Building a gaming PC....how hard is it?

[Locutus9956]

I don't know where your based but in the UK I cannot speak highly enough of Overclockers.co.uk, they actually offer some really nice and crazy cheap prebuilt gaming PCs too if your nervous about doing it yourself (I've actually got one myself which is the first PC I havent build myself in years as I couldnt better the price (it's not top of the line by any means but it's no slouch either).

If you're not UK based though I dont know how much use that will be, the overclockers forums though are a goldmine of very tech savvy types who will more or less write you a step by step instruction guide if you give them your requirments, pricepoint, etc (I'm not talking about me here by the way, I know my way aorund a PC but I'm not a hardware guru by any means!)

 

[trouble_gum]

Also, when it comes to power supply, make sure it's good enough or you're gonna have a bad time, I would suggest a 750w because unless you're going overboard, it'll run your system without costing a lot on your power bill, if you don't care about the power consumption, or cost of the power supply itself that much, feel free to get one that is more powerful, however, I would suggest Coolermaster, as the brand they just seem to work better than other ones I've tried, quieter fans and such, also they don't cost too much.

This. Saving money on your PSU will likely only lead to either a shorter lifespan for your machine as it glitches out and your PC slowly dies or it just flat out not working due to there being insufficient power for all the internal components. A quad-core CPU and a recent GPU pretty much demands that you have a PSU capable of putting out a consistent 750w. The important word here is "consistent." There are some cheaper PSUs that claim to be 750w, and they are. At PEAK output. Which is no use to you, so this is an area you should be careful in and that it's easy to overlook.

 

[Varrdy]

I built my own PC for less than £400 and it's handled anything I've thrown at it so far! It helped that I got the nVidia 9600 card cheap off a mate (never used) but the rest was bought new from a local parts shop.

One thing I will say, despite it being a cliche, is this: When it comes to a power supply (PSU) - buy cheap and you buy twice!

The case I got came with a somewhat lightweight 500w effort that died after about a month. The old 450w unit from my old PC was much meatier and lasted long enough for me to find a good 650w unit.

I'm no expert but I know how a screwdriver works and what goes where - as others have said, there are a squillion-and-one guides to PC building online.

Good luck!

 

[Vault101]

snip.

snip

just thourght Id ask a couple of people..how does this build look?

http://pcpartpicker.com/au/p/itC4

 

[Signa]

snip.

snip

just thourght Id ask a couple of people..how does this build look?

http://pcpartpicker.com/au/p/itC4

You could save yourself $50 right off the bat if you drop the cooler. Intel stock coolers are plenty if you aren't overclocking.

Other than that, you're perfect. The last gripe I have because of personal preference is I like Nvidia over ATI.
I normally use this when gauging my video cards
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-5.html
Right now, it looks like ATI is offering the best bang for your buck, but I find Nvidia Physx damn sexy. You can't get that on ATI cards. To me, it's worth the extra cash for the extra functions.

Lastly, you have a micro ATX board selected. Nothing wrong with a micro, but because they are smaller, they don't have the same expansions that a larger board will have. The Toms Hardware article I linked shows the best bang for your buck at the $250-$300 range is dual cards. Most micro boards don't have dual graphics card slots. It does look like the one you chose does though. If you do go dual cards, that board will only support ATI dual cards, so your current choice does mesh well right now.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

To be honest, I'd just go to your local computer store and get them to make a custom rig for you. Cheaper than buying something pre-made and easier than putting it together yourself.

 

[thePyro_13]

$1000AUD PC is more than enough to run current games on full settings. But you'll have to tone the settings down as the years go on.

Buy the parts yourself and put them together, a lot of them come with instructions for assembly(such as attaching the CPU to the motherboard). You can find many guides on the internet.

Just remain aware of static and make sure none of the wires are in a position that might let them clog up a fan(I've killed a video card that way before).

If you're worried about assembly then just take the parts to a comp shop and have them assemble it for you.

 

[Elate]

FROM THE BELLY OF THE EARTH THE DWARVES WORK THEIR SECRET TECHNIQUES TO FORGE THE MACHINES OF GODS!

