Building a gaming computer

[VoiceOfAutism]

So come my birthday in January third I'll have enough money to build a gaming pc, I'm writing this because I know almost nothing about computers and have only used macs prior to what I am building. If there's anyone who can link me to any tutorials about building computers that will make sure I don't break anything, and could give me advice about the important of what parts I'll need to buy on the higher and lower end I'd appreciate it, I'm expecting I'll have a budget of about 1,100 USD and about 100 for taxes. Finally I would like to eventually make realistic models and retextures for games like Fallout or TES and possibly get into animation so I'm assuming that affects what parts I'll need?

[tonyb56586]

Building PCs is easy. There are even kits that you can get that have everything you need and instructions. With the amount of money you will have available, you will be able to build a fantastic high powered machine. You can check out some kits at Tiger Direct (www.tigerdirect.com ) to give you an idea of what is available. You can also get stuff like motherboards, processors, RAM, etc, but you will need to have some idea of where you are going with that method. Good luck! I have built several computers and will be willing to give you some advice as long as you do not hold me responsible for any SNAFUs. My email: [email protected]

TonyB

[Rennn]

You can make new models and textures on pretty much any gaming PC. I don't have firsthand experience with animations, but I assume any competent gaming PC would work for that as well.

Building a PC is pretty easy on a $1000 budget. Most of the difficulty comes in at $600 or less, when you start cutting corners to make sure the game performance is pretty good.

 

I'm not going to go into much depth, since I don't have the time, but here are some basic tips to avoid obvious f-ups.

 

1. 8GB of RAM is perfect for most gaming PCs. It should only cost about $60.

2. Unless you use more than one video card, you absolutely do not need more than a 750w power supply unit.

3. SLI and Crossfire (methods of using 2 or more video cards at once) aren't worth it for beginners. Go for a single stronger card.

4. For the most part, don't worry about whether a video card is made by AMD or Nvidia (the two main companies). They both make great cards for fair prices, so if you find a good deal, take it.

5. Overclocking is for more experienced people. It's not necessary. I didn't OC anything for the first 3 years I owned my first gaming PC, and I only spent $800 on it.

6. Aim for a video card around $250-350 with 2GB or 3GB of VRAM. That's a good balance for a $1000 PC.

7. There is a really huge difference between RAM and VRAM.

8. Get a big case. Or at least a medium sized case. Definitely do not get a small case. You'll soon be frustrated with how a small case limits your selection of video cards and motherboards.

Edited December 25, 2013 by Rennn

[Werne]

If there's anyone who can link me to any tutorials about building computers that will make sure I don't break anything

See this post, it has some nice tutorials linked on the subject. You can also read the entire thread since the OP also uses a Mac and there are some general advices on using Windows (especially anti-virus and the like).

 

and could give me advice about the important of what parts I'll need to buy on the higher and lower end I'd appreciate it, I'm expecting I'll have a budget of about 1,100 USD and about 100 for taxes.

1. - CPU. On the CPU side with a 1100$ budget, you got nothing to do on the AMD side so go with Intel, either an i5 or i7 depending on what you need more, anything weaker than i5 would result in a mis-configured build. Since you mentioned models and textures, an i7 would come in handy since rendering and Photoshop are multi-threaded (i5 has four and i7 eight threads), while sculpting and mesh editing is single-threaded (hence Intel due to great single-threaded performance). If you need to sacrifice graphics card performance to get an i7, go with an i5, it's the same thing without hyper-threading.

 

And get an aftermarket cooler, something like CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO would do nicely, newer-generation Intel processors get pretty hot under load.

 

2. - Graphics card. Go with high-end, either Nvidia or AMD. Nvidia is generally better when it comes to 3D modeling and Photoshop due to it's better OpenCL performance (AMD is improving though they're still behind), but for pure gaming, both AMD and Nvidia are equally good. Using OpenCL in 3D/2D software can reduce time for some tasks, but unless you're doing professional work, don't base your decision on that alone. Forget SLI and Crossfire, go with a single powerful card, multiple cards sometimes have problem with scaling so you can get even worse performance than what you'd get with only one card.

 

3. - RAM. Getting anything over 8GB wouldn't be needed gaming, and anything less might be a problem. Large amounts of RAM come in handy if you're sculpting high-poly models (4M polygons and more), rendering large 3D scenes, or working with high-resolution images (by that I mean insanely high resolution) but since games are 32-bit, they can use 3.2GB RAM at most so 8GB is fine. Speed is more important, which is a combination of frequency (number of work cycles) and CAS latency (reaction time), this guy explains it well for those who have no idea what that is, speed gives you better performance in sculpting and games for example (marginal performance boost in games).

