By Jim Rossignol on January 13th, 2011 at 3:05 pm.
So I am going to rebuild my PC soon, and that got me thinking about the infinite variations of hardware, and I wondered how many of you guys are planning to upgrade or get a new PC, given this year’s avalanche of PC games. I mean, clearly it’s not the same as it was a few years ago, when the march of graphics cards went hand-in-hand with software that supported them, and we all started moaning about it costing £7000-a-month to run a PC, but I am still considering how top-notch I want The Witcher 2 to look, and whether I could get Call of Pripyat running at even higher detail levels on a fresh, rather more resplendent, machine. I can wait no longer for the computational newness. So…
EDIT: Argh, I can’t get polls working. Something has made the buttons stop working! This internet science is beyond me. Instead, I’ve posed some questions, below, that you can consider in the comments.
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
13/01/2011 at 15:09 banski83 says:
It no worky, sadly.
13/01/2011 at 15:10 Lewie Procter says:
I vote for [poll id="13"]
Edit: although in all seriousness, I am going to get a new PC at some point when I can afford it, ideally this year. It’ll be a super wizzy one, I and will pay a shop to make it for me. I reckon I’ll go Nvidia this time, because I’d like to play Mirror’s Edge with the Phyx whistles and bells. Probably one of the high end cards since I have a 1920×1080 monitor.
I suspect I’d be aiming to spend somewhere between £700 and £1000 all in.
Where is the best place to get a prebuilt PC these days? I hear Cyberpower are good.
13/01/2011 at 23:44 jaheira says:
“I hear Cyberpower are good”
Hmmmm. I got my last pre-built from them. Intermittently faulty video RAM on one of the cards. The card failed altogether in the end, which is the only time that’s happened to me in 15 years of peesea gaming.
14/01/2011 at 07:25 Martha Stuart says:
i just built a new rigg, although i did build it technichally last year. my specs are as follows
intel Core i7 950 quad core (overclocked 200 Mhz per core) – 549$ combo with mobo
ASUS P6X58D mobo
8 Gigs ram – G.Skill 2x 4GB sticks – DDR3 2000 – 319$
2x EVGA Geforce 460 SE – 159$ each (running in SLI)
1200 Watt PSU – 200$
scrounged Hard drive and case from old computer
_______________________________________________________________
Grand total = > 1400$
This setup will run any current game with all settings tapped out without even breaking a sweat.
i ordered all parts from newegg.com and prices listed in USD$
P.S. with CPU overclocked and 2x Graphics cards this baby runs a little hotter than most other setups. but nothing to worry over. and if you are planning on overclocking CPU or GPU’s make sure to get an aftermarket heatsync and fan, and a case with good ventiliation is also highly recommended.
13/01/2011 at 15:11 Groove says:
I vote poll id 12 for president
13/01/2011 at 15:20 President Weasel says:
Bah, the spam thing ate this post and then later regurgitated it next to my very similar replacement post. Bah, I say.
Still, it’s better than a lot of posts about shoes.
13/01/2011 at 15:26 President Weasel says:
The incumbent in these races has all the advantages.
I’ve had my PC for 2 and a bit years now, I think. Maybe even more!
I replaced the graphics card when the 8800 GTX in there stopped working, and I think it had 2GB of RAM when I got it which I’ve since replaced with 4GB of slightly faster, but still DDR2, RAM.
Still seems to be chugging along nicely and hasn’t complained yet about any game I’ve tried to play on it.
I probably won’t buy a new PC. I may buy a gaming-capable laptop as a second PC depending on finances.
I have no intention of upgrading, since the main performance upgrade would be a new processor and a new motherboard that can handle better than DDR2 RAM, and at that point the voices start telling me “but now you’re most of the way to a new PC!”
I would happily read an article from RPS telling me how to build a new PC.
13/01/2011 at 15:45 simonh says:
Indeed, mine has 2x 9800GTX, 4gb RAM and a e8400, it still performs well after almost three years.
Of course I have to tweak the graphics settings, can’t just put them on maximum anymore, but in general the actual differences are negligible. I think this is the upside of the consoles domination and their long generational cycles: we’re still getting prettier games, but the developers are forced to optimize instead of just raising the specs.
13/01/2011 at 15:11 CMaster says:
No immediate plans, although if I get in a comfortable financial situation, I may get a new PC.
Thing is, my current, 3/4-year old ish machine (with a gfx upgrade about 2 years ago) is still plaing new games comfortably at 1680 x 1050. SO not really feeling the pressure to upgrade.
Core2Duo E6400
4gb PC6200 Ram
975X chipset
Radeon HD4850 512
For those who are interested.
NOT.
TO
QUICK.
13/01/2011 at 15:38 kirkbjerk says:
I’m in about the same boat as you are, however, I’m still stuck in the 8800gt still. This year I’m tempted to either grab up one of the i760′s or just hold out longer and see if this detritus span chip is everything people are yelling about.
Thing is, if I go the cpu way, I will need to poney up for the motherboard and ram. If I go the gfx route, only one thing….
13/01/2011 at 16:18 CMaster says:
8800GT isn’t much worse than the 4850 mind.
My thoughts were when I do build a new one, I could whack the old CPU, old GFX, the memory probably (new stuff is all DDR3 right?) and one of the HDDs I don’t use at the moment into a media centre case.
Not too quick, stupid bot.
13/01/2011 at 15:12 Jockie says:
Having suck rotten luck with my PC lately, that most of my ‘PC upgrade’ money is going towards replacing broken parts. Waiting on a new PSU to arrive currently.
13/01/2011 at 15:13 westyfield says:
Not planning on upgrading internal components, my monitor and mouse are slowly wearing out so I’ll probably get new ones this year. Saving my corruption points for a laptop when university time cometh.
13/01/2011 at 15:17 Navagon says:
My advice: don’t buy anything from Don Intelio. Oh and buy a 400 series Nvidia card. That should help cut your heating bills this winter.
1. I doubt it. Nothing really seems to tax what I have enough to warrant it.
4. This PC was upgraded last year to a quad core with a new GPU too. So it’s about as good as I need it to be for a good while yet.
5. No. I doubt that it is lovelier somehow. I’d get a DS for portable gaming.
6. I think a guide like that would be a nice thing to do and help clear up these misconceptions. I don’t need it myself, but that’s no reason not to support the idea.
7. The graphics card market has been fairly crap for a while. But at least now we’re seeing more of a focus on fixing existing problems rather than trying to come up with the next big, pointless thing. If I were to go either with Nvidia or AMD right now it would be Nvidia. I’m seeing more effort from them in fixing their hardware problems than I’m seeing from AMD with regard to finally sorting out their drivers.
13/01/2011 at 15:17 Torgen says:
Being so very poor, I have a firm graphics card update schedule: when the $100 recommended card on the monthly Tom’s Hardware’s “Best Graphics Card for the Money” article is two tiers above my present one on the hierarchy chart at the end of the article, I upgrade.
It’s actually getting close to upgrade, as I have a 9600GT right now, but I just went from XP to Windows 7/64, and it now does DX10, so I’m re-experiencing all my games with updated graphics right now. That’ll keep me entertained til the prices drop a bit more. (see also: going from 2GB to 4GB RAM since switching to Win7.)
13/01/2011 at 15:17 Tei says:
Life is long, but memory is limited. So I have forget the last time I updated my comp.. I think It was buying a new graphic card.
So my 2 cents is writting this upgrading plan:
– new computer
– upgrade graphic card
– upgrade graphic card
– bigger screen/hard disk
– new computer
– upgrade graphic card
– upgrade graphic card
– bigger screen/hard disk
….
And so on.
A new computer cost me about €400, and a new graphic card about €300, a new hard disk about €60 and a new monitor about €100.
If I upgrade the monitor and the graphic card, the total is €400 (in a whole year).
13/01/2011 at 15:18 The Hammer says:
I’m planning to get an upgrade to the PC around April time, but I’ll only have a budget of like £200 or something. I figure it’s enough for an injection of ram, but knowing the price of some processors, I think I’ll have to stick with my elderly looking one.
At the minute, GTA4 is pretty sluggish on my machine, Ruse seems to work reasonably fine on high-ish (and, it must be said, attractive) graphics, Dragon Age I can play pretty much at high, WOW occasionally chokes when I have view distance to max (and considering its stunning environments, it’s a shame to NOT run it to its full potential!) and Medal of Honor seems to work quite well on medium/high.
To be honest, the varying competency with which software takes to machines is as wide-ranging as the output of the machines themselves.
EDIT:
“would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?”
Oh, yes please!
13/01/2011 at 15:30 Torgen says:
I’m pretty much at the end of the CPU upgrade path, myself, with a LGA 775 motherboard. I bought a E7500 Core Duo last year to replace the OCed E2160 I had in it.
I bought the E2160 when I got the mobo, since it was a $95 chip that was child’s play to overclock to match a $250 chip. I’ve been doing this since the days of the Celeron 300a, and it’s what drives my motherboard upgrade decisions. Until a sub-$100 chip comes out that can easily see a huge performance increase, I limp along with the CPU I have.
13/01/2011 at 20:03 MikoSquiz says:
GTA4 is sluggish, period.
