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Hey all,
I am new to building computers but I was wondering if somebody could essentially tell me what to buy. My budget is around $1000. I will be playing Guild Wars 2, Battlefield 3, Rift...etc.. Could somebody make a list of what to get that would run these games as well as possible considering my budget?
Thanks
Comments
Can you assemble a computer from parts yourself, or do you need to pay someone else to do it for you? You can get better value for the money if you can do it yourself.
I can put it all together. Just not entirely sure what to get.
Tower only?
"LOL"
Ok I have no idea if that was a joke or not but no. I need everything. The parts have got to be able to run those games well
To explain DMT's question, when buying a new computer, a lot of people buy a case and everything that goes inside, but not new peripherals. A monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, or surge protector is trivial to upgrade independently of everything else, so people commonly re-use the old peripherals. and upgrade or replace them when a part fails, they're no longer happy with its performance, or whatever.
It's much harder to do that with components that go inside the case. It's not just that they're harder to get at, but there are compatibility issues. The processor, motherboard, and memory often need to be upgraded together, as the new parts aren't compatible with the old. Other parts are somewhat more practical to upgrade independently, but there are often still good reasons to replace the case and everything inside it all at once. Those reasons don't apply to peripherals.
If you do need a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and surge protector, that's fine. It will eat up $200+ of your budget, which means cutting back elsewhere. But it is still a useful question to ask, as answers do vary.
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Another question: how much storage space do you really need? Recent flooding in Thailand shut down a considerable fraction of the world's hard drive production, and that has sent hard drive prices soaring upwards. If you don't need that much capacity, you may be better off getting a solid state drive in lieu of a hard drive. Today, you can get a ~60 GB SSD for about the same price as the cheapest hard drives, and a ~120 GB SSD for about the same price as a decent 1 TB hard drive.
Many people don't need as much storage capacity as they think they do. Personally, I have a 120 GB SSD and no hard drive, and that's plenty of capacity for me. If you need a lot of capacity, you can get it, but you'll be stuck with a fairly slow hard drive. The big advantage of solid state drives is that they're really, really fast, so often, you don't have to wait for your computer, and even if you do, you might only have to wait 1/2 or 1/3 as long as if you had a hard drive.
Finally, do you do rebates? Some people regard rebates as "free", while others can't be bothered. For example, if one part is $120, while another, identical part is $140 before a $40 mail-in rebate, which would you prefer? And is that $1000 budget before or after rebates?
Oh i see. I need everything. Also I dont really understand the whole rebate thing. All I am looking for is a computer that will be able to run those games (especially GW2) for the budget. I also just remember how I have a $200+ video card at home.. I dont remember exactly what it is but I will find out soon. (I am at college and the computer is back home so I need to ask my brother to check for me) I assume I wont need to buy a new video card though.
A "Rebate" is when a company offers to mail you a cheque for a given amount, AFTER you purchase the part. So you'll have to pay full price for the part at first, and go to the trouble of mailing in the receipt to the appropriate location, wait for it to be processed, before you can finally receive and deposit the cheque. BUT, the after-rebate prices can be very attractive at times.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Ohh I see. No I dont think I would want to go through that haha. Seems like a pain. Thank you
It seems like you might be better off just getting a DIY kit from newegg. They bundle different hardware (that is guaranteed compatible together) and ship it to you for you to assemble.
A quick look on newegg and I found this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.759913
seems to be in your price range and those are mostly all solid components. This is just an example I'm not saying to defintely get that one (I wouldn't because the PSU and RAM is a little weak) but it can give you a good baseline for what you should look for.
And remember, computer parts are defintely a get-what-you-pay-for deal. 90% of the time, if something looks identical to another part but is 20-30$ more, there's usually a reason for that. Sometimes it is simply because of the brand name, but they wouldn't be able to charge more if the brand wasn't proven to be reliable (excluding DOA parts and user-error). Fo example, I always go with Corsair for RAM and Power supplies and never had any problems. As far as motherboards I prefer Gigabyte. In the end it is up to you what you decide to buy, and that is the beauty of building your own PC.
Thank you. I will take a look at this.. Also I have an EVGA GeForce GTX 570Ti video card. Also I have a 650Watt psu
Your video card doesn't exist. There is a GeForce GTX 570, a GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and a GeForce GTX 550 Ti, but not GTX 570 Ti.
If you pull the video card out of the old computer, then the old computer will likely no longer function. You may want to take more components from it in that case, or just take the whole computer with you. Or maybe you'll need to buy a cheap video card for the old computer, so that you can take the gaming card with you.
What power supply is that? The nominal wattage tells you basically nothing. Give the exact brand name and model if you're considering reusing it.
