hardware-revolution.com — Who said you needed to spend a fortune to get a great gaming PC? Use some elbow grease, do it yourself and save with these outstanding designs. Based on quality parts that are well balanced and offer great value, those gaming PCs will give PCs from Dell, Gateway and other manufacturers a run for their money.
May 28, 2009 View in Crawl 4
zip000May 29, 2009
I was talking to a guy at work about building computers - both of us are sort of indirect computer support people, not our primary job, but we do a lot of it - and he was adamant that building your own costs more...and I just don't believe it...maybe it can be, but when I built my own, and compared comparable systems at the major retailers, my build was about at least $100 less than at any retailer.I don't know what he was talking about.
shredswithpiksMay 29, 2009
"Anyway, anyone knows that at high-resolutions, the GPU is the bottleneck, not the CPU."Which makes your giant wall of text mostly meaningless in a discussion about what's better for gaming PCs.My opinion is to buy something cheap that overclocks really well (I've had best experience with intel core2, but YMMV) and dump a bunch of money into the video card instead.
jamesfarrMay 29, 2009
Well, I'm actually using a system I built about 6 years ago to type to you right now. I think it's time to upgrade but if the new hardware is anything like to the old hardware for computers than I will have no problem saying that you definitely get more bang for your buck when building a computer vs. buying one that has already been built.
pika2000May 30, 2009
@Ommatidia: Moot point. Your point defeats the whole reason for the list. I mean you can then argue one can use previous hardware like DVD drive, motherboards, case, power supply, etc. That pretty much defeats the whole premise of the guide. I can then argue that I can spend $0 for a gaming machine since my previous one still works. On and on. You pretty much ignored the premise of the list and the discussion.
n0diggityMay 30, 2009
Posting OCs is a waste of time without a link though. I really don't care that much, it was more of a joke than anything. I didn't build this computer to show off. :) It is at a modest OC of 3.33Ghz now, but I will certainly try for more down the road when I need it! I've seen OC's from my batch (D0 stepping) reach 4.4Ghz and higher even on water. Either way I'm GPU limited in games so it doesn't matter.i7 is fast, but it's not really any different in games that the phenom II CPUs. It will be nice to not need a CPU upgrade for a few years though.
tornsterMay 30, 2009
Or bye PC for 800$ and spend 0$ for lifetime games on Pirate bay.
darksoulJun 1, 2009
I agree all these people I see telling their friends and other people that they need to build the latest and the best and telling them to go with an i7 system are full of s**t. So far I just built a comp about two months ago it runs everything and I have a ton of room for upgrading as long as you are thinking head of time what you will want to upgrade to you will be fine.
darksoulJun 1, 2009
See that is hard to say because that card is a non gaming card. That system is just meant for business If it was me I wouldn't waste my time on upgrading it just do like you said and build a new one yourself. Just remember to ask yourself like this article said. Also I would add one more to it. 1. What resolution will you be playing at?2. How high do you want the graphic settings to be?3. What games do you want to play?And more to answer your other question yeah your Quadro is holding you back, that graphics card is just a business only type of thing you could still probably put a decent graphics card in and it would give it a decent boost but still after looking at the specs I would still say build a new comp yourself it will be worth it money wise.
santeNov 13, 2009
I'll see your AGP and raise you one PATA, PCI, DDR, and Window 2000. :) My PC doesn't have any current generation technology now except for USB 2.0 -- wait, scratch that... USB 3.0 is hitting now. My motherboard is a 5-year-old Socket 939 Asus A8V with an Athlon X2 4400+ dual core proc, 1GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive. Video card is an Sapphire Atlantis RADEON 9600 256MB AGP with fanless heatsink (I like quiet PCs).The funny thing is... this machine, built in 2004, still has more horsepower than I need and it performs every task I need quickly and capably. I like video games but happily the games I like are old school arcade games that MAME can run rings around on my current rig. It rips DVDs, transcodes video, and plays every media file out there without effort.Part of me wants to buy a new rig but I'm having trouble finding any reason why I should waste the money. Newer versions of Windows don't have anything I need or want. I have plenty of RAM and hard disk space for my needs. I've been trying to think of what it's going to take to finally force me to upgrade, and I think for that to happen the web would have to become unusable with my current software. The only thing I can think of that would make that happen is if Adobe drops Win2K support in Flash and/or antivirus vendors drop Win2K support.