Building A Gaming PC. Help Me

Off Topic
1

Ok. My laptop crashed. I need a new computer now for school, but I also enjoy gaming. Checked out a few dell XPS systems and also ventured into Alienware.

However nothing caught my attention, so I decided that I could build such a good computer for half the price I would spend on a fancy dell or alienware. I’ve always wanted to do this but never had the finances, but now I’m good money. Newegg.com has become my resource for computer parts/accessories.

So far I purchased

Motherboard-Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard

Case-Rosewill Conqueror

Hard Drive-Seagate 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Memory-Crucial Ballistix (I baught 2, 2GB Sticks for 4GB Total)

Needed (This is what I plan on getting unless recomended otherwise)

CPU-(Wasn’t sure whether to go with the quad or dual core 2.66GHZ)

or

Graphics Card- ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB

DVD RW-LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model DH-20A4H-08 LightScribe Support - Newegg.com

Power Supply-Coolmax 950 watt

OS-Windows Vista

Now do I need anything else?

This machine should be a beast what are your opinions and reccomendations?

When the time comes I will also need help on overclocking if anyone knows how.

What are your opinons on Quad Core vs. Dual Core processors and keep in mind my motherboard can only take a cpu with an FSB of 800/1066MHZ

Thanks in advance.

2

I’m at this moment on NCIX.com pondering the very same thing.

I was going to go with the 8800GTS for video and dual core because I don’t think there is much really utilizing the quad core yet and by the time they are it might be time to upgrade again anyhow. I’m definitely interested in what others have to say.

3

Personally, I’d rather go for an nvidia geforce 260.
Also, just get the fastest dual core you can afford. Quad core is basically useless for gaming.

Edit- Too slow. :frowning:

Debra, have you considered getting a 9800GT? I think it’s on sale for like $99 at ncix.

4

o really :o I will look at that.

5

Vegg, do you have a link for the 9800GT? I can’t find it at that price.

6

my gaming pc,
its not the fastest but it handles everything I can throw
heres what it is
Abit an-m2hd
Amd athlon 64 x2 +3800 2gig
8 gigs ram Forgot the brand I think corsair Ill look on cupz if your interested. but you have intell stuff which my memory is great but it will be too slow for your FSB.

nvidia geforce 8500gt video card
500 watt PS I need a new power supply this one sucks I cheaped out with a cooler master.

I should have gotten a better vid card and less memory but I am happy with this set up under windows vista ultimate 64.

Crysis,need for speed pro street,online games like combat arms
Attack on pearl harbor.
Gears of war
none of these games real demanding but they do run perfect all on the highest settings.

7

[quote]debraD wrote:
Vegg, do you have a link for the 9800GT? I can’t find it at that price.[/quote]

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33062&promoid=1055
I guess that’s after the mail-in rebate, but it’s a still great deal.

8

[quote]Vegg wrote:
debraD wrote:
Vegg, do you have a link for the 9800GT? I can’t find it at that price.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33062&promoid=1055
I guess that’s after the mail-in rebate, but it’s a still great deal.[/quote]

my 8500gt was that price
jump on that I love tha tcard and thats a tasty price.

9

Who do you guys think makes a better graphics card ATI or nVidia?

My mother board only accepts ATI cards, was thinking about getting the geforce 9800 GTX, but that’s no longer an option so the radeon 4870 seemed just as good if not better.

10

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Who do you guys think makes a better graphics card ATI or nVidia?

My mother board only accepts ATI cards, was thinking about getting the geforce 9800 GTX, but that’s no longer an option so the radeon 4870 seemed just as good if not better.[/quote]

Right now for the price, ATI makes the better high end cards
however, I believe Nvidia’s quality beats ATI by a lightyear.

I’d go with the quad core, yes theyre basically useless for games, but in the future they won’t be, and a dual core may give you a bottleneck depending on what you’re doing.

