Help me justify the cost of building a gaming PC

[Hobie-wan]

Do not, and I mean absolutely do not spend less than about $60 on a power supply and do not spend any money on a fancy one just because it has lights or neon sheathed cords. There are some decent but plain looking ones from Antec in that low range, but anything cheaper than that or super fancy looking for that price is garbage. If you can, spend $100 plus on a good power supply. You don't need a $200+ one, just don't scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Just like a car can never perform better than its tires or brakes, a PC with a crappy power supply is an accident waiting to happen. If a power supply provides 'dirty' power or blows up, it can kill other stuff. I made the mistake of buying a $20 power supply for what was a 3rd older 3rd PC in my room. I had something running in there that I didn't want interfering with whatever I was doing on my main and the power supply made a nice loud pop and took the motherboard with it in my room. The PS was so bad that the fuse didn't even blow, it was another component and my mobo had some really lovely burns on it too.

For games, maybe I'll suggest some later, but hit some review sites.

Gamespy has genre sorting- http://pc.gamespy.com/index/reviews.html

Metacritic gives genre too, but you can't sort by it- http://www.metacritic.com/games/pc/

[t0yrobo]

With pretty much any game you can name the pc version will be better. Unless they managed to much up the controls. The one that springs to mind first though is Team Fortress 2.

My only advice for hardware is to absolutely avoid the high end stuff whenever possible, you'll only wind up seeing the same parts for way cheap 2 months later. I've found the high midrange area of performance to be great price/performance wise. The last computer I actually built (granted it was awhile ago, had a AthlonXP in it) was $700 and was great for gaming for about 2 years and pretty decent for a couple after that. And think about how you'll be able to upgrade in the future, a new video card and some ram in a couple years can make a huge difference for not that much money.

[GSZX1337]

Anyways back to the subject, any games you could recommend for the PC? Even if its on a console if the PC is the better version I'd rather play that.

Here's some of my personal favorite PC FPS games after 2000.
Quake IV
Half-Life 2
Deus Ex
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Far Cry
Unreal Tournament 2004
Team Fortress 2
Star Wars Battlefront
Call of Duty
Medal of Honor Allied Assault
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Counter-Strike: Source

[J T]

Start with the Orange Box. It will give you a bunch of great games in one bundle (Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, HL2:ep1, HL2:ep2, HL2:Lost Coast). You will be introduced to Steam because you have to use it for the PC versions of those games. And you will have access to a TON of mods that utilize the Source Engine.

[Ack]

Hmm...well, I do have some favorites from over the years that I've enjoyed. Here are a few games I liked that you might like as well.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Dungeon Siege
Call of Duty
Unreal Anthology(included Unreal, Unreal 2, Unreal Tournament, and Unreal Tournament 2004)
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Civilization IV
Galactic Civilizations
Demigods
Titan Quest
Penumbra Collection
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2142
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights 2
Team Fortress Classic
Alien Vs. Predator Gold
Alien Vs. Predator 2

I've also enjoyed playing quite a few MMORPGs. And then there are large numbers of games that did get console ports that I prefer on PC due to the modability, keyboard and mouse control, and/or multiplayer setups.

Half-Life 2
Call of Juarez
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Painkiller
Wolfenstein
Prey

I'm looking forward to trying out Borderlands on the PC soon, and Diablo III is currently slated as PC only.

Yeah, I know, I mostly play first person shooters, but it's one of my favorite genres. There are some RPGs in there though, along with some turn-based strategy. There's still a lot of life left in the PC, and I usually consider PC versions to be the superior version(though not always). There are some good flight sims and space combat games from over the years. Have you tried Microsoft Flight Simulator X, for instance? I'm afraid I'm not current on my knowledge of flight and space sims.

[Hatta]

There have been some good deals on decent quality OCZ power supplies on slickdeals recently. Keep an eye out. A power supply doesn't have to break the bank, but you don't want cheap crap either. 80Plus certification is a great idea too, power costs add up.

Don't underestimate the value of a good case too. A nice case with cable management, sound proof panels, a separate compartment for the power supply, well designed drive bays, filters on the air intakes, etc makes life so much better. If you can find a good combo deal on an antec case with power supply, it's well worth it. Although, if you're piecing it together from parts you may not have much choice.

As for games, I haven't played many recent games. That would require a reboot into windows.

[Niode]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers ... ber-2009/1

Get whatever you can afford from that buyers guide and get Windows 7 Professional. If you know somebody with a valid student email address you can get win 7 pro for $30. This and Ultimate are the only versions of Win7 that is compatible with XP mode, which essentially puts you a completely activated XP install on your PC that you run seamlessly as if it's a native application. It's still virtualised but it will cope better with a lot of the older PC games than Win 7 will natively.

