An overused topic title: Getting myself a new computer

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Hey, I generally wanted to try asking WP first before a techie forum, as techie forums can really be aggravating in their attitudes towards people.

Anyways, hardware has always been my weak point (Generally because I could never buy any. But now I can.), but I'm looking to buy a new desktop. I already have a monitor I'm happy with, so the big stuff is just the general pieces.

I know I can save... 1/3rd or 1/4th on costs by building it myself, so I'm not going to buy them in a bundle unless there's a good sale.

For reference, I'm a hardcore gamer. I'm not sure what my budget is, currently, but I know that I want to be able to play all the latest at max settings and still run at max framerate, while still having a bit of reserve power for when newer, more resource intensive games come out, I can still play them even if not on max settings.
Also know that I'm not really looking, right now, to learn all about how hardware works. That's why I'm asking on forums and not googling it and using wikipedia.

So the question is... vague. I generally need to know a lot. I know the Intel i series is generally the most popular, but I doubt if it's like they say and there's nothing to compare it to. From what I've seen, the newest generation just introduces some stupid "turbo boost" anyways...
But then, I know almost nothing about CPU's. I know that different CPU's have different processing code and algorithm's, though... Would this vastly affect the quality of a CPU? What should I be really looking for?
I would think I could figure out the graphics card on my own, but I'll still ask for advice. But like this whole topic, I'm not sure what to ask because I've never really done this before.
I know even RAM has it's own processing speed, so is there any recommended brands out there, or other things I should know about?
Other things I need to really consider... Sound cards, network cards (I might need two of these, because I use XLink Kai?), motherboard, tower casing and cooling system. I might be missing one or two.
Especially the cooling system... I know nothing about that. Motherboards I can generally know are just a means to an end (Being able to handle more RAM, better CPU's, more connections, etc.). but that's about it. I wouldn't know what casing to get, either, that would fit everything and the cooling system.

So that's all I can think of right now. Any and all help would be appreciated. I'll hopefully get something out of it to remember in the future. =)

Building a computer yourself will not save you much money. What it will do is allow you to upgrade subparts like the video card. Get a fullsize mother board with 2 or more hard drive slots and a 700 plus watt or more power supply. A full sized case. Quad core or better Cpu. 120 mm exahast fans.
Get a 64 bit windows Max out the system ram.
those are a few suggestions.

glad you're considering building a machine it's alot of fun,
but definitely if you have an existing system that you can upgrade that might be a better way to go depending of course on what existing hardware it has etc
for performance numbers you may find http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ useful, also you can find a heap of resources on youtube on building your own pc so this might be worth a look also.

I don't have an existing system to upgrade from. Well, I do, but it's ancient. Best to just start from scratch.
I know performance numbers can help and all, but isn't there still the fact that they perform differently according to, say, coding, etc? Like, I remember seeing that one processor worked wonders and was incredibly fast for general computer use, but very weak when it came to games...

Also, I don't think I'll max out ram. Win7 can have a max of... 52gigs of RAM, if I remember right. I don't think I need even 16gigs, which is what many people seem to go with.
From what I can tell, 8gigs should be enough to run games at max settings and frame rate + Firefox + MSN + VOIP. I could be wrong. Either way, I don't need to run 2 games at once, most likely. =P
Again, it could change. I still don't know what kind of cash I'll have to put into this, and it may end up that I'm on a low budget like $600 or less, so RAM will probably be the last thing I do.

Is there any site that has charts for the other pieces I mentioned? I've honestly never actually had anything but built-in sound cards, and my father bought my network card for me, etc, etc.
And cooling systems I need to get right the first time, so my computer doesn't die.

And thanks for the responses.

CPUs - AMD is cheaper, but Intel is definitely faster and provides more bang for the buck. In particular the Core i5 'K' series chips are multiplier unlocked and can easily be overclocked 20% on the stock heatsink and voltage with no issues. I had the i5-2500K, stock 3.5 and OC'd it to 4.2 by just bumping up the multiplier and never had any issues. For future-proofing, Intel is currently ahead, though AMD is cheaper. If you get Intel, get an Ivy Bridge CPU (Core i5 is the best bang for the buck right now). If you get AMD, get one of the 'Bulldozer' FX chips. Get something with at least 4 cores, although right now games only use 2, but.. future-proofing.

