So I'm getting a gaming PC for christmas

[Luigibro606]

I have either £750 or £800 to spend. Wat do get? You guys probably know how to make a good PC from that.

[mincespy]

Get a dreadnought to sit on top of your monitor

[Grove]

Get i7, some card from nvidia GTX series, 16 gb ram, Asus motherboard, at least 2 TB hdd and extra stuff and you\'re set.

[Katalliaan]

You\'d probably be better off with two smaller drives in a RAID 0 config or a big HDD for your files and a smaller SSD for the programs/games you use frequently than a single big drive. It\'d cost more money than just one big drive, but you\'d see much faster loading times.

[Millst0ne MK II]

I have an i5, GTX 560ti, and 8gb of ddr3 ram. Runs everything I play at high-ultra settings at around 40-60fps.

Kerbal averages 120 ;P

[Radsoc]

I think you need about £1000 to get good performance/value. (i.e. that lasts for 3 years, with no or minor upgrades).

Right now I\'m waiting for the GTX 670. Not sure about the CPU, but definitely some i7. I will reuse my old GTX 260 for PhysX.

Modular power supply with 4+ PCI-e rails. (2 for GTX 260, and 2 for the 670).

The chassis has to fit 4 slots for GPUs and some PCI. Most likely a somewhat bigger than standard has to be used.

I\'ve got 6GB RAM currently, but never used that much. So I\'ll aim for that again.

Small SSD for the Windows-HD.

1 TB+ total storage. Reuse old ones.

Soundcard (very important for the sound quality, old ones are as good).

Mainboard with

PCI-e 3.0

USB 3.0

Gigabit ethernet

Later on:

Retina 24' Screen (probably next year) (They seem to call it 4K HD)

Approx:

£150 Chassis

£350 GPU

£350 CPU

£100 SSD

£50 HD

£150 Mainboard

£100 RAM

£100 PSU

[witeken]

BTW, wait for the new Ivy Bridge CPU\'s. They\'re made on 22nm (instead of Sandy Bridge 32nm). This means: more power for less electricity. Ivy Bridge comes out in May-June or so.

GPU: AMD HD 6xxx/7xxx Not sure what a good one is.

CPU: Ivy Bridge i5/i7 (clock at 3+ GHz)

RAM: 8 GB

Monitor: 1920 x 1080

Mouse: Logitech G400 Gaming Mouse / or a standard mouse...

HDD: 0.5 or 1 TB should be fine. However, if you have money left, you can take an extra SSD for with your HDD (you can put games and your OS and other things that need to run fast in the SSD)

[Kryten]

BTW, wait for the new Ivy Bridge CPU\'s. They\'re made on 22nm (instead of Sandy Bridge 32nm). This means: more power for less electricity. Ivy Bridge comes out in May-June or so.

This.

Even if you can\'t actually afford one, it should mean a good lowering of price for what\'s already out there.

[witeken]

This.

Even if you can\'t actually afford one, it should mean a good lowering of price for what\'s already out there.

There are two options:

1) Take a mid-end CPU with not too much power, but take a better GPU

2) Take a high end CPU (like i5 2500k) and take a less high-end GPU

With that budget, I should take a mid end Ivy Bride CPU and take a more high end GPU. If you take good coolers. If you take good coolers, you can overclock your CPU if neccesery.

[Caesar15]

So i want a gaming PC for Christmas

[socket7]

You\'d probably be better off with two smaller drives in a RAID 0 config or a big HDD for your files and a smaller SSD for the programs/games you use frequently than a single big drive. It\'d cost more money than just one big drive, but you\'d see much faster loading times.

You know why it\'s called RAID 0?

Thats how much data is left if anything goes wrong with either drive or the controller.

You want fast loading times, go for an SSD as an OS drive.

[SteevyT]

If it is only gaming, the i7 will not see much (if any) improvement over the i5. Games don\'t use more than a couple cores yet, and the i5 has four. If you are doing some serious rendering, then you will see a benefit from the i7.

Also, games really don\'t need more than 8GB of RAM, I have four, and the only time I\'ve seen them filled was when I accidentally opened five instances of Inventor. (Or the other time when I somehow gave a VM more RAM than what was available)

[Katalliaan]

I never said RAID 0 was perfectly stable, just that it would be better performance than just a big drive. Besides, you\'d be a fool to not have backups of any important data.

[Randox]

Your really don\'t need a gigantic CPU for gaming. The GPU is much more important for that kind of application. I am running an AMD Phenom II 1065T, which is six 2.9 GHz cores. It\'s a beast for multitasking, but I don\'t think there are any games that can use more than 2 cores, let alone its 6. My point being, its not having any trouble from games like Skyrim or GTA 4 from the CPU end.

Also, you have to decide if something like an SSD is really worth the money. For the cost of an SSD, you could easily get a second high end GPU and upgrade your processor.

[Ydoow]

Yup. Definitely go with a gpu over a cpu.

I did the exact opposite on this build (my first build).

My i7 first generation still hasn\'t broken 40% on any game I\'ve played. And that\'s in extreme physics situations that it might spike to 40% on average it sits around 13%

i5\'s aren\'t much different than i7\'s, just a bit more power and frequency.

I was lucky and got a great, yet cheap, gpu that\'s held up. It\'s definitely not high end, but it handles things well enough.

I\'m looking to upgrade soon.

I\'m thinking of the HD Radeon 6570 (or something named similar to that...) since it has the best performance per $ that I can see on charts and such

[Luigibro606]

Ok, I\'m taking this all in, peeps.