 

If you have to sacrifies something like CPU or graphics card to get more than 8GB of RAM or a high-speed RAM, get a lower-speed RAM or 8GB, the difference is not that huge unless you're doing professional work.

 

4. - Motherboard. For CPUs like i5 and i7, I advise a 4+2 or 8+2 power phase motherboard. What that means is that motherboard has multiple power leads, so instead of 100W going through a single lead, it goes through multiple, reducing temperatures and increasing motherboard's lifespan. VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) heatsinks are also advised since those tend to heat up a lot.

 

5. - PSU. Rennn said it well, for a single-card system you don't need more than 750W, but don't go too low either. If for example you have a 95W CPU and 300W graphics card, that's ~395W, add the power draw of other components (50W should be good) and that's 445W. Does that mean you need a 450W PSU? No, you always need to leave headroom so you don't overheat the power supply and in case components draw more power than advertised, so some 500-550W PSU should be perfectly fine for that example PC, 600W would allow more overclocking headroom.

 

Go with a too powerful PSU and you get "dirty" line output (there are voltage ripples), go with too low and you overheat it, it can also die if it can't deliver what's advertised (dying PSUs sometimes destroy other components as well).

 

Another thing to look when it comes to PSUs is brand and rating. For example, LC-Power PSUs sometimes can't even deliver the advertised power, while some SeaSonic units can deliver even more than what it says on the label. I generally prefer SeaSonic and XFX Core Edition PSUs (re-branded SeaSonic units), but there are other good brands. Rating affects how much more power will the PSU draw from the outlet, so a 500W 80+ bronze PSU would draw ~100W more (590W total) under full load while an 80+ Platinum would draw ~50W more (550W) total, both can deliver 500W to the machine but draw more due to it's internal fuctions and heat buildup.

 

Personally, anything over 80+ Gold is a waste of money when you're on a budget and are generally used for high-end builds that draw 1000W or more, a quality 80+ Bronze or Gold PSU would do just fine in your case.

 

6. - Storage drives. You got HDDs and SSDs, hard drives are slower but you get a lot of space for the money. what's important about hard drives is cache size and seek time, the lower the seek time, the lower the cache latency, and the higher the cache size, the faster that drive is. Personally, I believe a Samsung or WD Blue would do just fine, WD Blacks are not that much faster than Blues to justify the price tag, and the difference is barely noticeable.

 

Difference between a HDD and SSD is quite noticeable though, but SSDs are expensive compared to hard drives, so if you find that getting an SSD would mean getting a weaker graphics card or CPU, just get a hard drive, drive speed affects loading time, GPU/CPU affect game performance and look.

 

7. - Case. The bigger the case, the better is cable management, leave cables hanging around and it affects airflow. Larger cases also accommodate larger components, so you're not restricted in your hardware choice. Don't go too big though, huge cases like Antec 900D are for enthusiasts and it's price would set you back on hardware choice, not the size. A larger ATX midi-tower or a standard ATX tower would do nicely, anything larger is too expensive and anything smaller would affect your hardware choice.

 

8. - Airflow. PCs need air or your components will overheat and throttle. So put some case fans on it, air flow on PCs is usually from front to back (fans blowing in on front, fans blowing out on back), with exhaust fans on top as well depending on the case type. Having cables tucked away neatly behind the motherboard tray helps air to move without obstructing the flow.

 

 

 

Other internal components like optical drive, flash card reader and so on are less relevant, you can pretty much skim on those and buy the cheapest possible. You also don't need expensive peripherals like a 300$ mouse or a 500$ keyboard, cheap ones work well too, may not have all the bells and whistles like their expensive counterparts but they'll serve you well as long as you take those that fit you.

 

Finally I would like to eventually make realistic models and retextures for games like Fallout or TES and possibly get into animation so I'm assuming that affects what parts I'll need?

Not really, no. Anything except the processor (and RAM speed in 3D sculpting) only affect task duration, not task performance or quality.

 

For example, a render of a large 3D scene on 8 threads would take 1 minute while on 4 threads it would take 1 minute 30 seconds, quality would be the same only the duraton changed. But sculpting on an AMD processor would be dealing with 500,000 polygons while it would mean 850,000 polygons on Intel. AMD CPU would have worse performance on 800,000 polygons than an Intel CPU and sculpt quality wouldn't be the same, so processor power plays a role (specifically single-core power in that AMD vs Intel example), as does RAM speed since sculpting also does rapid changes in RAM (not as important as CPU speed).