If you want to save some money on Intel without losing much speed, you can get a Sandy Bridge instead. They are only about 10% slower than Ivy.

Motherboard - You can get motherboards now with two network cards integrated. They all have at least 1, though, and you get another network card for $15 or so. If you get an Intel CPU you'll get a Sandy or Ivy Bridge chip, which have a pretty good GPU included. Definitely not 'hardcore', though. But if you want to use that GPU one way or the other (it can also be used for Folding@Home type stuff), make sure you get a motherboard that supports using it.

Memory - Hardly any games are even 64-bit yet, so as far as games 4 GB is enough. That said, 8 GB is barely more expensive and it is more future-proof. Still, if you want to save a little cash, you can get 2 2 GB sticks now, and get another 2 later (pretty much all mobos nowadays have 4 RAM slots). Don't worry about getting the ultra-super-fastest memory, it doesn't make much difference. That said, nowadays you can usually get the almost-super-fastest memory for $10 or so more than the slowest

GPU - I haven't really been following GPUs lately. I know AMD semi-recently came out with their 7-series, which isn't a huge jump over the 6 but is a bit faster. I think Nvidia is basically the same. Really, for whatever price point you want, either the AMD or Nvidia choice will be about the same. Nvidia is a little faster for tessellation and has better 3D monitor/glasses support and has built-in Physics Now (or whatever it is) support, which about 3 games support, but tends to be a little more expensive and run a little hotter than AMD. I know that when AMD's latest 7-series GPU came out they said it was the fastest available, but that was a few months ago, things might have changed since then.

As far as AMD, if you want you can buy a 6950 and unlock it to a 6970 by just burning a new BIOS (freely available). Or at least you could a few months ago. It would save you about $60. And the 6970 is plenty fast for today's games. So is the 6950.

Also, don't neglect your PSU. Definitely don't get the cheapest PSU Make sure it at least is rated for the minimum recommended for your video card.

Sound card - Mobo sound is pretty good nowadays, although on a good set of speakers/headphones you will notice cleaner sound on a dedicated card. I had a Xonar DX and it was quite nice. If you're not picky about signal-to-noise ratio etc then motherboard sound is fine nowadays, they all support 7.1 and EAX and DirectSound 3D nowadays, and CPUs are fast enough that it doesn't matter if your CPU has to do some of the work anymore.

Cooling - If you want to really overclock your CPU or GPU, 3rd party heatsinks etc are good. In my experience GPUs don't OC much, but Intel's CPUs do. That said, I didn't notice a huge difference in games OC'ing my i5, although it did help in video encoding and the like. And even on the stock heatsink on the i5-2500K (a pretty mediocre heatsink really) I could overclock it 20% no problem.

Case - There are many many cases nowadays all of which are basically the same. It comes down to which one you think looks better. Corsair makes a lot of cases. CoolerMaster. Antec. Raidmax. Really though, go on Newegg, sort by price, and find one you think looks nice. Make sure it doesn't have a bunch of negative reviews. The main thing is that it can fit whatever size mobo you get, ATX (you'll probably get ATX) or mini ATX or whatever.

As far as size, realistically you'll probably only ever need something that has one or two 5.25" bays, two 3.5" internal bays, and enough space to hold 1 or 2 long-size GPUs (almost all mid-tower+ cases).

To ensure good cooling it'd be best to go with a case that has a fan on top, at least one in the back, and at least one in the front (you'll also have the PSU fan doing a little bit). A side fan can't hurt but I've never needed one myself.

Enjoy

Intel provides more bang for the buck? The top of the line Intel chip is 5 times more expensive then the top of the line AMD chip. Is it 5 times better?

I would quote you, losenger, but then it would make this way too long. =P

PSU... when I read that, I think Phantasy Star Universe. This is an acronym I don't know. But I'm guessing you meant power source? I figure 500W should be good enough, right? I might not even need that.

As for graphics cards... I really would like the PhysX or whatever it's called, as Dark Souls and other games do require and need it, and it would save on CPU power. But that would mean a video card that's several hundred instead of a couple hundred, wouldn't it?
I guess, in the end, I could always get a couple cheap ones of the same model and stick them together, no?

I would love to get Intel's CPU's, but they would cost a ton. I'll see, though. Maybe there will be a sale. NewEgg has a ton of those, and they'll have another sale soon, I'm sure. It's that time of the year.

