Getting a new computer. Need advice.

[MrRubix]

I haven't bought a new computer in so long, so I have no idea what's good anymore. No more than a few grand in terms of price, though. I'd want a PC.

I just want something that is going to be beastly fast, hardcore, and will play video games like a dream.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[fido123]

Are you comfortable assembling the parts yourself?

[MrGiggles]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

No more than a few grand

Never ever ever ever ever ever pay more than 1.5k for a self-assembled computer.

Also, you should always self-assemble (I mean, unless you want a Mac, but then gaming would be trickier) because it's way cheaper and computers go together like legos, and there's only 5-6 lego pieces.

[Bluearrowll]

If you're going to buy a PC, from my personal experience HP makes the best, the last one I had was a Dell and it lasted an amazing 9 years but it got slow after about 6 months. I have an HP now (Slimline) and it's worked just fine so far. I've had it for alittle under a year.

[MrRubix]

Originally Posted by fido123

Are you comfortable assembling the parts yourself?

I am fine with buying individual components, sure -- I am embarrassed to admit that I've never put together my own computer together before, but I figure it can't be too hard. If I can still get a monster computer by just buying a premade one, I might prefer that instead.

This is all going to be a gift from my mother to me for graduation. She wants to get me a new computer because my current one is falling apart hardcore.

[MrGiggles]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

I am fine with buying individual components, sure -- I am embarrassed to admit that I've never put together my own computer together before, but I figure it can't be too hard. If I can still get a monster computer by just buying a premade one, I might prefer that instead.

This is all going to be a gift from my mother to me for graduation. She wants to get me a new computer because my current one is falling apart hardcore.

You CAN buy a powerful premade, but you'll bleed money out the asshole for it.

Building your own computer is really easy. I can't even stress that enough. It took me the better part of 6 hours to get mine running the first time I built one, and that was using the insanely vague P-182 manual.

[MrRubix]

What components are good for a hardcore comp nowadays?

[Artic_counter]

I remember my friend (who's an hardcore gamer) bought an AlienWare PC which is just amazing by what he told me but I never owned one so you might want to ask the others about that one before buying it. You might know this already but get yourself plenty of RAM so it reduce the lag and make your computer run smoothly (I have 3G of RAM and it's amazingly smooth (even though I wanted 4G xD)).

If you want to run software on high quality like crisis or things like that I think what you need is a godly Video Card

So that's where my computer knowledge stop I don't know a things about components.

[MrRubix]

Yeah I basically want to be able to run something like Crysis on its uber high settings without breaking a sweat

[Prime8]

My friend just purchased a beastly Alienware with a 2.86 GhZ Quad Core, 4 GB Ram, nVidia GTX 295 Graphics Card for less than $2500. Granted, he probably could have done it for around $2000 if he bought it premade from like TigerDirect or some other place, or maybe even cheaper than that if he built it himself (neither I or him have any knowledge with this, so he decided to just buy one).

It may be a somewhat large sum of cash to dish out, but so far, this computer delivers. It can easily run Crysis on maximum settings, even with a bunch of other crap running in the background.

[MrRubix]

Is all that stuff top of the line?

What's the best video card out there? The best processors? The most memory? Are we still in quad cores? lmao.

I'm a hardware noob.

[chidori!]

Do Not get a laptop and an Intel graphics card. Unless you want your computer to crash if it blinks five times.

[Wineandbread]

I hear Alienware is rather overpriced. They sure do look nice though.

Imo it's not worth buying a super high-end computer... you could probably settle for something like this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...gfXE0Xg&gid=45 (+ peripherals he got as a gift earlier and like a Acer 23" widescreen)
It's a build one of my friends followed. I've seen him play some intensive games on some high settings, and it runs pretty smoothly.

Wish I had the money to upgrade my computer. =/

[Edit] I think this chart is still pretty accurate for GPU tiers: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rd,2118-7.html

[Prime8]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

Is all that stuff top of the line?

What's the best video card out there? The best processors? The most memory? Are we still in quad cores? lmao.

I'm a hardware noob.

Quad core is the "in" thing for processors right now. We haven't necessarily made software that would actually warrant the use of all 4 cores yet, but it certainly secures you for the future when we may have more advanced software. "Quad core" is Intel's thing, and I don't know too much about AMD. They seem to flip flop back in forth about who has the better processor. I think AMD has some Phenom thing that is similar to Intel's Quad Core. Now that I think of it, my friend does have an AMD Phenom processor.

The nVidia GTX 295 is (I believe) the best mainstream graphics card you can purchase from nVidia. You can look at ATI Radeon, but I am not so familiar with them. I'm sure they have something near the level of the 295 though. One thing you'll want to look into is having graphics cards running in SLI (or Crossfire if they are ATI cards). Simply put, you can have multiple graphics cards running simultaneously. I would recommend getting two graphics cards that are slightly worse than the 295 that are SLI Enabled and run them together. The only thing is, obviously, you're purchasing two graphics cards as opposed to one, so price does become an issue, especially since the performance edge may not warrant the extra couple hundred bucks. For a safe bet, I would stick with what my friend did and get a single GTX 295. It's a pretty expensive card, but I can tell you from experience that it is DEFINITELY worth it. If you have more cash to dispense, look into SLI/Crossfire stuff to see which cards running in either outperform the 295. Just a FYI, you have to have the exact same cards to run them simultaneously.

