I really want to get back into PC gaming but it's been years since I had anything decent and even then, i didn't build my own rig. Any chance my knowledgable blades here could let me know what all I need (i think its like 7 core hardware pieces and surely id have to buy some kind of OS as well right?) Is It possible to build your own PC by yourself just being self taught from the internet, or is it vital I have someone next to me showing me how to do it? I've done some online research but I always like to get the second opinion of the folks on GC. Was hoping like ~$800 would be enough to build a decent enough computer than can run most games fine enough.
Trying to work out how to sub to this thread, i would like to read some tips from blades as well. Lots of pc games out atm that arn't yet released for xbox. Squad, The culling and dayz are a few i really want to play!
building a computer is fairly easy, if your willing to do a little bit of reading. Pick Parts, Build Your PC, Compare and Share - PCPartPicker is a good starting website. you are going to want to spend most of your money on a gpu, and cpu. you should be able to build a fairly powerful machine for 800 bucks. also it would be a good idea to check out a few youtube channels. i have a personal preference for Linus tech tips LinusTechTips as for the specific parts you need ill let you figure that out.
I just built a PC. Spent about 3200$ on it. I fucking love it.i did not have a budget per say. I just got,what worked together. It took about 3 weeks of research to get everything figured out. If you don't have a deep understanding of how computers work, then no I do not recommend buying at the componant level and assembling an entire gaming PC. Your best bet is to buy a tower and upgrade the powersupply if needed and the video card.then upgrade a few key components over time. Once you have the tower, video card and power supply working together your next upgrade should be an SSD. Even a small one for the operating system to reside on would be amazing. Adding more ram after that and you should be good to go. when looking for a tower, make sure it has a PCIe x16 slot for a video card upgrade. You'll need a 750watt minimum power supply. As far as a video card goes, for a budget build, I would probably do an Nvidia 970 as far as a video card goes.
Thanks for the insight and speedy responses there, friends. Going to look over all the posted information and see what I figure out. Might post more questions here later.
Tower, motherboard, processor, graphics card, keyboard/mouse, harddrive, DVD/CD drive, and RAM. Sometimes power supply, once in awhile soundcard, every now and then network card...The most difficult will be finding the tower that fits the motherboard, I'd just go with a full-tower ATX case; the next hard part is getting the right motherboard for your processor...Intel has their socket as does AMD and they are not interchangeable, then it is matching RAM to your sockets, which isn't that hard anymore since most is DDR3, but you want to pay attention to the timings which must match or you'll get wonky performance. Since most games are digital nowadays you don't necessarily need a DVD/CD drive unless you plan on discing it out with games or watching movies, the harddrive is easy just get it in the size you want and try to look for decent RPMs unless you go SSD. You might have to go with aftermarket cooling and power depending on your graphics card and motherboard combo, pay attention to the voltages necessary and make sure you have that covered but don't go too far above necessary as the computer will slow, same with RAM...Too much and the computer will slow. Few good articles out there for this: http://lifehacker.com/5828747/how-to-build-a-computer-from-scratch-the-complete-guide eHow also has some good walkthroughs...I'd hit up newegg.com for parts.
awh was in your boat a couple years ago sept I had a computer to start with. what I did to start off with was a case (coolermaster HAF), psu (coolermaster 600w) , graphics card powercolor r7 260x) then ssd ( crucial m550 128gb). now I'm saving up for a mobo cpu ram overhaul. msi 990fxa gamer, amd cpu undecided, and crucial balistix ram 2x8gb I never really did check to see what would work with what, I just read basic info and went from there. but that was mostly due to my mobo combo being low in performance....