Buying first PC gaming setup

[Erik_Twice]

Holy crap I totally fubared the conversion. Let's try £30 minimum and £60 or higher is better, shall we? That's what I get for trying to be fancy and post converted currency in a hurry.

I started to think your computer was an excuse to run a power supply the size of your house

[Frizz.Meister]

Ok here is what im going for tell if its good bad whatever for what i want:

Computer Case Tornado Gaming Case - Black
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955 (4 x 3.2 GHz) AM3 8MB - Black Edition
CPU Heatsink AMD Heatsink & Fan
Memory Corsair 4GB XMS3 PC3-10666 1333MHz (1x4GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 - 1 GB (Asus) (PCI-E)
Motherboard Asus M4A78LT-M (AMD 760G)
Sound Card Motherboard Integrated HD Sound
Networking Wireless LAN 54Mbps (PCI)
Power Supply 450W PSU
Case Wiring Professional Standard
Hard Drive #1 80 GB SATA-II HDD 7200 8MB
Optical Drive #1 Samsung (SH-S223L) 24x DVD Re-Writer/Reader +/- RW - Black - Lightscribe (SATA)
Operating System #1 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32 BIT (Genuine DVD & COA Included)
Backup Software Windows Backup

[Ziggy]

Didn't read the whole thread, but just commenting on the specs in the last post...

I just looked up that motherboard and it looks like it only has 2 RAM slots, yet you said you're gonna get 4x 1GB sticks. You would have to get 2x 2GB sticks instead.

What kind of power supply are you getting? You just specified 450w, but did you have a specific model picked out? There's only 2 brands of power supplies that I trust, the rest I wont touch with a 39 and a half foot pole. Enermax and Thermaltake, and Enermax wins by a land slide. I've owned several myself, and have used them in builds/upgrades for other people, and have NEVER had a problem with any of them. Also, 450w should be perfectly fine, but there are PSU calculators to give you a good idea of what you need. You might consider overshooting what you need, this is good practice. You don't really want "just enough", you want a little more. Just enough means you can't add a second hard drive later on, or a second optical drive, then the new monster video card that comes out and turns out to be a total power hog. Also pay attention to the amperage ratings on all the voltages. Some higher end hardware, especially video cards, will have a required amp rating.

About the hard drive, I'd get something larger. SATA drives are pretty cheap these days, you can get a much larger drive for not much more than an 80GB. If this is a gaming PC, wouldn't you want more space for game installs? They can take up a lot of space. And if not the size, I'd definitely get one with a larger cache than 8MB.

Why 32-bit OS? Go for 64-bit. Also, you might consider getting 7 Pro. Regular retail prices suck, but OEM 7 Pro isn't much more than an OEM Home Premium (it's $30 more on NewEgg). In fact, I think 7 Pro OEM is cheaper than Home Premium retail.

I'm not sure what you're looking for in a case, if you want the side window with LED colors and whatnot. But you might consider this case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

That's what I have now for my main rig, and it's been a solid case. I highly recommend it. But maybe you want something more flashy? I picked this case because it's rather plain looking.

I don't know what "Case Wiring Professional Standard" is and I'm assuming you mean you're planning to use the HSF that comes with the AMD CPU?

[Frizz.Meister]

I went for only an 80gig HDD because 90% of the game i play install at under half a gig and sure maybe ill want one or two of the newer games but surely they wont take up for than a couple of gig? Also i have a 1TB external for all music/videos ect

Power supply is made by corsair if that helps.

As for the ram it's 1 stick of 4gb not 4 of 1gb so it does fit the motherboard.

Windows 7 i reckon 32bit is the way forward as still very little is 64 bit optimized and from experiecne with my laptop drivers and 64bit OS dont mix to well when a problem does come up.

Monitor wise i have 1 21" 1080p rotating moniter for the central and 2 19"1080p non rotating monitors for the sides. So i can play FPS in glorious tri-screen but for shmups i can simple rotate the central for tate mode. I managed to sort this much out using my current old pc and many many cables.

Thanks for the imput keep it coming as i intend to order it in a week.

