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My PS3 quit working a few weeks ago and my wife returned the MW3 game she had bought me for Christmas. I was really wanting so play that game I decided to download it from game stop and play it on my pc. Bad idea. As you can imagine, I am now looking at building a game machine - I did a lot of research and instead of buying a new PS3 or XBox360, I’m going PC.

My tech that works for me ( KennyF ) is helping me but I wanted to see what others are doing/using for gaming machines. My intent is to build one with his help, but if you have any other suggestions or have had luck with a certain machine - share it with me!

21 Spice ups
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Booooooooooooo hisssssssssssssss how dare you move away from a PS3

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I’ve been building custom gaming rigs for myself for the past 7+ years… Tom’s hardware and the graphics Card comparison charts are INVALUABLE in this part of the process. here’s what I do.

  1. Define a budget for the build

  2. Research Graphics Card options (that fall within the budget)

  3. buy & assemble parts

the hard part is deciding what vendor’s you want to stick with, in my case… cost is always paramount so I use AMD stuff to lower cost. but… if you have a good budget, and want better performace, I can recommend the intel core “i” series stuff, which is kicking the crap out of AMD performance wise at the moment so i’d go with that if you could.

otherwise newegg reviews are a good baseline to establish product & manufacturer credibility as it’s easy to see what works when 1000+ people are rating whatever it is 4+ stars…

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I have two gaming machines in my house, one for me and the other for my wife, which I built about a year ago for her as a entry, mid-to-high end machine and mine is a little bit older but still able to chug around in new games.

Both of them are running newer games just fine and I haven’t run in to a game that either one will not handle.

When I built her computer I just went through researched all of the products and prices, then making sure that they were all going to work well together, purchased all of the products on NewEgg, and had it put together 3 days later.

I am running:

Intel Core i7-860 2.8 GHz

4 GB DD3

XFX ATi Radeon HD 5770

OZC Agility II SSD 60GB for OS

Cant remember 7200 RPM 500 GB HDD for Storage/Games

She has:

ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 MB

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 GHz

8 GB G.Skill Ripjaw DDR3 1600

WD Cavior Black 1.5 TB 7200 RPM

Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W PSU

XFX ATi Radeon HD 5770

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I’m about to embark on this adventure as well. I’ll be running Intel i-series as well, I wish for the i7-Extreme, but I think the $999 is overkill. Would be nice though. I also decided on an Antec case, rather customizable, and plenty of room for a liquid-cooling system. Let me know if you find any really nice deals somewhere!

If you really want to be cool, you can run one of these… (pun intended)

pc-aquarium.jpg

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You can always buy a better system by yourself and usually cheaper (especially if you use IT connections!). My friends are NewEgg and Fry’s generally (although the latter I hate much like Steam because I always tend to buy more than I have gone in there for).

Mine is homemade and whenever I create a new sys, I usually give my daughter my hand-me-down.

If you are going to build one, I’d figure out your main pieces first. Knowing what kind of Graphics Card and Processor you want will help you pick all the other (right) pieces.

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We need a budget before we can assist you in quality budget parts and which parts go well with other parts…

I spent £330 on a Gigabyte Mobo, I7 3.2GHz, 4GB corsair Ram and over clocked too 4.2ghz… but even when not overclocked it still preform’s really well…

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Jeremy7043 wrote:

I’m about to embark on this adventure as well. I’ll be running Intel i-series as well, I wish for the i7-Extreme, but I think the $999 is overkill. Would be nice though. I also decided on an Antec case, rather customizable, and plenty of room for a liquid-cooling system. Let me know if you find any really nice deals somewhere!

If you really want to be cool, you can run one of these… (pun intended)

I was going too say… (Is that a fish tank?) lol

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My gaming rig.

Original build 2008

mobo: EVGA 790i ultra

cpu: Intel 8400 dual at 4 ghz.

graphics: replaced old dual 9800gtx’s and put in single nvidia 580gtx

4 gigs 1600 DDR3 ram

I have been buying a bunch of EVGA stuff as of late. I have not had anything EVGA fail on me and they offer lifetime warranty on some products.

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Something I’ve noticed that people forget to mention - a good case. I’m currently using a Cooler Master HAF X Full Tower and it didn’t give me any problems putting everything together in it.

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For my next machine I’m debating between self build and ibuypower. I got one of their machines from newegg for a friend and it has been great. Their site has the craziest configurator I’ve ever seen. As long as a particular part is compatible you can put it with any other part that they offer.

Otherwise I’d agree with everyone else’s input. Set your budget, research what you can fit within it, and then let the fun begin.

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I budget around $1000 for my gaming rigs (although I also tend to go over a bit despite that). I agree with the above posts - Intel is nice if you’ve got the cash, but I’m cheap and tend to run AMD. I just built one a couple of months ago and it works like a champ. I also used to run Asus motherboards, but my recent experience has been less than stellar with them so I’m using Gigabyte now. My current gaming rig hardware:

Antec 300 case

PowerPC 910 Watt power supply

EVGA GeForce 560ti Video card

Gigabyte GA-990XA Motherboard

16 GB Ram (Adata)

AMD 8-Core Bulldozer @3.1 GHz

I’m running Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit on it

There’s other parts as well - SSDs and regular hard drives, blu-ray burners, cooling fans and fan controllers and such, but so far I’ve had no issues with Rage or BF3 or Crysis 2 running on this box.

