How to get into PC gaming?

[ElNeroDiablo]

I'm currently setting up a computer for gaming and it doesn't seem like it will cost much over $1000 AUS.
I have the case ($105) a power supply (free, from family) and a DVD drive (free from family, again) already. All I need now is a motherboard, processor and RAM (looks like about $500 - $600 altogether from swap meets), a video and sound card and 2 monitors (one which I may get for free).

That $500-600 that is mentioned is for three components and three components only. Nobody in their right mind would plan a rig for PC gaming and try to shoehorn the video card and hard drive into the same budget as the CPU, mobo & RAM. As an over-all budget for the price of parts? Yes, that's where the price of video card fits, not when you're focussing on the 3 things that are gonna be running the fucking video card.
I left ~OUT~ the price of video card from the three parts I picked before as they were JUST for the $500-600 budget for those 3 parts. I tossed in the hard drive at the end for if Creator002 wanted to spend the positive difference between the limit and the price of those 3 parts combined. it was not a serious part of the suggestion and more of a side note.

If I set a limit of $600 (including shipping) for the CPU, mobo & RAM, I will focus it primarily on CPU, mobo & RAM. If the end cost comes under budget, then I will reallocate that spare funding elsewhere once I'm happy (relatively) with the end choices of those 3 parts.

 

[number2301]

If you want to build a gaming PC on a budget then why would you go for an i5 2500k and IGP instead of something sensible like X4 955 and an HD 5770.

Purely for the fact that 1155 looks to be a good chipset to be on for quite some time I wouldn't recommend anyone go out buying an AM3 board.

I'd even rather go for an LGA1155 i3 with a dedicated GPU than spend money on AMD right now. Unless of course Bulldozer turns out to be sensational.

 

[Kabutos]

Hey, the pccasegear.com shopping cart page!

Needs case and PSU.

I have the case ($105) a power supply (free, from family) and a DVD drive (free from family, again) already. All I need now is a motherboard, processor and RAM (looks like about $500 - $600 altogether from swap meets), a video and sound card and 2 monitors (one which I may get for free).

That $500-600 that is mentioned is for three components and three components only. Nobody in their right mind would plan a rig for PC gaming and try to shoehorn the video card and hard drive into the same budget as the CPU, mobo & RAM. As an over-all budget for the price of parts? Yes, that's where the price of video card fits, not when you're focussing on the 3 things that are gonna be running the fucking video card.
I left ~OUT~ the price of video card from the three parts I picked before as they were JUST for the $500-600 budget for those 3 parts. I tossed in the hard drive at the end for if Creator002 wanted to spend the positive difference between the limit and the price of those 3 parts combined. it was not a serious part of the suggestion and more of a side note.

If I set a limit of $600 (including shipping) for the CPU, mobo & RAM, I will focus it primarily on CPU, mobo & RAM. If the end cost comes under budget, then I will reallocate that spare funding elsewhere once I'm happy (relatively) with the end choices of those 3 parts.

Except that he says he also needs a GPU. (As well as sound card and 2 monitors but I decided to just stick to essentials)

Also thanks for explaining what shopping is.

Purely for the fact that 1155 looks to be a good chipset to be on for quite some time I wouldn't recommend anyone go out buying an AM3 board.

I'd even rather go for an LGA1155 i3 with a dedicated GPU than spend money on AMD right now. Unless of course Bulldozer turns out to be sensational.

It's kind of hard to make a budget build when the i5 2500k starts out at $220 USD.

Also yeah SB is nice but for gaming I really wouldn't pick anything lower than the 2500k; the X4 955 is perfectly fine up until it.

 

[ElNeroDiablo]

i5 2500K <$219> [http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=187_346_1184&products_id=16531]
ASRock Z68 Pro3 <$139> [http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=138_711_1183&products_id=17350]
Corsair 8GB Dual Channel kit (2x 4GB DDR3 1600MHz) <$105> [http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=186_538_913&products_id=15938]
$463

$219 is the lowball price for a 2500K here, and perfect for Creator002 as he lives in Melbourne, where PCCaseGear is located.

Even if we look at ACO located in Sydney, a 2500K is only $245 [http://computeronline.com.au/products.php?C_ID=1&S_ID=206&PROD=35455&PHPSESSID=&]. And this in in a country where the prices tend to skyrocket even if currency exchange is a null-factor, simply because it's Australia.

Hell, for $517 (including $12 S&H), I built a Core i7 2600 <$295, PCCG> with a HA65M-UD3H-B3 (something I'll never get again, issues with owner of shop where bought at in-person) <$135> & 4GB Transcend DDR3 1333MHz <$75. same store as mobo>. I've recently spent $55.76 on getting a second 4GB Transcend chip <$48> shipped from ACO to boost to 8GB so I don't need to close Firefox any time I want to play TF2, let alone Minecraft (fucking Java!).

Yes, I don't list the prices of chassis, video card (the Intel HD2000 out performs the 8400GS or 9400GT got built into other systems in the house), fans, optical, hard drive, keyboard, mouse or monitor, but that's because I'm using parts I've already got that are still working more than well enough that I don't need to spend more money on replacing those parts.

 

[number2301]

Purely for the fact that 1155 looks to be a good chipset to be on for quite some time I wouldn't recommend anyone go out buying an AM3 board.

I'd even rather go for an LGA1155 i3 with a dedicated GPU than spend money on AMD right now. Unless of course Bulldozer turns out to be sensational.

It's kind of hard to make a budget build when the i5 2500k starts out at $220 USD.