I'll definitely get a sound card. I'm huge into anime and music, so sound quality is important, especially with my headphones, which can do 5.1 and virtual 7.1. It'll also lessen the load on the CPU to have a dedicated sound card.

Cases... I know nothing about these. What is a bay, exactly? Is that where the hard drives go, or where the front/back access areas are?

And cooling. Honestly, I wanted to get a liquid cooling system of sorts. Then I can always upgrade my stuff later on, and not worry about heating. That, and I won't really need to worry about troublesome fans and dust, will I? I always forgot to dust out my computer. Bad, I know =P
I don't think I'll need a.... what's it called? An oil/Vaseline based system? I think that's supposedly the best cooling system out there, and hard to maintain. It's honestly for min-titans of computers, which I don't think I'll be getting yet.
Still, I know nothing of cooling systems other than fans. =/

As for over-clocking, I don't think I'll be doing it yet. I'll just let my stuff sit for awhile, and OC when I really need to. OCing slowly wears out the unit at a miniscule pace, more if you OC a ton. I would like to avoid that, for now. At least until I have more disposable income.
Still, if and when it comes up, I'll probably be making a separate thread just for that.

Again, thanks for the support guys! I think I'm learning more than wikipedia could teach me, honestly (At least with my ADHD.), as it's full of unnecessary information that can be almost impossible to sift through. I think soon I'll really start looking at what NewEgg and TigerDirect have to offer. Maybe Frys.com, though they tend to only have good sales, and otherwise have horrible prices.

The extreme-est of the extreme Intel CPUs is not very economical, no But the i5s are much better. That said, yes, the AMD FX chips are plenty fast, and with Win 8 coming out, they will become a little faster due to MS fully supporting their unique multi-core architecture.

A PSU is a power supply. Depending on which graphics card you get, 500W may not be enough, particularly if you buy two cards. My main recommendation here is do not get the cheapest PSU for whatever wattage you want - they tend to be low quality, and if a low quality PSU malfunctions, it may take out your entire system.

Graphics - Nvidia tends to be a little more expensive, but not much. And all of their cards support PhysX. I haven't been following GPUs much, so you're probably best going to Tom's or the like and seeing what hits the 'sweet spot' for you as far as price and performance.

One thing about using multiple GPUs - you'll almost never get double the performance with two cards. Typically it's something around 30-50% faster, and some games actually run more slowly or don't work - although Nvidia/AMD tend to release fixes for those pretty quickly (and you can run such games in single card mode). I recommend just getting a faster single card for the same amount of money, personally.

If you do want to use multiple GPUs, make sure you get a motherboard that supports SLI (for Nvidia) or Crossfire (for AMD), and for the best speed, make sure both expansion slots operate at x8 or higher with two cards - even x4 on the second slot is nearly as fast as x8+ on both, but virtually all mobos go up to x8 on both nowadays.

Sound cards - The Xonar DX is fairly expensive for a sound card.. Apparently the DS is almost as good, and it costs about $50 less. There is also the classic Creative Labs Sound Blaster family, but nowadays cards like the Xonar are a better value.

Cases - 5 1/4" bays are for things the size of CD/DVD drives and 3 1/2" bays are for hard drives and SSDs. Generally, 5 1/4" bays are external and 3 1/2" are internal (since floppy drives are basically no longer with us).

Cooling - I've never used a liquid cooling system, but it seems to me a system will need at least one fan (for the PSU), which will attract some dust. Besides that, dust loves to stick to electrical devices. And, to use the same cooling system on a GPU, a CPU, and even maybe the motherboard's chipset (the parts that tend to get hot), you'd need various 3rd party heatsinks and that would all be fairly expensive.. and liquid cooling tends to be more expensive than air-based in general. You can check out prices and see if you think it's worth it.

As far as dusting, I dusted mine out maybe once every 6 months and never had any issues. Modern cases are almost all well-filtered nowadays to keep dust out.

Overclocking - there are people who have been overclocking their Celerons since they bought them 10 years ago and they are still running strong. Particularly with the i5s, the CPU temperature goes up maybe 5% with that 20% OC, and there's no overvolting, which is where I'd be worried as far as reducing life. That said, it's your stuff

Enjoy

I really think it's important to get a good power supply. I've had more then a few go out on me in the past so I tend to go a little overboard. My current PSU is a 1200 watt Antec. Make sure you get a modular power supply. It's so much nicer to only have to deal with the cables you need. Rather then have extra cables banging around your case.

