However, if anyone could reccommend an already assembled computer I suppose I wouldn't mind going to those pirates at Best Buy lol. My price range is $700 - 1000. Thanks in advance for your help
New High End PC Construction Help
Débuté par
yfullman
, avril 13 2011 01:59
#1
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 01:59
yfullman
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Hello. I'm planning on buying a new Pc and I would like it to be capable of running games like Mass Effect 2 and Crysis on the highest settings with no issues at all and won't be obsolete in atleast a few years lol. I realize that economically and for a plethora of other reasons, buying the individual parts of the pc and assembling them myself would be the wisest choice. If anyone could reccomend the types of RAM, Video cards, processors, monitors, etc I should purchase I would be very grateful. Particularly, if anyone has themselves done the same and assembled their own unique pc from seperate parts I would very much like their advice or council on which parts are compatable with which.
However, if anyone could reccommend an already assembled computer I suppose I wouldn't mind going to those pirates at Best Buy lol. My price range is $700 - 1000. Thanks in advance for your help
However, if anyone could reccommend an already assembled computer I suppose I wouldn't mind going to those pirates at Best Buy lol. My price range is $700 - 1000. Thanks in advance for your help
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#2
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 03:05
Kloreep
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$600 is usually the minimum price I see quoted for building a gaming PC, which I think is about right. And I'd say you can go up to around $1000 or so before the "upgrades" you could make start being a diminishing return for your money. That's just for the case and what goes inside, though, I'm not including a monitor/other peripherals, or a copy of Windows. So depending on whether/how many of those other things you need, it sounds like you have somewhere between just enough of a budget, and a very nice budget indeed.
To get the lay of the land, I recommend the "Best Gaming CPUs for the Money" and "Best Graphics Cards for the Money" articles at Tom's Hardware. Depending on how much time you're willing to put into research you may want to dig deeper than those, but they're certainly a good place to start; and the Hierarchy Charts at the end make a good reference, particularly for video cards/GPUs.
Don't skimp on the Power Supply Unit. And by that I don't mean you have to have an excessive wattage rating (though you do want enough to handle everything, and gaming GPUs are an energy suck). You want a unit that also has a decent amperage rating, from a reputable brand that's known to be reliable. (What I've been told is: The PSU is the part of your computer that, if it fails badly enough, can take other components with it. So don't skimp on it!) I'm no expert myself, but you can look for more info on power supplies at places like the Tom's Hardware forums.
For the actual assembly, this video is a good watch if you're not already familiar with mucking about inside the case. Though do note that the parts list is out of date by now.
To get the lay of the land, I recommend the "Best Gaming CPUs for the Money" and "Best Graphics Cards for the Money" articles at Tom's Hardware. Depending on how much time you're willing to put into research you may want to dig deeper than those, but they're certainly a good place to start; and the Hierarchy Charts at the end make a good reference, particularly for video cards/GPUs.
Don't skimp on the Power Supply Unit. And by that I don't mean you have to have an excessive wattage rating (though you do want enough to handle everything, and gaming GPUs are an energy suck). You want a unit that also has a decent amperage rating, from a reputable brand that's known to be reliable. (What I've been told is: The PSU is the part of your computer that, if it fails badly enough, can take other components with it. So don't skimp on it!) I'm no expert myself, but you can look for more info on power supplies at places like the Tom's Hardware forums.
For the actual assembly, this video is a good watch if you're not already familiar with mucking about inside the case. Though do note that the parts list is out of date by now.
#3
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 04:56
yfullman
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Wow. Thank you so much! And I won't have that money for quite a while so I suppose I can do some more research lol. From what I remember from my classes, the computer's cooling system basically determines the pc's lifespan. I recall that there are cooling systems that use a liquid coolant in addition to standard fans though Im not sure if those are more or less only used for supercomputers. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you?