Personally, I’m mostly on ca. 2008 hardware except for the video card (which is 2009) and everything seems to work as well as I need it to.
13/01/2011 at 15:19 McDan says:
Poor student here so laptop gaming it is, it works well enough to run Dragon age, The Witcher, Amnesia etc. so it’s been fine so far. Would be very much interested in no.6 (showing how to build a cheap, fast pc.)
13/01/2011 at 15:20 Edgar the Peaceful says:
Jim. If you’re rebuilding your PC I’d heartily recommend getting an SSD drive and putting your OS and work apps on it. You’ll never look back. Stuff starts instantly and your whole machine will feel more responsive.
13/01/2011 at 15:24 Jim Rossignol says:
Yeah, that is the plan.
13/01/2011 at 15:40 Nallen says:
SSD is the only thing I’m really interested in at the moment.
13/01/2011 at 16:07 HexagonalBolts says:
OOoooohh but, so little space, so much money, it makes me wallet’s tiny little wallet-sized heart oh so sad.
13/01/2011 at 16:25 oceanclub says:
Still not prohibitively expensive? 120GB drives are still €200 euro (no point in a 60GB one, as Windows 7 is such a monster, most of that is gone on your Windows and User folders).
P.
13/01/2011 at 16:43 Edgar the Peaceful says:
@Oceanclub. Respectfully – nonsense! I have Windows 7 & plus most well-used apps, and even a couple of games on a Crucial 64GB SSD. No slowdown even when it starts getting full.
I keep a couple of standard hard drives for data, and have a snazzy programme called ‘Steam Mover’ or something which allows your main steam installation to be on C: but all the games moved over to another drive.
13/01/2011 at 20:51 Trans says:
I wanted a new soundcard in November last year so bought a Xonar D2X. I looked inside my case when the shiny item arrived and discovered there wasn’t enough room above the gfx card (huge gt260). So I bought a new mobo with i7 and 6GB of RAM. Then I got silly and bought a 128GB SSD for around £180. Win 7 boots into desktop in about 10-12 seconds and applications that occasionally hung when loading are almost instant.
In the end I spent about £800 and all wanted was a new soundcard. I sold my car to pay for it.
No more upgrades for many years. I’m not sure what I was thinking but my PC is very quick and I love it like an imported Thai wife.
Anyway… all I wanted to say is a dedicated sound card and an SSD make a massive difference to the PC experience.
For competitive FPS players the good quality dedicated soundcard is a must!
13/01/2011 at 23:03 Huggster says:
I recommend the 80 GB Intel G2 SSD – seems to do well in reliability as well. Everything feels more snappy (web browsers, apps) and long load times in games are much less of an issue (obvious benefits for things like Bad Company 2 where you can get a head start). i have my old 500gb SATA as data storage for music and so forth.
14/01/2011 at 05:07 Zaboomafoozarg says:
SSD is the bomb and a half, it made my compy running an E8400 feel new again.
13/01/2011 at 15:21 AndrewC says:
Yes! Tell us how to make a £500 tower, or, even better, point us at deals with reputable companies that are guanteed to play this year’s biggest-balled games on high.
I don’t even know how to change RAM these days. I can’t be buggered!
13/01/2011 at 15:23 trjp says:
90% of people who upgrade their machines regularly, do so because they can – not because they need to.
Many of them only use games to showcase their hardware (not the other way around) – some never play a game at-all, content with benchmarks and the like.
Right now a C2D with 2GB+ of RAM and a half-decent (£80-100) GPU plays almost anything to a decent level – taking ‘decent’ to ‘amazing’ will cost 10-20 times as much.
Summary: Do you really need those almost un-noticeable fps’s???
p.s. instead of asking loaded questions, why not just do an RPS Hardware Survey?
13/01/2011 at 15:25 Jim Rossignol says:
“why not just do an RPS Hardware Survey?”
Because we’d need to use survey software again, which is more hassle than I can be bothered with at the moment. We do actually have some numbers on this stuff from the last survey, but I was wondering if people generally felt like 2011 was an upgrade year, given the surplus of games coming out.
13/01/2011 at 15:32 trjp says:
You can’t be bothered with a survey but you’re offering to enter the arena of gladiatorial combat which is recommending a PC to make!?!?!?!??!
You’re insane – no really, there are a million places which already hack away at that particular chestnut surely???
13/01/2011 at 15:40 The Hammer says:
To be honest Mr trjp, with your excitable ramblings, unproven percentages and many, many question marks, you’re presenting yourself as the undisputed insane one here.
Have you thought that perhaps there isn’t much crossover between the “millions of sites” you imply and this one here?
????????????????
13/01/2011 at 19:38 MattM says:
Really? How do you know the reason for other people’s upgrades? I upgrade frequently, but it is always prompted by some game that I really want to play at high settings. Metro 2033 is currently my target.
Do I need more performance? No I don’t really need any videogames, but its a fun hobby. I both like and notice high quality game settings and high framerates and consider the money I spend to be a reasonable luxury expense. People don’t need to fish or water-ski, but people dont call them crazy when they spend $15,000 on a recreational boat.
14/01/2011 at 16:34 trjp says:
re: The Hammer you call me insane and suggest there’s no crossover between RPS and sites which go into the minutiae of building PCs…
I’ll say more when I’ve stopped laughing my fucking teeth out.
What there IS no crossover between, is RPS (a games site) and a the obsessional hobby of getting “just one more FPS” from a game – they are totally unrelated. Feel free to continue both hobbies, but don’t pretend they’re anything to do with each other…
Then there’s the matter of bringing in the “nVidia sucks” and “that rig is shit” types – on the whole, I’d rather than all died, let alone invaded this place…
13/01/2011 at 15:25 Schmung says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
If I get some money together, then yes.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
£400 or thereabouts I should think
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Mobo, CPU, GFX, RAM.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
Purely financial, my current rig is just about ok for gaming, but the meagre core count is bothering me with all the photoshoppery and game dev stuff I do. For the record – E5200, 4gb, Radeon 4830.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I think the specialist hardware sites are properly better for this sort of thing, though perhaps some sort of occasional summary piece would be nice?
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
13/01/2011 at 15:26 groovychainsaw says:
I usually have a ’2 cards behind the current generation’ rule for graphics cards (which i slightly borked by then buying a second 8800gt for SLI fun last year), haven’t seen much need for a new cpu since core 2 duo was introduced, and am pretty happy with 4GB ram for games (and can’t see that changing in the near future whilst console/indie games hold sway for me).
PSUs are expensive, but cheap ones in the past have crapped out on me, whereas my relatively expensive one I got last time has run nicely, so maybe the components inside are better? I’m always looking at new graphics cards purchases , but think i would mostly be disappointed by anything less than a 20% jump in performance. So no plans for upgrades really, happy with my current spec, and don’t see anything that will stretch it this year, unless i HAVE to run in max everything mode.
I’d genuinely prefer RPS to stick to games rather than hardware, too. Whilst your writing could liven up reviews a bit, other sites do the numbers pretty well and hardware reviews give you less scope for flights of fancy. I’d prefer more games articles, in short :-)
13/01/2011 at 15:30 Jim Rossignol says:
No plans for regular hardware coverage, but I am tired of people saying “Oh I’d love to get into PC gaming, but I can’t afford £1000 for a PC”.
13/01/2011 at 15:34 Torgen says:
Jim, perhaps then just link once or twice a year (the holiday season seems an apt time) to one of the dedicated hardware site’s building guide. I haven’t looked in forever, but someone (Anandtech?) used to do a $500/$1000/$1500 “best gaming PC feature” on a semiannual basis.
13/01/2011 at 15:36 groovychainsaw says:
Yeah, that IS tiring, I could make a decent ‘average settings’ system for <£300 I think (with no research done!) that would play everything that has come out up until today (except Crysis!) on average at a decent lick. But I reckon most people here know how to that, or can find an article that tells them? Trouble with writing a 'builder's guide' is that it would get out of date quite quickly as prices change, so would have to be updated. Writing about software creates a piece for posterity (especially with the writers on here being a pleasure to read), hardware writing is transitory…
/Edit – Just saw Torgen’s reply – linking to a hardware site would be fine :-)
13/01/2011 at 16:55 battles_atlas says:
Bittech do a monthly buyers guide for varying budgets. It, or its sister Custom PC mag, is where I get my info. I wouldn’t see the point in RPS doing this, as whilst it will do doubt be better written, the research wont come near to that done by those guys.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2010/11/03/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-november-2010/1
13/01/2011 at 17:15 Richard Beer says:
I don’t think anyone should buy a PC just for gaming; it’s ridiculously expensive. If, however, you need to do all manner of other stuff like browse t’Internet, write things, draw things etc etc, then you should get a PC that can handle games.
Just over 4 years ago I bought a beautiful, water-cooled custom-made PC from Beast Computers for just over a grand. It was a Hybrid Evo but… uh, I can’t actually remember all the specs, now that I think about it, but it was a slightly overclocked 6600 Intel Duo with an nVidia 8800 GTX. I upgraded it to 4GB RAM a while ago so I could edit video, but that’s all I’ve done, and I’m happily running COD: Black Ops in some high resolution with zero slowdown, so I feel no real urge to splash the cash on a new rig just yet. It’s certainly lasted a lot longer than I expected it to. I guess I have console owners to thank for that.
