Advice On Building A Gaming Pc!

TheCapedCrusade

Since my home PC is, well, a dell dimension 3000 from 2003,it won't run newer games, namely call of duty, bioshock, the sims, any decent mmorpg.

So I decided I'd give building one a shot. Now it wouldn't be replacing my home computer, as I want this one to be a personalized one. And I don't really want me Da saying "it'll be cheaper to buy one" when he is quite clearly wrong. I know a decent bit about computers and I will be getting help to make it, Id just like to what components I should purchase. I've a budget of about €500 - €600. Which I hope will be enough!

I'd like to know what processor, CPU, video, sound, and graphics card, the motherboard, etc is suitable for that price range. I'm not looking for a top-O-the-range system, just something that will run games for a good long time.

Thanks,
Mark.

EDIT:and please no links to other threads.

Solitaire

Why not? :P

Just by saying that you'll be the first person in ages to get hit by a ton of "see this thread here!" posts y'know! I'd never be so cruel, but I can't vouch for everyone...

The first question is of course: Does that budget include a new monitor/OS/peripherals? And the second is - if you already have a monitor, what resolution is it?

€600 isn't a bad figure for a mid-range build but the second you start losing €100 chunks out of it for some of the stuff above everything quickly goes to hell...

Wonda-Boy

TBH and I know I will get shot down here....but €600 is not alot to build a gaming PC I tell you that.

I mean for a "GAMING" rig you are gonna need a good to UBER gpu and my advice is to go for a least a ATi 58xx series card and that is gonna cost you €200+ No point in getting a last gen card now along the line of nvidia gtx range. You could possibly wait till march to see what the new nvidia cards bring to the table.

The latest AMD x4's are really good chips and match the C2DQ's and you will save a few quid on the mobo. Maybe you should RAPE the PC you have to save on components and get the best gear you can.

Jonny7

aahh for 600 euros you can get yourself a nice machine that will run all new games no bother.. will be a giant leap after an ancient Dell.

I had that budget recently, and I gave myself 10 or 20 euros leeway on important components like CPU and GPU..

It would be tight, but you could aim for a quad core AMD or a fast dual core i3, both have different benefits. 4 gigs of ram is pretty much essential, 1 tb harddrive is possible, don't scrimp on the power supply, half decent case, dvd writer. I would be assuming you already have an operating system? if so then you should have enough left over for a ATI 5770 graphics, which, won't set any gaming records, but plays everything I can throw at it on high settings on a 22 inch monitor.

The pc configurator on hardwareversand.de is a good place to start.. if you have some choice in the components and maybe a read a little about the CPU and graphics then you'll have a lot more satisfaction in putting them together.

cherryghost

Wonda-Boy wrote: »

TBH and I know I will get shot down here....but €600 is not alot to build a gaming PC I tell you that.

I mean for a "GAMING" rig you are gonna need a good to UBER gpu and my advice is to go for a least a ATi 58xx series card and that is gonna cost you €200+ No point in getting a last gen card now along the line of nvidia gtx range. You could possibly wait till march to see what the new nvidia cards bring to the table.

The latest AMD x4's are really good chips and match the C2DQ's and you will save a few quid on the mobo. Maybe you should RAPE the PC you have to save on components and get the best gear you can.

oh come on. he said he didnt want a top of the range.

OP you could build yourself a nice Core i5 rig with a decent graphics card that would last you a good while for 600 euro.

As solitaire said though, depends on the peripherals, whether you need to or not

TheCapedCrusade

As I said before lads, I'm simply looking to build somthing that will actually PLAY games, not some top of the range monster.

Yes I have the operating system sorted, I know a guy who can get me windows 7 ultimate edition . But with €600 I should be able to make a decent pc, right?

cherryghost

TheCapedCrusade wrote: »

As I said before lads, I'm simply looking to build somthing that will actually PLAY games, not some top of the range monster.

Yes I have the operating system sorted, I know a guy who can get me windows 7 ultimate edition . But with €600 I should be able to make a decent pc, right?

do you need a monitor/keyboard/mouse?

