of the new game releases, so I bought my first-ever GPU - the GTX 750 Ti, and that took me to a whole new playing field. I also bought more HDDs for extra storage and replaced the PSU a couple of times whenever it conked out. And that was it. That’s how I’ve been using the same system for 15 years now.

And then I looked at my Steam games and realised there were so many titles I owned but couldn’t play, lolz. Even the ones I could play gave me issues like slo-mo dashes to kill enemies and frame-rate drops everywhere. Some had different outcomes. For example, when I played Cities:Skylines, I couldn’t fast-forward the game to speed up building and population growth due to my system limitations, lolz. And so I had to play at the slow-ass minimum speed. Can you imagine how freaking long it took me to reach Megalopolis like that? Ahhh, I have so much patience, lolz. (If you’re single, do know this is a good quality in a guy, ahemz...)

So finally, during my recent office trip to Pune, I sat with Tanishq, one of our developers at Ronin Labs and a complete tech nerd, and he helped me select the best parts for my new setup. Here are the things we got.

First up, I went for the i7 14th-gen processor. Yup, that’s a humongous leap from my i3 2nd-generation, lelz.

I also bought a separate processor cooling gel, not knowing that the new processor comes with its own tube of cooling gel. :D

For the motherboard, I went for the MSI PRO Z790-P with built-in WIFI.

Just look at this beauty. It supports 13th and 14th gen Intel processors, has 4 DDR5 compatibility, and excellent heat dissipation. Oh, and it even has four NVMe slots! To be very honest, I didn't even know about the existence of NVMe SSDs before this, lolzzz. For those of you who are uninformed like me, NVMe SSDs apparently plug directly into the motherboard, so there is no need for separate SATA or power cables. Nice.

To cool my powerful processor, I picked up a CoolerMaster tower fan. Do keep in mind that my old system didn't even have a CPU cooler, other than that sad exhaust fan at the back. :D

Coming to the RAM, I ordered two 16GB DDR5 sticks, 5200MHz each, giving me a total of 32 Gigs. Imagine jumping straight from a single 4GB DDR3 stick to this, lolz. The monstrosity!

Now, the GPU took me a long time to finalise, not because I didn’t know what I wanted, but because I didn't know what price I could afford, lolz. 

I debated heavily between the RTX 4060 and 4070 (the 4080 and 4090 are wayyy out of my league, a ₹2,00,000 GPU, are you kidding me?), and finally settled on something in the middle - the RTX 4060 Ti. A good mix of power and future-proofing, without burning a hole the size of a wormhole in my wallet.

I actually ordered the 4060 Ti 16GB initially, but somehow, after reaching Mizoram, the product got "returned" automatically even before reaching my doorstep. No idea why. I got refunded, and so I ordered the same 4060 Ti again immediately, this time going for the slightly cheaper 8GB variant instead of 16GB.

For the power supply, I went with the MAG A650BN, delivering a solid 650W. It’s 80 Plus Bronze certified and perfectly suited for my setup.

For storage, since my motherboard supports four NVMe drives, I decided to test the waters with my very first 1TB Gen 4 NVMe. I’ll be using this drive purely for Windows and software installations only.

I also got a 1TB SATA SSD just for my Steam games. SSDs load games much faster than traditional HDDs, so no more waiting forever on splash screens or level load times.

Finally, the case to house it all, a GALAX gaming cabinet. Sleek, spacious, and, most importantly, deep enough to fit my skyscraper of a CPU cooler. Plus, it came with enough jhing-jhang RGB lights to make it look like the front of a North Indian night supply truck, lolz.

As a final accessory, I picked up the Kreo OWL webcam for client calls and team brainstorming sessions. It comes with Full HD 1080p support, dual mics, auto-focus, and even low-light correction, perfect for late-night meetings or sudden video calls in dim farm lighting.

And with that, my setup was complete!

All the parts took about a month to arrive in Mizoram (including my GPU that was returned and reordered). I prayed every day that none of them got damaged during the long transit. Once everything was finally here, my good friend Sanga (aka blogger BlackestRed) came over to my farm, and we got to work assembling it. We kept my laptop open the whole time, watching tech YouTubers step-by-step as they guided us on how to plug in and install each component.

Aaaand finally, we were done! 

So here is my new PC. Hello, you monster!

All the cables were neatly managed, and I tucked in my three internal 4TB HDDs at the back, along with the new 1TB SSD. I also connected my external 18TB HDD, and counting the 1TB NVMe, I now have 32 Terabyte of storage. :D

I think overall, it is quite an upgrade from this. :D

The total cost of this entire config came to ₹ 1,42,358/- after product discounts, Amazon Prime offers and Amazon Pay credit card benefits, and though that's still a lot, I think it's worth it, especially if you consider the condition of my old system above. This is an investment that can last for a long time.

The biggest insight I learnt from Tanishq while selecting my config was that you should always set two limits for yourself when you are shopping for parts. A "Do Not Cross" limit, and a "DO NOT BLOODY CROSS, FINAL WARNING, DEFCON 1" limit. In my case, I set my first limit as 1 lakh, and the second limit as 1.5 lakh. Because trust me, you will easily cross your first limit. That's just how nature works, lolz.

As the great Confucius once said, "If a man cannot find a girlfriend, at least get a new computer", I will now bask in the company of my shiny new companion for the next 10 to 15 years, by which it would be time to upgrade again, so hopefully I'll see you around by then too.

Cheers, everyone. Hope you like my new config and feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments!