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How to: Build a Gaming PC for under $1500 (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (tropmug) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:28:00 +0000

[Note: Sorry for the late post, I was swamped with work and I won't make more promises I can't keep]

Onto part three of how to build a gaming PC for under $1500. I'm assuming many of you have a mouse, monitor, and keyboard, no matter how old, which means you don't really need to buy anything new. However, unless you still have the install discs from XP, you will need to get a new OS, which is the first thing I'll be talking about this time around. I'll also discuss new mice, monitors, and keyboards.

THE OS:
The OS is THE most important part. Since it's gaming, if you want DX10 and the prettiness that comes with it, get Vista. However, graphics cards do perform slightly worse on Vista due to less effective drivers. That should change within the next few months however. XP is still supported by everyone and some games (CoD4 for example) don't even use DX10. I would recommend XP as it's cheapcheapcheap and can still run high powered games.

MOUSE:
This is all personal preference, but if you want the best all around gaming mouse and you're a righty, you cannot go wrong with the logitech G5, G7, or G9 mice. The G5 and G7 are all around comfortable mice with extremely high sensitivity and adjustable weight (the G7 is the cordless version of the G5). The G9 has an even higher sensitivity but a wide grip. Since those are all made for rightys, if you're a lefty gamer you should go with one of Razer's options as they are great for leftys and are extremely high quality. I would recommend the Habu or the DeathAdder.

MONITORS:
The perfect monitor depends on how much coin you have. If you want displayport (the latest connector from PC to monitor that is overall better but high priced right now) then jump on the Dell 3008WFP with a 30" screen, max resolution of 2560x1600, and a multitude of connectors for anything you might need to put in it. Ever. For much less money (still high priced) and a 19" screen, go with the Acer AL1916WABD.

KEYBOARD:
If you want a keyboard meant for gaming, go with the Logitech G11 or G15. There's an insane amount of customization in these. On the other hand, if you have an amazingly large amount of disposable income, grab the Optimus Maximus. Although the keyboard is scarely produced and costs most than most of the other components put together, OMFG is it amazing. All of the keys are OLEDs and can be customized to any image you want as well as macroed. Most amazing keyboard out there.

Cheerio till next time.

Late Post

noreply@blogger.com (tropmug) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Sorry for the late post everybody, I've been overflowed with work. I'll update Wednesday with How To: ... Part III.

How to: Build a Gaming PC for under $1500 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (tropmug) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:25:00 +0000

In part one I covered a lot and in part two I'm going to cover the case, PSU, hard drive, and optical drive.

Quick reminder of the rules: Everything is budget for under $1500 total when bought from amazon, built for possible expansion, and I'll give possible alternatives. Also, amazon is constantly changing prices, so the possibility of this being a <$1500 PC may be slightly off.

Case: For a case, the price merely depends on how stylish you want it to look. Cases run from $60 for a beige box to around $170 for see through boxes with LEDs. However, you still want to make sure that any case you buy has plenty of room for your components and/or future parts. A cheap, good looking case is the Aluminus Black High Gloss Case from Ultra which costs $70.

PSU: The PSU depends on how much expansion you want to have. For the purposes of this, we'll go with a 700 watt PSU which goes for $100 (the Xion 700-watt Quad Rail ATX Power Supply). You can buy up to 1200 watt PSUs which will be able to handle the greatest expansions. However, they will most definitely be extreme overkill for the base version of this PC and cost much much more. Even the 700 watt is overkill, but it's based for expansion. Depending on your expansion plans for the future however, it may be more beneficial to go with a slightly smaller 600 watt PSU (the ULT31848). These cost around 20-50 dollars less, but they also limit future expansion and you may have to tone down the base configuration to provide your parts with enough power.

HDD:
The hard drive is simple: the more space you want, the more expensive. Also, how fast the disk spins (measured in RPM; the higher the better) is a factor, but the difference is truly negligible to all but the most hardcore users. For a cheap version, we'll go with a 250 gb version running at 7200 rpm for $80 (the WD2500KSRTL from Western Digital). What interface each hard drive runs on is important for speed, but delving into that is for the most hardcore. You can get hard drives with enough space for a terabyte (1000 gigs) for around $350 dollars from Seagate.

