Help me pick parts for a new gaming PC (from scratch)
Alright, so, I've never had the money to do this before, but I will soon, so I want to do it.
I don't really know all -that- much about computers, so I'll let you guys edumahcait me and the like. Uhm, as far as a budget goes, I've been told by a few people that have studied up thoroughly on PCs, specifically gaming PCs that you really only need to spend about $900 to run pretty much everything at a constant 60 FPS. Maybe $1,000 to $1,100 if you want a little more power. But I guess my budget would be set at... $1,200? MAYBE $1,300, depends.
Anyways, as far as what I want...
Spoiler!
RAM - Uh, 8GB is fine I suppose. Is there any need for 16GB or higher? As far as gaming goes. I'll only be running a few tabs in my browser, a game or two maybe, and have things like Skype/Xfire/Steam open constantly. Just... decide for me, I suppose.
Hard Drive - Was just looking around, and apparently, there's features about hard drives I didn't even know about. Like the RPM and cache size. So I'll let you guys pick a good one out for me. HD space would be 1TB. 2TB if you can find one at a reasonable price. 1TB would be fine though.
Motherboard - There's a lot of factors here, but what I do know is that you need to make sure what's on the motherboard fits the rest of the components. Like the RAM, the connectors for the hard drive, supports enough RAM, has the right video card slot(s), supports the processor, right pin slots for the PSU, you guys know all that stuff. Just pick a good one. xD
Video card - Okay, here's what really matters on a gaming PC, obviously. I've heard that you can use two video cards, but I don't think I'll need that. Basically, I need a good enough video card to run one game at a time. MAYBE two, I doubt I'll ever need to run two, though. Anyways, I just want one that would be able to run the popular games at 60 FPS and stay there. Games include Starcraft 2, Dota 2, Heroes of Newerth. Maybe a few MMOs too, like Guild Wars 2, Aion, World of Warcraft. Those kinds. I also really like playing PS2 games on my PC through emulating, so I'd like to be able to run those well. Games like Disgaea 2, Final Fantasy games, Alter Echo, things like that. Just a nice, powerful video card that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. But I am willing to shell out for a powerful one.
Processor - I know a powerful processor is important. The cores, the Ghz, etc. Just a nice powerful one.
Power Supply - Uh, just one to support all my stuff, I guess? I seem to have really shitty PSUs that I buy that only last a few months. So, one with good quality would be nice as well.
Sound Card - I'll need one of these as well. Nothing expensive. $50 at the -very- most.
Computer Case - Uh, pick a nice one that fits all of this, I guess? Wouldn't mind a flashy case, I guess. Nothing too expensive, though.
Cooling Equipment - Good processor cooling, obviously. Or great, whichever. Whatever gets the job done. As far as fans go, whatever you guys think is best.
Edit 2: Also, forgot about one thing. An internal Optical Drive. For playing CDs, like DVDs and Bluray discs and such. Good one, I guess. $30 max? Maybe $40?
Also, I use a 1920x1080 resolution monitor. I'd like to be able to run things smoothly. As far as games go, yes. I want to be able to fullscreen them and put all settings at max and get a constant 60+ FPS.
Um, that's about it, I guess. If you need a little more insight, um...
I bought that about 3-4 months ago. It performed really well. I had no issues with any of it (aside from the onboard sound not working and the hard drive not working). Processor was great, cooling was great, motherboard was nice, video card was nice, no issues really. But I do want a much more powerful video card, as it was only able to run Dota 2 at 1600x900 resolution (borderless windowed mode) with maxed Textures and Render Quality at 35-40 FPS. Which was the best I could get, really. You could also enable:
Spoiler!
Anti-Aliasing [Off/On]
Specular [Off/On]
Specular Bloom [Off/On]
Water Quality [Off/On]
Fog [Off/On]
Shadows [Low/Med/High]
Animate Portrait [Off/On]
Additive Light Pass [Off/On]
World Lighting [Off/On]
Ambient Occlusion [Off/On]
Ambient Creatures [Off/On]
But yeah, being able to put everything at max settings for like, most PS2 games and most MMOs would be great, along with most MOBAs that I mentioned. Thanks for any help.
