Gaming PC

[Preacher]

As I write this from my phone My PC sits broken taunting me for the third time this year. Given that this bastard is from '07, I reckon its time for an upgrade. The issue is that this is the first time I'm buying A PC myself as a mature and responsible adult *ahem*. How much money should am I looking at here for a decenttl gaming computer? And is there any particular piece of hardware/software you recommend?

[Dutch guy]

That depends entirely on your definition of decent I'm afraid.

[Geoff_B]

I've just invested in a new Alienware laptop. I say invested rather than bought because it's cost me £2,500 (high-end processor and graphics and in-built blu ray) with another £500 for three years warranty, accidental damage cover and anti-virus protection.

My last laptop cost a similar amount and lasted me for 5 1/2 years (finally being put to rest a month ago). I'm expecting to get a similar (or longer) lifespan out of this one.

So really the more you pay the better you'll get and the longer it will last.

[Preacher]

That depends entirely on your definition of decent I'm afraid.

A computer to play the majority of games on medium graphics that will last at least two years. I hope am not being unreasonable here

[AdmiralMemo]

That depends entirely on your definition of decent I'm afraid.

A computer to play the majority of games on medium graphics that will last at least two years. I hope am not being unreasonable here

For that, you can probably get an off-the-shelf PC from a computer store for about $600 and then purchase a separate graphics card for it for about $100 to $150.

[Jamfalcon]

Memo's right. If you're don't care about turning a setting down here or there, you can get one (relatively) cheap that'll do fine. The one thing to watch when you add a new graphics card to a pre-built PC is the power supply. A lot of off the shelf on computers are pretty weak in that regard, so if you get a nice powerful card it could cause problems.

[Metcarfre]

Can someone tell about, or point me to a guide to, current processors? I looked a year or so ago and again fairly recently and the mid-range OTS PCs I was looking at had Intel i5s as their processors - is this pretty standard? Will processors be upgraded//changed again fairly soon, or would something like that suffice for a while?

[Dutch guy]

I think a mid to high level i5 or mid range i7 would be a good choice. I'm not sure on what is "on the horizon", but I do know the next step in die manufacturing currently being taken is going from 350 to 450 mm wafers. (Ie, making chips cheaper, not faster) The next big step in terms of speed is dependent on getting a sub 20 nanometer production process working. The chip industry is currently not yet ready to deploy the needed tech to the field so I don't think we'll see it in the next 2 years.

[Lorithad]

I always make sure to check

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ for processor benchmarks, and
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ for video card benchmarks before I build or reccomend anything.
Their formatting makes it really easy to find the thing you're looking at, and see where it's preforming. You may find something cheaper that actually works better than what you were looking at.


In terms of how much to spend to make (Not buy) a decent gaming computer, 1200 is pretty much what I tell people to budget for. Thats not including peripherals. Usually when I stick to that, I get 3ish years of playing titles on ultra or high graphics.

[Jamfalcon]

For what it's worth, I built my own computer in early 2011 for around $800 (before the monitor, but including Windows 7) and I still haven't found anything it won't handle at all, but a couple things have had to have one or two settings turned down... anti-aliasing reduced in a couple of games, and DX11 made L.A. Noire slow to a crawl. But overall, it's been excellent.

[Lyinginbedmon]

I've just invested in a new Alienware laptop. I say invested rather than bought because it's cost me £2,500 (high-end processor and graphics and in-built blu ray) with another £500 for three years warranty, accidental damage cover and anti-virus protection.

...

...holy mother of god both of mine only cost £500 and are 5 years apart...

[Lord Hosk]

I built mine for $700 including windows and the virus scanner and it can run anything ok. I dont know the Australian market but I am guessing it will be a little more expensive just because.

I highly highly recommend your local computer shop, if that doesnt exist, your local university Computer information/technology department, you could also try your local nerd store be that comics, magic cards... either they or one of their regulars is huge into computers, if none of those are available (shudder) You could hit up a local big box store like (google) harvey norman or Office works during non-peek hours and talk to the computer sales person or repair tech, you probably have a 50/50 shot at someone who loves computers and is doing that job just as a transition.

I went to the local computer store, that doesnt do custom builds, and I asked the clerk what he would recommend for under $800

Most parts are going to be in the $50-$100 range case, HD, board, CPU, memory... the only real expensive thing is the Video card. You might want to start with the video card and work backwards. The biggest pit fall would be "well this HD is only $25 bucks more an has an extra 200 gigs, and if I go with this memory its only $50 more for twice as much..."

the screen savers used to do a segment(when they were on I miss them) of the $500, $1000, Ultimate gaming system.

[Lord Chrusher]

Do not skimp on the power supply.

[Master Gunner]

However, don't go overboard on the power supply either. While you'll want to leave some room in your power budget for future upgrades, you don't need a kilowatt+ power supply if your computer is only ever going to draw half that. Having a power draw too far below what the supply is rated for makes it less efficient, and more likely to burn out sooner.

[CtMolloy]

For what it's worth, I built my own computer in early 2011 for around $800 (before the monitor, but including Windows 7) and I still haven't found anything it won't handle at all, but a couple things have had to have one or two settings turned down... .

same here.
Building it yourself will surely save some monies, and isn't hard at all.