My PC, as is… runs Crysis on very high with no issues

Motherboard: EVGA 750i FTW SLi (overclocking board)

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfsdale core (best c2d
core)

RAM: 4gb G-Skill DDR2 PC6400, 5-5-5-15 timings dual channel

Video Card: XFX 9800GTX+ XXX/Black edition, 768mb ddr3 PCI-E

Sound Card: Soundblaster Live! Fatal1ty x-fi xtreme/gamers ed.

Powersupply: Terrible, being replaced nextweek

Case: Sigma black/red, mid-sized, awesome as fuck

Harddrive: Western Digital 250GB S-ATA, 7,200RPM
backup, seagate 160gb sata, 7,200rpm

Cost me about $950.00 and only took about an hour to assemble(i’ve built MANY computers), games are a joke for my pc… I’ve yet to see one that can drop me below 45fps

Games like COD4, WoW… run at about 300fps, on max everything, heh.

11

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Who do you guys think makes a better graphics card ATI or nVidia?

My mother board only accepts ATI cards, was thinking about getting the geforce 9800 GTX, but that’s no longer an option so the radeon 4870 seemed just as good if not better.[/quote]

False. Your board will accept Nvidia cards just fine, but you won’t be able to SLI them, which is totally fine because I doubt you’ll want to buy another graphics card just to get a 20% in frame rates. Yea some how having 2 graphics card only gets you typically 120% the performance of just 1 card. Go figure.

Also, I second the quad core option. More and more games now are going multi-threaded, not to mention so long as your clock speed is comparable to the dual core, you’ll probably do just fine with single thread apps as well.

If you want to overclock, I’d look into getting an aftermarket heat sink. Intel’s stock is crap. I suggest anything by Scythe.

12

[quote]MetalGrasshopper wrote:
austin_bicep wrote:
Who do you guys think makes a better graphics card ATI or nVidia?

My mother board only accepts ATI cards, was thinking about getting the geforce 9800 GTX, but that’s no longer an option so the radeon 4870 seemed just as good if not better.

False. Your board will accept Nvidia cards just fine, but you won’t be able to SLI them, which is totally fine because I doubt you’ll want to buy another graphics card just to get a 20% in frame rates.[/quote]

Can you explain alittle bit more cause I’m decent on this kind of stuff but nowhere near an expert.

13

[quote]Vegg wrote:
debraD wrote:
Vegg, do you have a link for the 9800GT? I can’t find it at that price.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33062&promoid=1055
I guess that’s after the mail-in rebate, but it’s a still great deal.[/quote]

Thanks! I’ve added to cart :slight_smile:

14

Your board has 2 PCI-E slots, the ones that you use for video cards, and given that your board will support it, you can link 2 video cards together so that you get faster performance.

The problem here is that it would require you to obviously buy another video card of the same type (same model/chip processor, but not necessarily manufacturer). Now you would think that with 2x cards, you get 2x performance. This isn’t true because of some weird voodoo that video cards do when they split the load for processing. Typically with nvidia cards linked together (known as SLI - Scalable Link Interface) you can expect somewhere between 20 to 40% improvement over just 1 card. ATI has its own version of this called crossfire, but the way they split the load between the two cards is just weird and not very effective, so in the end its definitely not worth buying 2 video cards in my opinion.

15

Crysis is not demanding? That game can make your computer work pretty hard if you can even run the very high details settings.

How about a sound card and good headphones?

Personally I don’t like Radeon’s as all the ones I’ve owned I have had trouble with.

Looks pretty good though. There’s some powerful gear out there…I haven’t looked at computer parts for a good 6 months and shit it changes fast.

16

Your motherboard can’t tell the differnce between nvidia and ati they are both gaphics cards. Personally I like nVidia over ATI simply because ATI blows cock at writing drivers nVidia has a long history or being better as far as that goes.

Also you went DDR2 which i would def have recommended going for DDR3 ram. I currently use ballistix but only because I got it for free. I recommend mushkin.

Also it is worth going to 64-bit OS for vista. You can prob find deals on that that are going to be better than on newegg.

