Components required for a decent gaming rig

SK1979

Hey guys

I was hoping to get some advice about putting together a new gaming rig over the coming months. Basically, what should I be looking for when it comes to a gaming spec PC? i.e. How much RAM, what sort of processor, graphics cards etc. Any other crucial piece's I should be looking at?

Even just at a high level and then I can go off and do some research and pricing etc for specific parts.

I've been out of the PC gaming culture a couple of years but intend to start playing online again as well, should I look to get a PC with a wireless N card in it, does it improve online play by much?

Thanks in advance.

S

Khannie

Moved to building....

Overheal

If you wanna get ridiculous? A GPU Card, Standalone network card (sure, N. N wont hurt.), and a Standalone Sound Card. Lets get as much load off the CPU as we can. A Quaddie with a fair bit of cache and for ****s and giggles if you have the cash try an SSD.

briany

Also a monitor which can take the resolutions the newest games are capable of running at.

SK1979

Cheers guys.

I'm just starting to look around now and honestly have turned into a complete noob with these things. The last time I looked at gaming spec's, it was all about SLI / Crossfire etc.

What sort of gfx card will suffice for a decent level of gaming say over the coming year? Crysis on full at the moment is probably about the level I'm thinking of (seems to be a bit of a benchmark?).

Is 8 Gig of DDR3 ram the requisite amount?

What processor? Is Quadcore still the best or what about the i7 dual core processor's?

SK1979

briany wrote: »

Also a monitor which can take the resolutions the newest games are capable of running at.

I would of been assuming that some sort of Full HD (1920 x 1080) monitor will be what to look for?

Any other criteria to consider for a monitor?

Rattlehead_ie

HIgh Res,
HDMI port if possible to go with your Ultra GFX card.
8GB would be good for RAM but of course 16 would be better.
Try get a top spec'd gfx cards 1GB + seems to be a good base these days 1768Mb again if money is no object.
I presume you wont want to be overclocking your stuff so as earlier said, CPU wise something in the Quad Range with a large cache and try go with the i7 chip rather than the 775.
Wireless N will give you a boost, but only if you have a wireless N router + N really comes into its own if you are streaming, so as far as Im concerned if your not at the very other end of the house G WiFi will do.
I dont know anything about sound so Ill skip that.

Effluo

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

HIgh Res,
HDMI port if possible to go with your Ultra GFX card.
8GB would be good for RAM but of course 16 would be better.
Try get a top spec'd gfx cards 1GB + seems to be a good base these days 1768Mb again if money is no object.
I presume you wont want to be overclocking your stuff so as earlier said, CPU wise something in the Quad Range with a large cache and try go with the i7 chip rather than the 775.
Wireless N will give you a boost, but only if you have a wireless N router + N really comes into its own if you are streaming, so as far as Im concerned if your not at the very other end of the house G WiFi will do.
I dont know anything about sound so Ill skip that.

Ho k....

Ignore most of that...

If you just want something that will play pretty much every game on 1080 with high settings with good prospects for doing that for a couple of years to come, then consider this.

This Includes a 23" full hd monitor too, with a dvi connection.
Put two red fans in it too, they may be cheap but these are the same ones that overclockers.co.uk charge near a tener for! :O

You need an operating system with this though, i'd wait for windows 7 if i were you.
No wireless card/keyboard/mouse with it either

Rattlehead_ie

Out of interest Effluo why did you say to ignore most of what I said?

Solitaire

Pimp yo' rig yo. 1080p system with a blingin' 24" screen, throw in a couple of CCFLs and its still under a grand shipped. A second HD4890 will push the price up closer to €1150 though

Solitaire

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

Out of interest Effluo why did you say to ignore most of what I said?

Because it's... well, how do I put this kindly?

Any decent graphics card worth its salt will come with a DVI>HDMI dongle. Few performance cards have HDMI ports on them.

8GB RAM is overkill outside a hardcore apps machine, which is really i7 territory. 16GB is overkill on pretty much anything outside servers and enterprise-grade heavy workstations.

Memory available to GPU != GPU performance. Many cards with "double-density" memory are a complete waste. It might come in handy in Photoshop. Maybe. Most likely it will end up a total waste of time and money. The only real exception is the HD4870, as it had sufficient GPU power and memory bandwidth to actually use the extra 512MB memory to boost performance at higher resolutions (1080p and up). But the popular 1GB HD4850 and 2GB HD48x0 and the 1792MB GTX260 are useless - the extra expense of the doubled memory gives less than one percent real-world improvements in performance.

