AO: Help me design a great gaming pc

[Steelrat]

So, how exactly does one overclock? Is it in bios, or is there a utility you run?

[Steelrat]

Now I would just need a monitor suggestion. I'm running a 19" gateway I had back from, geez, I can't even remeber when. I used it when Starseige:Tribes first came out, if that means anything to you

I'm thinking LCD, but only because I want something that takes up less space, and I want it to be 20" +.

[FlawleZ]

Thats exactly what I was looking for, thanks! I'll pour over the list there. That's actually less than I was looking to spend.

Do you just use that silver crud to stick the heatsink right to the processor?

Out of curiosity, why does everyone seem to favor nVidia over ATI?

I'm glad you found what you were looking for. But honestly, several of us could have picked out parts for you and tell you what to buy but we didn't. We didn't because we wanted to give you insight and helpful suggestions so that you can make an educated purchase through your own research. Its much more rewarding to build a system that you look into than just some cookie cutter machine someone tells you you should get.

[FlawleZ]

So, how exactly does one overclock? Is it in bios, or is there a utility you run?

Both. But the right way to do it is in the BIOS. Please do some reading here:

https://www.overclockers.com

[Steelrat]

I'm glad you found what you were looking for. But honestly, several of us could have picked out parts for you and tell you what to buy but we didn't. We didn't because we wanted to give you insight and helpful suggestions so that you can make an educated purchase through your own research. Its much more rewarding to build a system that you look into than just some cookie cutter machine someone tells you you should get.

I didn't intend to denigrate the suggestions you had made. Nor do I intend to purchase exactly what he suggested. But I was looking for a whole-system recommendation to start with, that I could then alter based upon any research I did. Keep in mind I work 60+ hours a week, and have 3 kids, so I don't have too much time to spend sifting through the mountains of information out there

I'm fairly sure I DON'T want the 1gig video cards, as I see an upgrade with DX10 in the future anyways. I like his suggestion on the hard drive, and I had no clue that the nForce chipsets didn't overclock as well as the intel ones. Glickman's post about the 6400 had pretty much made my mind up about getting that chip, anyways.

Will I need to buy some cables too, or do they come with the various components?

[kruger]

While I will agree with most of what has been posted as a suggestion for you, I must offer you some more advice. I also have a P180 Antec case. They are really good cases for the EXPERIENCED builder. You will have some problems dealing with the power supply in this particular case. The power supply has its own little area at the bottom of the case with its own fan. And there lies the problem. The fan is very close to the power supply and leaves very little room for cables. I have a modular power supply and it was a pain in the rear to get the cables so that they did not interfere with the fan. I had to do a little customization on the power supply tunnel to make things work. I love this case, but it can be a pain if you get the wrong Power supply. Also, because of the the layout, you are very cramped if you decide to go the dual Vid card route. Again, it is because of the power supply cables. The second vid. card slot is right above the acess slot for the power supply cables and makes for a very tight fit. It also reduces the amount of airflow across the vid cards. And, like I said, I have a modular PS so I dont have to worry about all the extra cables that I am not using, and it is still very cramped around my bottom Vid. card. With this case, you would have less trouble if you got a modular PS.

[FlawleZ]

I didn't intend to denigrate the suggestions you had made. Nor do I intend to purchase exactly what he suggested. But I was looking for a whole-system recommendation to start with, that I could then alter based upon any research I did. Keep in mind I work 60+ hours a week, and have 3 kids, so I don't have too much time to spend sifting through the mountains of information out there

I'm fairly sure I DON'T want the 1gig video cards, as I see an upgrade with DX10 in the future anyways. I like his suggestion on the hard drive, and I had no clue that the nForce chipsets didn't overclock as well as the intel ones. Glickman's post about the 6400 had pretty much made my mind up about getting that chip, anyways.

Will I need to buy some cables too, or do they come with the various components?

Understandable. Sounds like you've got the foundation for an awesome rig. Beats mine .

[Banshee23]

Thats exactly what I was looking for, thanks! I'll pour over the list there. That's actually less than I was looking to spend.