Honestly, really not that hard to actually BUILD it. So long as you have the right power supply etc, a big enough case to fit it, and you know all the parts go together. Other than that, pretty much follow all the instruction books you get, and don't make a stupid mistake like I did and curse it out for an hour straight for not working, before realising I hadn't plugged the god damn power, in to the god damn motherboard.

 

[distortedreality]

To be honest, I'd just go to your local computer store and get them to make a custom rig for you. Cheaper than buying something pre-made and easier than putting it together yourself.

Only do that if you trust the person though, otherwise you can definitely get taken for a ride.

My grandfather recently (like last week) went into a small computer shop to ask them to write him up a quote for a new computer. He explained to them that he does basic photo editing, net surfing, email etc. So nothing too taxing, right?

The idiot at the store quotes him one of the most expensive i5's he has, a 5xx series Nvidia GPU, 16GB's of high end ram, a $50 Asrock mobo, a generic PSU for $30 and a 1TB hdd. My grandfather brought me the quote, and I literally wiped my ass with it and mailed it back to them with my thoughts.

So, if you go the route above, either have someone you trust at the store or have you someone you trust look over the quote before committing.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

To be honest, I'd just go to your local computer store and get them to make a custom rig for you. Cheaper than buying something pre-made and easier than putting it together yourself.

Only do that if you trust the person though, otherwise you can definitely get taken for a ride.

My grandfather recently (like last week) went into a small computer shop to ask them to write him up a quote for a new computer. He explained to them that he does basic photo editing, net surfing, email etc. So nothing too taxing, right?

The idiot at the store quotes him one of the most expensive i5's he has, a 5xx series Nvidia GPU, 16GB's of high end ram, a $50 Asrock mobo, a generic PSU for $30 and a 1TB hdd. My grandfather brought me the quote, and I literally wiped my ass with it and mailed it back to them with my thoughts.

So, if you go the route above, either have someone you trust at the store or have you someone you trust look over the quote before committing.

Yes, I should have specified that. All big-ticket purchases should be made under the oversight of someone you trust with knowledge in the area.

Also, wrong use of the word literally (at least I hope so).

 

[Angry Camel]

Get your parts from MSY, they have good prices. I built one for about $1'000 with parts from there (Balcatta) and it's running like a champ.

Basically, most parts of a PC need 2 things; power and communication. PSU gives the power and the motherboard serves as the communication centre.

If you want a rough guideline for your PC (assuming you want to play games on high), here's mine:

Intel i5 processor (3570)
Gigabyte Z77MX3 motherboard
Freezer i30 CPU cooling fan (stock coolers are enough, but I'm pedantic)
Nvidia GTX560 graphics card
2x4GB ram (ram is cheap)
CD drive (doesn't matter what, get a bluray if you wanna watch those on your PC)
Barracuda 1TB hard drive
Intel 120GB Solid state drive (you don't need to get one that big though, 60 is plenty if you put the OS on there)
Antec 900 case

Watch the newegg videos people have posted in this thread, they're great.

 

[Blackdoom]

thanks for the help!

also are thee any Australians who might tell me where is a good place to buy thr parts?..online seems the more obvious way..though I'm hesitant to trust sites aside from familiar ones like ebay (they all seems oddly expensive on ebay)

I usually buy my parts from http://pccasegear.com/ However there are some other places which are good for parts such as Scorptech or Centrecom depending. MSY is meant to be good however I have never used it.

The prices in Australia are more expensive for the same reasons as anything else.

 

[distortedreality]

MSY is cheap, but the people that work there are dicks. I avoid the place like the plague.

My local shop is very good (ARC), but i've had good relationships with ItEstate, and SkyComp as well. Pc Case Gear as noted above also has a very good reputation.

 

[loc978]

snip.

snip

just thourght Id ask a couple of people..how does this build look?

http://pcpartpicker.com/au/p/itC4

As a general rule, I advise people not to mix intel and AMD or AMD and NVIDIA anymore... but it's not a hard and fast rule. If you want a sandy bridge CPU, you're shooting into a higher price bracket than any AMD part already anyway. That processor is going to leave any single video card in the dust... which translates to a bottleneck in the video department.

