Building my first gaming PC

[EboMan7x]

So, after a year of PC games telling me that any graphics setting above "Low" would make my computer burst into flames, I've decided that I want to build a gaming PC.

Problem is, I know nothing. My understanding is that the majority of the Escapists are PC gamers, so I figured this may be a good place to look for help. Anything from How to vids, to part recomendations, or anything will be appreciated.

EDIT: My budget is around $1000, will spend more if I have to, wouldn't have a problem spending less.
EDIT2: heh... okay, so when I said "I know nothing", I mean I literally KNOW NOOOOOTHING. Like... even if you just wanna tell me what RAM is, or like... whatever. I'm truly in a sorry state on this project.

 

[JRCB]

The only thing I can say is avoid brand new motherboards with H67 or P67 chipsets (they work with new Intel processors that use Sandy Bridge architecture). They're undergoing recalls right now, and I made the mistake of buying one. Which means I have to wait a month before I can get my PC running again.

Other than that, what's your budget?

 

[DefunctTheory]

Budget please.

After that, easy.

 

[EboMan7x]

Other than that, what's your budget?

I'm looking spend up to $1000. But if I need to spend more I will.

 

[EboMan7x]

Budget please.

After that, easy.

Around $1000

 

[EHKOS]

The thing about building a PC is, As much as you can spend, spend. The better you can do, the longer you can do better. Shop around, but on the best, newest, most powerful parts. Or else your new computer will be obsolete sooner than you think.

 

[EboMan7x]

The thing about building a PC is, As much as you can spend, spend. The better you can do, the longer you can do better. Shop around, but on the best, newest, most powerful parts. Or else your new computer will be obsolete sooner than you think.

What do you mean obsolete? Like there will be faster computers, or like I'll be back to where I am now trying to get PC games to work? I don't care if there are better computers than mine, I just want to play the games without having to set it low graphics and wait 15 minutes for every pixel to load.

 

[Worgen]

well going for the newest and shiniest parts is over rated, I would just go for middling parts since it will probably last you for only bit shorter then really high end parts

lets see, Im too lazy to look up prices right now but your gonna want at least 4 gigs of ddr3 ram, windows 7, probably a quad core, a vid card with 1gig of memory (I got a gtx 460 for like 150 from newegg) if your gonna build this yourself you can make a pretty good machine for probably like.... 800, should include the cost of a monitor as well but the most expensive parts will be the cpu, vid card and the os, but you should be able to get all of those for between 150-200 and end up with some good parts, not great but good, should last plenty of time also

once you build a machine is much cheaper to keep it going since you can just upgrade parts as you wish and the most obvious thing to upgrade is the vid card and ram, and just doing those bit by bit as you need to is much cheaper then building a new system every few years

 

[randomsix]

newegg.com is your best friend right now.

Also, protip, make sure your ram and cpu are compatible with your motherboard and that the motherboard has all the room you need for the stuff you want.

Edit: If you're going Intel for the cpu, you might consider staying with the quad core family of cpus instead of the i7's. my q9450 still handily manages the vast majority of games I throw at it on high settings.

 

[Worgen]

The thing about building a PC is, As much as you can spend, spend. The better you can do, the longer you can do better. Shop around, but on the best, newest, most powerful parts. Or else your new computer will be obsolete sooner than you think.

What do you mean obsolete? Like there will be faster computers, or like I'll be back to where I am now trying to get PC games to work? I don't care if there are better computers than mine, I just want to play the games without having to set it low graphics and wait 15 minutes for every pixel to load.

hes wrong, pretty much as soon as you can buy parts they are obsolete so dont worry about it, just going middle of the road is better then spending a ton since you can always upgrade later, Ive made the mistake of buying really expensive parts before and they ended up being wasted money for the most part

really the only reason to go really expensive is if your going to be all about overclocking and tweeking the hell out of your system for max performance which you can do with cheaper parts but they might not take it as well

 

[JayDub147]

The first thing I would do is look at pre-built gaming pcs, their prices, and their parts. Then model your purchases around those.

As for specific parts, you're going to want at least 4 gigs of ram, a quad-core processor, and at least a $150 graphics card. Choose your processor first, then your motherboard, then your ram. I would also recommend against getting a solid-state hard drive, as they seem to have a few issues and are much more expensive.

For the processor, I'd go AMD, simply because it's so much cheaper than intel.

As for sites to do your parts browsing, I'd go newegg.

 

[KiKiweaky]

If I could build your pc for you I'd love to, but I'm going out getting hammered in about 10 minutes.

I take it your going to use the same speakers/keyboard/mouse/screen etc, find a good site in the states for computer parts. They may offer pre assembled computers just the box itself cpu/gpu/ram etc.

Take your time, do your research aswell, when I bought my computer. I bought all the parts seperatly, which led to some fun times. The graphics card I bought was 10.5 inches long and the graphics card space in the case was 10.6, after some butchery it eventually went into place haha..... buying a pre assembled one will mean stuff like this wont happen to you.

Oh and happy gaming

 

[Boris Goodenough]

I would wait for Intel's new motherboards to get fixed then buy, should only tkae 1-2 months from now.

I would get the Intel i5-2400 (200 USD), 8 GB of RAM (100 USD, almost any would do, but I would recommend Corsair or Kingston, just the value kind), Asus motherboard (really, any kind that takes socket 1155), newegg won't tell me prices, so bleh but up to around 250 USD is possible.
An AMD 6870(220USD).
Corsair HX 850 (150 USD).
A "cheap" HDD, pref. from Seagate (cause I am a fanboy).

