Building a gaming PC soon! Advice welcome! (Awesome present from my wife. ;-) )

[peteer01]

Edit: Ordered the parts. That thread is here.

 

Hey everyone. Long story short, I'm going to build a gaming PC next month. I've been using the idea as a motivator to study for my next Cisco exam, but today I got the official WAF. My wife gave me a card that reads:

"Thank you for your hardwork everyday for the family. Please buy a gaming PC. I love you!"

 

 

 

 

No asterisk, no budget, no terms and conditions. Unqualified permission to buy (build) a gaming PC.

 

(Optional learn about peteer01 info below: Skip below for PC build thoughts and request for input if you're not interested)

 

Now, the last time I built a gaming PC, it was 2000, and Deus Ex had just come out. I played a decent amount of PC games from Deja Vu when we got our first computer (Macintosh) in 1985 until I moved to Japan for work in 2003. (At which point I basically didn't game outside of periodically playing at game centers and playing Tetris on my monochrome cell phone. Two years later I got the the PSX and then the 360 at launch. The social mix of real life friends in Japan, other native English speakers and some cool Japanese guys was the reason I never considered building a PC again once I was pretty seriously and regularly gaming again with the 360.)

 

Those of you who actually remember me will remember that I was in Japan when the earthquake happened. Aftershocks and radiation weren't a combination I was comfortable subjecting my two young children to, and through a highly unlikely confluence of events, my family and I are now living outside of Albany, NY, where I've started a new job.

 

My 360 friends list, with the exception of family, now sleeps when I'm awake and games while I'm at work...so while I still keep in touch with a lot of them, when they started telling me about how good Skyrim is (including two who have chosen to play it on the PC for reasons that are probably self-explanatory for you PC gamers), I thought, "Now that's a game worth buildilng a PC for."

 

(Aren't you glad you know more about me now? Here comes the PC build thoughts and request for input)

 

I've been reading up on parts, and playing with the idea of building a PC for several weeks now, so I'm beginning to hone in on a parts list. I'm giving my next Cisco exam my first try on January 3rd. That's a very aggressive test date, as I still have six chapters to read for the first time, but I'm basically planning to give it my best shot so I can identify what I need to focus on (if I fail), study those topics and give the test another try (or two) later in January. When I pass, I'll place my order. (Unless I pass on the 3rd, at which point, I'll want to see how the 7950 is going to affect my graphic card options.)

 

I'm looking at possibly getting a i7-2600K if prices drop in the next month...but probably getting an i5-2500K based on budget and bang for the buck. I've got to build everything from scratch, so the opportunities for scope creep to screw up my budget surprisingly large. 2500K is probably fine, right?

 

I'm planning on 16GB of DDR3, a 240/256GB SSD, and one slow (traditional HDD) 2GB or 3GB drive. I'm looking at Motherboards that are comparatively cheap because they only accommodate 1 graphics cards, something around $100 is what I was thinking for motherboard. (I'm not opposed to upgrading the motherboard when/if I buy a second graphics way down the road, but I probably won't bother with SLI in the near future.) I have an Astro A40+MixAmp I got for my 360, and I'm torn between trying to use onboard sound, a sound card with Dolby Surround (pricey) or a sound card with Dolby Headphone... (What's the best way to make use of the A40 and/or MixAmp?)

 

As for graphic card, I'm pretty impressed with the 7970 that just (paper) released. I'm very hopeful that 7950s will hit the market at a compelling price in January. I think that's (7950) what I'd like to go with, assuming I can find a way to get it for a reasonable price. $350 for the graphics card is what I have in mind from a budget standpoint, but none of the budget numbers are set in stone.

 

So...how's that sound? Reasonable enough? As for cooler, I was thinking something like Evga’s SuperClock CPU Cooler. Cheaper than water cooling, and if I can get a reasonable case, I'm hoping air cooling + headphones isn't too bad from either a cooling standpoint or noise standpoint. I played with a launch 360 RIGHT NEXT TO ME when I had my projector room in Japan, and headphones made that acceptable enough. :-)

 

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

 

(Below is just some exposition on how effective Steam's recent marketing has been.)