Something to consider when making the switch - the reviews of MW3 for the PC have been less than stellar compared to the console versions, so be aware that there are differences between platforms. If you have any more questions

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Jeremy7043 wrote:

I’m about to embark on this adventure as well. I’ll be running Intel i-series as well, I wish for the i7-Extreme, but I think the $999 is overkill. Would be nice though. I also decided on an Antec case, rather customizable, and plenty of room for a liquid-cooling system. Let me know if you find any really nice deals somewhere!

If you really want to be cool, you can run one of these… (pun intended)

Yeah don’t get the extreme labeled i7’s. They offer next to no performance increase over the usual $150-$300 dollar variants. Matter of fact, if you don’t want to wait on Ivy Bridge, then just get an i5-2400(if no overclock), or a 2500k if you plan to overclock. Those have been benched at beating the 980 and 990x.

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Scott696d wrote:

I budget around $1000 for my gaming rigs (although I also tend to go over a bit despite that). I agree with the above posts - Intel is nice if you’ve got the cash, but I’m cheap and tend to run AMD. I just built one a couple of months ago and it works like a champ. I also used to run Asus motherboards, but my recent experience has been less than stellar with them so I’m using Gigabyte now. My current gaming rig hardware:

Antec 300 case

PowerPC 910 Watt power supply

EVGA GeForce 560ti Video card

Gigabyte GA-990XA Motherboard

16 GB Ram (Adata)

AMD 8-Core Bulldozer @3.1 GHz

I’m running Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit on it

There’s other parts as well - SSDs and regular hard drives, blu-ray burners, cooling fans and fan controllers and such, but so far I’ve had no issues with Rage or BF3 or Crysis 2 running on this box.

Something to consider when making the switch - the reviews of MW3 for the PC have been less than stellar compared to the console versions, so be aware that there are differences between platforms. If you have any more questions

What reviews you speaking of exactly? If they are user reviews, then it is a bunch of troll bait really, PC users complaining over the p2p aspect of the multiplayer. Aside from that and the slightly nicer graphics, they are really the same across all versions.

Also who listens to reviews nowadays?

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When buying a gaming PC you also have to ask yourself what kind of games you’re into.

  • For first person shooters you’re going to need a top-of-the-line graphics card to get the framerate at least above a skipfree frames/sec.
  • For role playing games, a fast hard drive is important, there’s often A LOT of data loading. If you don’t enjoy staring at load screens, I’d suggest getting at least 1 SSD to install/load the current game you’re playing.
  • And for Facebook games, you need to leave the gaming discussion group.

But as a general rule of thumb for gaming PCs, don’t skimp on the processor (I personally go with i7s), a good dedicated graphics card (no integrated Intel chipsets), and at least 6 gigs of ram (your OS will eat 2 of those).

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JohnnyEgnyte wrote:

  • And for Facebook games, you need to leave the gaming discussion group.

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JohnnyEgnyte wrote:

  • And for Facebook games, you need to leave the gaming discussion group.

+1

This, so very much.

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JohnnyEgnyte wrote:

When buying a gaming PC you also have to ask yourself what kind of games you’re into.

  • For first person shooters you’re going to need a top-of-the-line graphics card to get the framerate at least above a skipfree frames/sec.
  • For role playing games, a fast hard drive is important, there’s often A LOT of data loading. If you don’t enjoy staring at load screens, I’d suggest getting at least 1 SSD to install/load the current game you’re playing.
  • And for Facebook games, you need to leave the gaming discussion group.

But as a general rule of thumb for gaming PCs, don’t skimp on the processor (I personally go with i7s), a good dedicated graphics card (no integrated Intel chipsets), and at least 6 gigs of ram (your OS will eat 2 of those).

The FPS graphic card thing really isn’t the case anymore though. I’m using a fairly solid midrange card (~$200) and I’m able to set almost all games to Ultra or high (including BF3). The only game that’s given me issues is Skyrim and that’s a driver issue where when skyrim is running the fan controllers just sit there and drool at idle till the card overheats. In fact this year saw the first time I’ve had to upgrade a video card in years, if trends continue the same way they have been I can probably keep this one for another several years (unless I blow it up).

Use a solid state drive for OS and game installs, don’t scimp on RAM, middleweight video card and at least a quad core of some form or another (I’d suggest an i7) and you are ready to game.

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LiterateGeek wrote:

That’s because most games are graphicly based to be on console… so our computer hardware is not being pushed too what it’s capable of doing… stupid game company’s! stop slacking!

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wow - great info! I don’t have a budget because I’m independently wealthy. (joking)

$1000??? crap… I’m rethinking this, as for parts, right now I do have an SSD drive (80gb), but hell, that may hold 3-4 games tops, right? that sucks. I have looked at some cases, but planned on taking Kenny with me to MicroCenter to see what a good deal might be, not that I would buy it there.

Man, I see this getting real expensive… Anyone got a used XBox 360 for sale?? lol!