[Niode]

Ok here is what im going for tell if its good bad whatever for what i want:

Computer Case Tornado Gaming Case - Black
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955 (4 x 3.2 GHz) AM3 8MB - Black Edition
CPU Heatsink AMD Heatsink & Fan
Memory Corsair 4GB XMS3 PC3-10666 1333MHz (1x4GB) - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 - 1 GB (Asus) (PCI-E)
Motherboard Asus M4A78LT-M (AMD 760G)
Sound Card Motherboard Integrated HD Sound
Networking Wireless LAN 54Mbps (PCI)
Power Supply 450W PSU
Case Wiring Professional Standard
Hard Drive #1 80 GB SATA-II HDD 7200 8MB
Optical Drive #1 Samsung (SH-S223L) 24x DVD Re-Writer/Reader +/- RW - Black - Lightscribe (SATA)
Operating System #1 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32 BIT (Genuine DVD & COA Included)
Backup Software Windows Backup

80GB HDD, just why? I can get 1TB 7200RPM 16MB cache drives for £40... Plus it looks like a pre-built, built by somebody who knows fuck all about building systems. 32 bit Windows will mean that 4GB RAM will only appear as 3GB RAM when you have a 1GB GPU installed. 32 bit windows can only address 4GB ram system-wide. So 1GB of your RAM will be completely un-addressable by Windows. You need to be looking at Windows 7 64bit. Paying for backup software is completely unnecessary, save money and learn how to use rsync or download SyncBack. Optical drive, just stick with something generic. I paid £12 for my DVD-RW+Lightscribe. Just get a generic unbranded drive. Skimp on the non-essential parts and use that money to buy better core components. That graphics card is also very old and very poor. There are better 'budget' choices from the latest generation of cards which will vastly outperform it at the same price range. IE nVidia GT430 or a ATI 5570. Both these cards are in the £45-50 price range. Personally, I'd spend a bit extra and get a Radeon 6850 since that offers the highest amount of performance for the money, it's going to last you the longest as well.

Ask yourself this. Do you really need quad core? You only need a quad core if you're doing some serious work that benefits from it. If all you're doing is casual use, some light editing, photoshop blah blah, those extra cores are just going to run your electricity bill up for no reason at all. Get a Phenom X2 (hell you might even be able to unlock the other cores anyway) for half the price. Use the money saved here and get a 6850 or a GTX460. If you're looking to get your hands dirty, go for the Intel Pentium G6950, Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard and overclock the fuck out of it.

Edit: If you're wanting to play FPS in triple head you're going to need quite a bit of horsepower. You need to be looking at no less than a 5770 and even that I fear would be underpowered.

[Frizz.Meister]

Awesome response there load of usefull info. I never knew about the missing 1gig of ram was down to having a 32bit OS but now you mention it, it makes perfect sense. Also my CD drive is costing me £9 so its far from fancy

My main issue with the things you mentioned is that the palce im having it built doesnt offer all of those options, and i no longer wish to build it myself from simple fear of having never done such a thing before.

As for graphics cards i no litterally NOTHING about them other than all games reccomend Nvidia, so i simply picked the middle one offered to me. Which of these do you reccomend?

NVIDIA GeForce GT 210 - 512 MB - (Asus) (PCI-E)

512MB Zotac GT 210 Synergy, 800MHz GDDR2, GPU 589MHz, Shader 1402MHz, 16 Cores, D-Sub /DL DVI-I/ HDMI

512MB PNY GT 210, 800MHz GDDR2, GPU 589MHz, Shader 1402MHz, 16 Cores, D-Sub/ Dual Link DVI-I/ HDMI (PCI-E)

512MB KFA2 GT 210, 800MHz GDDR2, GPU 589MHz, Shader 1402MHz, 16 Cores, Dual Link DVI-I/ HDMI/ D-Sub (PCI-E)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 - 512 MB - (Palit) (PCI-E)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 210 - 1 GB - (Asus) - Silent (PCI-E)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 - 1 GB (Asus) (PCI-E)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 - 1 GB - (Palit) (PCI-E)