TerrorFirmer

Wonda-Boy wrote: »

TBH and I know I will get shot down here....but €600 is not alot to build a gaming PC I tell you that.

I mean for a "GAMING" rig you are gonna need a good to UBER gpu and my advice is to go for a least a ATi 58xx series card and that is gonna cost you €200+ No point in getting a last gen card now along the line of nvidia gtx range. You could possibly wait till march to see what the new nvidia cards bring to the table.

The latest AMD x4's are really good chips and match the C2DQ's and you will save a few quid on the mobo. Maybe you should RAPE the PC you have to save on components and get the best gear you can.

That advice is way out of context. Lets assume that we're talking solely about the games mentioned - Bioshock, Call of Duty MW2, The Sims - and let's assume that he wants to run them at maximum resolution at, say, 1440x900. Even that in itself is incredibly unlikely if the machine in question is from 2003, but just to err on the side of caution. A machine capable of that would easily be built for much less than 600 - not to mention that he could, more likely, be playing at 1280x1024, in which case the requisite machine to play those games at native resolution at maximum settings would drop in price even further. In theory - and practically too, though these parts are not available new anymore, which is why I'm only mentioning this in passing - an old Core 2 Duo from the launch line up (say, an E6400@50 euro 2nd hand) and an old 8800GTS 320MB@40-45 euro 2nd hand would rip through any of those games at 1280x1024 and would perform pretty well up to 1440x900. Not bad, considering you're looking at someone who will be coming from a position in which he can't play those games full stop! The reasons above are exactly the reason why an 'uber' graphics card is hardly necessary, let alone an insistence on a current gen card - though I will admit that the value in the lower end budget/performance cards is actually not bad. A lot of the current gen higher end cards are ridiculously priced though. I have a 4890, which had dropped to rock bottom prices, but then mysteriously shot back up with the release of the new cards - probably to smooth over the embarrassing gap between cards that was not reflected relative to performance whatsoever. As it is, I'd have to drop about a hundred quid on my 4890 to get a card giving me about 10-15% performance increase in that generations competing class - hardly worth it.

I have always felt that since Core2 came out, people are continuously both over and underestimating the requisite hardware to play games. The cheapest Intel dual core - provided it's not celeron (which in itself would be perfectly OK for gaming at relatively low res, but lets not get too into that) - would be perfectly fine for someone taking their first step into PC gaming, even putting aside the monster OC potential. I understand their are a few games that do put demands on processors but in what I would estimate to be 85-90% of games, a dual core hitting 2.2 - 2.4Ghz freq is perfectly capable of churning out games at HD and above resolutions - certainly in the case of Sims, Bioshock, and either Modern Warfare. It runs fine on my laptop - a 2Ghz Core 2 with 9600GS at 1366x768.

Oh, but what about future proofing...please. People have been spinning that line for years with even refresh of hardware, the bottom line is that my old 1.6Ghz E2140 from years ago could handle the latest games effortlessly when overclocked (which costs nothing). If you're against overclocking, I can say the same thing about my 60 euro E5200 from 2 years ago, with a clock speed of 2.5Ghz it would still handle the games mentioned above at virtually any resolution without a hitch. I still have an ancient Biostar S775 motherboard I use as a backup from time to time too, there's far too much emphasis these days on features that will never be used, potentials that are never reached, and so on. No, far from 600 being too little, I challenge that by saying it's not only possible, but you could also fit into that a nice monitor for yourself too, considering you've already got the OS.

I'm not saying a build like below is exactly perfect. But people have to stop insisting on you need i3. You need i5. You need quad core. You need the latest gen video card. You don't, simple as. With this build (komplett) - again, just an example - you could sit back and enjoy Bioshock and Call of Duty at 1440x900 at maximum settings.

Samsung 19" Montior (1440x900)
HD5670 (though if you could find a very cheap 9800GT it takes the fight pretty well to 5670)
Gigabyte P43 Board
Antec 300 Case
Corsair VX550w PSU
E5300 @ 2.6Ghz
4GB DDR2 Ram
DVD-RW
500GB Hard Drive

But then again, you could always drop the monitor and use the extra money to go i3/x4/i5 or whatever - it's all possible. My point - 600 euro is more than enough for a gaming rig. And not just to play games - to play them at high settings.