[Rennn]

 

and could give me advice about the important of what parts I'll need to buy on the higher and lower end I'd appreciate it, I'm expecting I'll have a budget of about 1,100 USD and about 100 for taxes.

1. - CPU. On the CPU side with a 1100$ budget, you got nothing to do on the AMD side so go with Intel, either an i5 or i7 depending on what you need more, anything weaker than i5 would result in a mis-configured build. Since you mentioned models and textures, an i7 would come in handy since rendering and Photoshop are multi-threaded (i5 has four and i7 eight threads), while sculpting and mesh editing is single-threaded (hence Intel due to great single-threaded performance). If you need to sacrifice graphics card performance to get an i7, go with an i5, it's the same thing without hyper-threading.

 

I'm agreeing with most of what you said, but I don't think he should really consider an i7. They can run $400 alone versus $250 for a good i5, and there's a lot to consider when building a PC. An i5 is a much more economical choice when the primary task is gaming, and it won't bottleneck any modern games, or any games in the near future. Of course, he should aim for a CPU at at least 3.0Ghz. Most good i5s (ie, a 3570) tend to be 3.3Ghz or higher.

 

I also don't think he should go for an SSD. Not only are those extremely expensive and only really useful to shorten loading times in modern games, but having two storage drives could be misleading to a new PC gamer. Prematurely installing a few games to the wrong drive could dramatically burn read/write cycles and consume space on the SSD. And what if he forgets and tries to defrag it? Imo, the current generation of SSDs are just not worth the money to anyone except enthusiasts with extra money and prior knowledge of PCs. In case he's used to console load times, any decent 7.2Ghz HDD would already be a big upgrade.

Edited December 25, 2013 by Rennn

[VoiceOfAutism]

Well thanks for the help guys, I'll keep you updated when I start picking out the parts I plan to buy and upload a few shots once I've built it. Merry Christmas all. :laugh:

Edited December 25, 2013 by VoiceOfAutism

[FMod]

 

could be misleading to a new PC gamer. Prematurely installing a few games to the wrong drive could dramatically burn read/write cycles and consume space on the SSD.

It's not going to do so. So you install a few games to the wrong drive, you use up say 20GB, what now? Your SSD has 100-1,000 TB of write endurance till SMART WLC=0 and plenty past that. If it cost $100 for 100TB of WE (this is feldgrau wearing neo-nazi conservative, even TLC gives more than 2TB/$), weep - you just cost yourself $0.02.

 

Seriously, the argument that you should put write-intensive operations on a HDD instead of SSD is like the argument that you should take very long trips on a bicycle instead of a car to avoid excessive wear to your automobile.

 

Buying a PC, or for that matter a new car, is no more of an investment than buying a case of beer. You're not buying into it to wait for it to mature and improve, you're paying for N hours of pleasure through alcohol intoxication - or, the case of a gaming PC, adrenaline.

 

 

And what if he forgets and tries to defrag it?

Nothing out of a nightmare.

For scheduled defrag,Windows will typically process the request, detect a SSD, and do nothing.

A newbie probably won't even know about defragmentation, and Windows won't do it on its own.

 

If for some reason you DO force a defrag, most SSD will essentially fake a defragmentation - rearrange their translation tables, but not move the actual data. This is partially even inherent to how a HDD-emulating SSD works.

I just forced defrag on one of my SSD while monitoring it and it caused less than 1GB in writes.

 

 

Back to the hourly cost, what a SSD does is read/write 1GB of fragmented data in 10 seconds while a HDD takes 110; the 100 is saved time. if you price SSD endurance at $1/TB, this is $0.01 for 1,000 seconds saved, or $0.036 for an hour.

Whether a SSD is worth it for you on a price/endurance basis, then, comes out to a simple question: is your time worth less or more than 4 cents per hour?

 

In practice, of course, you're not going to exhaust even the 11,000,000 seconds or 3,000 hours of saved write time a $100 SSD buys you - that would be 1 hour of HDD-speed writes a day for 8 years - and not all of the writes necessarily hold up your productivity. The actual cost is thus higher, but only because most of the endurance you've paid for will eventually end up buried with the drive in a landfill.

[kalikka]

 

 

and could give me advice about the important of what parts I'll need to buy on the higher and lower end I'd appreciate it, I'm expecting I'll have a budget of about 1,100 USD and about 100 for taxes.

1. - CPU. On the CPU side with a 1100$ budget, you got nothing to do on the AMD side so go with Intel, either an i5 or i7 depending on what you need more, anything weaker than i5 would result in a mis-configured build. Since you mentioned models and textures, an i7 would come in handy since rendering and Photoshop are multi-threaded (i5 has four and i7 eight threads), while sculpting and mesh editing is single-threaded (hence Intel due to great single-threaded performance). If you need to sacrifice graphics card performance to get an i7, go with an i5, it's the same thing without hyper-threading.