 

[Panayjon]

This might seem like a trap, but occasionally 4Chan is actually useful:

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/CurrentLogicalPCBuyingGuide/Guide.png

You'll probably be able to build it yourself too, if you're willing to risk it. Youtube has a bunch of How-To videos. If you're not, it will still give you a great idea of pricing.

 

[EHKOS]

The thing about building a PC is, As much as you can spend, spend. The better you can do, the longer you can do better. Shop around, but on the best, newest, most powerful parts. Or else your new computer will be obsolete sooner than you think.

What do you mean obsolete? Like there will be faster computers, or like I'll be back to where I am now trying to get PC games to work? I don't care if there are better computers than mine, I just want to play the games without having to set it low graphics and wait 15 minutes for every pixel to load.

hes wrong, pretty much as soon as you can buy parts they are obsolete so dont worry about it, just going middle of the road is better then spending a ton since you can always upgrade later, Ive made the mistake of buying really expensive parts before and they ended up being wasted money for the most part

really the only reason to go really expensive is if your going to be all about overclocking and tweeking the hell out of your system for max performance which you can do with cheaper parts but they might not take it as well

What I mean is, I went out and got average parts and about a year and a half afterward, I found myself shelling out more money just so I could play a new release.

 

[Worgen]

The thing about building a PC is, As much as you can spend, spend. The better you can do, the longer you can do better. Shop around, but on the best, newest, most powerful parts. Or else your new computer will be obsolete sooner than you think.

What do you mean obsolete? Like there will be faster computers, or like I'll be back to where I am now trying to get PC games to work? I don't care if there are better computers than mine, I just want to play the games without having to set it low graphics and wait 15 minutes for every pixel to load.

hes wrong, pretty much as soon as you can buy parts they are obsolete so dont worry about it, just going middle of the road is better then spending a ton since you can always upgrade later, Ive made the mistake of buying really expensive parts before and they ended up being wasted money for the most part

really the only reason to go really expensive is if your going to be all about overclocking and tweeking the hell out of your system for max performance which you can do with cheaper parts but they might not take it as well

What I mean is, I went out and got average parts and about a year and a half afterward, I found myself shelling out more money just so I could play a new release.

Ive done that with high end parts also, I got a 500 vid card but then a new version of direct X came out and my card didnt support all the features of it and it couldnt handle shadows and lighting as well as new cheap cards and eventually I replaced it with a cheap 120 card that lacked the raw power of my old one but could handle new game tech much better so it was a kind of weird situation where old games wouldnt play as well (still fine just not quite as high fps) but new ones played much better with all the sexy lighting

 

[DefunctTheory]

What I mean is, I went out and got average parts and about a year and a half afterward, I found myself shelling out more money just so I could play a new release.

Then you just made a poor choice of parts.

3 years ago I built an 800 dollar PC (Really 1000, but the case was 250).

I just now had to replace parts, and only then just the video card and more RAM.

The trick to future-proofing your PC as best as possible: Cheap RAM, expensive video cards, and as many cores as you can jam in there.

 

[Ossim_Sauce]

God I wish I had your budget, I too am planning on building my own gaming PC though I'm not sure how far 520 bucks is going to get me.

Best of luck to ya

 

[Wolfram23]

So, after a year of PC games telling me that any graphics setting above "Low" would make my computer burst into flames, I've decided that I want to build a gaming PC.

Problem is, I know nothing. My understanding is that the majority of the Escapists are PC gamers, so I figured this may be a good place to look for help. Anything from How to vids, to part recomendations, or anything will be appreciated.

EDIT: My budget is around $1000, will spend more if I have to, wouldn't have a problem spending less.
EDIT2: heh... okay, so when I said "I know nothing", I mean I literally KNOW NOOOOOTHING. Like... even if you just wanna tell me what RAM is, or like... whatever. I'm truly in a sorry state on this project.

First thing, spend some serious time researching. I knew a thing or two about PCs but never built one until last May, and I spent at least 2 weeks researching every little thing I could on current CPUs and GPUs, as well as what sort of RAM to get and how all that stuff works. It's daunting at first but just start researching what's already out. It'll take time but you'll have a lot more confidence in purchasing after you've done your homework, and you'll know exactly what to expect out of it.

Secondly, this website(http://tomshardware.com) is a fantastically amazing resource. Especially check out their "new builds" section on the forum and you'll get lots of insight into what people are building and recommending at your price. There's lots of other good sites too (guru3D, techpowerup, anandtech, hardwarecanucks, etc)

Off the top of my head I'd recommend an i5 2500k ("k" if you feel like overclocking, and really, there's no reason not to with these CPUs) on an Asus P8P67D Pro mobo. 4-6gb RAM (8 if it's in the budget). For GPU depends on your resolution but I wouldn't get less than a single 6870 or GTX 460 1gb. I'd recommend a GTX560 Ti or maybe a 5870 but there's a lot of options.

You could also save some money on the cpu stuff by getting an AMD Phenom II X4 and maybe put a little more cash towards CF/SLI GPUs.

Anyway yeah there is a ton of possibilities right now. I can throw names and numbers at you all day but I think that the absolute best thing to do is start researching. Even just google everything from specific motherboards and cpus to more general things like "what is RAM latency" so you can understand how it all works.