My brother recently upgraded his old PC, actually, so I was going to grab his 8800 GTX and SLi it, but I don’t have enough power leads! That’s the only upgrade I’ve recently considered, even though it failed. Anyone want to buy an 8800 GTX?
13/01/2011 at 15:27 Giant, fussy whingebag says:
Recently got a new GPU, as well as a PSU to be able run it and hopefully anything for the next 10 years (they are indeed disproportionately expensive). Geforce 460, by the way, for the still excellent price:performance ratio.
I envision my next upgrade will be when pigs fly and 250-500GB SSDs are affordable. Probably, for most people, an SSD would provide the most noticeable performance boost, by the way…
13/01/2011 at 16:36 Squirrelfanatic says:
SSDs won’t have that much of an impact on your gaming performance – as I understand it – because their major improvement is the access time which is not really important if you got a sensible graphics card and / or RAM. Same thing with DDR3 RAM in comparison to DDR2. The differences are tiny.
13/01/2011 at 16:50 Edgar the Peaceful says:
@Squirrelfanatic. Regarding gaming, that’s true, except level load times are improved. I had BC2 on my SSD for a while, the maps load very quickly but you’re left sat waiting for all the other players to load before starting the round
Nevertheless, my entire PC response has been improved by an SSD
13/01/2011 at 15:28 mowglie says:
Yes please to #6! Or at least give me some links to follow…
My current machine has lasted me almost five years (!!!!) and I can still play most modern games on it. I for one have been *loving* the fact that most PC games also have to cope with xbox 360 hardware which means I can run them :D
It really makes the poorly optimised ones stand out (Crysis, The Witcher, I’m looking at you!)
However, the poor brave thing is showing its age. The hardware is all slowly failing, and I’d rather upgrade the whole thing at once rather than replace parts over and over.
13/01/2011 at 15:29 El_MUERkO says:
My current rig has a C2Q 9500, 8gigs of ram and I’ve recently updated to an AMD HD6970 from a pair of 4870s. CPU and RAM speeds have outpaced the engines that run on them and 90% of making your game run well is done by the graphics card.
If you’re a gamer first then the easiest way to save money is to not buy the newest CPU/Mem/Mobo combination as they’re not needed by any of the games currently available (and by looking at next years release list that wont change). I cant see myself upgrading mine my till early next year because frankly there is no need.
13/01/2011 at 15:29 Tori says:
I bought my PC for The Orange Box (was it 2006?).
Intel Core2Duo @ 2,66
GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB (they don’t make that amout of memory anymore!)
4 gigs of ram (was 2GB at first, added more later)
It still plays most of the new games, usualy on high details at 1980 x 1080.
I belive that if I’ll have a good financial situation, I might buy something new this year. The amout will depend of course on how much will I save.
The Witcher 2 is the biggest reason why I would buy a new PC.
13/01/2011 at 15:30 Jhoosier says:
I choose #3. Barring a disaster, I won’t be replacing my machine or any components this year. I don’t think I’ll be buying any high-res games this year, so my PC from 2008 will be sufficient — Intel Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM and a 9800GTX are enough to run New Vegas at high settings, as well as play Just Cause 2 at a decent clip. Since I have a ton of games from last year, like Bioshock 2 and Call of Pripyat to play, not to mention lower-requirement games like Minecraft, I will wait until my machine is absolutely decrepit before upgrading.
If anything, I will make the move to Windows 7, but even that is a stretch.
13/01/2011 at 15:31 kikito says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Upgrading. My girlfriend pushed the PC and it fell from a table. The mainboard died.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Less than 100 euros.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
The motherboard.
4. (not applicable)
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Yeah. Because it’s the best one I have now.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Yes and yes. I’d also appreciate if you didn’t make it too UK-specific. At least include shops that ship internationally. Also, if you include the currency conversions directly – like this: £2000 / €2397 / $3148 you will save your international readers a lot of time.
7. (not applicable).
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
I don’t know what a PSU is. I could google it, but will wait for your articles instead.
13/01/2011 at 15:31 Ginger Yellow says:
Gah. RPS ate my comment again.
Basically, I just upgraded/replaced a dead PC a couple of months back, so I have no plans for the foreseeable future. I’ve built PCs in the past but tend to buy custom ones now. I typically pay a maximum of £1k, but it depends on how many parts I’m keeping from the old machines. I’d appreciate a building PCs article in the abstract, but in practice I wouldn’t get any benefit out of it for a couple of years. I have a GTX460, because the reviews suggested it gave good bang for buck for a DX11 card, and its quietish and runs cool.
13/01/2011 at 15:32 disperse says:
1.” Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?”
Nope, I don’t think so. (*See note below about Onlive.)
4. “If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?”
I have a three year old gaming laptop that has definitely forced me to pass up on a few games I might have checked out otherwise.
5. “Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?”
Yes (see above). I don’t really have a desk area and feel less socially isolated if I’m playing a game with headphones while my wife watches TV.
6. “Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC?”
Before buying the laptop I built a new PC for myself probably every other year.
6a. “…would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?”
Sharkeyextreme.com used to have a monthly feature suggesting components for a budget gaming rig. They aren’t doing that anymore. If I were going to build a gaming desktop I would love for someone else to do the research into the best bang for buck in a CPU, GPU, etc.
8. “And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me.”
Fancy power supplies: the new status symbol.
*I’m going to keep a close eye on Onlive over the next year before deciding to build another gaming desktop. I’m playing Alpha Protocol on Onlive right now and finding it more than adequate. It looks great and my laptop barely breaks a sweat running the client, I can alt-tab to my Internet browser and back and there is something special about being able to observe or be observed by other users as if they were looking over your shoulder.
13/01/2011 at 15:32 Crescend says:
I’ve had my current computer for 5 years now, but I’ve been upgrading the components one at a time so the only remaining original parts are the chassis and half of the current RAM. I upgrade quite rarely, about one or two parts per year but they’ve served me well and still run Just Cause 2 on high settings with 4x antialiasing, so I’m not in a big hurry to upgrade anytime soon. What I propably need to change next is my current 19″ screen which now has a big bunch of dead pixels (I was being careless while moving it..), altough you’d be surprised how easy it is to get used to them and completely forget their existence, as they’re bunched in the upper left corner.
13/01/2011 at 15:32 Rich says:
I plan to build a new PC, but retain the parts from the old one that I’m happy with, such as the PSU, HDDs and my shiny CPU cooler.*
Based on a discussion in the forum, I’m thinking the following:
Case: Coolermaster Elite 370 Case – OC UK – £33.70
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-US2H 760G – Ebuyer 193510 – £47.40
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition 1090T – Ebuyer 204933 – £188.60
RAM: Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz – Ebuyer 158711- £37.00
Graphics: HIS ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB – OC UK – £99.59
OS: Win 7 Home Premium OEM – £75.59
Total: £481.88
*That’s a point. Have AMD made significant changes to the heat sink mount? My motherboard is old, but the fan is supposed to support AM2, I think.
13/01/2011 at 15:33 zergrush says:
No upgrade plans for this year. Just got an HD6850 and a new PSU that should be enough for quite some time. I can play pretty much anything I want atm, maxed. Only bought the new card because I had to play BC2 on low settings to get multiplayer-viable framerates and couldn’t put everything on Ultra in SC2.
I built the machine in 2008, it’s an overclocked Q6600 in an Asus P5K-SE board with 4 gigs of ram. Had an 8800GTS before the upgrade.
And I don’t game on laptops because it’s too expensive and I already have a PSP and DS for portable gaming needs.
13/01/2011 at 15:37 nabeel says:
1. & 3. I plan to only expand my PC’s RAM from 2GB to at least 4GB, before I migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7.
2. I don’t expect to spend much at all, well within $100.
4. I bought this rig in summer of ’08, so it’s quite medium/low-end, but it’s perfectly fine for current gen games at slightly-less-than-maximum settings, so I don’t think I will be forced to upgrade for quite a while. Maybe next year.
5. I shamefully load up lower-end or older games on my work laptop, but my desktop will always be my primary gaming system.
6. I’m not clueless, but I think this would make for a great feature and point of discussion on RPS.
7. I really hope I don’t have to get a new for a while yet, but my current one (nVidia 9600 GSO) is quite long in the tooth already. It’s barely managing this console cycle.
8. I’ve actually had two PSUs in a row blow up because of poor quality, so I just invested in a good quality, reasonably -powered one that would survive an upgrade or two, hopefully it’ll last me longer.
13/01/2011 at 15:38 Frools says:
I might upgrade my graphics card (from a 4870) this year, depending on if any games actually manage to stress it.
Don’t see myself upgrading from a core2quad, no need at all.
Will probably upgrade to a faster/bigger SSD from a G1 Intel 80gig
13/01/2011 at 15:38 Subject 706 says:
I am going to upgrade soonish, not because I really, really need to, but because I want to.
My current computer is :
ATX asus motherboard
Core2Duo 6800
ATI 5850
4gb of RAM.