#4
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 05:27
Moondoggie
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Water cooling is a bit of an enthusiast trade i wouldn't bother with it unless you really know what you are doing inside a compiuter case. Air cooling works just fine as long as you get a decent case that has plenty of room and case fans.
It's good you haver time to do proper research as it is key to building a great gaming PC for the best price. Some people just buy the most expensive stuff because they automatically assume it is the best which isn't always the case so try to compare as many brands as possible for everything to get the best performence and price. First you'll want to find a decent case and PSU before anything else. There are plenty of reputable brands like Corsair. You'll want one like a 650W PSU for a high end machine to make sure you have plenty of wriggle room for upgrades. There are 1000W and larger PSU's around but unless you are powering the space program you probably won't need one.
After you have those sorted find a motherboard. This is where you'll be deciding to go with Intel or AMD CPU's Intel's high end CPU's are more powerfull but way more expensive while AMD's are powerfull and much less expensive. If you go with Intel decide if the extra power is worth the price and if the only type of games you wish to play are ME2 and stuff like that i'd stick with an AMD Phenom X4 there's a lovely 3.4ghz version that dropped in price recently. But do your own research and work out which is best for you.
After you have your motherboard and you chose Intel or AMD you'll be getting your CPU
Then you need RAM the latest motherboards support DDR3 RAM it comes in various speeds. Get yourself some decent RAM with a good speed. Skip the cheap stuff. 4-6GB of RAM is ample for a gaming machine at any level. Some people have 16GB of RAM which is silly unless you are a video editor and use a lot of programs that need to render material.
After you have these you'll want a hard drive. 1TB hard drives are fairly cheap now and are enough for a starter you may want a second hard drive for storing games on too if you are like me you prefer to keep your OS and Games on seperate hard drives.
After that you'll have enough to put the machine together and make sure it works before you add gaming specific stuff. Your GPU is the single most important aspect of a good gaming machine. Make sure you pick a Motherboard that supports more than one GPU as a high end gaming machine needs that extra power. And make sure you pick a large case since high end GPU's are very big.
And don't skimp out on a decent sound card. A great sound card hooked up to some good speakers or headphones can make the gaming experience incredible.
I think that's enough of my rambling for now lol. Last thing i will say is always remember what's inside your computer is most important. Don't waste money on sparkly LED rubbish. The novelty will wear off in a week.
It's good you haver time to do proper research as it is key to building a great gaming PC for the best price. Some people just buy the most expensive stuff because they automatically assume it is the best which isn't always the case so try to compare as many brands as possible for everything to get the best performence and price. First you'll want to find a decent case and PSU before anything else. There are plenty of reputable brands like Corsair. You'll want one like a 650W PSU for a high end machine to make sure you have plenty of wriggle room for upgrades. There are 1000W and larger PSU's around but unless you are powering the space program you probably won't need one.
After you have those sorted find a motherboard. This is where you'll be deciding to go with Intel or AMD CPU's Intel's high end CPU's are more powerfull but way more expensive while AMD's are powerfull and much less expensive. If you go with Intel decide if the extra power is worth the price and if the only type of games you wish to play are ME2 and stuff like that i'd stick with an AMD Phenom X4 there's a lovely 3.4ghz version that dropped in price recently. But do your own research and work out which is best for you.
After you have your motherboard and you chose Intel or AMD you'll be getting your CPU
Then you need RAM the latest motherboards support DDR3 RAM it comes in various speeds. Get yourself some decent RAM with a good speed. Skip the cheap stuff. 4-6GB of RAM is ample for a gaming machine at any level. Some people have 16GB of RAM which is silly unless you are a video editor and use a lot of programs that need to render material.
After you have these you'll want a hard drive. 1TB hard drives are fairly cheap now and are enough for a starter you may want a second hard drive for storing games on too if you are like me you prefer to keep your OS and Games on seperate hard drives.
After that you'll have enough to put the machine together and make sure it works before you add gaming specific stuff. Your GPU is the single most important aspect of a good gaming machine. Make sure you pick a Motherboard that supports more than one GPU as a high end gaming machine needs that extra power. And make sure you pick a large case since high end GPU's are very big.