Optical Drive:
A cheap and fast disc drive is the LH20A1L06, an extremely fast drive for its cost ($45). You can upgrade to a BRD (blu-ray) or HD-DVD drive, but even with warner withdrawing support from HD-DVD, I would hold off on upgrading. Also, the current drives are slow and expensive, two traits which will definitely improve in the next few months.

Next week: Optionals, such as the mouse, keyboard, monitor, and OS. Cheers till then.

Image Credit: Amazon.

And from now on I'll have a creative signature in this spot.

Note on Graphics Cards

noreply@blogger.com (tropmug) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:48:00 +0000

ATI recenty released a graphics card that can run games better than the 8800 GTX, competitor Nvidia's high-end graphics card. The Radeon™ HD 3870 X2 costs $449 and will be availible soon. This is the press release from ATI if you're interested.

Manufacturer's Spotlight: VoodooPC

noreply@blogger.com (Yannick) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:11:00 +0000

Let’s take a gaze into the online high-end PC market shall we? VoodooPC was a privately owned company from Alberta Canada in 1991, and was the first to introduce the concept of the accelerated graphics card. The company focuses on not only gaming PC’s, but multimedia powerhouses, home office PC’s, and ‘luxury PC’s’ (lined with silk and comfy pillows? Mmm not really). Voodoo is currently owned by HP, but still functions as a brand. So what is so groundbreaking about Voodoo? What makes it so special? Why Voodoo?

Well they asked that questions themselves, and from the ‘Why Voodoo’ section, I bring you:

“When I received my laptop I was in awe of the sheer beauty of it. My pc is an absolute work of art. I have owned my Pearl Orange Envy laptop for 6 months now & absolutely love it! The quality, fit and finish is second to none. The paint on the laptop far exceeded my expectations & would rival the paint on a Lamborghini.”

-Anonymous poster on Voodoo

I’d show you more quotes, but you can go to the website yourself if you’re reading this, and the comments are all pretty much the same. Voodoo PC is highly noted for their paint jobs, which are actually quite amazing. One can also add ‘tattoos’ to his/her laptop (sorry no desktop tattoos) to make it sleek and good looking.

Envious of the yellow!!!

Solid Gold.

Want to get one? Okay! Cough up 2,400 USD, that’s the base price of the cheapest laptop (12’ screen!). 5,000 USD approximately for the ‘cheapest’ computer(no screen!). What drives up the price? Well despite the fact that it takes longer to paint and tattoo one of these than it is to ride a wheelchair for 2 miles (oh and you can’t use your hands), Voodoo PC offers the top of the line hardware and performance.... and only the top of the line hardware and performance.

The lowest possible specs for their ‘Omen’ Desktop, (the gaming one, the only one you should care about), are:

1000 Watt Power Supply

Intel Core 2 Extreme 2.93 GHz

2G Corsair RAM

160GB Hard Drive

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 767MB

Oh and you have to pick it up, from Canada. Shipping to U.S is an additional 200 USD.

Customizing this rig any further will probably drain all your power in your house/apartment (probably other rooms too), but hey at least you got l337 paintjobz!!11

Costs more than a car.

Final Word: If you have a budget, at all, hit ‘Back’ on your browser from the Voodoo page, and go to Newegg and build your own computer. While it has top of the line hardware, Voodoo is pretty much for those who have the ability to pay about 3000 USD on paint jobs and tattoos, while leaving about 2000 USD for the actual computer. So what if it costs about as much as a used car? At least the rig is shiny and bright red.

-Yannick

VoodooPC Website: www.voodoopc.com

Image Sources: Google
Quote: www.voodoopc.com

How to: Build a Gaming PC for under $1500 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (tropmug) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 05:44:00 +0000

I've recently been granted the money to make a gaming PC with a budget limit of $1500, and I'm going to go in depth on how to pick the best components and then assemble them. I understand that $1500 might be a bit expensive for some people, so for many parts I'll list lower priced versions and all parts will be bought from the Amazon.com. Bear in mind that most of these lower priced versions will definitely hurt gaming performance. By the end I'm aiming for this PC to be able to run Crysis, even if only at medium. (unless you have deep deep pockets, you can't run it on high yet.) You can also get better deals on parts at Fry's or TigerDirect. The main parts covered in part one will be the CPU, the motherboard, the RAM, and the GPU.