Here's a couple things I'm looking at buying when I can finally fix my dead computer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103960

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131735

I have a huge problem with dust in my house and my case is pretty open. So I try and blow the dust out every 3 months or so if I remember.

I read an article somewhere that showed that OEM pc fails less often than custom built.
If you custom build i recommend that you put the operating system and software on an ssd and your data on an HDD.
There are chipset options that let you use both, using the ssd for caching.

I'm not sure what you mean... Can't I just hook up a SSD on a SATA, and use that as the main?

Also, for future comparison... as a gamer, do I need more than 4 cores? That motherboard also seems real high end. Do you think I could save some money and get something cheaper, and still meet my goals?

Yes, you can. I think he's just talking about the write limitations on SSDs. Which IMO isn't that big of a deal. If your really concerned about it you can get a Hybrid Drive that piggy backs an SSD on a HDD and, will sort your storage based on use.



I'm not sure what the performance limits are for current games. My old MB and CPU was a 6 core and it seemed to do fine with Human Revolution, Skyrim ect. I'm just trying to be forward looking and build for next years games since I have to replace the mother board anyway.

SSDs tend to have low capacity compared to hard drives, especially when comparing prices. Most people get a 120 GB or 60 GB SSD and put their OS and main apps/games on that and put everything else on a standard 1TB-type hard drive. In particular, things like mp3s and movies gain almost no benefit from being on an SSD.

That motherboard is pretty much the most expensive one you can get for AMD You definitely don't need that.. it will get about 5-10% faster performance than a standard $80-type motherboard, so it's up to you if you think it's worth it.

Ditto an 8 core CPU. I don't think any games even support 4 core yet. You could go 6 core if you really want to go for it. Intel's desktop line still maxes out at 4 cores.. though most of Intel's chips have Hyperthreading, which speeds things up a little.. not as much as genuine extra cores though

Actually, many games are listend quad-core as a minimum requirement these days. Though I'm not exactly sure if that's the same as AMD or Intel's CPU's. I'll have to look that up.

Also, I'm aware of the standard use of piggy-back in human language, but what does it mean in relation to computers? Does that mean it loads when the other it's on loads?

Sounds like I'm not getting a computer anytime soon, actually, because of monetary issues. What a damn shame.

Re: Quad core, yeah, I noticed that myself recently.. good catch.

Hybrid drives have both an SSD and a HDD component. They cache the data that is most used on the SSD and make the average use of the hybrid drive faster than an HDD on its own.

I haven't heard much about hybrid drives lately.. when they first came out, the reviews I read said they might be useful in some circumstances but you were generally better off getting a full SSD.

Re: 'piggyback', it's actually generally not used in reference to computers at all

The amount of misinformation in this thread is staggering.....

Intel makes consumer six-core chips. They are very expensive and not worth it for most people, unless you are using a 3D rendering software or doing high-level video production.

Hybrid drives are mainly for laptops, and they don't give nearly the performance boost of a pure solid-state-drive.

Liquid cooling isn't nearly as complicated as it used to be. You can buy self-contained sealed systems now for the CPU that cost around $60 and aren't any more complicated to install than a standard heatsink and fan combo. If you're building your first system, don't try to build a custom cooling loop.

Show me a ten-year old Celeron that was overclocked that's still running today with no problems. Please.

No games REQUIRE PhysX. if they did, the developers would go broke becuase they would be excluding everyone that uses an ATI/AMD graphics card.

Similarly, There are no games out yet that REQUIRE a quad-core processor. Battlefield 3, one of the most demanding games on the market today, requires a 2Ghz dual-core as the minimum. The RECOMMENDED requirements list a quad-core processor. Recommended requirements are what you want to have for the game to run smoothly with most or all of the eye-candy turned on.

A powerful graphics card doesn't take away from CPU requirements. You can't go out and buy a thousand-dollar GPU and then run a single-core processor.

A sound-card is only as good as the source material. If whatever you're watching/listening to doesn't have a 7.1 soundtrack, an expensive sound card isn't going to give it one.

Soft-modding a 6950 to a 6970 was only possible for a small batch of GPUs from one OEM.

Long story short, figure out the most demanding thing you want to do, and build to those specs.