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 - 1 GB - (Palit) (PCI-E) - This one is really pushing my budget

ATI Radeon HD 4550 - 512 MB - VGA/DVI (XFX) (PCI-E)

ATI Radeon HD 5450 - 1 GB - DVI/VGA/HDMI (Sapphire) (PCI-E)

ATI Radeon HD 4350 - 1 GB - VGA/DVI/HDMI (Asus) - Silent (PCI-E)

ATI Radeon HD 4650 - 1 GB - 2xDVI/VGA (XFX) (PCI-E)

There are others on offer but the prices are crazy such as this one:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 - 1 GB - (INNO3D) (PCI-E) which is £179.99

EDIT: Also the game i plan to play triple head arn't exactly Crisis 2. Pretty much just Halo CE, TF2 and Guild wars. And my current pc can run triple head guildwars with a terrible integrated graphics card.

[pakopako]

My main issue with the things you mentioned is that the palce im having it built doesnt offer all of those options, and i no longer wish to build it myself from simple fear of having never done such a thing before.

It's not that bad. You are just assembling a PC together. It's like inserting a cartridge into a slot. If you feel paranoid about static, lock yourself in the bathroom, strip yourself naked, cover the tub drain, and grab a piece of pipe.

The worst thing that can happen in these situations is that your motherboard won't like the hardware and you'll have to buy something more compatible.

Also the game i plan to play triple head aren't exactly Crisis 2. Pretty much just Halo CE, TF2 and Guild wars. And my current pc can run triple head Guildwars with a terrible integrated graphics card.

Then pick a card that's well within your budget, or buy a motherboard with an integrated graphics memory chipset. Also, may I suggesting buying a PCI capture card in case you want to use your PC has a home entertainment system (or to grab clips off your console)?

[Erik_Twice]

TF2 on triplehead

Don't think for a moment that it's going to run smoothly on a mediocre card and the same will apply to other games.

You know, I have a triplehead setup running (Look for my game room). When I used a single screen I was able to run TF2 max graphics with a lot of AA. Now I had to manually force N64 graphics disabling practically everything and running DX8 to get a decent number of FPS and I'm still using a single screen for the game (I can probably run smootly that way on triplehead but haven't tried yet).

Also, if you don't have a graphics card specifically made for triplehead you will need to run a software solution like SoftTH so as to force the game to draw on three screens and that eats an awful lot of resources.

If you want to run triplehead the best option by far is an ATI Eyefinity card. They have the neccesary programs to run the games, it's better supported than SoftTH and runs on hardware not software (meaning less resources). It also has all the neccesary outputs for half a dozen screens so you won't need a dummy card and a motherboard that supports two graphical cards.

However the Eyefinity cards are on the cutting edge and will cut your budget like there's no tomorrow. If you don't mind N64 graphics for a while for TF2 and other modern games I recommend you to stick to SoftTH until you can decide if it's worth the money. I haven't tried because my version isn't the Source one but probably HL1 will run well and is a cool benchmark for triplehead as corridors are AMAZING on triplehead compared to how boring they are on a single screen.

If you haven't checked yet, you should go to the Widescreen gaming forums, it's the site to go for everything triplehead (or six head, or triple proyector 3D ). Try not to drool over their setups!

[Frizz.Meister]

ok checked out widescreen gaming and after about 20minutes of staring at pretty pictures actually did some research to discover that ATI Eyefinity is pretty much all they will use because it is the best.

So of course i looked up some cards and well the prices vary hugely but i discovered the ATI 5750 which can run really modern games at full settings and so will easily handle my stuff and allow for triple head for some FPS action so long as i dont expect max settings. However its not cheap so HSBC might have to take one for the team.

[Erik_Twice]

I just got TF2 on triplehead running with N64 graphics so you can compare how much it drains FPS:

Game on one screen: 60-100FPS
Game on three screens: 30FPS

An important note, you will probably need a DVI->Whatever adapter, check your screens first.

I just checked the price and it's actually pretty cheap! 120 Euro, I remember spending as much for mediocre cards last time I upgraded my computer.