No complaint about going with i7 generally but for a pure gaming rig it gives very little improvement over a fast C2Q or AM3 and in return pushes platform prices through the roof. Plus the only affordable one really demands at least a bit of an OC for hardcore gaming, which isn't for everyone. Both the Q9550 and the X4-940 and up are more affordable and just a shade more powerful in games - enough to avoid the need to OC to get those single- and dual-threaded games running maxed-out without stutterring.

And while wireless-N is sound advice, telling the OP to resign themsleves to wired Ethernet would be even sounder. Far less laggy and droppy when it comes to online gaming. And I doubt this rig is for just WoW either so the aforementioned conditions are plain unacceptable.

Effluo

Solitaire wrote: »

I doubt this rig is for just WoW

Meant to ask this in my post....

Op what games were you planning to play on this thing?

SK1979

Hey guys

Thanks everyone for their replies. Been caught up in work since yesterday so only getting a chance to look at replies again. A couple of answers to questions:

Games I'd be intending to play are Starcraft 2, prob Diablo 3 plus any decent FPS's that appear over the next while. Operation Flashpoint etc.

I wouldn't be bothered with OC'ing the processor if at all possible. While I've done some self-building / upgrading in the past, I dont think I'd be confident enough anymore.

I was even considering going with a Dell (please dont beat me up :P) build for the simplicity of it all and the ease of dealing with any issues that arise. Their XPS systems seem to be giving reasonable value compared to what they used to be? Or are they still missing cruicial gear?

I did a self build before on Komplett and while saving some money, it was more trouble resolving issue's.

Thanks again.

Effluo

SK1979 wrote: »

Their XPS systems seem to be giving reasonable value compared to what they used to be? Or are they still missing cruicial gear?

Dells are a miss for gaming, it's just they charge so much for any kind of variation in their pc's. It makes it hard to get any kind of value for money. hundreds of euros in the difference

There's a big gap between crysis and pretty much everything else right now. A single 4890 plays it at 1080 at reasonable settings...

The two builds Solitaire and I put forward vary quite a bit

Solitaires cpu is a lot easier to overclock, the motherboard supports crossfire and so does the psu!

Mine with a cheaper but real quality budget case, mobo that doesn't support crossfire, psu won't either, the cpu is not only less powerful but also not as easy to overclock(mine has a 23" full hd monitor too )...

Both would play every game going, have a look at hardwareversand.de yourself.
Pick a case yourself maybe?

Hardwareversand.de They build it for you for 20euro btw
(and delivery is 30)!

Also i don't really get what you mean by "More trouble resolving issues"
There are no gaurantees your Dell will work straight out of the box and if anything breaks down after a year there's no warranty left.

Dell are a real pleasure to work with though....
....
......
........
MAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Anywho i'd deffo recommend a self build!

requiem1

Just one piece of advice in building a gaming pc....given they cost so much to put together ensure you have mapped out a good upgrade path. For e.g i bought a gtx295 on the promise that it was an extremely fast card and that i could throw another one in sli and reap the benefits.

The former is true however the latter is balls. If you don't want to break the bank get one card that has decent performance in modern games and that has the potential to run in sli or Xfire with realisable benefits.

Being gaming is the only reason i build pcs nowadays, the two things that kill me the most are the load time and my network. A good reliable network connection can do the world of good and i'd honestly spend money ensuring that than worrying if my cpu has four or eight cores. Also i'd fork out on an SSD, i've seen them in action and they are well worth the extra cash. They demolished my 2 raptors in raid 0.

Also power supply...make it modular and make sure it has the right gpu connections and if you want to go sli or xfire make sure that it can take a decent wattage. remember psu's only achieve 80% of their stated wattage. Solitare can fill you in more on that:D

Solitaire

requiem1 wrote:

remember psu's only achieve 80% of their stated wattage.

That's a pretty naff PSU then :P

All PSUs are supposed to achieve at least 100% of their output. Sadly, some cheap [CENSORED]s ignore that and make PSUs capable of achieving 80%, or 60% or even 40% of their rated output before they go so far out of spec they shut down. Unfortunately, the more extreme examples of said are so bad they don't even have the protection circuitry to shut down. Those explode violently instead. :eek:

But even if a low-mid-range PC actually used around 250W in real life (at peak) you'd still get a 400-500W PSU instead of a 250-300W one to save money. Because the smaller PSU being run so hard would run the system less efficiently and die earlier. The extra power wasted by the cheaper PSU would make it more expensive in the long run. Realistically you want to run a PSU at 50% of its rating all the time as it wastes the least electricity that way, but us gamers have to compromise and run them a bit higher when gaming, owing to the huge difference in power usage between normal computing and gaming. Y'see, running a PSU too lightly (especially under 20% of their rating) won't damage it but can still waste a lot of energy!