This setup has lasted for several years with no problems running games at 1680×1050. The GPU was changed from a geforce 8800GTX a few months ago, not because I needed to, but because a heatsink had come loose, wrecking it.
But, since good hardware is not terribly expensive anymore (and I have a good job :) ) I decided to do a little upgrade.
I will change the motherboard to a sandy-bridge one and probably get the 1155 2500K CPU. Oh and 8gb of RAM. I am also shrinking it to micro-atx instead of ATX, since I am nowadays competing for apartment space with our first child :). PSU, GPU etc will be reused.
The old cpu and ram will probably be reused in a home-server build I have planned for later this year.
13/01/2011 at 15:39 SimonHawthorne says:
Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Yes please.
I AM NOT POSTING COMMENTS TOO QUICKLY AND THESE LOVELY PEOPLE HAVE MISSED THE MUCH LONGER, FLOWING PROSE THAT MADE FLOWERS BLOSSOM AND BABIES CRY WITH JOY BECAUSE OF YOU COMMENT EATER.
13/01/2011 at 15:42 trjp says:
TBH – if you have the technical ability to make a PC, you really should have an idea where to find cheap bits to make it from and which bits are best.
I think what people are really asking is “show me where there are cheap PCs without the hassle of having to choose components and make the bloody thing”?????
This brings up the issue of the ‘STEAM PC’ again – Steam simply rate all their games in terms of it’s hardware needs and companies sell ‘Steam Level 1′ and ‘Steam Level 2′ machines/hardware!? :)
13/01/2011 at 15:47 perfectheat says:
Always remember to copy your post before posting. I might have lost my epic novel if it weren’t for this… or probably not as FF should keep everything for you if you click back.
13/01/2011 at 15:58 SimonHawthorne says:
@perfectheat – It is with great regret and sadness that I must admit that I am on internet explorer. In my defence, I’m at work on a temporary PC without my USB stick. I only hope we can move past this regrettable admission. But yes, copy and paste will be my friend from now on.
@trjp – Yup. I’m not sure it’s a bad thing to be asking for suggestions for cheap hardware – I simply don’t know where you’d go to get it, in the same way I refer my non-gaming friends to Steam for quirky games they’d enjoy, I suppose I’m asking for recommendations from those who are more knowledgeable than I am in the hardware market.
There’s also the fact that I don’t know if paying more for a quad-core than a dual-core is worth it, that the integrated graphics/processor thing seems odd to me and I can’t get my head round it and that, for those of us who don’t keep up, it’s hard to know which statistics matter and which are marketing fluff. I can generally shove things into the right slot, etc, but have no idea on what I’m shoving where.
And that’s what she said.
13/01/2011 at 15:39 perfectheat says:
1. Probably because I want to be able to work on my own game using the UDK. Something my 2006 Macbook Pro have some small problems with.
2. About £1000 (I live in Norway). Basically this with twice the ram and an extra SSD. Or if I have the cash the latest Macbook Pro again. But they cost about a 1000 us homes here.
3. Everything except cables, sound system and monitor.
4. MacBook Pro 2006 model.
5. Because I can work and lan across the world.. even with my buddies in London.
6. No, I don’t think we need RPS to help us with that. Focus on PC games! There is plenty of resources out there already. The people at build a pc subreddit are very helpful.
7. ATI because they seem to be ahead at the moment. The latest range. But the mid-price option.
8. I have no idea. But damn running one must cost a fortune with this winters electrical price.
13/01/2011 at 15:40 Fwiffo says:
I will say one thing about my PC building experience. After relying (or being forced to rely) on the more budget end of the scale and living with semi-shoddy performance for 10 years, splurging on a PC build with upper-mid tier components 2 years ago (A Q9550 and a 4870, about 600 quid in total) has improved my quality of gaming so much and still has little trouble running new games on high settings.
I advised my girlfriend to do the same for her laptop and she is the envy of her Intel-GMA-owning-Sims 3 playing-friends with her 9800m and smooth gameplay on high.
13/01/2011 at 15:41 Oneironaut says:
My current computer is from January of 2009 and was purchased for $700. So far all I’ve done to it is adding a second hard drive. It runs all games out there well enough that I don’t plan to upgrade anything soon (although I might get Windows 7 in a couple of weeks when I see what kind of discount my university gets me.) I may not be able to run the games at the highest settings, but BFBC2 and Just Cause 2 still look great and run smoothly at medium settings.
As for #6, I usually know enough that I can do the research to find which parts will work well for my computer, but some sort of guide would probably be useful, especially if you update it regularly to reflect the dropping prices of newer hardware.
13/01/2011 at 15:41 Ravenger says:
I built a new PC last year – i5 760, 4GB RAM, GTX 460, Coolermaster CM690-II case, 500gb HD, and a Samsung Blu-Ray drive. Cost about £700, but you could probably build it for a lot less now as prices have now dropped for many components, especially RAM and GPUs.
I don’t plan on upgrading the main components for a while, but I plan to upgrade to an SSD boot disk, and add a 1TB HD for all my Steam games (I want to get every game installed so I can easily back them up).
13/01/2011 at 15:41 Centy says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Yes my CPU is falling horribly behind but at this point getting a new 775 chip would be stupid so a full upgrade is more likely.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Trying to limit myself to £500 tops not too much since my graphics card, monitors and hard drives are all still fine.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
CPU, PSU, RAM, Case and Motherboard.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Heavens no.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I’m fairly advanced in my knowledge about choosing parts and installing them but a quick referall guide from a trusted source would convince others of the joys of a self built machine.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Not planning but if money was no object a Geforce 580 would be mine but I think my 460 is good for now games tend to be heavier on the CPU these days so that’s where I’d put the choice amount of upgradey cash.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
It really is the one part of your system you do not want to fail as it’s the one that creates fire and will kill us all. Plus modular PSU’s are more expensive because you pay for the luxury of a nice tidy case and I suppose they probably cant all be 100% made by robots alá CPUs.
13/01/2011 at 15:42 Sagan says:
1. Most likely not
4. I have a laptop that is kinda good. I used to have a desktop PC that is really good (Radeon HD 5750 and stuff) but I had to give that away for various reasons:
5. Yes I do. Mainly because I need a laptop for school, so I decided to get a good one while I’m at it. I’d prefer to have my old (much better) desktop PC back, but a) that would currently mean also getting a desk and chair, which would kind of increase the cost, and b) I wouldn’t even know where to conveniently put it in my current tiny apartment that I share with three other people.
6. Nope, I’m not.
7. I’d be getting a Radeon HD 6850 as it’s supposed to have good performance for it’s price.
8. Are they? Isn’t a decent PSU like 70-80€?
13/01/2011 at 15:42 Colthor says:
1. Not planning to, no. But no plan survives contact with hardware failure or irresistable bargains.
4. It’s still fast enough, especially considering I’ve got heaps of unplayed games that’ll easily run on it, so don’t need to worry yet about upgrading for hypothetical ones it can’t cope with.
As to its age, it was first built in early 2006 but its most recent upgrades were to a Core2Quad Q6700, 4GB RAM and a Radeon 4870 1GB in early/mid 2009.
Any further upgrade is new motherboard time though, sadly. It’s one CPU model higher than it supports already.
13/01/2011 at 15:43 KindredPhantom says:
Scan currently have a decent deal going for a mostly pre-built pc, all you need to do is add a graphics card and you should be fine. https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Shop/Basket.aspx
13/01/2011 at 15:46 Initialised says:
As a system builder:
1. I expect to work on hundreds of new PCs. I doubt I’ll upgrade my home rig until I can double it’s performance for reasonable money, i.e mainstream octo core
2. Rolling upgrades
3. CPU (Bulldozer or Intel 2011), RAM (2x4GB), Motherboard (2011), Graphics (6990 or GTX560 SLi)
4. I do a rolling upgrade, it’s OK, Q6600 @ 3.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 4870×2 is struggles with the likes of Metro 2033 and Crysis if I crank up the eye candy.
5. I use my Android, Laptops and PS3 for casual gaming. If I feel the need to mainline I fire up the PC.
6. Not at all clues less but sure why not run an article that I can copy for low end systems.
7. GTX560 looks like a good but. GTS450 Passive cooled is also very good and rocks at SLi for a quiet system you can hook up to your big ole HDTV.
8. Because cheap ones blow up whenever you upgrade.
13/01/2011 at 15:49 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
1. Possible Upgrade
2. If I upgrade this year, around €150
3. Extra monitor or New Harddrive
4. I don’t HAVE to upgrade, my pc is still good. 2.5 years old. (replaced the graphics card: it was too noisy)
5. Only games that don’t require complex graphics can be played on my laptop
6. I’m not clueless, but it would be interesting.
7. I recently bought a HD5750 with two fans. The higher frame-rates were nice, but I bought it because the previous graphics card made too much noise when playing games.
8. Because they have to be safe and reliable, which might be difficult when trying to work with high (possibly unpredictable) voltages, and distribute it precisely to all components that need power (and which will break when something goes wrong)?