Also yeah SB is nice but for gaming I really wouldn't pick anything lower than the 2500k; the X4 955 is perfectly fine up until it.

But going for a cheaper 1155 chip gives you a nice upgrade path to 2500k/2600k/presumably Ivy Bridge. As I say, if AMD catches up it may be worthwhile but they've got a lot of work to do.

 

[Kabutos]

Yes, I don't list the prices of chassis, video card (the Intel HD2000 out performs the 8400GS or 9400GT got built into other systems in the house), fans, optical, hard drive, keyboard, mouse or monitor, but that's because I'm using parts I've already got that are still working more than well enough that I don't need to spend more money on replacing those parts.

Okay, so ignoring your kind of meh build, I'm going to say this as simply as I can:

IGPs. Are worthless. For gaming.

Sure, you might scrape by 30 fps in Black Ops at low settings an 1024x768, but any dedicated GPU, even a rock-bottom card like the 5570 will blow it out of the water.

But going for a cheaper 1155 chip gives you a nice upgrade path to 2500k/2600k/presumably Ivy Bridge. As I say, if AMD catches up it may be worthwhile but they've got a lot of work to do.

Okay yeah you could do that or upgrade to a better GPU or SSD which will have a lot more impact in gaming than a CPU.

Point is, why would you spend more money on say, an i3 2100 (which btw is a dual core with hyperthreading so it'll be a bit slower than a true quad core) than an X4 955, when the latter will give you equal or even better performance until you swap out the i3 for a 2500k.

IMO if you want to go SB, then save up enough until you can buy a 2500k from the beginning, otherwise, AMD will give you more for your money.

 

[Katana314]

Yes, I don't list the prices of chassis, video card (the Intel HD2000 out performs the 8400GS or 9400GT got built into other systems in the house), fans, optical, hard drive, keyboard, mouse or monitor, but that's because I'm using parts I've already got that are still working more than well enough that I don't need to spend more money on replacing those parts.

Okay, so ignoring your kind of meh build, I'm going to say this as simply as I can:

IGPs. Are worthless. For gaming.

Sure, you might scrape by 30 fps in Black Ops at low settings an 1024x768, but any dedicated GPU, even a rock-bottom card like the 5570 will blow it out of the water.

Agree. There's designer logic to this too. Even if the Intel integrated cards are -not bad- by their own numbers, the fact is that PC game developers create their games optimized for the AMD and Nvidia cards. Any PC game programmer will tell you graphics cards tend to have their own ways they work slightly differently, but very few people are aiming for Intel cards for optimization, as not many PC gamers use them.

 

[ElNeroDiablo]

60-odd FPS in TF2 at either 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 (full-screen) on middle-ish settings (then again, TF2 is a rather poor benchmark when comparing cards like the 580 and 6970, but that's a different story) on a BenQ FP222W 22". MC will fluctuate between 10fps and 1000fps (typically in menus, so yeah... grain of salt), depending on render distance and how much RAM Java is hogging for MC to run (the APU has a blanket amount of 256MB + 2MB 'swap' for the V-RAM atm).

I know something like the GTX 460 ($216 + S&H at ACO [http://computeronline.com.au/products.php?C_ID=8&S_ID=125&PROD=31800&PHPSESSID=&]) with 1GB GDDR5 is gonna blow the HD2000 out of the water, but even so the HD2000 tears a new craphole in my 8400GS (PCI) and 9400GT (LP PCIe) in comparison. I'll probably look at getting the 460 in a while's time, but for me that can come AFTER a few other things are bought and paid off, so I'll stick with the HD2000 for now.

Anyways, hitting 5am 'ere (East Aus) and I'm about to crash into oblivion. Night.

 

[Allspice]

I'm actually just getting into PC gaming too. I want to get a few more years out of my current computer so I'm just going to upgrade it a bit. It currently has a Intel E6400 2.13 GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. Woefully underpowered now, I know, but it was good at the time XD.

I'm still learning about the ins and outs of all of this, but I did my homework and I think what I've decided on should work well for what I need for a while. Intel E7200 2.93 GHz processor and an extra 2GB stick of RAM (4GB is all my particular computer can handle anyway) should do the trick for me.

 

[Minigrinch]

Electronics Rule #1 : Heat kills components.

Laptops don't offer the same sort of cooling options a full size desktop can. Outside of that you can throw the same components into either. Its just a case of how long they'll last.

*Edit: In general yes your right, crap is too harsh a word.. however if you spend $3,000 on a ticking time bomb (laptop) ... Crap is an appropriate word.

I payed approximately $1200 AUS (Custom Built) for my desktop one and a half years ago, and $1000 AUS (Retail) for my laptop 6 months ago, as long as your not doing anything absolutely stupid witth it its basically never going to overheat enough for it to be damaged, and when it does the laptop has the advantage of being mobile, I have had my desktop overheat once and the only real solution is turn it off and hope for the best.

The real reson laptops are becoming much more viable is that newer parts are much more expensiive and bigger, yet actually minimally upgrade it. The newest set of processers (i7) from Intel is particularly bad, compared to the i5 series, since they are nearly quadruple the price in some cases, yet at best provide a few fps's higher for gaming and have features most software still doesn't use.

Not that I'm saying desktop is worse, I still prefer it in the end, but laptops are starting to be close to them in terms of power, and with the advantage of portability (even if you need to carry the charger because it eats its battery fast) still brings the two even closer.

 

[kidd25]

grab a game and play. kngpere meet me on steam for TF2.