 

I've been signing up for all kinds of contests/giveaways at computer hardware sites like Tom's and HardOCP, and stumbled upon Steam's giveaway, which had me put 10 games (pretty much the 10 most expensive games I'd want, as opposed to the 10 games I'd want most. ) on my wishlist.

 

Then the coal/present thing started, and even thought my most competent gaming PC is a laptop with integrated graphics, I've now got HL2:Ep 2 (I have the Orange Box for 360, but I'm kind of interested in getting HL2, ep1 and ep2 for PC just so that I can give the game a second chance with Fake Factory's Cinematic Mod, since I never actually finished even HL2 on the 360, but talking about mods, that mod and HL2 is a whole 'nother thread.), 6 chunks of coal (what happens when you have 7!?), played E.Y.E. (Thank you, Mr. GOH!), bought and played "And Yet It Moves", which wasn't just my first Steam purchase, but had me register my credit card to Steam, which will undoubtedly lead to more impulse buys down the road.

 

Anyway, the whole point of this long rant is that Steam's promotional giveaways have been highly effective. (On me anyway. Nearly bought Skyrim yesterday, despite not even ordering a PC for at least another two weeks.)

 

(Also, if you remember who I am, and are remotely interested in friending me on steam, by all means, please do so. :-) )

Edited January 8, 2012 by peteer01

[Mr. GOH!]

Looks good to me.

 

I think you'd be fine with an i5-2500k unless you're using this rig for non-gaming CPU-intensive programs.

 

I also have a gaming build-related question: I plan on building a PC to serve as an entertainment hub and plan to game on a TV from my couch. I have a gamepad, but I'd prefer to have the option of using a keyboard and mouse to game comfortably while I'm sitting back on my couch. Does anyone have any recommendations as far as lapstands or the like go? Should I just resign myself to hunching forward and using a TV tray as a stand?

[MasterDex]

I have to agree with Goh on the i5. Although I've never tried either an i5 or an i7 system, all reviews and info I have read on both have indicated that the i7 only comes into its own for professional work where multiple cores are crucial. For a gaming system, all signs point to the i5 as being the port of call, so to speak, for gaming - and it saves you a good $100. But stick to the K series. The K signifies that it's open to overclocking and although you may not overclock for some time, it can be a great comfort to know you can get more - the i5 and i7 K's have been reported to reach 3.2ghz without breaking a sweat.

 

I'd also strongly suggest that you get no more than 8gb of ram unless you know you require more for your profession. Realistically, there are literally a handful or so of games that will utilize more than 3gb of ram and those few that do will still run more than acceptably on 4gb of ram. With ram, what you want to consider is what the highest usage will be per program plus what windows and your pagefile (virtual memory) will use. With WinXp, this tops off at 3.3gb, with Win 7, it's more around 4.5, all things considered. 8gb of ram ensures plenty of headroom for anything coming our way in at least the next 2 years and buying two 4gb sticks means that should you find yourself needing more later down the line that it's an easy and cheap upgrade to 16gb.

 

As far as graphics go, I'm a personal believer in sticking to the middle-line. The GPU manufacturers like to tout "the fastest card" every season but the reality is that it will provide only a marginal improvement over last season's "fastest" card. Because the difference between last season's (not even last year's) top of the line card and this season's is so small, you're better off going for the middle of the line card that will, in most cases considering the games released over the last 4 years, see you being able to run high/medium at respectable framerates. Should you find that your GPU becomes the bottleneck of your system, it's easy to double up with a second card of the same type to improve your performance (again, in most cases. There are certain games, and certain settings that won't play well with crossfire/SLI). It's also worth keeping in mind that with the latest and "greatest" cards comes a pricedrop in the lesser cards. I honestly, even if you had the money to burn, would never recommend buying the "top-of-the-line" cards.

 

As far as motherboards go, I'd stick to the P67 chipset (as far as intel CPU's go) rather than going for the newer Z68. The motherboard I'm eyeing up for myself is the Asrock extreme 6, it's rated as one of the best P67 motherboards out there at the moment and doesn't ask for too much cash but should you find it's a bit on the expensive side for yourself, there are other cheaper alternatives that offer good quality. Either way, I'd recommend the P67 chipset for anyone planning an Intel build for a gaming PC.

