Building PC

How about you tell us what parts you're considering, and then we'll offer our opinions/recommendations.

everything.. case, fans, sound card, processor (amd perfered), motherboard, vid card, ram, hard drive.. I'm mostly going for gaming

Hey Blake,

Well you have come to the right place to build a great machine. First lets start off with a budget. How much would you be willing to spend on this machine and what types of games would you like to play on it? Will this be your first time building a computer?

WOW I love this site already.
Found my main proplem right away, I hope you guys wont mind if I but my budget for a gaming computer here. 1500$
I need everything, I have a very old dell dimension which just cant cut it anymore.
The types of games i play are: real-time stradegy and mmorpg(world of warcraft). It's also my first time building a computer. Thank you very much

This targeted towards both Blake and Garnuba, but it may help Garnuba more....any questions just post em!!

Ok, i'll give you some good site to get stuff, and tell you what you'll need. I'm not going to tell you what to get, but i will suggest things that i have and that work well for me.

Here is a checklist of the things you will need to get. (anyone please add anything i forget)
-Case
-Motherboard
-Processor
-RAM
-Hard Drive
-Removable Media Drive (these are like DVD-ROM drives and CD-RW Drives)
-Screws and Stand-off's to attach your mobo (motherboard) to your case (most Mobo's come with these, but it often helps to have a local computer store to fall back on in case these things don't come with your mobo)
-Power Supply (alot of cases come with these nowadays)
-Video Card (you may end up dropping 1/3 of your budget on this)
-Cooling Devices (Case fans, CPU fans and heatsinks, etc.)
-Any Monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers etc.
-Customization (what do you want it to look like. Light up, plain, bright yellow w/e you want)

The games I play with my custom PC are Half life 2, Unreal Tournament, and Battle for middle Earth, and I spent $500 on mine. The $1500 opens alot of opportunities.

-CASE-

The case will be what you see and what contains all the parts, this is one of the things you could cheap out on very easily. Me, I spent about $80 on mine. I know this isn't a ton of money, but when you think about is cool looking case really worth $80??? It all depends, like I said, on what you want. Xoxide.com has a wide selection of cases. This is where i got my case. Mine is called the mutantx. Choose what ever you think looks the best. One stipulation I would have, is that you pick a case that supports ATX form factor, because this is what most good mobo's are.

-Motherboard-

This will basically decide what components your machine can handle, so choose wisely. I went the PERL865 Intel mobo, but If you prefer AMD go with that. I'm sure there is a mobo out there for gaming especially with your budget so please someone help me out with this one. Keep in mind FSB or HTT is very important higher the better!!

-Processor-

obviously you'll need a processor, so if you choose Intel you'll definetely want a P4 processor with 3.0Ghz and up. Make sure the processor you get is compatible with the chipset of your mobo. Get w/e you feel comfortable purchasing. I got a 3.0 Ghz works great. Maybe you're an overclocker, in that case, definetely go with AMD they are the king of overclocking. A great place to get any type of hardware, is at Newegg. Newegg has lots of great items at low prices. Tiger Direct has a much friendlier user interface, but is alot more expensive on some things.

-RAM-

For RAM I would suggest 1Gb +. Mainly because a game requires most levels to be loaded into RAM, as well as the textures and things like that. The more RAM you have (most of the time) the faster your games will load. Make sure your RAM is compatible with the mobo you choose. I would recomend splitting the ram into several sticks like 2-4 512mb sitcks (for a total of 1-2 Gb), or 2-4 256mb sticks (for a total of 512mb-1Gb), this reduces the cost and gives you the same if not better performance.

-Hard Drive-

An commonly overlooked feature of a Hard Drive is its rpm. A 250Gb hard drive may cost less than a 140Gb hard drive that has a higher rpm. Go for the highest rpm with the nessesary amount of storage, unless it compromises your budget. I would recommend 250-500Gb of storage space. If you plan to have alot of games music or videos, you need alot of space the 500Gb may be a bit extreme if you don't have alot of big media files. Make sure your hardrive is SATA (serial AT attachment, not sure what the AT is lol). It is much faster than IDE, or the ribbons of wire you see connecting internal drives to the mobo. Make sure your motherboard supports SATA.

-Removable Media Drive-

I would suggest either a DVD-ROM Drive and a CD-RW Drive, a DVD-RW± Drive, or a DVD-ROM Drive and a DVD-RW± Drive. Any of these combinations may suit you depending on your needs. If you don't plan to burn DVD's then don't worry about the latter two. If you are going to burn DVD's then you should get one of the two with the DVD burners. The reason for having just a plain DVD drive is that some games now come as DVD, and you may not want to use you DVD burner to read the games this may wear it out quicker. You may want a floppy or a Zip drive this is totally up to you. The floppy may come in handy if you need to boot windows or format you hard drive.

-Power Supply-

I would say you should get a 450-600W power supply. Mine is a 450W works great. If you care about noise spend a little extra on getting a quite one.

