Gaming Pc

[FingerandThumbs]

Got my son a gaming pc from this company.

www.aria.co.uk/

[aeromech3]

Hi guys, didn't think I would be posting in the computer section except questions, as I am not very computer literate.
Been vasilating on whether to buy or build a new PC; to cut long story short could not find the combination I wanted so here is my Thursday morning effort: i5-3570k. ASUS P8Z77-V, PSU bequiet 530W Pure Power, SDD Corsair Force3 120GB, RAM Corsair Vengeance 8GB, DVD Samsung 22x writer and case Enermax Staray. No Graphics card as I am not a gamer but unit has plenty of potential.
Had some issues with the length of PSU cable to the MOB so not all tidy hence this picture. Works a treat after a day setting up the OS, drivers for wifi and the USB3.0 ports, then copying all my web addresses from my grinding to a halt Compaq laptop. Cost around 780 quid incl OS, Office and Keysonic mini keyboard which is giving me a hard time.

[Razor]

I've seen a couple of YouTube vids that use 3d graphics etc to get kind of a benchmark figure of how well a pc copes with this sort of thing. A bit like the windows index but a proper version.

Is there a standard program for this preferably a free one

[soaps]

Just thought I would post to correct some of the information on here, firstly games consoles are manufactured and distributed at a loss or at best at cost, the reason being the manufacturers need to ship alot of units to encourage publishers to the platform. Games consoles are manufactured using the latest technology, so when they first come out they ARE FAR MORE POWERFUL than any gaming PC you could build for the same cost. <-- Just correcting what someone said earlier, obviously if you compare a £2000.00 gaming rig to an Xbox 360 thats different.

Going back to the OP, I would go for an 1155 Ivy Bridge setup, in terms of performance to cost ratio I think that is the best way to go, it would cost considerably more for a 2011 chipset setup:

Motherboards - http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-har ... -intel-z77
Processor - http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-har ... -bridge%29

If you take a look here:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You will see that this processor is right at the top of the list, my processor and motherboard which were considerably more expensive are much farther down. If the PC is a pure gaming rig, you could go for an i5 as the graphics card is more important, graphics cards are optimised for performing complex calculations relevant to 3D, so that work is not done on the CPU.

In terms of RAM someone here said you need loads, you DON'T, huge amounts of RAM are for high end 3D rendering and other long intensive tasks. (When I say 3D rendering I mean making feature length animations like Pixar films etc), 6-8G should be more than enough, I have 6G I think in mine and even when I run a really intensive 3D game I dont use nearly all of it. If it comes down to an option between 6G of really fast RAM and 8G of slower RAM go for speed. You wouldn't use 12G running Crysis or BF3 or whatever. Try to go with someone like corsair they have a really good reputation when it comes to RAM. My 6G at the time was the fastest ram you could buy.

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-har ... hz-plus%29

Graphics are a grey area you have the Nvidia camp and you have the AMD camp, Nvidia camp will say the cards are more expensive but better quality and have better support, AMD camp will say you get more for your money... Its upto you on this, I went for Nvidia because it had better options for 3D etc in the future and I read that CUDA cores kick ass compared to AMD's (you'll notice that AMD cards have like 1000+ cores, whereas an equivalent Nvidia has 320+). My decision turned out to be wise, a friend of mine that built a rig at the same time (a considerably cheaper one) had to buy a new Nvidia card because he was having problems with a particular game and his AMD card. Anyway graphics you will have to make your own mind up... Just get the best you can afford...

Power, theres 2 options really, modular or not... Modular is where you plug in what you need so you dont have loads of wires everywhere, non modular is the opposite you have a harness of wires whether you use them all or not. I would go for 700W or something like that, try to stick with a decent brand so it is less likely to develop faults.

Erm HDD's and SSD's, well SSD's are ALOT better reduced loading times better performace yes, but they are expensive, I got a 60G one when they first came out and it lasted a year before it just died, it came with a 3 yr warranty so I got it replaced but I had lost quite a few of my files, if you can afford a SSD then get one but dont take it out of your budget for the other stuff. You will probably still need a traditional HDD for raw storage aswell anyway.

And I think thats about it, the other elements I dont consider to be part of a gaming rig, Monitors, Mouse, Keyboard etc they are nothing to do with raw processing power and should not be included in your £600 budget otherwise you wont get even a half decent rig.

As for Ebay etc, unless its 2nd hand you will probably find that most of the rigs around your budget are based on the 1155 chipset, obviously the seller will have a mark up for building it, so you would probably save some money assembling it yourself.

Not to sound rude but £600 for a gaming rig is a fairly low budget, the above is about the best you will get for your money. You would have to increase your budget considerably to get a really high end gaming rig.

[Puma]

If you look at Toms Hardware, they review individual items so you can find the best for your buck. They also test stuff and tell you how well they perform with BF3 and other games.

Look at power consumption of the graphics cards - I really don't want to burn extra watts for nothing!

Look at noise free items too, you can get passively cooled everything if you really search. This saves a wee bit of money on the leccy too.

I think you can build a good gaming machine currently. I could not find any BF3 benchmark, but Crysis which is very heavy to run, will run on medium settings at 60 frames per minute (pretty darn smooth) with a GTX 460 which is only £90 on Amazon. Or the one that BF3 recommends the 560 is only £104, this is above min spec.