4 GB of Ram is decent, but 6 GB is preferred. If you can actually afford it, go to 8. I don't think you'll really need anything above that. I don't have any experience with anything above 8, so I can't tell you if it's uber amazing, or if it's just a burnt hole in your wallet.

I don't know too terribly much about all this stuff, so don't take my word as holy. I had to try to learn up on this mumbo jumbo because my friend wanted my help getting a badass PC a few weeks ago, and he thought I already knew this stuff lol.

[MrRubix]

Yeah I was looking at getting nVidia -- I've used ATI for a few years now and it hasn't really been up to snuff.

[Solid Dreams]

i7 is the in thing now. That's the latest greatest from intel, and they're "relatively" cheap.

You'll want ram in multiples of 3 if you get an i7, the i7 works best with 3 DIMMs (not 4, etc.) which is sorta odd.

For something that powerful you'll probably want to at least get a raid 0 configuration with 2 hard drives, or you'll end up bottlenecking.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130504

That's a super nice video card.

Gotta make sure you get a mobo that works with it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229111

Could go with that, I guess. you said "couple of grand" and all.

[MrGiggles]

Originally Posted by Solid Dreams

i7 is the in thing now. That's the latest greatest from intel, and they're "relatively" cheap.

You'll want ram in multiples of 3 if you get an i7, the i7 works best with 3 DIMMs (not 4, etc.) which is sorta odd.

For something that powerful you'll probably want to at least get a raid 0 configuration with 2 hard drives, or you'll end up bottlenecking.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130504

That's a super nice video card.

Gotta make sure you get a mobo that works with it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229111

Could go with that, I guess. you said "couple of grand" and all.

That video card is top of the top of the line. That'll run you a lot, and will likely play Crysis on ultimate no problem. I think a 285 will run Crysis on ultimate settings as well.

It's cheaper to buy a mid-high range computer and update components every other year or so than it is to buy some sort of god machine and update it every 4 or even 6 years.

Most mid to high end computers will play Crysis on medium/high, depending on what you buy. In two years, mid-high range computers will likely play it on very high or even ultimate if you don't mind a framerate less than 40 or so.

So yeah, a ridiculously powerful computer will probably have 2-3 cards in SLI, I think you can do it with 295's but you'll need a PSU big enough to keep up, an upper-end i7 (I hear they overclock pretty well too), a mobo upwards of $250-300, some sort of RAID setup, a 1000 (or more) watt PSU (Corsair makes good PSU's), and as much RAM as you can possibly fit in there. RAM is really really cheap lately, and so are non-SSD hard drives.

Dunno what the AMD/ATI equivalents are to that Intel/Nvidia setup, but they're likely a bit cheaper. Don't ask which is better or the thread will get derailed faster than you can blink.

EDIT: Oh, you'll also need a very cool case. Everyone loves Antecs, go with one of those.

[ninjaKIWI]

I recommend for a processor, the Intel i7 940 Quad Core, or a 965 if you're willing to pay for it, for a video card I like the GeForce GTX 280, motherboards I don't have a readied opinion on them so you're on your own there.

Actually since you said a couple grand, the NVIDIA Tesla C1060 would be a nice video card It's not exactly meant for gaming though, and wouldn't make much sense if you don't have a nice monitor.

By the way you'll need a nice power supply

[Shadowcliff]

Haha, recently I've been badgering my dad to get a new computer, or at least update this one. We've got a nVidia GeForce 5400, which adequately runs most games. Our problem is RAM. And it's a BIG problem. This computer doesn't have many games on it, but that's kind of because we only have 512 MB of RAM. Yeah, laugh, it sucks.

My dad has actually told me that he'll help me build my own computer. At first it sounded like a lot, but thinking about it, it's just hard drive(s), CD drive(s), USB, RAM, processor, graphics card, motherboard, done. (Okay, I know almost nothing about hardware, but those are the essentials. I'm more of a software person.)
Buying components and piecing them together would probably give you a satisfying sense of "hey, I did that", plus it'll be a lot cheaper. Just do some research on the components (find out what combination of components gives you the performance you want), the assembly, and finally the price.

Oh, and talk to someone else about what the components actually are. I'm pretty sure I screwed that up.

[Nightfirecat]

I'd say you should definitely get an i7 intel processor - it's the best out there atm...

As for video card, either works, but generally Intel goes with Nvidia, where AMD goes with ATI.

Ram - get triple channel, probably DDR3 also, if you can.
Hard drive... Doesn't really matter, but maybe get 2 so you can use RAID0 config for fast saving/loading.

Motherboard.... Get something expensive. Generally, that assures good quality.

And for a case, just get something with LOTS of cooling - that helps make sure that you won't have to worry about it.