And after posting all this, apparently I’m posting too quickly. Funny bug :P
13/01/2011 at 15:50 parm says:
I recently upgraded my laptop to a reasonably gaming-capable one (although the old one wasn’t bad) – one of the Dell XPS15s with the Core i7/GeForce 435GT and a 1080p screen. It can’t quite manage running newer games at 1080p on full detail, but stick it on high detail or drop to 1680×1050 or something and it can generally get 30+fps. It’s also now the most powerful machine I have in the house, so will be my main gaming rig; I alternate desktop and laptop upgrades, but am finding increasingly that the need to keep up with the bleeding edge is fading away.
My desktop is a three year old Q6600 with Radeon 3870 and can still put in a decent show of things on most modern games. It’s still running Vista, though, so some time this year, I’ll stick Win7 on it and upgrade the video card, and that should keep it happy for the next couple of years too.
13/01/2011 at 15:50 megalomania says:
I’m graduating this year, so I can finally scrap the two year old, mid-range laptop which has seen me through my cash strapped and transient student days for a nice up-to-date desktop. An RPS guide to building a gaming PC couldn’t be more timely for me.
13/01/2011 at 15:50 Yargh says:
I’d say most likely no upgrade needed until 2012, we’ll see about that when Brink and a few other games come out though.
13/01/2011 at 15:51 WMain00 says:
1: No
4. Mine was built in 2007 and still handles most games of today without fuss (the exception being Crysis…but hey, it’s a terrible game anyway…)
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Not clueless, but would certainly like to see a good article explaining how to build a PC. Would be very useful in the long run for everyone.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Generally the more expensive ones are modular and built to last, though I have seen a number of PSU’s that are modular on the cheap. What you’re really looking for in a PSU is reliability and wattage. The better the power output the longer it will last, cutting away a good bit of expense in budget and allowing you to concentrate on other choices.
13/01/2011 at 15:52 Pete says:
I bought a beefy laptop last year, although not cheaply:
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_G51JX_Core_i7_3D_Laptop_G51JX-IX192V/
The nvidia GeForce GTS 360M is good enough for Crysis on high settings, and WoW. I don’t have anything else which really pushes it. At full load it uses < 175W, all of which is chucked out the side properly so you can sit it on your lap without roasting your groin or hands.
(what do people consider "expensive" or "decent" for a PSU? I would be suprised at paying more than £50)
13/01/2011 at 16:30 groovychainsaw says:
Most ‘decent PSUs (>400W or so as well) are over £50. Name brand rather than own brand, people like Antec, Coolermaster etc. rather than ‘maxvalue’ or some such. I also prefer my PSUs not to be a raging tornado so I’m paying extra for quietness too. I’m sure there are hundreds of people who have never had a problem with the cheaper ones, but the more expensive one is more reliable over several years, in my experience.
13/01/2011 at 18:33 Starky says:
There is a reason branded PSU’s are expensive – they are good quality (mostly), using expensive internal components, with all the electrical safety circuits you could want, and work to a high efficiency.
It is one of the most importaint parts of a PC and one of the few components I’d never recommend skimping on or buying a cheap one.
That and this may sound backwards but cheap no name power supplies COST YOU MONEY.
Simply put a 600 Watt power supply from Corsair (one of the best brands) will run at 80-90% efficiency and cost you around £80
A 600 Watt no brand special will cost you around £30-40, but will be lucky to have an efficiency of 60%.
Even a moderate gaming PC pulls around 200 watts idle and 400-500 watts when gaming, so if you use your PC for more than 5 hours a day you’ll lose money in electricity costs.
Say you’re a hardcore gamer, and spend 200 hours a month on your PC (split between gaming and general usage.
That’s around 200 hours using roughly 300 watts for a good PSU, and 200 hours at about 350 watts for a crap on (to power the same system). That is about £20 of electricity extra per year.
Oh and did I mention that cheap PSUs shorten the lifespan of components? Especially RAM and CPU, due to issues they all tend to have with voltage ripple. They also carry a real risk of just flat out killing your system with a current spike as they lack the protection circuitry of the better brands.
13/01/2011 at 18:42 Starky says:
Oh and I forgot to mention (would edit but that always marks me as spam)…
Cheap brand PSUs almost never live up to their supply rating…
A good rule of thumb is just to flat out half it – so a 600 watt unbranded cheapo PSU will realistically be a 300 watt supply, as running more than that will over heat them, and cause issues.
This is where the quietness Groovesaw mentions come in, a good brand PSU will supply it’s max rating wattage (and often quite a bit more, though losing some efficiency, I’ve seen some good 600 watt PSUs able to supply 700-800 with only a minor drop in efficiency) – while a cheapo one will start to huff and buff at 400, efficiency will drop sharply and the unit will heat up fast, causing the cooling fan to spin up to ludicrous speed and sound like a hair dryer.
to be fair most single CPU, single Graphics card medium power machines only need around 350 watts at full load, but I still would not trust a cheap power supply with that.
Hell you can get 400 watt Antec PSUs for around £40-50 that will be superior than any no-brand PSU (even if it says 800 watts on it).
That and the 3-5 year warranty with the good PSU’s is nice.
13/01/2011 at 15:52 Jetsetlemming says:
I just built my PC last summer, for $220. Literally. Two hundred twenty US dollars. After the fact I added on a $60 video card, to bring the total to Still Less Than A PS3, And Significantly Less Than My Mother Spent On That Wii/Wii Fit Bundle HSN Bilked Her On.
Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6Ghz dual core processor
2GB DDR2 RAMs
2TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive (in addition to this I had a 640GB WDBlack I use as a boot drive that I bought last January)
Zotac budget cheapo motherboard (has not been an issue)
Corsair 400w Power Supply (highest quality component I selected, and the single most expensive thing in the case)
SIGMA budget cheapo computer case (POS, worst purchase I made, front audio ports don’t work, super loud case fans, and is a dust magnet: Avoid brand in future)
Radeon 4670 1GB video card (for $60 it’s pretty great)
And I’d love to have RPS have a PC buying guide.
13/01/2011 at 15:53 Scatterbrainpaul says:
It says this story has 50 comments on the front page, but when you click into the story it says 34.
Madness
13/01/2011 at 15:54 Sander Bos says:
1. My 2007 Core duo 2GHZ 3GB machine is still going strong, with a video card (radeon 4600) upgrade last year. It is still only Crysis games that don’t work right.
2. Were I to buy a machine, I expect to spend no more than 700 euro (same as last PC).
3. Video card, it is really the only things that makes games quicker. Bought Radeon 4600 last year, most expensive silent card that fit into one PCI-express slot at the time.
4. Yep, and if a game doesn’t run I just take down the resolution in a big way. But Mafia 2 and BC 2 can run at 1920×1080, with most settings on, so really no issues. Thank you long lasting Console cycle.
5. Desktop, although I would expect (have not looked) that the very long current console cycle might actually make laptops interesting now.
6. Nope, but I also think everyone wants something else (for me for instance, silence is golden). Also, there are plenty of sites that have recommendations for varieties of gamers (e.g. http://tweakers.net/reviews/1504/tweakers-punt-net-best-buy-guide-editie-januari-2010.html, in Dutch but the system names and parts should still be clear to English speakers).
7. The most expensive silent card that fits in a single PCI-express slot, and that’s a remarkably small category. Also, I used to be a serious NVidia fanboi, but that is just not maintainable anymore (especially if you want a silent card). Also the catalyst drivers are great now.
8. Wouldn’t know, I have never built my own system, only replaced memory and video cards…
13/01/2011 at 15:55 Casimir's Blake says:
There is a lot of people talking specs here, and very few talking products. Well, as builds, tech and servicing is my day job, for what little its worth since none of you know me… my recommendations:
Motherboards: Asus or Gigabyte. Wouldn’t bother with anything else.
RAM: Corsair XMS, the faster stuff is completely unnecessary, even if you are overclocking, unless you want to take Sandy Bridge to 5GHz (you crazy foo’ you!).
Hard disks: Western Digital, or Samsung Spinpoint F3. WD would normally be my preference, but these “newer” F3s are excellent. The 1TB is currently the best bang-for-buck for a performance hard disk. For low-power storage, WD Greens tend to be quieter and consume less power. I’d avoid other manufacturers. Techreport seem to be the most reliable with storage reviews.
PSUs: Antec Earthwatts are good, solid inexpensive PSUs. Not convinced by Corsair’s CX alternatives, would sooner suggest spending a touch more and getting a VX. If you must have modular then spend more and go for their TX models, or something by Seasonic. Enermax and Nexus are also pretty good. Consult Silent PC Review.
Video cards: I’ve had few issues with XFX and Asus cards, EVGA also have a superb reputation.
Optical drives: If you want a solid DVD writer, the only reliable choice is the Sony Optiarc 7240 or 7260 series.
13/01/2011 at 16:51 Stephen Roberts says:
Bookmarked! Kudos Mr. Blake!
I’m not going to bore anyone question anwers and my specifics. I am definitely clueless about building PC’s but it doesn’t stop me trying. I tend to break stuff, then spend ages fixing it and learning about it then I go ahead and break it some more.
My secret super plan is to slowly replace everything in my current PC until I have two PCs. Like single cell reproduction!
14/01/2011 at 16:36 Daniel Klein says:
What about SSDs then?