The games I want to play are TF2, World of Tanks, Supreme Commander: FA, KSP, Minecraft, Dawn of War I, Dawn of War II: Retribution, Simcity 5 (When it comes out), an\' Ace of Spades.

KEY:

Blue Does work on current laptop

Red Doesn\'t work on current laptop

http://www.reevoo.com/p/advent-8315

Current lappy.

[Grove]

Ok, I\'m taking this all in, peeps.

The games I want to play are TF2, World of Tanks, Supreme Commander: FA, KSP, Minecraft, Dawn of War I, Dawn of War II: Retribution, Simcity 5 (When it comes out), an\' Ace of Spades.

KEY:

Blue Does work on current laptop

Red Doesn\'t work on current laptop

http://www.reevoo.com/p/advent-8315

Current lappy.

My list: GTA IV, GTA V, SimCity 5, TF2, Prototype, Prototype 2, KSP, NFS: The Run, Half-Life 2+ episodes, Spiral Knights, Tom Clancy\'s: Splinter Cell.

Terraria, SimCity 4, GTA SA, The Powder Toy, Minecraft, Spore.

Laptop:

HP Compaq nx7400

[Radsoc]

Don\'t buy a laptop for gaming unless you have no other choice.

Supreme Commander and SimCity are CPU intense, while the other games aren\'t very GPU demanding. So it looks like the CPU will be more important than the GPU for you. And GPUs are easier to replace (no need to change the MB). My strategy is to buy a cheap one from the latest gen and upgrade when I need to. I can still run almost everything I want on my GTX 260 (definitely those games).

GTA V might be demanding, but I think it\'s being limited by the console hardware anyway. CPU is still important there for traffic etc, but you most likely need a lot of VRAM as well if you want to max things out.

[Luigibro606]

Yeah, Supreme Commander is a hard game to run. Computers with 2.4gHz will find a 4v4 Comp game will eventually crash. Thing is I don\'t know if i\'ll have enough money to get a computer capable of running it at all with £750. :C

[Luigibro606]

Buuuuuuuump.

I think I've found a good configuration. I'll leave the deciding to all of you;

AMD FX-8120 3.10 gHz eight-core processor (not that I'll need that many)

8GB DDR3 Memory

NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 1GB Video Card

500watt power supply

1TB Hard Drive

24X Double Layer Optical Drive

ASUS M5A78L-M Motherboard

Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling system w/ 120mm Radiator

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition

Am I doing it right? :3c

[jfx]

Buuuuuuuump.

Am I doing it right? :3c

No, sorry.

Don't use an AMD FX or Llano if you plan on playing exotic games or indy titles like KSP - its single threaded performance is abysmal. go for an intel i5 or if your budget is tight even an i3 which is perfect for KSP, etc and will still run heavy weight stuff like bf3 ok.

Also your chosen gpu is little more powerful than a fat smartphone gpu (dramatization) but you won't want to play games on that

Intel Core i3-2100, 2x 3.10GHz, boxed

RAM 4-8 gb of ddr3 ram

Mainboard ASRock H77 Pro4-M, H77 or similar

Radeon HD 7750 or similar

1gb hdd, 7200rpm

400w quality psu

+ fluff (case, optical drives)

If CPU power becomes an issue in two years you can upgrade to a sandy bridge / ivy bridge quad core.

Edited August 23, 2012 by jfx

[Luigibro606]

Gah. The only processors I can choose from are all AMD FX's. Lawl.

The other five are FX-8150 3.60 gHz, eight-core,

FX-6200 3.80 gHz six-core

FX-6100 3.30 gHz six-core

FX-4170 4.20 gHz quad-core

FX-4100 3.60 gHz quad-core

As of the gpu, I was guessing someone might say that. Any recommendations? I have 20 or so NVIDIA options.

[jfx]

Sounds like a ****ty shop with that kind of limited offers.

Buying a gaming gpu for dummies: Look at the second digit: If it's between 5 and 9 it will be good for gaming.

eg:

geforce 610 -> nope. geforce 660 -> good. geforce 690 -> monster.

Same goes for radeons:

74xx -> lol. 7770 -> good. 7970 -> woah.

Of course there are far more details but if you have absolutely no idea this is a good starting point. You can also check older gen. cards (geforce 4xx, 5xx or radeon 6xxx - they are still good)

[Warshawski]

So..

AMD->FirePro 8900 -> Woah.

... Yeah, that's about right.

Anyway, if all you see is FX procs, you need to be on Newegg. You might as well build your own comp - it's not hard, just a little time-consuming and you better hope you dusted well.

[Navy4422]

Buuuuuuuump.

I think I've found a good configuration. I'll leave the deciding to all of you;

AMD FX-8120 3.10 gHz eight-core processor (not that I'll need that many)

8GB DDR3 Memory

NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 1GB Video Card

500watt power supply

1TB Hard Drive

24X Double Layer Optical Drive

ASUS M5A78L-M Motherboard

Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling system w/ 120mm Radiator

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition

Am I doing it right? :3c

Id drop the liquid cooling and get a good fan for cheaper most of the 50$ fans work almost as that- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

Also Id say try to get a higher graphics card maybe the gt 640 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

Lastly, the intel processor blew the fx out of the water but the fx is still good though for a little more I'd recommend this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

(if you change remember to change the mb.)

makes sure that hdd is 7200rpm for speed

Also I have had a lot of issues with my asus motherboards so maybe change but thats personal preference.