[Lorithad]

Having a power draw too far below what the supply is rated for makes it less efficient, and more likely to burn out sooner.

Less efficient, maybe. But I cannot believe that it would burn out sooner. It makes little to no sense from my knowledge of the way electrical components work. But please, tell me more. I have often been surprised by things i've read on this forum.

[Dibria]

Most parts are going to be in the $50-$100 range case, HD, board, CPU, memory... the only real expensive thing is the Video card. You might want to start with the video card and work backwards.

I disagree on a couple of things there - if building yourself it is important to remember 'a balanced system is a happy system', sticking a high end graphics card in a lower mid range system is a waste of money as you are likely to hit bottlenecks on other components before your graphics card is being taxed. If you have extra budget you are better off shoving a few more bucks into your motherboard and getting a slightly lower model of graphics card.

For a good gaming system these days I'd recomend aim for an i5, i7 is obviously the better processor but most modern games won't see the benefit, photo editing etc. will. I also recomend sticking with intel, AMD are fine but over the last 2-3 years they have been lagging in the processor market and have recently started pushing APUs, the one area they lead in.

RAM wise 8 is a good amount at the moment but 4 will do you fine, RAM is cheap and easy to replace, buying more later is ridiculously easy, I recently upped to 16gb because I could get high end RAM I'm that capacity under £100. If you like a system otherwise but are dubious on the RAM spec this is worth baring in mind, you can always use http://www.corsair.com/learn_n_explore?id=12373 or similar to find out what it would cost to upgrade yourself.

Graphics card wise? That's a little tricky, if buying a ore built system you want to make certain it has a dedicated card, intel HD on chip graphics are miles better than older integrated graphics but game support for them is not great right now. I personally would say GTX...50 or higher or Radeon ...850 or higher, that said I know people who game happily on lower end cards. A friend of mine that plays Eve and Skyrim constantly gets good enough results out of amGTX 440 he payed £29 for... Basically what I'm saying is as long as you get a dedicated card, you should be ok.

Drives? SSDs are nice but ignore people that tell you they're essential, I run an SSD, it *is* nice to have the speed boost - but it's a big investment to get one of any decent size.

Power supplies, only really relevant if you're building from scratch or upgrading. Agree with the above, never skimp, there's a a useful calculator on the same site as the memory finder I linked before. Also vitally important - buy a branded one, yes it's cheaper by no small margin to get an 'extra value' or similar but Antec or Corsair will take your phone calls if it fries your board.

Motherboard, only really relevant to building your own as well. In a word 'Asus'. Not even kidding, not to knock other manufacturers, there are certainly other very good brands, but Asus are the world leader in motherboard production for a reason. But shop around, for the P55 chipset MSI made some great boards, I only say Asus as a 'if you aren't entirely sure' solution, chances are you'll shop around and find out you want an Asus board anyway but... Gone a bit off topic there.


I hope that was helpful? I personally built my machine for around £800 and it has been a constant upgrade project, I think at last caclulation it was £1500-2000 without peripherals so... I like to stay up to date on tech and am probably a good person to ask - though my knowledge of specific products is skewed to the higher end.

[Master Gunner]

Having a power draw too far below what the supply is rated for makes it less efficient, and more likely to burn out sooner.

Less efficient, maybe. But I cannot believe that it would burn out sooner. It makes little to no sense from my knowledge of the way electrical components work. But please, tell me more. I have often been surprised by things i've read on this forum.

It's more something I read somewhere on the internet, but I probably should look up a credible source at some point.

[Dutch guy]

Warning, the following was written by a Mechanical Engineer who has only a small bit of self-taught knowledge about electronics

Computer PSU's use a Switching power supply. Meaning a transistor turns the power on and off very quickly in rapid succession to lower the voltages. As you may now, transistors are LOAD driven devices. Meaning the difference between the switched amperage and the driving (gate) amperage is what makes them turn on. If the switched load is too low, a transistor start suffering from all kinds of problems caused by this load imbalance. (The gate load is set by the board design and is more or less fixed)

[Lord Chrusher]

Unless there any electrical engineers hiding in the corners I think you know more about it than the rest of us.

What I meant when I said don't skimp on the power supply is to buy a well reviewed supply from a manufacturer with a good reputation. It is not a component that you try and save a few tens of dollars on by buying a no name part.

[Dutch guy]

Yep, I agree on the "Buy a brand with a good reputation".

[empath]

Okay, I should have popped in here sooner; back when Hurricane Igor blasted Newfoundland, the power going on and off for the better part of a week overtaxed my surge protector and ended up killing my motherboard.

And I came here for advice on building a replacement.

I put a locally-bought CPU, mobo & RAM into an existing case I had, and mail-ordered PSU (Antec), GPU (GeForce) & HD (basic 1Tb WestDig) (and O/S - it was a good deal) and grabbed the sound card out of the dead compy and hooked up my old peripherals. It probably cost a total of $800-900cdn in 2010.

Now, two years later, my 'frankencompy' is chugging along just fine, with new titles (that I'm beta'ing) purring along in the 30-40fps range on middle settings, and SMP Minecraft with a fancy texture pack and every setting turned right up to max at 150-200fps.

I may see about upping the RAM for an Xmas gift to myself, but the rest is still perfect.


As such, I heartily recommend seeking the advice of this community!