And don't skimp out on a decent sound card. A great sound card hooked up to some good speakers or headphones can make the gaming experience incredible.
I think that's enough of my rambling for now lol. Last thing i will say is always remember what's inside your computer is most important. Don't waste money on sparkly LED rubbish. The novelty will wear off in a week.
#5
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 05:48
Kloreep
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BTW, a note on CPUs - I've seen rumors that AMD is going to bring out their new CPU architecture, Bulldozer, this summer. If you won't be putting your comp together for at least several months, then keep in mind that AMD may have some new stuff out by the time you're ready to buy. Researching the current CPUs would still be a good idea, but you may want to avoid making a final call on your motherboard socket/CPU until the prices are available and the hardware/benchmarking sites have their verdicts in.
Also remember that you can partition a single hard drive into C: D: etc., if you want to separate out the file system but don't care about them being literally, physically separate. If you get a 1TB or so drive, that's probably all the space you'll need, unless you have a ton of games you really all want installed at once. If you spend more money on HDs, I'd probably go for an external backup rather than another internal drive. (Or you could look at an SSD. But those are still somewhat expensive, and might be outside your budget range if you want to do other things, like the dual graphics cards Moondoggie is suggesting.)
Your Mileage May Vary, I suppose. Since I don't have a surround sound system - just 2.1 speakers and a decent pair of headphones - I find the integrated sound chip on my latest motherboard is fine. But then, I'm not any sort of audiophile.
Moondoggie wrote...
After you have these you'll want a hard drive. 1TB hard drives are fairly cheap now and are enough for a starter you may want a second hard drive for storing games on too if you are like me you prefer to keep your OS and Games on seperate hard drives.
Also remember that you can partition a single hard drive into C: D: etc., if you want to separate out the file system but don't care about them being literally, physically separate. If you get a 1TB or so drive, that's probably all the space you'll need, unless you have a ton of games you really all want installed at once. If you spend more money on HDs, I'd probably go for an external backup rather than another internal drive. (Or you could look at an SSD. But those are still somewhat expensive, and might be outside your budget range if you want to do other things, like the dual graphics cards Moondoggie is suggesting.)
Moondoggie wrote...
And don't skimp out on a decent sound card. A great sound card hooked up to some good speakers or headphones can make the gaming experience incredible.
Your Mileage May Vary, I suppose. Since I don't have a surround sound system - just 2.1 speakers and a decent pair of headphones - I find the integrated sound chip on my latest motherboard is fine. But then, I'm not any sort of audiophile.
#6
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 06:17
Moondoggie
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You've never experienced Mass Effect 2 on a 7.1 speaker system? You have not lived 
Maybe my suggestion there is more of an optional extra than an essential but i prefer to have the best sound available than just adequate sound but that's me wanting my nerdy surround sound experience XD
Maybe my suggestion there is more of an optional extra than an essential but i prefer to have the best sound available than just adequate sound but that's me wanting my nerdy surround sound experience XD
#7
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 08:44
Fredvdp
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ME2 doesn't support 7.1 so 5.1 is good enough.Moondoggie wrote...
You've never experienced Mass Effect 2 on a 7.1 speaker system? You have not lived
But yeah, it's awesome. In ME1 the EAX effects are nice but the problem is that it doesn't support surround cards without EAX support.
Modifié par Fredvdp, 13 avril 2011 - 08:45 .
#8
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 10:33
PnXMarcin1PL
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OP - could you pm me link to a shop where you want to buy new pc ? I'll send you good pc configuration tomorrow, in your price range ofc.