 

An SSD is a sound idea but their price per GB is still very expensive right now. To combat this, a few manufacturers have started to release go betweens that will allow for flash caching using traditional HDDs. As far as actual HDD storage goes, I feel 1TB internally should be enough. If you're concerned about contingency, double this to 2gb in a standard raid 1 setup. Personally I think the best solution for music, video and document storage is an external HDD or NAS as it allows for portability and speeds up the backup/repair process as it allows you to keep all your important data in an 'off-site' location.

 

Unless you plan to get every ounce of power out of your system (or you wanna be that guy) there's no great reason to go watercooled. Most aftermarket active cooling solutions are more than adequate for your everyday gamer. I would not recommend sticking with stock cooling for long if you plan on doing any serious amount of gaming. Stock coolers are designed for the everyman browsing the web, etc infrequently over the course of a couple of years, they're not designed to keep a gaming system healthy over the course of several years.

 

Finally, soundcards should only be a consideration, really, if you consider yourself an audiophile (or you've grown a hate for the likes of realtek over the years). Most quality motherboards come with decent onboard sound (or a decent PCI soundcard) that only connoissuers will scoff at. However, if you're like me, you'll want to link up as much to your system as possible and an aftermarket soundcard coupled with a front/rear panel that allows for multiple connections (TOSLINK, SPDIF, MIDI, etc) can be invaluable.

 

P.S. Don't go any smaller than a full tower if you plan on a serious system. Though they may appear too big and bulky, you'll be glad of the extra ventilation they provide as well as the extra room you have to work with.

 

Best of luck on the build whatever your choices, you couldn't pick a better time to go for it.

Edited January 8, 2012 by MasterDex

[deanb]

I'll chime in on the i5-2500K too. I built ben a PC pre-Skyrim and he wanted a high end i7, but since his budget was spreading I felt that'd be one of the quickest areas to trim the fat. A look around at benchmarks and the 17-2600K n the i5 were pretty much neck n neck apart from when it came to stuff like Photoshop batches, where there was a more significant difference than the 1-2fps shown in game(and that's not always to the i7's favour), but the £80 or so savings made up for the 8 seconds he might lose out when messing with Photoshop, and was massively well and ahead of the C2Q he had at the time.

 

I will also back up MasterDex that the high-end GPUs are basically sucker magnets. The only reason I look out forward to a new fastest n greatest is because everything else becomes cheaper. Once again have a look at benchmarks, Tomshardware is a great resource, look at the games you'd be interested in and the performance difference. The resolution of your monitor can be a big factor too. If it wasn't for the fact I like my big 17" I could go to my smaller, and lower res, 19" and probably eek out a bit more fps in my games.

 

I can't back up MasterDex claim about non-stock coolers helping the life of your CPU but I can back up that they tend to be much quieter which is always nice. I love the sound of my netbook, i.e none. Then again a totally silent PC would scare me, no sound to know it's coming to life.

 

One thing yet to be mentioned is PSUs. They're the heart of the PC. You can make your Frankenstein from the brain of Einstein, the arms of Michael Phelps, legs of Usain Bolt and the voice of Morgan Freeman, but it's all for nought if you skimp in the heart section. Make sure it's of a good brand and fits your needs. It's my experience that you should be able to get recommended wattage ratings from Nvidia n Intel, I'd assume ATI too.

 

 

@Masterdex: I think you GB'ed your TBs.

[MasterDex]

So I did!

 

Speaking of PSU's, Here's a handy calculator to help you figure out what your minimum wattage will be. If you plan on adding parts in the future, be they front panel LCD screens or even just hard drives, it's a good idea to give yourself some headroom of between 100-200w. I like 750w for the average system, it gives plenty of headroom for expansion. I'd als recommend a modular power supply if you like to keep things tidy. I'll echo Dean's and say make sure it's a good brand. The PSU is one part you don't want to skimp on as it could cost you more than just the power supply should it go belly up - a good sign is the warranty the PSU comes with, the top brands often offer limited lifetime warranties whereas other brands may only offer 1-5 year warranties. You'll know you have a good PSU if there's a bit of weight to it - Every time I've suspected a power supply of failing, I'd be so sure I was right when I had the PSU in my hands and felt the weight that I would've placed money on it, I would have won the bet in most cases too.