14/01/2011 at 20:19 Casimir's Blake says:
I hope this helps you and others. I use components by these brands, and have done for years, so I feel that these are not impulsive recommendations.
13/01/2011 at 15:56 KillahMate says:
1. Probably not.
2./3. Just a cheap hard drive for some breathing room, maybe.
4. Yes, four years old with a year-old CPU/GPU/memory upgrade, and quite fine.
5. Good heavens no. I honestly can’t understand people who game on laptops.
6. Speccing out a new PC is the kind of thing I do for fun in my head on the toilet. (TMI?) Still, spec avice from such fine chaps as yourselves would not go unread.
7. I have one I like.
8. PSUs have changed a lot more than you might think. A good Corsair PSU has as much in common with yer regular Chinese powerbox as an Intel graphics chip does with an Nvidia GPU.
(Edit to add that what I have is a nice midrange dual-core Athlon and four gigs of RAM, also a 1280×1024 screen which I like a lot and a GeForce 250 GTS which can run everything under the sun on max settings at that resolution, and which cost me the equivalent of approx. $140 a year ago. Also cool, thrifty and quiet.)
13/01/2011 at 15:56 Loopy says:
Well. I spent about £400 or so building my new PC last May. Admittedly I cribbed quite a few of the parts from my old PC but here’s what I bought/nabbed from my old rig anyway:
AsRock P55 Extreme – £90 – local dealer (quite competitive)
Intel i5-750 – £125 – Ebay Chinese import
2GB Generic DDR3 1333 RAM Stick – £20 – local dealer
Asus Radeon EAH5770 – £95 – Ebay
WD 250GB hdd – £25 – Ebay
Generic DVD +/- RW – from old rig
Hiper 530W psu – from old rig
Dell 17″ Generic CRT (1280×1024) – from old rig
Coolermaster Elite 330 case – £25 – local dealer
Windows XP – from old rig
Logitech G11 keyboard – from old rig
Logitech G9 mouse – from old rig
I’m pretty happy with the way this runs all my games right (apart from GTA IV maybe, which I’m forced to run in medium, but that’s a bit of a beast for most PC’s). Another 2GB of RAM would make me happier, and would certainly make alt-tabbing less painful, but overall I can run most games very well indeed, so no complaints here. :)
13/01/2011 at 15:56 Phoshi says:
I’ve just bought a new PC, Phenom II X2 555 and a GTS 450 with 4GB RAM, alongside all the good stuff to make them work together like a metal box and power lead and parent slab. Came to about £350 (but this was before the VAT increase), and runs things pretty great at my native resolution of 1680×1050. Three cheers for “PC gaming is pretty much not more expensive than console gaming at all any more”
Anyway, it’s now two weeks ago and I can answer these as I would have then.
1) Yes
2) Around the region of 350 great british pounds sterling.
3) Not worth upgrading, really. Case is slimline, mobo is DDR2 (Which is rather expensive these days!), not touching it.
4) I do intend to, though perhaps if DX10 didn’t require such fancy graphics cards I might not – I can live with 20fps where I have to.
5) I don’t, it seems like a very bad idea.
6) Certainly. I think I can build it myself, and preliminary research shows that £2000 would get me a really nice PC and I can spend much less because I have no money at all, but an RPS-certified guide would be handy.
7) GTS 450, because it’s pretty cheap and benchmarks show that while it’s not in a particularly fast card, it’ll do for my needs.
8) I think it’s important that they don’t burst into flames at the slightest provocation, though perhaps we should be allowed to take that risk. Who are they to tell us how to protect against fire?
(I am posting comments too quickly, apparently. I think my last one was a week ago, maybe I should be playing video games instead of reading RPS :()
13/01/2011 at 15:57 Lars Westergren says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Probably a new one, towards the middle or end of the year, for around $2000. I know I can get one significantly cheaper, but I want a SSD drive, and a big monitor. And since I just repaid the last of my study loan after a year or so of very frugal living, I want to spoil myself.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Yes. Because then I can sit in the living room together with people I love, and keep one eye on the tv, instead of alone in the bedroom. Marginally less anti-social. :) Also I have dual housing, so I can take it with me. One of those habitats requires fairly compact living, so I can stove it away when not using it.
But even though the laptop has really good performance (Asus G73JH) the drivers are a bit crap, and some games don’t work on it (Amnesia, Minecraft, etc, I suspect poor OpenGL support in the drivers). Also, now we are getting some more space in the other place, so I’m thinking of having a computer there permanently as a very powerful home theatre PC. Though I am currently thinking of how to set this up. I would like to
a) Have it very quiet, possibly putting it in a wardrobe
b) Be able to use it with the TV to watch Bluray, stream stuff from the net, play console ports with a USB controller in the sofa
c) but also switch over to use mouse+keyboard+monitor at a table, for serious work, strategy titles, or whatever.
d) but not have cables running everywhere.
13/01/2011 at 15:57 Delusibeta says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
No. Only got this laptop last summer. That said, I am considering sticking another hard drive in if there’s another bay for one (I’ve heard there is in the particular model I’m using)
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
As mentioned before, last summer. Pretty good, does slightly chug if I max out Just Cause 2, but medium is more than good enough for me for that game.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Yes. Mainly because I’m a university student and arranging the movement of a basebox across the Irish Sea and the university campus is a bit of a pain in the bum.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Considering I bought this laptop for £700, I will laugh at anyone who thinks you *need* to spend more than £1000 to get a decent basebox. However, I would like to see The RPS Guide To Making Mad Machines For Sensible Money. That said, one thing the paper version of jolly RPS tribute site PC Gamer is good at is a monthly build for about £850+Windows. Ignore the monitor, mouse, keyboard and headset recommendations and it’s probably closer to £600+Windows.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
n/a.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me.
To quote aforementioned RPS tribute magazine, “When it comes to PSUs, the mantra is buy cheap, pay twice”. That said, if you’re paying £100, you’re probably paying too much.
13/01/2011 at 15:59 dwl says:
1: Upgrade
2: Under £600
3: Motherboard, Processor, Memory, PSU
4: Dead PSU and Motherboard, no choice. Old parts cost more then new parts :|
5: Not any more.
6: No and No and only if you focus on specific builds for gaming. Many tech sites already do the rest.
7: No, no need.
8: No idea! Maybe safety standards tests/badges/achievements bumps the prices up. Maybe its just because they can.
13/01/2011 at 16:00 Jonathan says:
This makes me sad — my computer could hold its own until about a six months ago, and now many new games have system requirements that make me feel rather unhappy, and I don’t have the monies to upgrade at the moment, mostly because my motherboard is doing about all it can and it would make more sense to do a whole new build than upgrade.
Oh well, there are plenty of older games I haven’t played yet. In some ways it’s a good thing — up until about 2004 I was using a 400MHz Pentium, and the budget aisles in HMV/Virgin were my bestest friends, and I suspect the same can be true again now.
Oh, there were questions!
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Almost certainly not. *small cry*
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Stop rubbing it in!
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Perhaps, possibly, a new midrange GPU (5770 or similar), or a bit of RAM.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
It can run most things, but is starting to struggle with newer games. It’s about four years old.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I do use my lappy for gaming sometimes, but it’s old and runs linux, so it’s mostly running old things through dosbox (actually, all I’ve run on it is UFO — I tried Minecraft but it can’t handle it.)
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I am not clueless, but I am nervous about doing it wrong. I think these days I’d probably take the plunge though. I’d also not dream of spending £2k on a new PC. My last one was $1000 prebuilt, plus $250 for a then top-of-the-line graphics card, and as I’ve said, it’s only just starting to struggle.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
If I do, it’ll be a 5770 or a 5750 (or whatever the equivalent is by the time I get one) — they’re the right price range, and I’m loyal to ATI/AMD (the last NVIDIA card I had was a disappointment, mostly because of my own ignorance when buying it.) I’m also considering going with someting with passive cooling, because my PC is now in the living room and its jet plane cooling makes the Mrs unhappy.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
I don’t know what you mean by decent, but I picked up a rather nice, very quiet and power-efficient 650W Antec PSU for about £60 a few months back. That didn’t seem so bad.
13/01/2011 at 16:01 faelnor says:
1. Possible upgrade if there are enough new PC exclusives to justify it (since my computer is powerful enough for any console port of this generation).
2. Between 200€ and 350€.
3. Graphics card, more RAM.
4. N/A. PC was built in 2008 around a C2D E8500 and an ATI radeon 4850 and still going strong.
5. Nope. Used to when I was a student but now would be stupid, except flash games.
6. Nope. And I don’t care.
7. Probably going ATI again, a nice 5870 when they’re cheaper.
8. Because energy efficient, reliable and modular switched-mode PSs with low interference are complicated and expensive to build. I use a fantastic Corsair HX620.
13/01/2011 at 16:01 G says:
1. No plans this year, unless something breaks.
4. My pc is still quite good, a few years old but it’s had a couple of gig of RAM added a while ago and a new graphics card last year.
