Quirkymeister said:
Hello,
I am a mostly-tech-illiterate person trying to build/acquire his first gaming PC. Not understanding what any of these numbers/words mean, or what constitutes a good or bad CPU/Motherboard/Graphics card etc, I instead implore strangers on the internet who probably know more about this sort of thing than I do to help me.
I have put together an affordable-ish build on PCpartpicker.com that the website assures me will work properly (I'm aware it doesn't come with a monitor; I'll be getting a cheapo one off eBay or something, because I'll be buggered if I'm spending a tenth of the overall cost on the monitor), and I was just wondering if you PC gaming johnnies could just have a look and let me know if A. It's as cheap as I can get for a decent rig, and B. It will actually operate, because this whole PC gaming thing makes me fearful and paranoid that I'll put the whole thing together and it'll just not work.
I don't know how to insert images on this forum, so I've just put the hyperlink at the bottom here.
Thanks,
-Quirky
https://au.pcpartpicker.com/user/Quirkymeister/saved/#view=rnKbt6
It's like this, if you want a PC for gaming that is going to last a while your likely to wind up paying for it. If you go with minimal specs you might save a bit of money, but you'll just be wanting a new PC upgrade almost as soon as you get your new one.
My recommendation would be to save up a bit more money, and then start by looking at the games you want to play and trying to match or slightly exceed the recommended specs as a start. Chances are the recommended specs for current games are going to remain constant for a couple of years until they move up again, at which point you'll be able to gradually upgrade.
I expect my gaming rig to last 5 years or more (though I could be wrong) but I also built a very pricy machine that took me a while to save up for. It's overkill right now, then in a couple of years it will have parity, then a couple years after that it will be annoying but get the job done, and by then I'll hopefully have the money for upgrades or another rig.
For graphics for example mine aren't state of the art, but I picked up two overclocked Nvidia 980s which is pretty much the lower price end of high end graphics cards right now, and pretty sad compared to say the Titan Cards they just released. That said I don't expect things like those Titans to be expected for years yet and by the time they are the price will likely have dropped. You can of course game with a lot less than that, but the trick is to game well, and of course not want to have to worry about "will I be able to handle it" for a while. Right now the Nvidia 970s are on the way out and dropping in price but will probably be good for a while, I've noticed when some professional game reviewers talk about their specs they have mentioned using a pair of 970s, I could be wrong but I believe that's what Jim Sterling mentioned he runs when he does his gameplay videos for example.
Basically the big things you need for a gaming machine is much better graphics, and to do that right your talking about potentially doubling the cost of that machine. Quad Core is fine, but to be honest I recommend having at least six cores because like it or not the extra cores help when it comes to the computer balancing a lot of things. My current machine is six cores, which is where I had to cut costs, my previous machine I replaced had 8 (but the cores in my current rig are individually faster by a notable margin).
In the end though it all comes down to priorities and what you have to balanced. IRL I'm disabled (brain damage) and am lucky enough to live at home with an okay social security payment for the moment (I worked 10 years at what was a fairly decent job). Some days I can't even focus on playing video games, but when I'm up and about it's one of the major things I do, so of course I put away money to making sure I could have a good game machine. Not everyone is in the same position and when my situation inevitably changes some day I probably won't be able to put money away for things like this anymore (I have to make a lot of choices on what I'm going to do, not all of them easy, and give up doing a lot of things for what I want to do). I won't say how much I spent, but having shopped around when I built this system I'll say I wouldn't try and build a gaming rig for under $2,000 *IF* you want one that will last a while. Cheaper systems exist but longevity is an issue. Let's just say I spent more than that while shopping around a lot for the best deal. Put away money for a few more months or another year if you can and do it right if your going to do it, that's my advice. You don't need to play games on the electronic version of Godzilla, but you if you try and do it on the equivalent of a salamander you find under a rock somewhere your going to regret it in short order.
Also be careful to check your mother board in as well as your processors, to make sure you can actually use the speed. Put in a cheap board and it can hurt your other components by not letting them work up to capacity. Also check and see how the sound is, the quality varies, and nowadays your board is also going to be acting as your sound card, which is why when you look at the specs it talks about the sound it has. Since it's a gaming rig you can actually run into a few problems by having crappy sound on a fly by night board.
Another thing to actually look out for is your power supply, a lot of building sites will tell you how much power the components your setting up will use, make sure your power supply is at least a little in excess of that, and try to avoid getting a generic one, the reason why is that $15-$20 extra there can save you more money later, one problem I've had with computers in the past is my power supplies dying and needing to be replaced, especially when I've gotten cheap ones.
When it comes to the RAM the amount of RAM isn't as important as the speed of the RAM, and you want it to be as fast as possible for gaming. To be honest 16GB is a good amount as extra is always nice, but to be honest it's better to have say 8GB of fast ram than twice as much slower speed RAM, as that's going to influence the speed of pretty much everything on your computer and becomes huge when it comes to gaming. You don't need to spring for the fastest ram on the market, but I wouldn't go more than a step or so below that, with RAM I haven't found much of a difference when it comes to the brand names over several computers, so buy it by speed, don't worry too much about a pedigree, RAM is RAM, unlike power supplies I haven't had much trouble.
So right now I'd save up, try and get a dual/crossfire NVIDIA 970 or 980, I didn't crawl through all the specs but make sure your mother board is able to fully use your processor, make sure you have some pretty quick RAM, and a decent power supply. If the company your dealing with overclocks, get everything you can overclocked, I personally have never had a problem with overclocking and it seems to help, since this is a gaming machine that's pretty much what Overclocking is good for.
Cooling can be important but do your homework, I recommend having fans in addition to a liquid cooling system (common sense) but be sure of what fits into your case. I made a mistake when I had my system made and bought one more fan than the case would fit and they mailed it to me seperatly (and it wasn't worth the postage to return).
It probably goes without saying but don't bother to mess with exterior lighting systems and such, everyone I've met who has spent money getting their cases fancied up with stuff like that has had them stop working pretty early on. Your on a budget so it's probably not a factor, but it's just not worth the juice. I do confess I did have a skull pattern laser engraved on the side of my current case though.
That said I'm not an expert and frequently have trouble articulating the right terminology.