My motto was to stay behind the cutting edge by a couple of years and you will save a huge amount of money.

[BillyGoat]

And I think thats about it, the other elements I dont consider to be part of a gaming rig, Monitors, Mouse, Keyboard etc they are nothing to do with raw processing power and should not be included in your £600 budget otherwise you wont get even a half decent rig.

I'm not getting into the whole technical argument, but I will disagree with what you wrote above.

People buy or make gaming machines to spend longer than average amount of times playing games. Overlooking the primary components that you use to control/view the thing is sheer madness.

It's like running a marathon in a suit, because you have the best runnign shoes....

BG

[soaps]

I'm not getting into the whole technical argument, but I will disagree with what you wrote above.

People buy or make gaming machines to spend longer than average amount of times playing games. Overlooking the primary components that you use to control/view the thing is sheer madness.

It's like running a marathon in a suit, because you have the best runnign shoes....

There's gaming "Rigs" and there's gaming "Peripherals", if I had £600 to build a "Rig" and that included a Gaming Keyboard, Gaming Mouse and a Responsive Monitor I wouldn't bother.... You should have noted the "nothing to do with raw processing power" bit, I'm not disputing their importance, but they should no be included in the budget. All Mice and Keyboards are compatible, all Motherboards, Ram and Processors are not, I would buy a better "Rig" and upgrade the "Peripherals" later when funds allowed.

I would liken it more to doing a sh*t load of training for a marathon and wearing whatever you want on the day. Your way is like being fat and useless and wearing the best attire on the day of the marathon.

Just for your reference here is an Ebay link, (I don't advocate using Ebay but it was the quickest link)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksi ... C&_sacat=0

Note that the majority of these Gaming "Rigs" either do not come with "Peripherals" or come with a basic Keyboard and Mouse (Obviously so you can upgrade)

[northwales4u]

I would buy a better "Rig" and upgrade the "Peripherals" later when funds allowed.

I my personal experience, I tried that many years ago and found that by the time I had the funds to upgrade the peripherals the rig itself was out of date but that was a long long time ago when I was playing the original Unreal.

If I was the OP I would stick the £600 into a savings account and wait for the Xbox 720 to come out and use whatever change he has to buy COD, BF and a few other games

[soaps]

@northwales4u, the joys of owning a good PC, but I have to say it doesn't really matter if the machine is out of date, I spent a fortune on my PC which has an obsolete chipset(now), but it still runs any game you throw at it on max settings... Hardware advances alot quicker than software, so it will be a while before I give it something it struggles with at which point I will get a new machine. The main bottleneck in modern computers is read/write speeds which is improving with SSD's they just need to be cheaper.

[northwales4u]

Up until I moved to PC's I had always used Atari, the Falcon and even the STe were great gaming computers of their day. When I got a PC I was amazed at the prices - I think I paid about £700 for a 3D card and back then a 15" CRT monitor was about the same price. During that time PCs weren't really mainstream in the UK so thats why the cost was so much.

A couple of years ago I was in Kos and the hotel computer has a pirated PC version of COD4 so I loaded it up to see how it compares to the COD4 on the 360. I admit it was slightly better but I couldnt justify spending £1k on a kit good enough to run it when I can buy a dedicated games console that runs it perfectly well

[Rich-Ando]

there will always be many arguments for and against. basically calling peripherals a waste of time until a later date is fine as long as the OP realises that. you tend to forget the origins of a new player to the rig building game. i have spent so many years doing it and playing in that world that i see them all as one, i wouldn't build a decent rig and use a cheap cr4ppy MS mouse or keyboard. same again with monitors, they ghost if it cannot refresh fast enough and that would just put me right off.

no, you don't need 12G of ram for playing BF3 but i have 12G because it seriously helps me with video editing, 6G falls down.

i agree with going for Corsair, imho, some of the best ram around but others may disagree. for the graphics cards, there are many people using some of the slightly older cards, some of the early 6000 series ATi and equivalent Nvidia ones but many have reported they can't play BF3 on full bore. i also never buy top end as it's released because i can't afford the price tag, 2-3 from top end usually suffices.

consoles are sold at a loss, i thought everybody knew that? it still doesn't mean they compare to a high end gaming rig, they don't but they will more than do the OP for what he wants if it's just gaming.

there is one thing i would definitely like to add though, and this is one for the experienced replying: -

make sure you keep your rig out of reach of the outside weather. 3 days ago it peed down while i was working on my patio. i had the french doors open but only saw my tools when it started to rain. i grabbed them and took them in to save them being damaged. 30 minutes later i went into my living room to find the doors open, rain had peed in and all over my rig. straight through the fan vent at the top of the case and into my psu. took my psu out, the fuse in the plug, the rcd and mcb in my fusebox. £250 down the spout

[BillyGoat]

cr4ppy MS mouse or keyboard

[Rich-Ando]

oops, sorry BG i forgot that's who you deal with, i'm not wrong though

[northwales4u]

make sure you keep your rig out of reach of the outside weather:

When I split with the second wife I stayed at some birds house who didn't have broadband but her neighbour did so I wrapped my 360 in a bin bag and taped it to her back wall so I could pick up their signal. It didn't take long for the water to get in and bye bye Xbox

[thescruff]

oops, sorry BG i forgot that's who you deal with, i'm not wrong though

I use the Logitech G9 with maximum weights.