By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Vetteman94 on 14 December 2010
Edit Thread
Epoch said:
Vetteman94 said:

Am I being ignored or is everyone too busy too help 

Im probably going to pick up one of the Gaming PC magazines and look into the builds they reccommend.   But any help from real PC gamers would help. 


Its finals season so people are prolly pretty busy. 

If you're looking for a powerful machine, Look at getting an i7 or AMD Phenom x6.  Although its probably more power than you will use right now.

Pair the processor with a decent mobo (~$100-$130) and you should be able to upgrade as much as you like for the next couple years.  Make sure the mobo supports the processor and RAM and you're good to go.

RAM is really cheap, you can get 8gigs for $120, so you may as well.

As for video cards I would recommend ATI, 6850 or 6870.  Thats pretty high end though, so you could easily go with a 5850 for cheaper.

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Hard drives are a good bet, get the 64 MB cache and sata 6GB/s.

Cases are a matter of personal taste, but look to spend around $100 for a decent one.  I like the Lian Li aluminum cases.  They are well built and light.

Look for a power supply in the 550W to 650W range.  You wont need any more than that unless you plan on running 2 high end graphics cards and a bunch of hard drives.  Make sure it has a 5 year warranty and can provide 30Amps.  I recommend Corsair. 

All this is for a pretty high end machine, you could easily buy cheaper components and only sacrifice a bit of performance.

Yeah I was thinking about going with an i5 or an i7,  I have an i5 in my laptop and its pretty fast.

The video card is where I would probably have a tough time deciding where to go,  ATI for sure, but which model and would I be able to add a second one later on or better to replace.

As for the HD,  I was thinking about maybe going for a SSD for my windows drive and going with something like you mentioned for everything else.

You are right about the Cases,  its definitely about personal taste.  I have found a couple Antec cases I like.

Power supply I would need help on since I would be driving blind on that purchase.  

I am looking for a high end machine, since I want to get back into PC gaming.  But I dont also want to spend 2k for a PC,  been there done that.   

But thanks for the help,  its a good starting point for sure.