I'd generally advise against super combo deals like that. In that case, the power supply is junk, and having to immediately pay to replace that overwhelms the combo discount that is the whole point of the combo deal in the first place. Sometimes there are good deals on two item combos, or occasionally three, but six or eight item combos are usually problematic.
Contrary to what lolmac said, you don't necessarily get what you paid for. Sometimes a more expensive part is better. Sometimes it's equivalent but simply more expensive. Sometimes more expensive is actually worse, as with wireless keyboards, mice, and routers. If you just say, this part is expensive so it must be good, you'll probably get ripped off.
Oops, I meant to say GeForce GTX 560 Ti.. And I believe its a Corsair 650W or something.
It's not clear what you're after here. If you can take parts out of a modern gaming computer, then why not just take the whole computer?
If your existing computer has a 650W Corsair PSU and a 560Ti video card, I'm beginning to wonder what else is in there. It might be a good candidate for upgrading at this rate.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Should I just upgrade then? The CPU and MOBO are really really outdated i believe and are by no means good for gaming.
Post what the CPU, RAM and mobo are, what case they are in would also be helpful. The kind folks here can't help you if they don't know what you already have so they can see what's worth keeping.
Post your complete list of parts and let's see what you've got. Post everything, not just a few "main" specs. And post as much detail as you can. For most things, the exact brand name and model would be ideal, if you have it.
Yes, that helps quite a bit. That's not everything I was hoping to see, though.
It looks like you got a prebuilt piece of junk and then tried to upgrade it. If you have no problem with taking half of the parts from the old computer and leaving it no longer functional, then $1000 worth of new parts can get you something really nice.
If that's the case, then I'm going to recommend that you keep the video card and power supply that you bought separately for the upgrade. I'd still like to see the exact model on the power supply, mainly because some people who aren't entirely sure what they have end up being wildly wrong in their guesses.
If you can salvage parts from the old computer, then I'm going to recommend that you get a new case, motherboard, processor, memory, and SSD. You may need a new OS license, but you may also be able to get that relatively cheaply if you're a student.
Meanwhile, you keep the video card, power supply, optical drive, and hard drive (which would be used for bulk storage). If you're happy with the keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, and surge protector, then you can keep those, too. If not, then any of those other than the monitor can be replaced for about $20 or so.
What exactly does an SSD do? So what exactly would you suggest me getting that would be able to run those games well?
You know how a lot of times, you have to sit and wait for your computer to do something? You click to launch a program, and then sit there and wait, and then eventually it opens. You reach the edge of a zone in a game and want to go to the next zone, and sit there and wait at a loading screen for a while. There are a lot of smaller things where you have to wait a tenth of a second here and half of a second there.
If you had an SSD, you wouldn't have to wait nearly as long. Sometimes, you wouldn't have to wait any perceptible amount of time at all. You tell your computer to do something and it just does it, rather than making you sit there and wait a while before it eventually does what you said.
The reason for this is that much of the time that you have to wait for your computer, you're waiting for it to load things off of the hard drive. If a program requests some piece of data, it might have to wait 10 ms for the hard drive to physically spin to the right spot before it can do anything. Now, 10 ms by itself isn't much. But if it needs to grab hundreds of things, then multiply that 10 ms by several hundred and you're sitting there and waiting several seconds.
For an SSD, the analogous figure is about 0.1 ms. Multiply that by several hundred and it amounts to a rounding error. For example, look here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-rift-ssd,3062-12.html
Launching Rift off of a hard drive took 27.1 seconds. Launching it off of exactly the same computer, except with an SSD instead of a hard drive, only took 12.2 seconds. Zoning on a hard drive took 23.3 seconds. Zoning on an SSD took 4.88 seconds.
But it's not just those long loading times. Short waiting times often also become much shorter, and that makes the computer feel a lot more responsive. It's kind of an offline equivalent of taking 100 ms off of your ping time in an online game. The game is playable with a higher ping time, but feels so much better with the lower ping time.
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Are you able to re-use the parts from your older system as I said? Or does the old computer need to remain functional?
I have old parts to put back into the pc because I will be building the new one from scratch
I think you were trying to answer my question, but I don't understand what you mean.
Does the old computer need to remain usable? Or is it fine if the old computer no longer works because you stole some parts from it for use in the new one?
Well I can take the parts out because I have extras that I can put into it. So essentially it is ok to steal some parts from it because I have extras.
So it sounds like the old computer does need to still work? What parts do you have extras for, and what do you not?
It sounds like you can take the video card and power supply, and revert to what originally came with the computer. Do you have a spare hard drive, optical drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and surge protector?