I can pretty much understand all this techie stuff and I’m confident enough poking around under the hood but I really do struggle to be interested. Having said that when it comes to a rebuild or a major purchase I do try and immerse myself in it all, so some pointers towards where to start looking (best buy guides for various prices or whatever) would be good. Probably be better as a sticky on the forum for something like that I reckon.
13/01/2011 at 16:03 Zephro says:
1. Possibly upgrade.
2 N/A
3. Possibly the GPU/Bit more RAM/SSD. Probably nothing.
4. I upgraded late last year for around £500. That was from a P4 2.8Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, 6800 Ultra which was still coping with most games. I replaced the CPU, Mobo, RAM, GPU, OS and an extra HDD
5. God no, every attempt at this leads to horrible expense and disaster. Somehow a lovely Core2 Duo laptop always ended up slower than my ancient P4 2.8Ghz.
6. Not clueless at all, build all my own.
7. Possibly a Fermi card. Mostly as I loved reading all the research papers on it’s architecture and tessellation.
8. What I want is a quiet PSU, mine is like a hovercraft.
13/01/2011 at 16:03 shoptroll says:
1. No plans. Upgraded last year and I don’t see anything on the horizon that requires more processing power than I already have. Of course, exception being hardware failure which would most likely be hard drive related.
3. Hard drives if anything. Previous upgrade was swapping out a Creative Audigy 2 ZS for a Asus Xonar DX due to the Audigy causing all sorts of audio issues with Win7 x64.
4. PC was built October 2010. Plays everything I’ve thrown at it flawlessly. Core i7-860, 4 GB RAM (splurged on performance RAM this time), and a Radeon 5850 1 GB. This is a bit beefier than what I was building in college (usually closer to $100-150 for CPU and $150 for GPU) but since I usually ran those computers for about 4 years between upgrades, I figure I should be able to get about 5 or 6 out of this one.
5. No.
6. Nope. I already know you can build a solid box for less than that. Could just link people to any of the dedicated hardware blogs (Tech Report and Anand) and their quarterly build recommendations.
8. Check the offerings from Antec and SeaSonic. Also you can usually get away with a smaller PSU than what the GPU vendors recommend as a CYA measure. I’m using a 430W Modular SeaSonic PSU with the above hardware and no trouble. Highly recommend reading what Ars Technica, Anand and Tech Report suggest in this department.
13/01/2011 at 16:06 Goomich says:
1. Upgrade.
3. Video card.
4. 1992
7. Something Geforce. Because of Incarna. :D
8. When my Codegen failed, I’ve had to buy new PSU, motherboard, RAM and case. When my BeQuiet failed I’ve had to buy new PSU. Obvious answer is obvious.
13/01/2011 at 16:06 Toby says:
Not going to upgrade or anything. Had my dear Stella (Yes I named her) for one and a half years now. She is amazing. A beauty!
She has:
i7 920 Processor
ATI HD 5870
6GB of Ram
1 TB HDD
ASUS P6T V2 Deluxe Motherboard
And a Corsair 750w PSU
I will survive for long with that. She originally had a 4890 but when I went on a trip to the US and A I noticed how cheap GPU’s are there compared to communist Sweden so I bought a 5870 and sold my 4890 after a mere year of usage.
13/01/2011 at 16:09 Shakermaker says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Just bought a new custom PC.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
I spent 1100 euro. This was just for the computer proper. I already had a good monitor, keyboard, etc.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I will use my Macbook for gaming if I can’t use my desktop PC for one reason or another, but I’d rather play on my regular rig.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
I will probably get a second 6950.
13/01/2011 at 16:09 Oak says:
I’ve only recently been seriously considering an upgrade (Civ 5 was the game to finally humble my machine), but I’m not sure whether I should finally take a crack at building one myself: I’ve never done more than switch out parts, don’t know anybody who can help me, and am generally pretty dense so there’s a high risk of any attempt ending in wailing pleas to an absent god.
13/01/2011 at 16:10 plugmonkey says:
I’ll upgrade my PC when I find a game it can’t run, which hasn’t really happened yet. It just keeps munching through everything. Maybe this year will be the year? If so, I’ll overclock it till it melts, and then replace the runniest bits.
It’s almost 3 years old. Q6600 2.4GHz quad core, 8800 GT (XFX Alpha Dog XXXtreme!!!), 4 mb of RAM.
It cost me £700 at the time. I could have built it about the same for about £100 less, but I went for a good quality sound-proofed case, quiet PSU, and a higher spec motherboard – with the idea being I could pick up another 8800 GT for a pittance and SLI it when I needed to. A strategy that isn’t panning out too well as those Alpha Dog cards are still being sold for over £100 quid and I didn’t pay much more than that at the time. The whole pace of obselesence seems to have slowed to a snails pace.
I wouldn’t buy XFX again because their tech support dept are a bunch of complete and total cocks.
13/01/2011 at 16:11 Chelicerate says:
1: Yes. Upgrade.
3: I’ve already changed the processor (I bought crap when I got this computer. Emachines-level. Was 2.7 single core, is now 3.2 dual core). Next purchase is going to be a video card (Currently have GeForce 7050, which is integrated. Thinking GeForce 9800 GT, at least something in that price range. I admit I’m going based on reviews, not really a tech nerd).
5. Only with some games. Roguelikes. Minecraft. Emulators. Games I’d want to play portable anyway.
6. Before looking into it, I did think it’d cost a pretty penny for a new PC. I would like this very much, yes.
7. GeForce 9800 GT. It’s in my price range, and it fits in my computer. Has good reviews so far as I can find.
8. No idea.
13/01/2011 at 16:12 Xercies says:
“Are you clueless about building stuff?”
Yes i am
“If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?”
Yes i would actually, I’ve always been kind of frightened about building my own PC because I’m afraid i would buy all those items and bork it up a little bit.
As for whether I will get a new PC, probably not for a good few years(though I am tempted to replace the motherboard of this one) since well with my Quad Core, ATI Radeon 4850 and 4GB of RAM I can basically put every modern game on highest settings(if there optimised well that is) and well I can see that going on for a number of years now.
13/01/2011 at 18:20 plugmonkey says:
If you can replace your motherboard, you can build your own PC. My current one was my first self build, but I figured after variously replacing the memory, HDDs, GFX card and PSU on my old one, the step up to screwing a motherboard into a case probably wasn’t beyond me.
And it all went very smoothly, apart from XFX being mentally incapable of answering a simple question about GFX card drivers without suggesting I replace every other component in my computer.
Seriously, don’t buy anything from XFX.
13/01/2011 at 20:11 Xercies says:
I’ve never replaced a motherboard to be honest myself, also the one thing that scares me is the processor placement since that can go very wrong very easily.
13/01/2011 at 16:13 Mr_Day says:
Important note for PSUs:
PSUs can blow. When they do, they are supposed to act kind of like a fuse – the blow up but don’t pass an electrical surge into everything they are plugged into.
Thing is, cheap ones don’t always manage that. When I worked at a computer shop, a crappy PSU blowing and taking out the stuff it was plugged into was so common, it wasn’t even funny.
Important note – the PSU is plugged into everything. That expensive motherboard, those fancy SSD drives, that over the top graphics card – there is a power cable running to each of them from the PSU. And a cheap PSU can take one, or all, of those out.
That is why you buy an expensive one. You spent all that money on a decent gaming machine, why the hell would you risk it getting torched because you wanted to pay £20 for one of the most important parts of the machine?
13/01/2011 at 16:19 jonfitt says:
Don’t forget efficiency, heat dissipation and noise!
Efficiency is a big one. 750W on the board means more than that at the wall:
http://compreviews.about.com/od/cases/a/PSUEfficiency.htm
13/01/2011 at 16:28 Mr_Day says:
@jonfitt
Good point, well made.
This page is useful too: http://compreviews.about.com/od/cases/a/PSUWattage.htm
13/01/2011 at 16:33 Tei says:
Another reason to buy a good PSU, is how PSU may fail. Since are analogical devices, may produce errors strange to diagnostic, so is like fighting ghosts. You can run crazy.
13/01/2011 at 17:03 battles_atlas says:
Very much second this. I’ve had two cheap PSUs go flaky in the past, and if anything its worse than it just blowing up. At least then you know what the problem is. Fault finding a dodgy PSU is a nightmare. About 18months ago I built a media PC using a case that came with a PSU. I ended up buying both a new hard drive and new RAM before I finally confirmed it was the PSU that was the problem. A good PSU is £50 or £60 well spent (though don’t believe the hype around wattage – a modern CPU with high end gfx uses about 250-300w. Given that PSUs are most efficient at 50% load that means that a 600w is plenty for almost all systems.)
13/01/2011 at 16:13 Devil Wears Wings says:
Not planning on upgrading this year, since my current system should handle anything I throw at it (tri-core Athlon II, Radeon 6850, 4 GB DDR3-1333 @ 1920×1200).
If you’re building a new system, your best “bang-for-buck” options are probably a quad-core Athlon II (or an i5-2500k if you’re feeling especially spendy), a R6850 or GTX 460, 4 GB DDR3, a nice $70-$80 case (Antec P180 Mini or thereabouts), and a good, reliable PSU. You really don’t need anything more than that unless you’re running a 2560×1600 monitor or a crazy Eyefinity setup.