TerrorFirmer

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

....

I agree with alot of what you said but an E5300 at 2.6 may run those games you mentioned at lower resolutions (1440x900) and below but it will be on the limit and it certainly will be the bottleneck in a system with a HD5670 (or maybe not as the card is equally as bad a choice, see below) on newer games like bioshock 2, dirt 2, dawn of war 2 at most any resolution. I recently swapped out an E5200 @3.8 for an E8400 at 4.3 because it was bottlenecking my GTS260 @1680x1050 in all the newer games i mentioned above (badly, i got huge frame rate increases after dropping in the E8400 and Oc'ing to 4.3).

My point is that the E5x00 is a poor choice with a budget of 600 which leaves me ready to recommend other socket 775 cpu's like a Q9550 or E8400...but wait, they still cost alot and you get better performance to cost with any i5 or i3 system....so....Ya, you should go i5 if you are running a res of 1440x900 or greater and if you play any newish games at all or plan too.

edit: Why would you advise him to get a 9800GT? Surely he should get the die shrunk, cooler, more efficient and slightly faster GTS250 which is available very cheap now instead?...But i definitely wouldnt advise either tbh. and the HD5670 is not a good card no matter what way you look at it. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/01/14/ati-radeon-hd-5670-review/10

edit2: Terrorfirmer, if you are against the idea of futureproofing why recommend a 550w PSU for a system that will draw ~260-280 under full load? Of course corsair is a good choice but if not futureproofing wouldnt a lower output and cheaper PSU suffice?

slowlydownwards

@TerrorFirmer Thanks for taking time to write that reply... about time somebody spoke up... Getting tired of the ever-repetitive "get i5 / i7, it's dog's cojones..." posts.

@OP Komplett ran pre-xmass 500eur build competition... some great builds in there that are still relevant. Not giving you a link, since you do not want it.

TerrorFirmer

david7536 wrote: »

I agree with alot of what you said but an E5300 at 2.6 may run those games you mentioned at lower resolutions (1440x900) and below but it will be on the limit and it certainly will be the bottleneck in a system with a HD5670 on newer games like bioshock 2, dirt 2, dawn of war 2 at most any resolution. I recently swapped out an E5200 @3.8 for an E8400 at 4.3 because it was bottlenecking my GTS260 @1680x1050 in all the newer games i mentioned above (badly, i got huge frame rate increases after dropping in the E8400 and Oc'ing to 4.3).

My point is that the E5x00 is a poor choice with a budget of 600 which leaves me ready to recommend other socket 775 cpu's like a Q9550 or E8400...but wait, they still cost alot and you get better performance to cost with any i5 or i3 system....so....Ya, you should go i5 if you are running a res of 1440x900 or greater and if you play any newish games at all or plan too.

edit: Why would you advise him to get a 9800GT? Surely he should get the die shrunk, cooler, more efficient and slightly faster GTS250 which is available very cheap now instead?...But i definitely wouldnt advise either tbh. and the HD5670 is not a good card no matter what way you look at it. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/01/14/ati-radeon-hd-5670-review/10

