I just wanted some ideas and help for a computer that I would like to set up.
It will be mainly for playing PC games, recording them and editing afterwards.
I’m looking for no disruption of speed, while in recording.
I have a budget of around $1000. I do not need a lot of Hard Drive Space. 1 TB is more than enough.
I want to buy the parts piece by piece.
If anyone would like to suggest pieces that are needed (everything). Links will be awesome too.
I really don’t have much knowledge about these specifics, I only know I want good RAM and a High Graphics card.
I’m planning just to bring it to a shop to get set up.
$1000 is a lot (IMO) for a computer so you aren’t restricting yourself too much. Unless you are dead set on building it yourself just because you want the experience, you can probably save money by buying a $650 or less computer from a reputable manufacturer and then spending the rest on a good video card to give it good gaming performance. That is less time and hassle and the end result will be good plus it will will come with a copy of Windows and a warranty. If you do want to build it yourself, there is nothing wrong with that but you probably won’t save money because you have to buy parts separately. There are whole websites dedicated to building computers yourself and they are constantly updated with the latest components. We can’t give an exhaustive list here like they can. Building a computer yourself isn’t very difficult but it does take time to do the research on each and every part which leads to a type of compulsive second-guessing yourself even when the real-life differences between parts is tiny.
Thanks for the output!
I ONLY want to assemble a PC because I just want good performance, and what your suggesting is that for around $600, I can just buy a manufactured one and just put a nice graphics card in it? Wouldn’t I need to put more RAM also?
That will in fact save me a lot of hassle, and I personally do not want to make my own, I just want good performance.
I’ve built my own and bought from a manufacturer, and unless you have some line on highly-discounted parts, you’ll probably find it cheaper to buy from a manufacturer. And if you buy the parts and then pay someone to put it together, the cost won’t even be close - building yourself will cost significantly more.
Dell and most others allow significant customization of the system. Like Shagnasty recommends, swap out the video card, add more RAM if you need it, and you’ll be fine.
Both HP and Dell off good systems in the $650 or less range. You can do the searches for those options yourself on their web sites. I don’t know how much RAM you want but many of them come with 4 - 6 gb with the option to add more from the manufacturer or you can just pop some in yourself for not much money.
There are some good deals in graphic cards. I would stay away from the absolute high end because you pay a very hefty price premium for the absolute newest and fastest cards that I don’t think is worth it. You can back off just a notch and get a really good video card like this GeForce 560 for a little less than $200.
The other thing you could look at for performance is a solid state main drive or a hybrid drive as your boot drive. These use solid state memory or a combination of solid state memory paired with conventional hard drive technology to hold your OS and other commonly used files but greatly increase disk performance. Bootups and system tasks are very fast on these drives but they are usually much smaller than a regular hard drive and also fairly expensive. You need to have a conventional hard drive as a secondary drive even if you have an solid state drive just to make the total drive space acceptable.
You might have to dial back your expectations for large hard drive capacity, which doesn’t seem like a problem in your case. It’s because a major part of the world’s manufacturing capacity is in Thailand, and many production lines are now (glub, glub) underwater. This has resulted in a tripling of HD costs, and will probably continue for 6 months to a year.
Once they get back to capacity, I predict a drastic price drop. Hope everyone can wait.
I bought a quad-core with three gigs from Circuit City about a year before they closed. Got it for half price (about $450, IIRC) because it was a display model with no box. Had to swap out the ATI card and cheapo power supply for better models but that was it. A bigger HD has since been added, though.
That isn’t a bad system for the price. You can try to see if it meets your needs as is. You may not need as much as you think. However, the video card included in that one is sub-par by current standards and basically a throwaway model. It may not be that bad but it won’t play the newest games at the highest settings and it will get even more out of date fairly quickly. The GeForce 560 I linked to above is many times more powerful and will make a big difference in video quality if you want an upgrade but it costs $180 give or take so it isn’t cheap even though it is a good deal too. 8 GB of RAM should be enough for your needs. Adding RAM does not help performance if you have enough and 8 GB usually is for now. You can add more later if you want. The hard drive on your linked computer is 500 GB which is slightly small by today’s standards but a second hard drive is fairly cheap and easy to add later if you run into a space problem.
The processor included in the one you linked too isn’t the fastest available either even at that price point. An Intel i5 will easily beat it as will an Athlon Phenom II and Dell and HP offer systems at about the same price with those processors as long as you buy the video card separately. You could look at those too.