Do you just use that silver crud to stick the heatsink right to the processor?

Out of curiosity, why does everyone seem to favor nVidia over ATI?

No real reason for Nvidia over ATi, the 1900XTX 512mb card from ATI is a great card. It's the fastest single card solution out there right now. But the 7950GX2 is faster in most cases, as it should be since it's two cards sandwiched, not one. The 1900XTX is around $400. Or if you plan on upgrading in a year or so just get a 1900XT (ATI) or 7950GT (Nvidia). Both a little under $300 and work great for current games. They should both handle new games fine too until you decide to switch to a DX10 board.

Yep you use the silver paste between the cpu & heatsink, there's instructions at arcticsilver.com on how to apply it. The heatsink clamps to the MB after you apply the paste, the thermal paste doesn't hold it by itself As for an LCD screen Dell just came out with a slimmed down version of their 20" widescreen LCD for under $300. It's a nice monitor.

As for the P180, the PS being under everything doesn't always work great as kruger said. Besides the issue he mentioned I've seen some power supplies with wires that are too short to work in this case. Not sure if the PSU I listed has that problem. Antec makes a bunch of other cases in the traditional style, you just have to pick one. Thermaltake also has some nice cases out there, alot of which are very similar to antec designs

Oh, and all the cables you need should come with the components.

[kruger]

I will try to address a coupla things that you mentioned.

The Artic Silver is a heat sink compound. What it does is provide a medium for the heat from your processor to transfer to the heat sink and get it away from the chip. Heat is the major killer of electronic components. It is not a glue and there is a proper way to do it, if you can beleive that

Any component or card that you buy will come with their own cables or connectors. The mobo will come with an asortment of cables and connectors that you may or may not use, depending on what your set up is.

As far as monitors go, if you have the room, then I do suggest that you get a CRT, not the flat panel LCD. The CRT's do present a much better display and have a wider range of operation resolutions. And, like I stated before, you can get great deals on 20 and 21 inch displays. 20 and 21 inch LCD's will make you cry as to how much they cost. And they will have an inferior pic quality compared to the CRT, relativly speaking. The LCD is good for most things, but gamming is the true test of a dislpay and a system. And, you are building a game machine? right?

Overclocking is not an exact science. It is a trial and error thing. There are guides on what and how, but no guide that can cover every configuration of system out there. So, check out some of the links that were posted, google for more. The more that you know about overclocking, the better prepared you will be to react WHEN your system crashes, and it will crash trying to find that magic tweak. Heat is the biggest problem with over clocking. The faster you drive a component or system, the more heat is generated. You have to have your cooling ducks in a row if you want to overclock. So, knowing the proper way to apply the Artic Silver has gained a bit in importance now. Evacuating the heat from your case is also is important to overclocking. So the case design has also gained a bit more importance. That also includes the fans that you pick. You can go huge and fast on the fans, but the trade off is noise. Not a problem, but is will bother you over time. There are big, slow fans that move a lot of air, but were designed to be quiet. Look for those. Antec makes a line of fans that are efficient and quiet, but so do others. If I have made you a little bit afraid, then good. I am not saying that you should not overclock, I am just trying to make you aware of the fact that you can destroy components in your system, if you go into it very deeply and not really know what you are doing. If you only get one useful thing from my post, then I hope that it is a desire to reserch overclocking before you make any radical changes in your bios. There are systems that have been overclocked to unbeleivable levels, and it can be done. But, their systems were designed and built to acheive these levels. And, most piece built systems can be overclocked safely to some degree or another, its just that that degree is a variable, depending on everything in the system that you build.

Most of what I post is my own personal experience and opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, as you should from any forum posts. There are nuggets of useful information in any forum, you just have to decide which ones are useful to you.

