technology Help building a gaming PC

[RainbowDashie 767]

I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but i don't know of a better place.

 

Alright, my question isn't about 'how to build a PC' but more of what would be a better idea.

 

I have a couple of idea's and i hope you guys help me pick the right one.

 

Idea's:

1. Build a relatively cheap PC so i can start quicker and upgrade later.

2. Build an expensive PC that is extremely good from the start.

 

Also i have some questions about form factor. What would you guys recommend?

 

1. ATX

2. Micro-ATX

3. EATX

4. Mini-ITX

 

And lastly, for the GPU i have decided to go Nvidia, no way anyone is gonna talk me out of that. However, for the processor i'm still thinking about AMD and Intel, which one do you guys prefer?

 

1.Intel

2.AMD

 

I hope you guys can help me out!

[SilverHeart 741]

I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but i don't know of a better place.

 

Alright, my question isn't about 'how to build a PC' but more of what would be a better idea.

 

I have a couple of idea's and i hope you guys help me pick the right one.

 

Idea's:

1. Build a relatively cheap PC so i can start quicker and upgrade later.

2. Build an expensive PC that is extremely good from the start.

 

Also i have some questions about form factor. What would you guys recommend?

 

1. ATX

2. Micro-ATX

3. EATX

4. Mini-ITX

 

And lastly, for the GPU i have decided to go Nvidia, no way anyone is gonna talk me out of that. However, for the processor i'm still thinking about AMD and Intel, which one do you guys prefer?

 

1.Intel

2.AMD

 

I hope you guys can help me out!

If it were me I'd go with a mixture of the two. I'd buy a few highend parts. Namely the motherboard and CPU. Then I'd buy just part of the rest. Like just one GTX 970. And only 6-8 gigs of RAM. That way at later points I could drop the money to SLI a second a graphics card and double the RAM.

 

I've always been told that Intel is the way to go for Nvidia and AMD is best for Radeon. As it stands, if say you're making the right choice about Nvidia since they dominate the PC market and AMD is in the consoles. Plus Nvidias drivers are better.

 

I'm pretty sure I went with a full sized case. As big as I could get. I can't remember the type it falls under but it weighs close to 80 pounds fully built.

[long gone 8,929]

Remember price:performance, and that spending more on your GPU than your CPU is better than spending more on your CPU than your GPU. You'd get more bang out of your buck that way. So really, buy what you need and based on what you can afford.

 

While smaller form factors are more compact and EATX offers the most expansion, ATX imo offers the best balance between cost, size and expansion. Not too big, not too small and a lot of motherboards still offer great expandability.

 

As for processors... I'd avoid AMD FX right now, as that platform is dead. AMD is good on the lower end while Intel is good on the high-end. Again, price:performance, and get things based on what you need and can afford. Also, you realistically won't need more than a Core i5 if you're just doing gaming and some light workstation use on the side. As for GPUs, there really is no "best" GPU maker; both nVIDIA and AMD have their problems. Again, get what you need and can afford.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Daring

[Plageius 263]

Remember price:performance, and that spending more on your GPU than your CPU is better than spending more on your CPU than your GPU. You'd get more bang out of your buck that way. So really, buy what you need and based on what you can afford.

 

While smaller form factors are more compact and EATX offers the most expansion, ATX imo offers the best balance between cost, size and expansion. Not too big, not too small and a lot of motherboards still offer great expandability.

 

As for processors... I'd avoid AMD FX right now, as that platform is dead. AMD is good on the lower end while Intel is good on the high-end. Again, price:performance, and get things based on what you need and can afford. Also, you realistically won't need more than a Core i5 if you're just doing gaming and some light workstation use on the side. As for GPUs, there really is no "best" GPU maker; both nVIDIA and AMD have their problems. Again, get what you need and can afford.

I agree with everything he said except for FX being dead. FX is a great budget platform.

[long gone 8,929]

I agree with everything he said except for FX being dead. FX is a great budget platform.

AMD rehired the original K6 engineer, Jim Keller. He killed off the FX series. It'll still be around until Zen launches next year, but there will be no new FX processors.

