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About Me
I am a PC gamer. I have a water cool completely custom case that I hand crafted from raw materials and PC DIY parts. The case is one of the smallest 3 120mm radiator cases that exists. I have a modest computer inside. The non-water cooling parts cost about $650 dollars and I upgrade the system about every 3 years and the video card about every 2 years.
I have been gaming all my life. I started with simple LCD portable games and we eventually got an Atari which I played the dickens out of. NES was too played until my fingers had blisters. I bought a PC in 1988 and have not looked back since (well except to play karaoke with my ex-wife). Games like Civilization, Battle of Britain, Ultima IV, Leisure Suit Larry, and Wing Commander took my heart.
Sytems I have owned:
Atari 2600
Atari 7200
Nintendo NES
X-Box
PC
Wii
I am also an avid technical scuba diver and have logged dives at 170' deep. I play paintball, softball, football, and all sorts of table tops games that include DnD and Axis and Allies. I am also in the process of writing my own table top RPG and have spent three years working on it. I have a woodworking shop and can make furniture, picture frames and the like.
I have a degree in Industrial Design. This makes me a designer of products, architectural way finding, POP displays, and user interfaces. I have also taught design at the college level.
I have been gaming all my life. I started with simple LCD portable games and we eventually got an Atari which I played the dickens out of. NES was too played until my fingers had blisters. I bought a PC in 1988 and have not looked back since (well except to play karaoke with my ex-wife). Games like Civilization, Battle of Britain, Ultima IV, Leisure Suit Larry, and Wing Commander took my heart.
Sytems I have owned:
Atari 2600
Atari 7200
Nintendo NES
X-Box
PC
Wii
I am also an avid technical scuba diver and have logged dives at 170' deep. I play paintball, softball, football, and all sorts of table tops games that include DnD and Axis and Allies. I am also in the process of writing my own table top RPG and have spent three years working on it. I have a woodworking shop and can make furniture, picture frames and the like.
I have a degree in Industrial Design. This makes me a designer of products, architectural way finding, POP displays, and user interfaces. I have also taught design at the college level.
Gamer Profile
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Steam: locke913
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Steam: locke913
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Following (9)
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Well well well, we have some idea that we can put together a smoking system for very little $$$. and its been this way for some time. I believe we have consoles slowing down graphic development for this. Of Course trying to play Arma II at full settings at 1920x1200 is near impossible... damn those European developers for actually taxing hardware... SO what do we have left? Well all the non-core components. These are things that can stick around for years and years and years. So lets check these out and hopefully help you pick some good stuff! We are getting closer to the final build result and we can see just how spendy it can be. Case In case you didn't know a computer case holds all the computer crap. Cases come in all sizes and colors and prices... and this can be confusing. Since you can buy a case for $35 or spend as much as $300 or more. So what do we spend or select? Form Factor Cases come in 3 flavors known as form factors: 1. ATX: This is the standard case AND there are three flavors of ATX cases: - Full Towers - Mid Towers - Mini Towers All of these cases hold an ATX mother board. Full towers usually have about 7 bays, Mid have 4, and Mini have 2. Bays hold hard drives and optical drives. Most of us don't need more than 2 hard drives and the truly frugal only need one. 2. Micro ATX: A Micro ATX case holds a Micro ATX mother board. These are small cases and can look like cubes or small towers. A Micro ATX mother board can also be placed in an ATX case (see above)... yeah it can get a little confusing. An ATX MB CANNOT go into a Micro ATX case. (This is the size of case I used when building a machine for your editor and chief...) 3. Mini-ITX: These are ultra small mother boards and there are a variety of cases that can house them. Since Mini-ITX is one of the newer form factors there are not as many options for hardware. Do NOT get a Mini ITX case WITH a power supply, you need to buy that separately. IF the case does come with one, its most likely a small supply that does not have the ability to power your system and power hungry video card. Suggestion: For more room go with a mid tower ATX or a Mini ATX. Also there are more choices in these. Also i would suggest trying to find a case between $60 and $100. These cases are usually built well enough to last for many years. These manufactures make nice cases: - Antec - Thermaltake - Lian Li - Silverstone - Corsair I like these cases: ATX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066&cm_sp=Cat_Computer_Cases-_-Product_Spotlight-_-11-129-066 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139006 Micro ATX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112221 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163157 Mini ITX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112296 Just be sure the case has two slots for the Video Card. Most new video cards require two rear slots. Total Price: $50 to $200 
Power Supply The power supply is arguably the most important part of a computer. A nice supply can last for years. There are two types of Power Supply Units... or PSU. 1. Single Rail: These PSU's supply all their power on one "circuit". This means that all the draw of the computer is taken directly by one circuit. These supplies tend to be more expensive since they need more parts to control the power. 2. Multi Rail: These PSU's spread the power they provide across multiple circuits. This means that if a supply provides 30 amps of power and has two rails, likely each rail will supply 15 amps. The problem is that if you need to run 20 amps of stuff, and your video card takes 10 you are wasting the other 5 amps on that rail. When using a multi rail just check to be sure that any single rail is enough to run your video card. In many newer PSU's the manufacturer has taken this into consideration. Also PSU's can come with "modular" as an option. A modular PSU allows the user to plug cable into the back. Many don't like to use these as the plug could become loose and interrupt or lose power. However, these PSU's allow for the extra cables to not be used 