I spent £600 on my gaming rig last September

Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3.4GHZ
Titan Fenrir Heatsink (awesome heatsink, this thing performs phenomenally considering it only costs £17)
Asus P5Q Deluxe
4GB DDR 2 1066hz
ATi Radeon HD4870 1GB
Corsair TX 750w (awesome PSU and so cheap, you should get one of these in your rig)
Antec 900 Case (again, awesome case for the money, don't get one if you don't like lots of blur LED fans though, but you can't )
NEC Optiarc Optical drive

Plus £125 for my DELL 24" 1152p (a bit bigger than 1080p and a little bit smaller than 1920x1200) screen which is awesome for gaming on.

Bearing in mind that you might not even be able get the same system for the same price (or equivalent in dollars) now since the price of components has risen quite drastically since I bought my system thanks to the recession and shortage on silicon.

[MrPopo]

You mentioned that you enjoy RPGs. The PC has the definitive versions of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Dragon Age. There's also The Witcher.

[corn619]

I appreciate the advice on parts guys but, my friend is handling the PC build. He works for a large PC gaming company in Mass and I trust his judgement on parts. A lot of the parts and software will be little to no cost for me to me due to his connections. He's the computer expert not me. I'm better at playing games than building the console it runs on.

I just wanted some recommendations on must have PC experiences that can't be had on a console. I should specified that I hate almost all FPS, so I'll have to try the other recommendations by you guys. Are there any good horror games on the PC worth trying? I know that theres tons for the PC but its hard to shovel through the shit sometimes. Again thanks for the help. Mr Popo, The Witcher and The Path looks great and will most likely be my first purchase. I played Obilvion to death though on the 360. Diablo 3 has my attention as does the Neverwinter series.

[fastbilly1]

What resolution do you plan on playing most games at? This changes the cost fairly dynamically. I mean I typically play at 800x600 or 1024x768 so my 9600gt which is not a gamers card, has been more than powerful enough to run most games on high for me. Emulation however the 9600 has been lacking - stupid Dolphin.

I am also having trouble justifying a gaming pc with a lot of my friends ditching them for consoles. However the past two weeks of playing Borderlands and Supreme Commander and the art for Alice 2 will keep me with a gaming PC for some time yet.

The pc games I have played the most this year are:
- Borderlands – PC version has tweaks to make it better than the console one (ie modifying the font so you can read the extra line on some weapons, mouse/keyboard, higher resolutions [though that matters little]).
- Guild Wars – MMORPG that is fun in short bursts
- Supreme Commander – The RTS – if Star Craft 2 has multi monitor support I might consider it for this spot (its lack of lan play is a big turn off though). Its TA for a new generation.
- Total Annihilation – What use to be The RTS (if you don’t think this should be here [it did come out in 97] fire up a game with the 50,000+ unit cap and a map that takes a gig of ram to play – like that one that is a 1/6 scale map of the United States)
- Demigod – Action RPG with RTS elements. Simply awesome in multiplayer. It is not just DOTA+ (I thought the same before I bought it).
- Half Life – yes even 11 years later I still play this one with friends. Why? Well it runs on everything (so does not need a gaming computer) and it has mods for everything. Team Fortress Classic is my favorite, but other good ones are Counter Strike, Science and Industry, Natural Selection, Opposing Force CTF, Wanted, that vampire one that name eludes me, and the list goes on. Man I want to play Half Life now.
- Unreal Tournament III – ok the PS3 port of this is fairly good, but the pc version has more mods.
- There are more but these are all the newer ones.

For games I have not played recently but need a newer pc:
-Morrowind – with the Octopus Mod Manager and all mods. Not only is the game higher resolution with a couple thousand extra quests, monsters, and items. It minimizes loadtimes after you have started the game. You can also turn on the load the world mod, but that has trouble with dragons and giants turned on. Also if you play with the dragon mod, don’t go swimming in the ocean.
-Hearts of Iron III – Grand Strategy Wargame – its oldschool
-Stalin vs Martians – Aracde RTS – ok it is an awful game but the name is fantastic

Upcoming games:
- American McGee’s Alice 2 – Alice was an awesome 3d platformer, and if the concept art has anything to do with it, Alice 2 will not disappoint. In one of the bits of art Alice is fighting a Giant steampowered snail on top of a building while war rages on all around them. Rumor has it the original voice cast came back. And that teaser that came out a couple weeks ago was a fan thing.
- Natural Selection 2 – Scifi teambased FPS. Humans vs Aliens with commanders. They were going to build it on the source engine but built their own engine so it would play the way they wanted it to – volumetric flamethrower and no more fall 10 feet and you die (damn goldsrc engine).
- Red Alert 4 – they can fix the series, I have faith.