Edit: Also, for my current PC that I have (that doesn't work because it needs a new PSU), could someone recommend me a good one? It came with a 480w PSU, so 500w+ would be nice. Thanks.
Edit3: (Ugh, sorry lol) I want to buy a nice gaming mouse and keyboard. Something like these two?
The hard drive is pretty important too. My recommendation for a gaming rig would be to get like.. a 256mb or 512mb SSD as your primary onboard storage (that small because they run a little pricey) and try to keep its usage to a minimum, like literally for games only. SSDs are designed for you to be able to retrieve data from them at a substantially faster rate then HDDs. Anything else you'd wanna store you should just buy a TB external HD.
I'm not going to do your budgeting for you, but this is a good place to look for your video cards and any other needs:
Be aware, most of the high-end video cards nowadays are 13 inches, so you'll need a case that can fit that. Most cases can fit it no problem, but its just something to keep in mind.
More RAM is always better. Especially considering Chrome starts like 30 processes while you run it, and Firefox doesn't have a memory usage limiter. Neither do a lot of games nowadays, actually. I've got 8GB of RAM on my current PC, and it functions fairly well for my needs but I wouldn't call it a gaming rig. I still occasionally suffer from a short lockup when multitask on it too much, as a matter of fact. No forced restarts or bluescreens or anything awful though, just a short freeze before it goes back to normal.
I'm not gonna pick anything specific out for you but those are just a couple of recommendations based on personal experience.
Wait for the christmas sales/black friday/cyber monday. If money isn't any problem to you though, then by all means.
Your listed games are extremely modest. You could probably max them with something along the lines of $600-700. The only problem is emulation. A pretty powerful CPU is going to be needed to run at least 99% of any emulated games at full speed.
If you don't mind spending the extra $80-100, an SSD as a bootdrive will do wonders.
I'll put full trust into kago, shugi, or another regular to pop in with a whole build laid out for you since
Spoiler!
I'm lazy
I'm willing to bet my left nut they'll tell you to wait for the sales too though.
For emulation, AMD just doesn't cut it. You can use your old hard drive for the OS if you don't want to buy windows 7 or maybe even a new hard drive. SSDs are a luxury. Black friday/Cyber monday is around the corner just wait and see if you can snag similar parts I listed for a lower price.
RK you hurted my feelings :[
For brands (might be a bit biased)
Gigabyte/MSI is great for both AMD or Nvidia cards
Asus/Gigabyte is great for motherboards
G.Skill or Corsair for RAM
Western Digital for hard drives
Antec/Seasonic/Corsair for power supplies
Cases is a toss up. There's always a cheap gem of a case somewhere.
So I talked to a friend of mine, Joe, who is a very amazing expert at computers. So I asked for help, as I value his opinion highly.
He said that it's just best to replace what I need to in my current PC, as there's nothing wrong (as far as I know) with my hardware. Everything's fine. The ODD, HDD, MOBO, sound (though the onboard sound doesn't work, so I use an external sound card), video card, etc. Everything's fine. I just want a more powerful CPU, GPU, and a new PSU.
The link I gave with my $600 "gaming" PC works for me. But I want a more powerful CPU and GPU.
I'm 100% against the Mouse and Keyboard. They're both pretty bad. Mad Catz is notorious for making crap, their mouse is no exception. The twin philips laser is horrible. The logitech keyboard is all show.
Mouse: Steelseries - Full performance, modest eye candy (only full featured sensei) or Something like Corsair or Logitech
Keyboard: Just aim for mechanical key switches. Cherry MX Red is nice for gaming. I use Browns and hate Blacks.
CPU: Eh... AMD... eh... I don't know what to say. I have the highest end AMD CPU at work and they're not as good as I expected... To switch to intel you need a new mobo, and that's extra money you have to spend.
Hey Roflknife, it doesn't have to be incredibly powerful to be a gaming PC. xD Just means it's more geared towards running games than doing typical computer stuff.
Thanks Shugi. <3 Seems everyone is lazy around here. :3
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Help me pick parts for a new gaming PC (from scratch)
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