[Plageius 263]

AMD rehired the original K6 engineer, Jim Keller. He killed off the FX series. It'll still be around until Zen launches next year, but there will be no new FX processors.

OK.....? What does this have to do with not getting FX? They're still great budget processors...

[long gone 8,929]

OK.....? What does this have to do with not getting FX? They're still great budget processors...

There's also a multitude of reasons.

 

1. All of them have the same exact performance. Sure, an FX-8350 has four more cores than an FX-4300, but all those cores perform exactly the same across both processors. This would be especially noticeable in single-threaded applications, where the FX is at its weakest.
2. The socket is dead. No upgrade path, since Zen will be on a new socket, FM3. Upgrading from a lower-end AMD processor requires a motherboard swap. As said before, no more processors for the AM3 socket will be released.
3. It bottlenecks high-end GPUs. Why do you think AMD uses Intel processors when benchmarking new GPUs? Because their FX processors would bottleneck them and the results wouldn't look nearly as good.

[Jonny Music 3,425]

It also would depend on what you want to use your PC Build for. I can't vote on your poll and suggest anything unless you tell us what you need/want to use that PC build for in the first place.

You always need to ask yourself this question when making decisions like this: What am I going to need/want my custom PC for?

[ponypowa96 106]

Good call using NVIDIA over AMD for your GPU.

 

Definitely get an Intel CPU. Something like a 4690/4690k would be more than enough for any gaming you're planning on doing. If you wanted to save money, you could even buy an older generation processor such as a 3570K/2500K or something, since the technology really hasn't advanced that much since then and if it could save you some substantial money it would be worth doing, in my opinion. The only downside is that you'd need to find a compatible motherboard with the correct CPU socket.

 

If the money you'd be saving by doing that is negligible, however, then scrap the idea because there's no reason not to get the best if you're only gonna be saving 20 bucks or something by rolling your CPU back a generation or so.

 

As far as the cheap/upgrade later vs "instant gaming rig" option, all I would say is don't cheap out on your motherboard, PSU or cooling. A decent i5 would be a good enough CPU for any game atm, and as far as a GPU goes a GTX 970 will run pretty much anything you could want, or a GTX 960 would also be a good option if you're not ready to spend that much yet. As for RAM, get 8GB and then upgrade to 16GB if you feel like you need it later (it's not really necessary for any game atm). However, you don't want your components to fail because you have a bad quality PSU, and you don't want your expensive hardware to underperform because it's always overheating!

And then a decent motherboard would allow you to upgrade pretty much your entire system to literally whatever you want in the future, although there may be some CPU limitations depending on the motherboard socket you've picked.

 

When I built my first PC, the PSU died within 3 days because I bought some cheap no-name crap and figured it'd be alright xD Learn from my mistakes because I certainly felt silly when it happened

Edited April 9, 2015 by ponypowa96

[A Black Circle 1,586]

I voted EATX, but I don't know crud about motherboards and I needed a vote, so, yeah.

 

Some advice:

 

1. Use Linux

2. Use Linux

3. USE LINUX

[Silverarrow66 25]

PUT IN 90 GTX TITANS! IT WIll BE WORTHIT

Edited April 10, 2015 by Silverarrow66

[simba86 1,541]

totally keeping an eye on this topic because i am looking to get started in SFM and I need a good computer to run it

[Knight Hadron 372]

I voted EATX, but I don't know crud about motherboards and I needed a vote, so, yeah.

 

Some advice:

 

1. Use Linux

2. Use Linux

3. USE LINUX

He isn't joking. Use linux. Use linux. If you are building your own, there is absolutely NO reason to go spend money on Windows OS, except for cases where wine/other platforms won't play windows games under linux.

 

You can tell I am a linux geek.

[Simon 4,557]

Since this thread deals with technology it has been moved to media discussion.  Please limit life advice threads to threads asking for help with personal issues and the like.  Thanks!

[Deano 1,704]

I'd go for a large, light case, with a Gigabyte MicroATX motherboard. For a processor, AMD A series APU's are your friend here. Good luck!