For a mid to high rang video card a 500 to 750 watt PSU should be just fine. I like this one for $50: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016 Hard Drives Hmm... Just get one that runs at 7200 RPM. It a good idea to get two. One for Windows and the other to store games. This can be important as if you use Steam you can reinstall the system on the OS drive and Steam will rebuild all of your games!!! Also be careful when you buy a small case that you can put two standard size internal drives which are 3.5". Sometimes small form factor cases only allow the space for laptop 2.5" drives. If you choose to do this be sure to get a drive with at least 80GB for the OS. You can get a 1 Terabyte drive for Total cost HDD $75: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284 Optical Drive There are two choices for a cheap system: 1. BluRay Player: $56 2. DVD Burner: $21 Ummm. BluRay seems good for the price... you don't need light scribe or anything like that. Total Cost SO far the total cost of the system is: MB: $100 to $125 CPU: $100 to $150 RAM: $50 to $100 Video: $125 to $175 Case: $50 to $100 PSU: $50 to $85 HDD: $45 to $75 Optical Drive: $21 to $56 Total Price: $550 to $870 So a whole new computer cheaper than a new release console. It can be plugged into an entertainment system and easily upgraded. It makes sense to go lower or higher, but CPU prices tend not to drop as fast as video cards. Upgrading No matter what you build you will need put upgrade just like buying the next gen console or when you have to replace a console bc of red ring like only 54% of XBox 360's did. So my suggestion is to replace the Video Card only after 2 to 4 years and do this twice. The core should last 4 to 6 years and the auxiliary components should last indefinitely. Optical drives tend to die faster like those who bought PS3 found out. If you choose to replace or upgrade core components leave the mother board alone and just get a newer or faster processor. With cheap RAM prices you can always add more RAM whenever you like. See its not so hard or expensive. I hope this helps. PM me with any questions. I can help with all types of Intel builds. I know AMD builds can run even cheaper!! thanks! and good gaming!
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Living the dream since March 16, 2006
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
As a counterpoint to the rosy picture you paint of PC gaming, I have to say a couple things. Even $550 is way more expensive than any model of 360. And if some component breaks or something ends up being incompatible? Watch out for restocking fees on returns, and good luck troubleshooting which component is dead. These things can be non-trivial.
Now $550 is somewhat more than a 360 after you get the extra controllers, charging tools, wireless, and new HDD. Also its about what a console cost during introduction.
When the next gen of consoles come out I would guess that 66% of people who post here will buy one at launch and 33% will buy both. If we look at the cost of the last launch this would be over $1000 easy. If you had a PC that was upgradeable and only buy the core you can spend just $300 every 3-6 years.
Plus all console owners also own some sort of PC so add that cost in too and it get very expensive. Also PC comps do have issues but its not nearly as frequent as the problems that the current gen of consoles have had since 54% of XBox360's needed prepare and I'm not sure about PS3's but I know several people that have had to buy entire new units. $600 + $250 replacement is pretty expensive and more troublesome over one bad PC part.
Also I know from playing wit my friends, their PS3's go down all the time when playing BFBC2 and my PC never does. If 4 of them are playing for a night then there will most likely be 2-4 crashes and lockups. PC is stable. A lot of what you mention have been more typical problems past 5 years ago. New PC's are pretty stable. This is what PC gamers have been saying and posting on this site for at least 18 months.
But yes I may could have stressed that the smaller the case the less space inside. SO if you want a small case beware it might not have a lot of space especially for fancy after market CPU coolers.
i3 is meh, more and more games are starting to support the quad core market completely obsolete. Also, you might want to point out that the test beds for those benchmarks across all of your blogs were done with mostly i7 setups or Quad AMD setups. Games like Starcraft or Civ 5 are generally very cpu intensive.
The GPU I have to disagree with, youre buying extremely outdated tech, with a 6850 you are essentially buying and OC'd I think it was a 5870 if my memory serves me correctly. that tends to be the case with any new gen card, but, we are in the era of the 6950 or 560ti. I've tried out both cards, and love both cards, I fully expect to get a good 5-6 years out of either one of them.
I just picked up an i5 2500k, MIS board, MSI Hawk 560Ti, 8 gig ram, 1 TB 7200 RPM drive, optical drive, 650w PSU from Corsair, Win 7, and a Coolermaster Haf 912 for around 720$, you can go high end with newegg and save money, you just have to take advantage of all those combo deals.
I love the fact that you love PC gaming as much as I do but don't give people the illusion that if they buy all these parts it will work flawlessly.
Yes that's true. There may be problems. I have not had problems over my last 3 builds, nor has my friend who upgrades with me. But problems can happen. Actually this current machine had an older BIOS that didn't like to work with wireless adapters. I flashed the bios and everything was fine. Many Gigabyte boards have two bios so if something happens bad during flashing the second one re-flashes the first. Also you can check others and see what they are building and if they don;t have issues you most likely won't either.
Most problems occur with early adoption. If you buy stuff that been out for 2-6 months there is little chance for problems other than defects. Compatibility problems are almost non-existent.
Were there problems with your most recent build loic?