Also just throwing this out there instead of getting one 640gb HD you could get two 320gb and run them in RAID 0 which is awesome, but that gets complicated.

17

I got a gaming computer reasonable recently. (there is a thread about it here somewhere).

This is what I went for:

Antec 900
Nvida 9800GTX
LG 22" widescreen monitor
Razer Copperhead
Logitech G15
2x WD 500GB hard drive
Vista home premium 64
Intel Duel Core 2
Logitech surround sound speakers (I think they are called G31)
4GB generic ram

Can’t remember the motherboard

18

[quote]EG wrote:

Also you went DDR2 which i would def have recommended going for DDR3 ram. I currently use ballistix but only because I got it for free. I recommend mushkin.
[/quote]

Makes very little difference at this point in memory technology.
There are DDR2 sticks with better timings than DDR3 sticks for half the cost. Over time however, DDR3 will be utilized better

For now, DDR2 is fine

19

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Ok. My laptop crashed. I need a new computer now for school, but I also enjoy gaming. Checked out a few dell XPS systems and also ventured into Alienware.

However nothing caught my attention, so I decided that I could build such a good computer for half the price I would spend on a fancy dell or alienware. I’ve always wanted to do this but never had the finances, but now I’m good money. Newegg.com has become my resource for computer parts/accessories.

So far I purchased

Motherboard-Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard

Case-Rosewill Conqueror

Hard Drive-Seagate 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Memory-Crucial Ballistix (I baught 2, 2GB Sticks for 4GB Total)

Needed (This is what I plan on getting unless recomended otherwise)

CPU-(Wasn’t sure whether to go with the quad or dual core 2.66GHZ)

or

Graphics Card- ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB

DVD RW- LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model DH-20A4H-08 LightScribe Support - Newegg.com

Power Supply-Coolmax 950 watt

OS-Windows Vista

Now do I need anything else?

This machine should be a beast what are your opinions and reccomendations?

When the time comes I will also need help on overclocking if anyone knows how.

What are your opinons on Quad Core vs. Dual Core processors and keep in mind my motherboard can only take a cpu with an FSB of 800/1066MHZ

Thanks in advance.[/quote]

You better increase your strength in each lift by at least 20 pounds each session or I’m gonna fly over and kick your ass for wasting your time playing computer games.

That being said, I need to get myself a new rig, too. Seeing as how I don’t really need that much extra size on me and all, I got the time now, ya know :wink:

Good luck with your new pc.

20

General comments:

-The motherboard is overkill, even for extensive overclocking, and Intel tends to overcharge on their mobos aimed at the enthusiast market. I would have gone with an ASUS P5Q Pro. Generally the enthusiast class motherboards don’t offer much more that you’ll ever use. If you can switch at this point, I would for the $100. SLI/Crossfire isn’t worth it unless you’re using a gargantuan monitor or have a tiny penis.

-Good choice on the HDD. Great price point for doing storage and performance well.

-Not sure why you’ve limited your processors to one choice at $270 and one at $140. For gaming, I’d get an 8xxx series processor, a Thermalright 120 class heatsink, and overclock the shit out of it. Quad doesn’t help much currently, a very fast dual will perform better.

-Video card is good, though personally I’d go with a Saphire equivalent card as the company has been better to deal with.

-Power supply is overkill. A good 750Watt will more than do you fine.

-RAM’s fine.

-The case is okay, though at that price point you should get an up-front eSata port. You’re not going crazy on number of drives or anything, so I’d check out Antec’s cases around that price point.

-Don’t skimp on the keyboard and mouse, a good set is essential to hand health. If you can get to Staples in the next day or so, they’re selling the Logitech Wave keyboard (great piece of equipment) for $20. Mouse is very much personal preference.

-If you end up saving on the MOBO, get some good fans, Scythe and Yate Loon are awesome depending on your needs (performance and value respectively). Check out Jab-Tech.com for those, good prices and amazing customer service - I have no affiliation with them, just a happy customer.

Enjoy your new rig!

-Dan