 

I'm agreeing with most of what you said, but I don't think he should really consider an i7. They can run $400 alone versus $250 for a good i5, and there's a lot to consider when building a PC. An i5 is a much more economical choice when the primary task is gaming, and it won't bottleneck any modern games, or any games in the near future. Of course, he should aim for a CPU at at least 3.0Ghz. Most good i5s (ie, a 3570) tend to be 3.3Ghz or higher.

 

I also don't think he should go for an SSD. Not only are those extremely expensive and only really useful to shorten loading times in modern games, but having two storage drives could be misleading to a new PC gamer. Prematurely installing a few games to the wrong drive could dramatically burn read/write cycles and consume space on the SSD. And what if he forgets and tries to defrag it? Imo, the current generation of SSDs are just not worth the money to anyone except enthusiasts with extra money and prior knowledge of PCs. In case he's used to console load times, any decent 7.2Ghz HDD would already be a big upgrade.

 

I'm sorry, but that is the most stupidest thing I have ever heard.

You do not buy an SSD to reduce game loading times, you buy an SSD to immensely boost the overall usage speed of the PC.

And 120gb SSD only costs ~90$. They were still a very good buy for a 1000$ rig when the price for 120gb was over 150$.

 

Have you ever used a laptop with a slow 2,5" HDD? I sure have and it's not pretty...

 

And on the CPU, check if you can find Xeon 1230V3 for cheap, that baby is a hidden i7-4770 without the iGPU. Then pair it with a cheap H87 mobo like H87 fatal1ty (the name gives me the creeps though).

Edited December 26, 2013 by kalikka

[Rennn]

 

 

 

and could give me advice about the important of what parts I'll need to buy on the higher and lower end I'd appreciate it, I'm expecting I'll have a budget of about 1,100 USD and about 100 for taxes.

1. - CPU. On the CPU side with a 1100$ budget, you got nothing to do on the AMD side so go with Intel, either an i5 or i7 depending on what you need more, anything weaker than i5 would result in a mis-configured build. Since you mentioned models and textures, an i7 would come in handy since rendering and Photoshop are multi-threaded (i5 has four and i7 eight threads), while sculpting and mesh editing is single-threaded (hence Intel due to great single-threaded performance). If you need to sacrifice graphics card performance to get an i7, go with an i5, it's the same thing without hyper-threading.

 

I'm agreeing with most of what you said, but I don't think he should really consider an i7. They can run $400 alone versus $250 for a good i5, and there's a lot to consider when building a PC. An i5 is a much more economical choice when the primary task is gaming, and it won't bottleneck any modern games, or any games in the near future. Of course, he should aim for a CPU at at least 3.0Ghz. Most good i5s (ie, a 3570) tend to be 3.3Ghz or higher.

 

I also don't think he should go for an SSD. Not only are those extremely expensive and only really useful to shorten loading times in modern games, but having two storage drives could be misleading to a new PC gamer. Prematurely installing a few games to the wrong drive could dramatically burn read/write cycles and consume space on the SSD. And what if he forgets and tries to defrag it? Imo, the current generation of SSDs are just not worth the money to anyone except enthusiasts with extra money and prior knowledge of PCs. In case he's used to console load times, any decent 7.2Ghz HDD would already be a big upgrade.

 

I'm sorry, but that is the most stupidest thing I have ever heard.

You do not buy an SSD to reduce game loading times, you buy an SSD to immensely boost the overall usage speed of the PC.

And 120gb SSD only costs ~90$. They were still a very good buy for a 1000$ rig when the price for 120gb was over 150$.

 

Have you ever used a laptop with a slow 2,5" HDD? I sure have and it's not pretty...

 

And on the CPU, check if you can find Xeon 1230V3 for cheap, that baby is a hidden i7-4770 without the iGPU. Then pair it with a cheap H87 mobo like H87 fatal1ty (the name gives me the creeps though).

 

 

The "most stupidest" thing? Lmao...

[kalikka]

All your arguments were invalid.
SSD:s are "install and forget" kind of devices. Someone who claims that noobs can't use them is just an ignorant twerp.

The only thing you need to worry about is that you leave 10% of free space to the SSD. Even defragmenting can be forgotten completely as the storage HDD won't need it (or needs it extremely rarely).

For example my Windows 7 automagically defrags my HDD every Wednesday, and because W7 is such a smart OS it also automagically detects that the SSD is an SSD so it won't need any defragging.

Edited December 26, 2013 by kalikka