I am not sure if there is a recognised demographic for middle-aged first-time gamers, but if there is, then I am definitely a candidate. Or will be candidate shortly. As of today, the new "house machine" for gaming has been ordered. It's without a doubt the most powerful bit of kit I have ever purchased with the following on-board:

• 3.4 GHz AMD Kaveri processor
• 8 GB RAM
• 2GB Silent Nvidia Graphics care with GPU Streaming
• 1 TB hard disk (not convinced on SDD drives yet, so this is old-skool hard disk)
• ASUS ATX Motherboard
• Aerocool Dead Silence Case

I did contemplate reviving an older box that is currently a door-stop to my study, but the graphics card only had a VGA out, so quickly rejected this idea.

I think there are several reasons why gaming is now on my planned list of things to do. One is the very fact that Steam exists and supports Linux, and specifically Gentoo Linux. I trialled Steam on Gentoo a few weeks ago on our Toshiba Satellite laptop and it worked - technically - but just did not have the juice to keep up with the resources these games demand. I am sort of Gentoo militant to be honest, and will not use anything that doesn't work on Gentoo.

The second reason is that the games just look so good. I played Portal 2 at a friend's house a couple of months back and was fairly impressed. And then very impressed when I discovered Steam was multi-platform (more or less).

The last reason is time. I seem to have a bit more of it recently and am hoping to become an expert in Kerbal Space Programme. Quite frankly, I spend too much of my time doing things I should do, and plan to spend more doing things I want to do.

Once the parts are delivered I will build it and then enter negotiations about where to locate the gaming machine. My preference is the back room but if it is too ugly or too noisy then I reckon it will end up in the study or a bedroom.

The gauntlet has been laid down... one beautiful, quiet and powerful gaming machine coming up.

Woo... hardware.