The aftermarket heatsink/fan could be dropped since the processor is retail and the stock one is fine if you're not overclocking (and if you are, you'd want something beefier). Holy crap that $190 retail processor comes with no fan.. what the hell, intel?!

If you're cool with filling up all your RAM slots with 4GB, alright... but I'd advise leaving some room for expansion. 2x2GB instead of 4x1GB would leave an upgrade option open without leftover parts.

Your Hard Drive is only SATA II, and the board has 2 SATA III slots... that's twice the data transfer rate. That will be a bottleneck for the system. It won't cause gaming framerate issues so much as long load times and stuttering during precaching.

A Micro ATX motherboard is an odd choice with a big ol' case like that, but it'll fit with plenty of room to spare. Still, you might get more expansion options out of a similar full-sized board.

Not sure why you need the sound card. If you're doing professional audio work with it, I suppose that would explain things, but the motherboard does have onboard 8-channel HD audio. That tends to be more than enough for most people... and you'd need to disable the onboard sound to avoid conflict with your PCI card. (also, that's $80 you don't need to spend)

Your power supply is totally future proof, by the way. I hope you plan on adding hard drives, optical drives, and maybe a clone SLI and/or crossfire video card some time in the future, because it can handle that. Of course, if you do wind up with twin video cards at some point, you'll probably also want to replace that processor with an i7 3.5GHz... I'll leave you to ponder the future of your own system, though. Just know that power supply won't be overstressed with any or all of the above.
In case you're curious... with an additional video card of the type I chose below SLI'd, an additional 256GB SSD, 2 additional 7200 RPM 2TB hard drives, doubled RAM, a blu-ray burner in addition to the DVD-R and the most demanding i7 I could find, the system would peak at about 530W.

**edit # I don't know**
So... I played around with pcpartpicker's hardware list and came up with a tweaked, slightly cheaper and more homogeneous loadout... but I can't save it without making an account, which is one more step than I want to take here, so I'll detail the changes here instead (I tried to keep the choices similar in price and brand with the exception of the drastic video card swap. Which isn't nearly as necessary as the RAM, HDD and motherboard swaps... if you're dead set on that 7870, don't let me stop you).

1. removed the sound card.
2. replaced the motherboard with http://pcpartpicker.com/au/part/asus-motherboard-p8h77v
3. replaced the hard drive with http://pcpartpicker.com/au/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd1002faex
4. replaced the video card with http://pcpartpicker.com/au/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvn660oc2gd
5. replaced the RAM with http://pcpartpicker.com/au/part/kingston-memory-khx1600c9d3b1k24gx

that dropped the price from 1038.75 to 1002.25
Of course, that's not an option if you need that sound card for something professional. Adding it back would take you to 1081.25

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

Well first off, make sure your RAM and CPU are compatible with your motherboard.

Second, when you're putting the motherboard in the case, DON'T FORGET THE STANDOUTS (Had to go buy a brand new motherboard when I built my first computer because I forgot the standouts and I burnt out the mobo.)

Third, cable management is key, it really helps with both cooling and if you have to do some under-the-hood maintenance when your cords aren't just haphazardly strewn around your case.

Forth, don't skimp on RAM. DDR3 RAM is ridiculously cheap and 8-16 gigs of RAM really go a long way.

Fifth, unless you are in a room completely surrounded by tiles and are wearing a rubber suit, get some antistatic equipment, especially when handling the motherboard, CPU or RAM.

Sixth, more expensive isn't always better. Shop around for graphics cards. A lot of the more expensive cards will come with a lot of bells and whistles that, unless you are a hardcore PC enthusiast, you will never use. Also your cost for the PC as a whole should not be any more than $1500.

Seventh, if it doesn't go in easily, you're doing it wrong. Never force a component into it's socket. You will almost always end up having to buy a replacement.