#9
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 11:25
yfullman
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Wow guys thank you sooo much for all your advice! And @PnXMarcin1PL you would be that kind lol? I would be really thankful if you did. Unfortunately, I haven't even began research sites or parts. In fact the thought to get a new pc only occured to me this morning when I downloaded the copy of ME2 that came with DA2. But i could start looking up sites after this weekend once if finish my midterms if your still willing.Thanks
#10
Posté 13 avril 2011 - 11:50
eshrafel
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If you want some random recommendations to narrow down your searches ...
PSU: Use the Corsair modular ones, or alternatively SeaSonic. 550W minimum for a decent box.
HDD: Probably doesn't matter. I use Western Digital, Samsung, and Seagate. Make sure it's 7200rpm or higher of course.
Soundcard: Again, probably whatever is on your mainboard is fine, though if you want to run ME1 you may want to buy a Creative X-Fi as it seems a lot less weird on that.
Mainboards: I tend to use Gigabyte and Tyan, from which I have had very respectable customer support. Asus are popular; I've had a few issues with them, but it's probably not statistically significant.
RAM: No need to go for the absolute fastest RAM anymore. In the P4 days you really needed to feed the CPU cache at a fast rate to keep your framerate up, but with the on-die memory controllers on the new chips these days, decent RAM is good enough. If you buy top-dollar RAM you may squeeze 2-3 more fps.
Graphics: I think both ATI/AMD and NVIDIA are fine cards. My last purchase was NVIDIA because at the time, the ATI SLi drivers were shambles. Pretty sure it's a lot better now.
CPU: How much money do you want to throw at it? Core i7 is Intel's top dollar chip, but the i5 is pretty damn competitive, or even the i3 is still decent for games if you only want dual core. My system is a couple years old, but uses a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 4GHz and it is still reasonably competitive even now. Most games *currently* only use 2 cores. If you want an absolutely future proof system and have cash to spend, go for a quad core, but a fast (possibly overclocked) dual-core will still do you just fine.
Mouse: Logitech G5
I have 5 of them.
If you have the cash, buy yourself a nice aluminium case too, you won't regret it.
Oh, and Windows 7 of course. Anything else on a new system these days would be an odd choice.
PSU: Use the Corsair modular ones, or alternatively SeaSonic. 550W minimum for a decent box.
HDD: Probably doesn't matter. I use Western Digital, Samsung, and Seagate. Make sure it's 7200rpm or higher of course.
Soundcard: Again, probably whatever is on your mainboard is fine, though if you want to run ME1 you may want to buy a Creative X-Fi as it seems a lot less weird on that.
Mainboards: I tend to use Gigabyte and Tyan, from which I have had very respectable customer support. Asus are popular; I've had a few issues with them, but it's probably not statistically significant.
RAM: No need to go for the absolute fastest RAM anymore. In the P4 days you really needed to feed the CPU cache at a fast rate to keep your framerate up, but with the on-die memory controllers on the new chips these days, decent RAM is good enough. If you buy top-dollar RAM you may squeeze 2-3 more fps.
Graphics: I think both ATI/AMD and NVIDIA are fine cards. My last purchase was NVIDIA because at the time, the ATI SLi drivers were shambles. Pretty sure it's a lot better now.
CPU: How much money do you want to throw at it? Core i7 is Intel's top dollar chip, but the i5 is pretty damn competitive, or even the i3 is still decent for games if you only want dual core. My system is a couple years old, but uses a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 4GHz and it is still reasonably competitive even now. Most games *currently* only use 2 cores. If you want an absolutely future proof system and have cash to spend, go for a quad core, but a fast (possibly overclocked) dual-core will still do you just fine.
Mouse: Logitech G5
I have 5 of them.If you have the cash, buy yourself a nice aluminium case too, you won't regret it.
Oh, and Windows 7 of course. Anything else on a new system these days would be an odd choice.
#11
Posté 14 avril 2011 - 01:32
Oddball1
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Here's the system I built in the fall of 2009 specifically for gaming, including Dragon Age Origins and it's expansion, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age 2 and a pile of non EA games.
