A Short Story

In the beginning, she was nothing more than spare parts.

A Pentium G3258 , freshly dropped onto a budget H97 PC Mate , underclocked by fear and surrounded by secondhand dreams. She lived her earliest days inside an Enermax case with a 2.5" laptop hard drive so loud it sounded like it was grinding corn.

8GB of DDR3 , mismatched sticks.
Thermaltake TR2 RX 850W power supply; overkill, unstable, possibly cursed.
And a cheap AMD card that tried its best. Bless its heart.

Bertha wasn’t called Bertha back then.
Back then, she was just " the PC ."
Just a collection of parts taped together by hope and zip ties.

But then...
The Gigabyte Windforce GTX 1080 entered her life.

Illicit. Acquired through “ strategic ” means. A mistake made by youth. Paid for in community service, restitution, and a deep-rooted distrust of free stuff on Craigslist .
Bertha learned consequence. She grew stronger.

Soon came the i7-4790 ; a legend from LGA1150’s golden years.
She could finally breathe.
For the first time, games ran without frame drops, without stutter.
Her cooler was upgraded, then replaced.
Air gave way to water.

And then, the world changed.

It was March 2020.
The malls were empty. The streets silent.
And the only thing louder than the pandemic panic was the clack of mechanical keys as she was reborn once more; an RX 580 Armor OC , bought on the first day of lockdown , smuggled home two hours after curfew .

Bertha evolved again.

She was rehomed into an MSI Z490-A PRO , given an i5-10400 , and fueled by an additional 16GB of Corsair LPX DDR4 .
Her drives became SSDs. Her air became ducted.
Dogecoin was spent. Dogecoin spiked.
Mistakes were made.

But Bertha didn’t care.
She ran Minecraft with shaders , Insurgency Sandstorm , Forza Horizon 5 , all while climbing past 90°C , clawing at the edge of thermal failure,
never crashing without a fight.

And now?
Now she runs with AC ducting shoved into her ribs .
A grow tent fan pushing cold air straight through her case like a turbocharged wind tunnel.
She idles at 21°C .
She overclocks not because she should… but because she can.

"She is not fast."
"She is not cool."
But she is unstoppable.

They say one day her pads will give out.
That her VRAM will finally cross the line.
That her core will crack under pressure.
When that day comes, she won’t be thrown out.
She’ll be mounted. Displayed. Framed. Masked, maybe.

A GPU turned relic.
A reminder that greatness isn’t bought, it’s built.

Big Bertha.
2014 – ???
She runs hot.
She runs loud.
She runs... still.

_________________________________________________________________


Keyboard: Corsair K68 Mechanical Keyboard [www.corsair.com]
Tactile enough to send rage through your fingertips. Still working after countless sessions of WASD abuse.

Mouse: Corsair M55 Optical Mouse [www.corsair.com]
Tracks better than Bertha’s VRAM thermals. Ambidextrous, just like my regrets.

Mousepad: Corsair MM300 Medium Mousepad [www.corsair.com]
A battlefield for sensor wars and occasional snack crumbs.

Monitor: Acer G226HQL (60Hz) [www.acer.com]
No high refresh rate. No HDR. Just 60Hz of pure, unfiltered commitment.

Memory:
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB) [www.corsair.com]
- Crucial Ballistix Gaming 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB) [www.crucial.com]
Two brands, one dream: holding back the flood of games Bertha barely contains.

Cooling & Case Support:
- Corsair H60 AIO Liquid Cooler [www.corsair.com]
- MSI MPG GUNGNIR 110R (when not collecting dust)
- Enermax Steel Mid Tower (when holding onto history)