How to build your own gaming PC on budget?

12# - What games to play?

2010-08-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Crysis 2

Everyone has their own choice of games.. some of them are good some of them are not, for me i think the best games out there are the FPS games like Crysis, Far Cry 1 and 2, DOOM 3, Wolfenstein 2009, Call of duty series, and there are many other, The best thing about these games is the visual reality, i like if the game looks nice and runs smooth, it just gives you a good feeling while you are playing these games.

There is also other games. MMORPG-s, these are the multiplayer games, you get levels, and you work together with other players around the world.. Good example is WOW ( World Of Warcraft ) , it is quite old game, and it doesn't really require a gaming PC to play, but i still wanted to mention it .

The one game i am rally looking forward to, is the Crysis 2 from Crytek. It is using CryEngine3, and it is aimed to be the best FPS game ever.. we will see about that .

11# - Operating System [OS]

2010-08-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

Commercial picture from internet.

For OS i suggest windows 7 64BIT of course since we have 4gigs of ram installed, we do need 64bit windows, 32bit windows support only 3.5gb of ram, and 64bit windows is much much safer, all the trojans and other viruses are mostly made for 32bit platform, so 64bit platform is much safer as i said earlier .

Once you start up your computer you will need to go to BIOS, you must press ESC or F10 on the startup (most of the times) to get into BIOS, you need to change your boot list, so first boot device would be DVD-rom, second HDD and no third booting device.

Restart...

Insert windows 7 CD, install it, download drivers or install most of them off the cd-s that you get with your hardware, and you are ready to run your PC.

In order to make your AMD Phenom 2 x2 550BE, into AMD Phenom x4 processor, you will probably need to flash your BIOS, and on that motherboard it is much safer, because we have the DUAL-BIOS system, if the first BIOS fails to boot, then the second BIOS will override it, and overwrite the Failed BIOS.
How to exactly open the extra cores ? i will explain it in the posts that come later.

Since we have Black Edition CPU, we are able to clock it, because FSB and Multiplier are unlocked.

10# - Assembly

2010-08-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

First of all, you must make sure, that you do not have any static electricity in your hands, so you should touch something that is made of metal. Open up your computer's case, next thing to do, is to unbox your PSU, and then fit it into the case, secure it with screws. Next comes the HDD and dvd-rom, unbox them, and secure with screws, next step to take, is to unbox processor, fit processor into the motherboard's socket and make sure you locate the pin #1 . once you have it set you must coat it with thermal compound . Unbox your CPU cooler, do not use the default one if you want to overclock this puppy! Screw the heatsink on to the CPU, and connect the power wire, it should be close to the CPU socket. place the motherboard in to the case, and secure it with screws. Now connect the 24 pin wire from the PSU to the motherboard, then connect SATA cable from motherboard to HDD, and do the same for the DVD-rom, but you must use IDE wire. Next step is to install the memory 2x2gb RAM, push them in to the socket, and close both ends, connect the power wires to HDD and DVD-rom, . Install your graphics card, install the led's and button's wires of the case to the motherboard, and it should be it for assembly.

09# - Cooling for overclockers

2010-08-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

If you want to overclock your black edition processor, then you probably need a better cooling system, the best thing would be a liquid cooling, but this is very expensive, since we are doing it for small budget, then we should use just air cooling. My choice of coolers are the coolermaster ones, but they are quite expensive :) .

08# - Case

2010-08-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

Aerocool vx-9

The most important feature of casing is the airflow, so we need a case which has much spots for fans, and many places for air intake and outtake, something that i really like is aerocool VX9. It is a case for a buck, and our current set of parts fit in there.

07# - Hard drive [HDD]

2010-08-22T01:15:00.000-07:00

For HDD i suggest SATA drive, it is new technology compared to IDE drives and it is much much faster, the HDD you can pick by size, how much space do you need, do you need 200 gigs, or you need 1 TB, its all up to you, just be sure, that you pick SATA drive. Good luck with that!

06# - Memory [ RAM ]

2010-08-22T01:09:00.000-07:00


Random stick of memory

For our motherboard only DDR2 memory fits in, and the cap is 8 gigabytes, we are using two 2 gb sticks of ram from apache, their default clock is 800mhz, but they could be overclocked, and for the clocking we need
heat spreading plates on to the ram-s chips. Else you could burn these down if you try to overclock them, the motherboard we chose supports up to 1066 Mhz memory speed so there is plenty of space to clock.
Apache 2 gb sticks 800mhz cl5 total 4 Gb .

05# - PSU[Power Supply]

2010-08-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

Power supply must definitely be high powered, for gaming PC, for this PC we need at least 500WATS of power, i suggest you an OCZ or Codegen PSU, There isnt really much to say about PSU-s, because you just need a quality brand, in case you don't want to burn your PC down !

04# - Graphics card

2010-08-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

XFX Radeon HD 5670 1GB

For graphics card i would really suggest something good, something good means good cash.. but something good for low price? you should check out XFX graphics cards they are really good in prices and in performance.. even tho the motherboard has integrated Graphics, but it isn't for gaming.. you will get very very low FPS, which means HUGE lag. My piece of choice is the XFX radeon HD 5670 !! It has 1024mb of GDDR5 memory which is @ 4000 mhz a core clock of 775 MHz and DirectX 11, shader model 5.0, ATI eyefinity and all other good stuff, it is a very very good graphics card

http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/graphiccards/HD%205000series/5670.aspx#2

03# - Processor

2010-08-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

AMD Phenom 2 X2 550 BE Processor

So we have to choose AMD processor now, because we have a motherboard that supports only AMD processors, and socket AM2, AM2+, AM3 . I chose Processor called: AMD Phenom 2 X2 550 BE <- What this all means, that this is phenom 2 brand, and x2 means for two cores, and the BE stands for Black edition. This means, that this processor has unlocked FSB and multiplier, u can clock it pretty high . There is a secret about this processor. This processor used to be AMD phenom 2 x4, but two cores were shutdown.. And there is a way with the motherboard i chose to unlock these cores, So for the price of dual-core processor you get a quad-core processor, CPU for a buck?

http://www.techspot.com/review/171-amd-phenomx2-athlonx2/

02# - Motherboard

2010-08-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

GA M85M-US2H

Motherboard is the most important part of the PC, almost everything else in PC depends on motherboard, what Graphic card you can use, what processor, what optical drives, what hard drive. For choosing motherboard you must know what brand of Processor you want to use, either AMD or INTEL, for me AMD is the option, because they have published the "Black Edition" Processors which are meant for overclocking plus i am overclocking everything i can. Now i know that i want an AMD processor, so i need to get a motherboard which has the same socket, as the new AMD processors have: AM2+, AM3. I chose motherboard : GA M85M-US2H which has integrated video ( Geforce 8200 ), ddr2 RAM support, socket AM2, AM2+, AM3 support and supports up to 8 gb memory.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3281#ov

01# - Your budget ?

2010-08-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

Budged, it is a big question, that how much you have to spend? you don't have to spend much to get a good gaming rig. First of all, you need to know how fast and powerful PC you want to build, is it with 2 core processor, 4 core or even 6 core processor that you want to use. What graphics card do you want to use, what memory ( RAM ), what hard drive, what motherboard, what kind of case.. it might look too hard for you, but believe me it isn't, you can build your own PC, but you just need to know how, and hopefully i will get you to that stage!

00# - What is it all about?

2010-08-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is lauri, and i am just about to start showing you, that how can you build your own gaming PC on budget, i came up with this idea, because of google of course, my opinion, and tips are missing from google, and i seriously hope, that you will find anything and everything you need to know about gaming PC building from my blog!