I think you have something else at hand if you found an E5200 at 3.8Ghz was bottlenecking. Yes, the smaller l2 would lead to some decrease but overclocked that high to compensate would offset it. Look back to the reviews of the Pentium 21x0 line, when overclocked heavily, even with the meagre 1mb l2, they were rivalling the top end extreme processors at stock in a lot of tests. I've run Dawn of War 2 at 1920x1200 on an E5200 overclocked - but nowhere near 3.8Ghz - perfectly fine. I simply cannot imagine that any games would be remotely CPU bound by an E5200 at such a high frequency unless they were poorly optimized. In fact, you also mentioned that you needed to OC your E8400 to 4.3Ghz to acheive your desired framerates at 1680X1050. I've got an E8600 and at stock - 3.33Ghz - it pisses all over Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2 at 1920x1200 - you name it. The only games it struggles with - and I use the word struggle loosely - are ones that are generally poorly optimized - GTAIV springs to mind. I've got a 4890 OC. Perhaps you need to take a look at drivers? No game - certainly not MW2 or Bioshock - demands 4.3Ghz frequency of a dual core unless it's very poorly optimised (or is designed exclusively for quad core). In fact, I've run Modern Warfare 2 pretty OK on my laptops 2Ghz dual core with 9600M video card at HD resolution...both of which are incredibly inferior to even a basic set up of an E5300 and 9800GT. I'm not saying you wouldn't get a framerate increase between E5300 and E8400 at similar frequencies (lets say, 3.8Ghz) - but these would be beyond human perception, you'd be talking framerates far beyond what the human eye could notice. The games you've mentioned would be GPU rather than CPU bottlenecked, especially at such a resolution as 1440x900....you know, the GTS250 is not exactly a powerhouse itself either, so if you're playing games at maximum settings at 1680x1050 - that's most likely the bottleneck rather then your processor. Like I said - I've an E8600 at lower frequency than your own E8400 and with a 4890 I have had absolutely no problem with any of those games you've mentioned at 1920x1200 at maximum settings. Overclocking to 4Ghz offered me virtually nothing in games, as the difference was a few frames on top of an already stable and consistently high framerate. My 4890 is the limiting factor in most games, I had slightly better performance when I had GTX260 in Sli.

Also added to that, I said in my post you could go i3 or i5, but there's a strong choice the user will want a new monitor too. Start throwing around Q9550 or E8400 and it's not leaving much for the rest of the build if it includes a monitor.

As to the 9800GT...prices for the GTS250 are much higher. I've seen 9800GTs go for 70 euro - can you show me a GTS250 for that price? The 5670 is around the same price, which is why I mentioned it - sure it might not be super, but for that price, it's pretty good, and rivals the 9800GT in performance but with the benefits you've mentioned of smaller die size, feature set, etc. If you can show me a card for 70 quid that smokes either, then I'm happy to see it. In fact, in that test you linked, the 5670 is running Dawn of War 2 at 1680x1050, 16xAF, Max settings, at 42fps average. It also manages Fallout 3 at the same settings at 51fps. That's hardly poor in my book, especially not when the res of the monitor I suggested is 1440x900, and when the OP is looking for a machine that can simply play games. Can you point out a viewpoint there that suggests the 5670 is 'no good no matter what way you look at it?' Sure, if you compare it to the GTS250 but...last time I checked they were at least about 30 quid more expensive when you compare the cheapest 9800GT/5670 vs GTS250. That's a considerable amount of money when you're talking about a budget build. I think he'd be pretty happy that it could play games at those levels.

I'm not attacking your post I just think you're displaying the sort of attitude I went out of my way to distance myself from - you need x, or you need y. Point in case - saying the 5670 is worthless. A card that can play current games at 1440x900 - 1680x1050 at respectable framerates at maximum settings is pretty good in my book for 70 quid. Somehow, I doubt the OP will be playing games at 1680x1050 - 1920x1200 with max AA/AF. Every class of card exists for a reason and/or purpose. In my opinion this it fills the bill well here.

edit: As for the PSU, it's the one aspect of a build that can last years. CPUs, boards, video cards - all destined to become obsolete, unsupported, whatever. Yes, the CX400 would suffice and save cash, but the Vx550 will last a few builds, or will tolerate performance cards if at a later date he chooses to add in a better one.

TheCapedCrusade

@TerrorFirmer, Thanks for taking the time to write that, I now know the basic components I need to build it.
Thanks.

Jonny7

I just did up a pc on hardwareversand.de but this netbook is so fiddly I lost it

Anyway you can get a 3.0 ghz quad AMD chip - 130 euros

an ATI 5770 graphics card - 120 euros

and a 1 terabyte harddrive - 75 euros

plus all the other bits and it fits nicely into 600 euros

A machine like that will run the likes of modern warfare two, etc very very smoothly (I know I play it on a similar machine)

and if you are feeling a little lazy that site will build the pc for you for 20 euros, but just remember if you have to send anything back, Germany is a long way. Have order from them plenty though and never had any problems.