-Video Card-

If your gonna be gaming spend the extra do-re-me on a nice gaming video card. My choice is the ATI Radeon x800. This card rocks. It will put a dent in your budget though $500. If you like Nvidia go with there highest gaming model (don't know Nvidia very well) Shop around for the best price. You may find that no matter where you go its always gonna be expensive. Spend the xtra money on a vid card its what makes your games run smoothly and look good. Make sure the vid card you get is supported by your mobo. AGP or PCI Express you need to know what the vid card is, and what your mobo supports!!!

-Cooling Devices-

Ok, heres where i don't know alot about. What i can tell you is that there are coolers for everything. The main things you will need are: Case fans i recommend as many as your case can hold. Front Rear Side... you name it get it. The most important cooling device is the CPU heatsink or fan. If there is a combo unit that has a heatsink with a fan on top with it then get that. Most processors come with a CPU fan, but they are often noisy. As soon as you put a diff fan on your processor you void your CPU's warranty...so be carefull. Fanless ones have some advantages though. They offer complete silence, and they will never fail....the downside is that they may not sufficiently cool your processor. choose w/e you think will work best for you.

If you need monitors, speakers, keyboards, or mice, don't forget them in your budget. Nothing would suck worse than getting your new comp then realizing that you cant use it because you don't have these things

-Customize!-

If you have leftover mula go crazy!! or be boring and save it . w/e you do make it look kewl.....get lights, decals, fan grills, anything to make your custom gaming rig ..... well your custom gaming rig. Personalize it.

Well this about raps up my guide to getting the parts for your gaming rig. You tell me if this helps and what you are planning on getting and ill make sure everything checks out. Once you get to the stage that you are comfortable to buy I will help you with the building part. Also it may be helpful to say that if this is your first time building, make sure someone who knows what there doing can help you. This way you don't just light money on fire. Maybe a better option if you have $1500 is to get an alienware or a Dell (those would be my suggestions)

If anyone disagrees with what i have said, or has something to add, feel free to criticize all you would like. Hope this was helpful and GOOD LUCK!!!

Man that was a mouthfull im tired

Cya,
Matt

Hey Matt, that pretty good couple of things though, usually the psu's that come with a case ain't very good and thats one thing you don't want to go cheap on so i recommend a antec true series 480w for a gaming rig but better yet to keep those cables nice and tidy witch is important when you need good cooling is a Ulta X Connect 500w. It has modular cable design witch means you can plug and unplug what ever cables you need and the cables are already sleeved.

Better than stock cpu cooling is also a good idea, yea it does void the warrenty but they would never no anyway if you had to return and some articsilver5 to go along.

You may want to add a fan controller to keep the noise down.

Also check out mobo's that support dual channel memory it can inprove performance dramatically.

rick

Hey Guy`s been building Game`n systems for some time now .. Humm I go by rule of thumb , Look at the game you`ll be mosty play`n then go by the TOP specs on that game, about a year ago I built a system on BF42 , now I`m upgrading for Farcry ..LOL all most there , gave up my ATI 9600 xt card for a 6800 GT Nividea wow it rocks, now working on the Mobo and I hope to go with a 3500+ Im` running a 2400+ AMD right now and a high end video card and can run farcry on high no prob. The computer store in my town takes my old stuff sells it then with the $$ I upgrade .

A game`n system is a on going thing ask any one thats a Die hard gamer, in three months your stuffs old, read lot`s too theres good sites on tests, here`s one of my fav links.
http://www.tomshardware.com/index.html

Peace

go Amd skt 939
so mobos are
asus a8n-sli and a pci-e nvidia 6800gt and u can get another one later for 2 pci-e 6800gt in sli
or a abit ax8 and a sapphire ATI x800xl

I would recommend an AMD 64 3200+ atleast with 1 gig of mem and 120 gig harddrive or higher...you might wanna get a SATA harddrive instead of IDE but its not that big of a deal- your video card for a gaming pc is where you will spend the most money if your looking for something really Highend- so get all your other parts finalized first probably and then start the endless shopping for your video card

all good ideas, i just helped a friend pick out what he needed for a gamin machine, he bought.....

AMD FX 55 proc.
Corsair 3 gig 3200 ram ( 3 x 1 gig )
nvidia geforce 6800 gt oc
500 watt psu
sound blaster audigy 2 zs
3 WD 300 gig HD's
and a ABIT mobo, not sure of the model, but very nice

( he overclocked the proc to 4.0 ghz the last i heard and is runnin really good and stable )

some of these parts people are yelling out are expensive as [bleep]. but anyway, if your lookin for a good budget card that is better than it should be for the price, get the nvidia geforce pcx 5750 graphics card. runs smooth all games I have played doom 3, counter-strike source, and halo wit a intel p4 3ghz. and 512mb. since your makin a gamin pc, I am assuming you will exceed what I have..so your fps will go through the roof.

Hi Matt,

I like the system that you have mentioned for 500 dollars. Can you send me the configuration specs and also where you purchased the parts from.

TIA,
Krishnan.

Hi Matt,

Can you send me your config spec for 500 dollars and the URLs from where you ordered the parts ?.

thanks,
Krishnan.