These are the main components
Core i5 750 each core running at 2.66GHZ
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe motherboard
8GB's of DDR3 1066 ram
120GB, 320GB, 320GB Western Digital harddrives.
Later on, I added an ASUS Xonar DX Soundcard, don't have no problems playing any of my games, a pair of factory overclocked Visiontek Radeon 4870's, had Radeon 3870's before this, a Crucial C300 128 SSD for my boot drive, and an Antec Truepower Quattro 850 watt powersupply. Two SATA optical drives, before this had IDE optical drives, one of the SATA optical drives is a Lightscribe DVDRW.
Have the Antec P182 case, and loaded it with fans where needed.
Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000, Logitech Wireless Mouse M510 and of course Windows 7.
These are the main components
Core i5 750 each core running at 2.66GHZ
ASUS P7P55D Deluxe motherboard
8GB's of DDR3 1066 ram
120GB, 320GB, 320GB Western Digital harddrives.
Later on, I added an ASUS Xonar DX Soundcard, don't have no problems playing any of my games, a pair of factory overclocked Visiontek Radeon 4870's, had Radeon 3870's before this, a Crucial C300 128 SSD for my boot drive, and an Antec Truepower Quattro 850 watt powersupply. Two SATA optical drives, before this had IDE optical drives, one of the SATA optical drives is a Lightscribe DVDRW.
Have the Antec P182 case, and loaded it with fans where needed.
Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000, Logitech Wireless Mouse M510 and of course Windows 7.
#12
Posté 14 avril 2011 - 06:39
Marn_Cherone
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For graficcard I'd recommend GTX 560 Ti or 570. Ram is pretty cheap currently. 4-8gb should be fine. For board you have to figure out for you self if you want to have the option for sli or crossfire, but don't save to much there, as its a critical part of any pc. For CPU i'd currently say i5 2500, but amd has fine CPU too. The setup of Oddball1 is pretty good. I run the same configuration but have an asus P7P55D-E LX what is a bit cheaper and can has only 1 PCIe.
My Specs are:
(built early 2010)
Asus P7P55D-E LX (I'm very happy with it, afordable and great quality and support. 1156 socket!!)
CPU: i5 750 @ 2,67 standard tact (Very happy with this CPU, got it for an excellent price back then)
Cooler: Zalman 9900 NT (this is a little oversized, a broken alpenfoehn would do fine and is cheaper, Megahalmes is very good but also expensive, depends on if you wisch to oc)
RAM: Kingston Value Ram 8GB (4x2GB) was cheap at the time, now there should be better or cheaper ram
GC: Gainward GTX 570 Phantom. nice card but very expensive. a gtx 460/470, gtx 550/560, radeon 5870, radeon 6850/6950 should be fine I guess. (nice option is to buy Board with 2 PCie, Buy a gtx 560 ti and later if necessary run it in sli with an aditional one.
Case: Antec three hundred. Still i think this is one of the best and most afordable (and goodlooking) Cases out there
My Specs are:
(built early 2010)
Asus P7P55D-E LX (I'm very happy with it, afordable and great quality and support. 1156 socket!!)
CPU: i5 750 @ 2,67 standard tact (Very happy with this CPU, got it for an excellent price back then)
Cooler: Zalman 9900 NT (this is a little oversized, a broken alpenfoehn would do fine and is cheaper, Megahalmes is very good but also expensive, depends on if you wisch to oc)
RAM: Kingston Value Ram 8GB (4x2GB) was cheap at the time, now there should be better or cheaper ram
GC: Gainward GTX 570 Phantom. nice card but very expensive. a gtx 460/470, gtx 550/560, radeon 5870, radeon 6850/6950 should be fine I guess. (nice option is to buy Board with 2 PCie, Buy a gtx 560 ti and later if necessary run it in sli with an aditional one.
Case: Antec three hundred. Still i think this is one of the best and most afordable (and goodlooking) Cases out there
Modifié par Marn_Cherone, 15 avril 2011 - 01:01 .
