I’ve decided that I have no interest in buying an Xbox One or a PS4, so my thoughts have turned to building a new PC. The last one I built was almost a decade ago, so I’m pretty much out of the loop.
I’m not really interested in being able to play Crysis 5 on ultra-high settings. What I really want is a computer that’s more future proof and can play most new games on medium-high settings for the near future. My laptop that’s 5 years old can play Skyrim and Civ 5 on ultra-low still, so that’s my lowest benchmark in terms of how long I need it to last.
What kind of price am I looking at, figuring I don’t need any new peripherals or anything like that? Also, is there a good CPUs and Video Cards for Dummies Guide out there? CPU seems simple enough in terms of more GHz is better, but I get confused in terms of numbers of cores and so on. Video Cards I get completely lost considering how many different ones there out there (and different versions of the same card).
Probably about $800 is reasonable for the computer. Going to $1000 adds some legs through overclocking, which is easier than ever before. Add $150 if you need a monitor, as you’re coming from a laptop. Deduct $100 if you have a Windows license you could use.
Those are probably a bit on the high side. Phrases like “futureproof” make it hard, especially since it isn’t clear yet how the new console generation is going to affect PC system requirements.
I never went for futureproof. I built one in 2011 with the objective of running games I needed to catch up on at their highest graphics settings, and new games at moderately high.
I ran across my newegg invoice the other day. Tower, everything in the tower, Win7, and Half-Life Orange Box came to a little over $600.
I would imagine you could pull off something similar now.
I’m not sure I would want to build one myself but every now and then I see a deal from MicroCenter for a refurbished i7 with 16gb of ram, and a 2tb drive for $600 or so.
I keep thinking that if you dropped a $200 video card in there you’d have something pretty damn good for gaming.
-are the least bit inclinded towards putting things together from kits or instructions
-don’t mind just a little research
-like to know how things you’re using work
then building your own is a pretty easy, fun, and satisfying task.
If you’re at a loss as to which parts to get, in every issue of PC Gamer they list hardware choices for 3 different performance/price points. Just decide what your price point is and buy what’s on their list, or mix and match the 3 lists according to your desires.
I don’t know a whole lot, but from recently purchasing a new PC myself, I know that a quad-core Intel i7 is on the high end, and an i5 running at a decent speed is a respectable processor.
Nvidia GPUs ending in 60 should be able to handle nearly anything new or recent, with 800s being the most recent, and you’ll want at least a 600 or 700 series. If it’s got an 80 on the end, it’s a really good GPU, but you’ll definitely notice the difference in price. There’s also letters involved; generally, GTX is better than GTS which is better than GT which is better than no letters.
A major question: are you interested in the FPS (or FPRPG or whatever) genre? I could be wrong, but it seems to me that almost all the graphics-hog games that come out are first-person. Isometric games like Diablo and Divinity (my current obsession) are much gentler on graphics systems.
CPU and GPU is easy, as always go to Toms’ Hardware best X for the money:
They update every month. I only wish they also had a best motherboard best drive, etc.
An Intel i5 4690k + a GTX 760 will get you better than current gen console performance for the rest of the generation. That’s pretty future proof for under $500. Toss in a solid mobo (I like ASrock’s Extreme edition ones) plus case, memory, hard drive and PSU and you’re looking at around $650 to $700.
Now, of course, in 3 years you can pick up a cheap 3K 21:9 30" panel and games will include Ultra settings that consoles cannot run, and if you want to game at those settings and resolution, you’ll have to upgrade, but you won’t have to, so long as gaming at 1080p/around 60 FPS at high settings (medium as time goes by) keeps you happy
Some other recommendations:
You can save some money by going i5 3500k, 8 gigs of RAM and 750 ti. Get an SSD for your OS and a spindle drive for your games/data, and in 3 years spend $200 on a new GPU. You’ll easily save more than that in the intervening time on Steam sales alone
I think they do a decent job on letting you know what kind of performance to expect - they usually also link you directly to their review of the GPU/CPU along with benchmarks.
Even if you’re going to physically build the system yourself from components, it’s pretty handy to go to a good commercial site that will build and ship a custom PC to your specs from components that they let you interactively choose individually, while updating the total price on-the-fly. It’ll give you a very good idea of the various options and their relative prices, helping you to find your “personal optimum value” by skimping on things you don’t need/want and paying a little extra for the things you do need/want.
Going to the right site with the right options and prices, you might just find that you’re not even able to built it yourself cheaper/better than their prebuilt systems. As a repeat customer there, I can recommend checking out iBuyPower. I recommend trying to build a system taking advantage of a major sale (pretty good one right now, appropriately titled “Back 2 Gaming”), then building a system from scratch using the custom-configurator (often, many of the major sale items still apply in there), last try starting with one of their basic templates, like Gamer Special A or B. (same as above with the sale items.)
Playing around a bit, you should be able to get a pretty nice fully loaded system in the ~$800 range, less if you skimp a bit, more if you splurge a bit. Free shipping, and all their systems get a 3/1 year labor/parts warranty.
Now that you’re familiar with all the stuff you want and all the price points, a twist! Head on over to Walmart.com, because they’re an iBuyPower reseller, and see if any of their preconfigured package deals might be able to beat what you came up with before. Free site-to-store shipping and the ability to just return it down the street if you aren’t satisfied, might make it worth it.