[peteer01]

Looks good to me.

 

I think you'd be fine with an i5-2500k unless you're using this rig for non-gaming CPU-intensive programs.

 

I also have a gaming build-related question: I plan on building a PC to serve as an entertainment hub and plan to game on a TV from my couch. I have a gamepad, but I'd prefer to have the option of using a keyboard and mouse to game comfortably while I'm sitting back on my couch. Does anyone have any recommendations as far as lapstands or the like go? Should I just resign myself to hunching forward and using a TV tray as a stand?

Haha. You guys know that there's another thread after this where I laid out all the components I did order, right?

 

In short, 2500K, 240GB SSD, 1TB Barracuda, EVGA Supercooler (which I am very impressed with),16GB of RAM. (I love to multitask, and end up with huge paging files slowing me down on both my work and personal laptop, which have 6GB each, and I figure it's worth the $35 or whatever I ended up paying for the extra 8GB to avoid using the SSD for paging file read/writes, as I type this, I just manually turned off my paging file). I'm gaming with a friend's old 8800GT, which is good enough to enjoy the games I'm playing, and gives me time to see what the 7970 launch does to graphics card prices.

 

I will turn off other programs when I'm gaming, but knowing that I've used more than 8GB with my current laptops, I saw no reason not to spend the extra cash now and get 16GB. (Also, it was one of those crazy 24 hour NewEgg coupon codes so it could have cost me as much or more to add memory down the line, and I know it's best to use the exact same memory modules, which factored into my decision.)

 

As for Mr. GOH's question, I'm considering setting up a theater room/gaming room so I can run the PC to a large 1080p TV as well. I want to get a laptop beanbag desk or something similar. They sell them all over Japan, but a quick google didn't find what I was looking for in English:

 

http://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/e-kurashi/q2x81.html

http://item.rakuten....mdin/ht-gr-oth/

 

 

Roughly $20, beanbag cushion on the bottom, hard plastic top, reasonably sized... My thought process is that having just bought this:

 

 

That and a mouse should fit pretty comfortably on a reasonably small lap desk, and I'm hopeful that that might play well on a couch and big screen TV. I am interested to know if anyone else has tried that with good/bad results.

Edited January 8, 2012 by peteer01

[TheMightyEthan]

I've played on my couch with my 47-inch TV with a 360 controller, and it was like playing the most gorgeous console games ever made. Wasn't very convenient for regular computer use though.

[peteer01]

I've played on my couch with my 47-inch TV with a 360 controller, and it was like playing the most gorgeous console games ever made. Wasn't very convenient for regular computer use though.

Speaking of wanting to hear back from someone who tries to game with a Logitech G13 and a mouse on a TV...

 

Seriously, Ethan, do you have a lap desk similar to what I pasted above? Can you try gaming with a mouse and your G13 on your TV and let me know how playable that is?

[TheMightyEthan]

I do, actually. I'm not gonna drag my computer into the main room to hook it up to the TV, but I'll try the lapdesk at my deskdesk and see how that works, since the real question isn't the tv part but whether the G13 + mouse is usable on that.

[peteer01]

I do, actually. I'm not gonna drag my computer into the main room to hook it up to the TV, but I'll try the lapdesk at my deskdesk and see how that works, since the real question isn't the tv part but whether the G13 + mouse is usable on that.

Believe it or not, your feedback will likely influence my current house hunting. I'm trying to decide how important it is to get a big TV in the same room as the gaming computer, and your feedback will help.

[Battra92]

I do, actually. I'm not gonna drag my computer into the main room to hook it up to the TV, but I'll try the lapdesk at my deskdesk and see how that works, since the real question isn't the tv part but whether the G13 + mouse is usable on that.

Believe it or not, your feedback will likely influence my current house hunting. I'm trying to decide how important it is to get a big TV in the same room as the gaming computer, and your feedback will help.

 

House hunting in the Capital region is totes unfun.