CPU:
Right now AMD's processors aren't as high quality as Intel's, so let's focus on Intel. All of the Core 2 Duos have around the same cache (the Core 2 Extremes have double it since they have double the cores.) Depending on how much you have to spend, you can go up to the E6850 which has a 3.00 ghz speed. I would recommend either the E6750 which is a 2.66 gHz speed for $100 less or even the E6320 with a 1.86 gHz speed since it's easily overclockable. I'll discuss overclocking in a month or so, so if you want a fast PC now, I'd go with the E6750 for ~$190.

Motherboard:
If you want to expand in the future (which you should definately plan on doing) you need an SLI capable motherboard, which means it can run two Nvidia graphics cards at once. (More on graphics later.) A cheap motherboard which has the necessary ports for everything else you're going to need and the right socket for the Core 2 Duos and the Core 2 Extremes is the Asus P5N-E which is around $120 online. A cheaper, non SLI version is availible for around $20-$30 cheaper. The P5K deluxe is also a cheap solution from Asus. For overclocking and expansion options, go with the Asus Strike Extreme or the EVGA Nforce 680i SLI.

RAM:
Most gaming PCs like to go with 2 gb of RAM. We're going to go with 4 gigs. A good RAM chip from Corsair is the XMS2-6400 which sells for around $120 and it two 2 gigabyte ram chips sold together. You can go with 2 gb of RAM for around $50, but I prefer 4 simply for the improved speeds in most uses of the computer.

GPU:
The graphics are tricky. You want to get a high end card such as the Nvidia 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS, or the 8800 GT or you won't be able to run Crysis even at low settings and even with SLI-ed cards. The 8800 GTS is in the sweet spot for the graphics card price and runs around $350. If you want a slight step down you can go for the 8800 GT for $100 less and sacrifice little performance. Also, you might want to hold out for the rumoured 9000 series of Nvidia GPUs coming in the future that are rumored to run Crysis at high.

That's all for now, check in later for the other parts (hard drive, case, optical drive, and PSU)

Images Source: Google. Like everyone else.

Gaming Computers - Should You Build It or Buy It?

noreply@blogger.com (Yannick) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:26:00 +0000

Gaming computers come in all shapes, sizes, and prices. The gaming industry is growing every year and has become big business, so the need for gaming computers has grown along with it. As computer games become increasingly detailed and graphics oriented, the demand for faster and more powerful hardware has become more of a necessity than an option.

With the increased demand comes a higher price tag. That being said, if you are in the market for a gaming computer, read on as we take a look at your options for buying the perfect gaming computer for you and how you can save yourself some cash.

When buying a gaming computer or any computer for that matter it is important to determine how much you are willing to spend and how good of performance you want.

Gaming computers can range in price from $600 to $7,000+ and come with a variety of options. But whether you buy a low-end gaming computer or a high-end gaming computer there are ways to save yourself some money.

You basically have three options when it comes to buying a gaming computer. You can buy a pre-built computer right of the shelf, or internet. You can have someone build your gaming computer to your liking, with the hardware that you choose. Or you can build it yourself. All three of these are viable options, and of course each have their upside and downside.

Buying a pre-built, of the shelf computer is by far the the fastest and easiest route to take. When buying a gaming computer this way you will have access to tech support in case you run into problems with your system. Your computer should also be covered by the warranty for a certain amount of time if something was to break. There are however a few downsides to buying a pre-built computer. You will almost certainly pay more for less. Also you will be extremely limited in choices on the hardware that you want.

You can save yourself some money by having someone build your gaming computer for you. Going this route will provide for greater flexibility in your choices on hardware and can have your gaming computer customized to your specifications. Having a computer built for you will take longer than buying a pre-built one and all though it will be cheaper than buying a pre-built computer, will still be more expensive than your third option, building your own.

Most people think that building their own computer is far to difficult and complicated, and in reality it is a lot easier than they think. All though it does require a little knowledge on how to do this, this information can easily be obtained online. This option will take you the longest time to complete but can be very rewarding. Buying your hardware and assembling your own gaming computer can save you a lot of money and you can build it with whatever hardware you like. Of course there is some downsides to this option as well. You will not have any tech support or warranty, except through the individual hardware companies. Even with this downside, having built your computer from scratch, should help in solving most of your tech problems on your own.

Which ever option that you choose, make sure you do your research and are not overpaying for a gaming computer that you could have for a lot less.

Author: Nicholas Spriggs
Source: Free Articles
Image Source: www.flickr.com