[kosmo]

Actually, the ATI 1950XTX thoroughly beats out the 7950 in most games, in addition to being cheaper and having better image quality. See here . Theres plenty of other articles out there confirming it, if you feel like looking. Id go for some different memory also, as Corsair likes to charge extra money for their name being on it. These sticks are cheaper, and if you do the mail in rebate, theyre quite a bit cheaper. With the buck fifty you just saved going that route, you can get a raptor drive . Throw your OS and games on here, and use the other HD for storage. Loads way faster than a 7200 rpm drive. Definitely get the sound card and some decent speakers, tis well worth it. The sound card will also increase your fps over onboard audio, in addition to sounding better. Also, the hulabaloo about LCDs not being good is ommunist propaganda.Widescreen is the way to go. Every now and then youll run into a game that doesnt naitively support it so the image is a bit stretched, but its been a boon for me in fps games like CS to increase my field of view. Oh yeah, while Im on the subject, EA is a bunch of (insert expletives here) for repeatedly putting out crappy, glitch filled games that dont natively support wide screen.

As for over clocking, its done in the bios by raising the FSB of your processor. Its darned near impossible to do damage to a processor by overclocking it until you raise the voltage too high. All an unsuccessful overclock will do is make your computer crash more frequently.

[tribalman]

overclocking as stated before is both. for the cpu it is typically done through the BIOS. it's really easy. just step of the timing. i really don't reccomend going balls out and go for insane speeds. i don't oc more than 20mhz, and i go in steps of 3-5 depending. so what you do is increase the speed, restart and run windows, then run some programs to put some stress on the computer and guage what's going on. check out this other thread with good programs and more advice.http://www.automags.org/forums/searc...earchid=980399
check out super-pi and cpu-z for system testing and stats.

with the video cards now the manufac. is actually giving the end user the program to over clock. it's as easy as running the program and moving a slider or typing numbers. once again take small steps and test the new speeds after each adjustment. with video cards DON'T increase the core more than 15-20%. the core doesn't OC very well. usually the memory gets better speeds, but there are exceptions.

as was stated by someone else, cooling is a must. really check out the CPU fan i mentioned earlier. it's the best, although big, cpu cooler out there.

*addition* people typically like nvidia more cause they got the double card working better. while single card stats are about the same, it's up to you. SLI beats the pants off of Crossfire. btw, SLI is what nvidia calls it while ATI calls it Crossfire. different names for the same idea.

[Banshee23]

Actually, the ATI 1950XTX thoroughly beats out the 7950 in most games, in addition to being cheaper and having better image quality. See here . Theres plenty of other articles out there confirming it, if you feel like looking. Id go for some different memory also, as Corsair likes to charge extra money for their name being on it. These sticks are cheaper, and if you do the mail in rebate, theyre quite a bit cheaper. With the buck fifty you just saved going that route, you can get a raptor drive . Throw your OS and games on here, and use the other HD for storage. Loads way faster than a 7200 rpm drive.

I forgot all about the 1950XTX There's way too many vid cards out there. I wouldn't bother with the raptor drive, they're annoyingly loud. The benches on the 7200.10 drives end up just below the raptors. So you get just about the same performance but without the noise, heat, & small storage space Yeah, corsair can be pricey. I just didn't have experience with the OCZ ram in the list so didn't want to recommend it in case it ended up being crappy (which it's probably not, OCZ usually makes nice OCable ram).

[SCpoloRicker]

Buy an Xbox 360?

/so went there

[Steelrat]

Buy an Xbox 360?

/so went there

I'm going to do that anyways, since I need an HD DVD player. But I like big (64 player +) multiplayer games, and the best the Xbox seem to muster is in the 20's. I play on Live with my Xbox already, which is fun, but PC games are my true favorites.

[FlawleZ]

I'm going to do that anyways, since I need an HD DVD player. But I like big (64 player +) multiplayer games, and the best the Xbox seem to muster is in the 20's. I play on Live with my Xbox already, which is fun, but PC games are my true favorites.

Ugh. Skip the 360, pick up a PS3. Have you checked into the specs comparing the two? The 360 is a bit lacking. What will be even more entertaining, is to see how much the 360 will pale in comparison in the future when developers and 3rd party support can fully take advantage of the power of the PS3.

Linux anyone? All bets are off.