Ok I am going to get rolling on this. I was looking to spend about $800 or so total, although I have a few things that can be recycled and upgraded later so that might bring it down a bit.
I have a 19" Acer flatscreen monitor. I’d like to keep this for a while, and when it finally goes I’ll get a bigger and better one. If my video card has HDMI output, I can hook it up to any television with an HDMI port, right?
I can use my current dvd burner. I don’t really use it much anymore since I buy most of my games on Steam now, and I think I’m going to start going to a cloud backup system rather than dvd backups. I suppose I could get a blu-ray player but I don’t want to watch movies on my PC, I want to watch them on my television from the couch.
I don’t really want to reuse much else. I kind of want to keep the current comp as a backup, or maybe a second comp for my wife.
A few questions about components:
1)Overclocking - I have never overclocked and have no interest in it. Also, unless it’s the new wave of the future (and thus becoming a necessity), I don’t want to run 2 graphics cards. So no SLI/Crossfire or any other dual card setups.
2)Drive - I was thinking of getting a solid state drive, maybe instead of a HD. I saw 500mb SSD’s for around $140, which is a lot for a drive, but I don’t usually have more than about 10-15 games installed at one time plus about 40-50gb in mp3’s and music videos. so I think a 500gb SSD would be plenty. Right?
3) Memory - Is 8gb ddr3 okay for a modern comp or should I shoot for 16gb?
4) CPU - Thinking an intel i5 quad core should be a decent bang for my buck. Any thoughts? I was looking at the 3.2gz, is that likely enough for me to enjoy new games for a couple years? Remember, I don’t want to overclock.
5) Case - There now seem to be towers, mid towers, micro ATX, and mini ATX. Guessing you have to have a smaller mobo for the mico/mini cases? I’ve been looking at some fractal designs micro ATX cases, hows the cooling in them and are they good for gaming (micro cases in general I mean)?
6) Cooling - A lot of the micro cases I’ve looked at mention radiators, water cooling, and open fan slots. Am I going to have to buy extra fans/cooling equipment, or do most of them come with “good enough” stock equipment?
7) Video card - A friend gave me a Cyclone N460GTX. I haven’t followed the current trends, I know this is a lower end card now, but will it play GTA5 and other newer games on high settings, or should I just get something beefier right off the bat? I’d rather save the money and go with the 460 if I can.