13/01/2011 at 16:15 Ian says:
Questions 1 – 3:
I’m going to be upgrading my graphics card at some point very soon and will probably fork out for a pretty good one as I think the rest of my PC is fine.
Question 5:
I do use a laptop for gaming, just not in place of a PC. My gaming PC is upstairs and I don’t want to be in my room all evening if I want to do some gaming, so I use my laptop for low-spec or easy going games.
Question 6:
I don’t think it costs that much but advice on good, cheap PC stuff is always good.
Question 7:
Dunno what I’m getting yet. Originally I just fancied an upgrade but I think mine is now actively on the fritz.
13/01/2011 at 16:17 jonfitt says:
I just rebuilt my PC for less than $1000.
Intel i7 950
Nvidia/EVGA GTX 470
Corsair TX750W power supply
8GB Corsair XMS3
CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ processor fan
Everything else was recycled.
The biggest boon apart from the huge speed increase is now I’m using Win7 which is nice.
I will probably spend the remainder of the $1000 on an SSD when the prices drop a little.
13/01/2011 at 16:19 Arclight says:
No upgrades planned, not yet anyway. Upgraded every piece of hardware over the last 3 years, going from dual to quad-core, 2GB to 4GB etc.
Think at the moment I’ve reached the maximum potential for the platform; P45 board with DDR2 and Q9550 (3.4GHz Core2). Got a 460 for the graphics and an X-Fi for sound, almost new 650W PSU. Next upgrade is going to be a new board + CPU and DDR3, as far as I’m concerned that means a new PC (even though I replaced every component, it still feels like the same PC).
What would it cost? Whatever it costs at that moment. Don’t think you should build a PC to a budget; compromising on 1 or more parts ends up becoming a bottleneck. Not to say you need top of the line, personally I much prefer the (upper) mainstream segment.
13/01/2011 at 16:22 Sander Bos says:
Browsing through the comments, I see a lot of people still on CRTs.
I used to be a CRT fan (especially because it can handle so many more resolutions natively), but I upgraded to LCD last year and would not ever want to switch back (also, my latest video card allows most games to run at native 1920×1080).
So I will add that had I not upgraded last year, I would also replace my CRT with a 24″ LCD (actually I have a well reviewed 22″ LG W2253V monitor that I got a great deal on). Widescreen, the only way to play games…
13/01/2011 at 16:25 Gar says:
1. Probably – I am just waiting for 25nm MLC NAND SATA 6 Gbit/s SSDs, 22nm Ivy Bridge Processors, 28nm nVidia Kepler GPUs
2. $1,000-$1,500
3. NA
4. If I don’t it will be because all the tech I want won’t be available yet
5. NA
6. NA
7. If I was looking for one right now, I would wait for a GTX560 (should be released in a week or 2 if rumors are to be believed). Otherwise I am waiting for Kepler
8. Seasonic x_50’s are totally worth it!
13/01/2011 at 16:26 Alex Bakke says:
I have:
2x2GB 1333MHz RAM, Corsair – XMS3, I think.
- This is fine, I have no need to upgrade just now. I don’t think I’m even using all of it up ATM.
ATI HD4890 (XFX, comes overclocked)
- I am looking to upgrade this at some point in the near future, although for the price I got it (£90) it’s been fabulous, and can still run most things at high/very high. I am looking at AMD again, I’ve had no driver issues with them, so hey, why not.
Phenom II X4 955 BE (3.2 GHz, stock cooler, no overclocking)
- This is once again great – It’s certainly nowhere near its sell-by date just yet, so I’m looking to buy a new Heatsink and Fan so I can overclock it to 3.4, maybe 3.6 (!)
Corsair TX650w Power Supply
- Great power supply that I probably don’t even need, but it’s nice to know I can upgrade other parts without needing to upgrade this. Cable management is a pain, but I’ll get onto that in a moment.
A motherboard of some description, Asus.
- I haven’t done anything that would make me need to know what it’s capable of, so yeah. Seems to be quite good though, for a mid-high spec.
Antec 600
- Ugly, ugly case. Ugly factor of 10. Great cooling though, comes with a 200cm top fan and a 120cm back fan pre-installed – Cable management’s a pain though, currently I’ve put everything into the HDD bays – I need to get another HDD soon though, so I’m looking to upgrade this case.
13/01/2011 at 16:26 Archonsod says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I have no intention to at this moment, though if I win the lottery or something that might change.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
It’s about 3 years old now, and the only upgrade I’ve added is an extra 2Gb of Ram. It’s an intel Quad core (Q6700) with an 8800GTX graphics card, 4 Gb Ram and running Vista 32 bit. It’s still running pretty much everything I throw at it with graphics on full (exceptions tend to be things like ARMA 2, but I can still run most graphic settings on max with a little tweak to the view distance). I am thinking about moving to Windows 7 64-bit at some point, though that’s not really a hardware upgrade as such.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Yes, but my laptop runs Solaris rather than Windows so we’re not exactly talking graphically intensive gaming here. Wolfenstein 3D is about the only 3D game I actually have on there.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Nope, but then I work for a company that builds servers. There’s an idea, let’s have an RPS guide to building a cheap server, I think the lowest ours start at is £35k.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Beats me. I saw one company (one of the Dixons group I think) selling a PSU which came in two versions, the only difference on the more expensive one being additional cables. Considering the same store sells cable splitters for £2 a pair I suspect they’re taking the piss.
13/01/2011 at 16:27 Headache says:
Let’s see…
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
No
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
N/A
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
N/A
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
My PC’s still great, built it myself Christmas 2009
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
No
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Not for me but think it might be useful
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
N/A
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
People have realised how important it is to have a great PSU that can supply enough juice to run anywhere up to 4 graphics card and a monstrous CPU, operate quieter than a mouse, and prevent power spikes from cooking any of your precious circuitry.
13/01/2011 at 16:29 MrSelfDestruct says:
Let´s see. For starters, my pc is 2 years old, It´ll be 3 this september:
1. No
2. Nothing
3. I haven´t thought about it, but I guess I´ll change my gpu when I find it really necessary. Not this year, though.
4. I don´t intend to upgrade because I run games just fine. There are a handful of them that I can´t max out, but I don´t have problems with the rest. Normally, I upgrade when a new “PC melter” game comes out, or when I have to put down the graphics settings in a lot of games.
5. Desktop
6. No, I´m not clueless. I´m not the most “tech savy” person in the world, but I´ve learned quite a lot of things these last 10 years. On the other hand, I´d like seeing things about building pc´s in here
7. No, not yet. When the time comes, I´ll decide wich one I prefer. I don´t have favorites, I´ve been switching from ATI to NVIDIA for years now.
8. I can´t help you with that one
13/01/2011 at 16:31 crozon says:
Just got the bits from my new PC. Here it is:
1 Intel Core i5 2500K unlocked s 152.25 182.70
1 Asus P8P67 PRO p67 MoBo 118.67 142.40
2 4GB 2x2G CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 XMP 64.24 77.09
1 1GB EVGA GTX460 SC PCI-E 118.46 142.15
1 NZXT PHANTOMM RED CASE W/O PSU 88.00 105.60
1 650W ANTEC TRUEPOWER NEW PSU 55.97 67.16
1 60GB OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G VERTEX2E 80.60 96.72
1 SSUNG SH-S223L/BEBE SATA OEM 11.49 13.79
1 E Carriage 13.98 16.78
1 Auto. generated by E Orders 0.00 0.00
1 AKASA AK-CCX-4002HP Venom Mult 29.49 35.39
Sub Total £733.15
VAT £146.63
Total £879.78
It should kick ass :)
13/01/2011 at 16:36 Jolly Teaparty says:
8. Oh god never skimp on a PSU, I’ve had three blow up and one of those took the GPU with it. Good ones generating stable voltage and a good amount on the 12V rails just cost dollars. They only look expensive in comparison to the huge number of horrible low quality ones that are available. Shell out for a really high end Corsair or Hiper and then just use that in your next rig too.
13/01/2011 at 16:37 Jeremy says:
1. 95% chance of upgrading
2. N/A. However, my average has been between $750 – $900
3. CPU, SSD external (for new OS and such)
4. N/A
5. No.
6. No, I’ve built all of my computers since I was a wee lad
7. Just recently upgraded to a GTX 470. I felt it hit that sweet spot of performance v. price.
8. My guess is, the architecture has had to be much more elegant of late, considering we’re working with dual GPU’s, and higher energy consuming parts. Still, does seem more expensive than it needs to be.
Well, I’ve recently purchased a new GPU, the GTX 470, which I am quite happy with.
Now in the works I need a new CPU, which I can upgrade since I purchased the “in between” board that bridges the gap between the old and new AMD chips (I know, I’m an AMD guy). I’ll probably want to snag an SSD drive too, just for fun. Finally, sadly, I need a new monitor, which are always expensive.
13/01/2011 at 16:56 skinlo says:
Are you waiting for Bulldozer?
13/01/2011 at 16:38 Temple to Tei says:
I looked pre-Xmaz (xmaz is the hip-hop version -or maybe orks version) at a new pc, then discovered City of Heroes which still plays on my very old laptop and is basically all I have played for 2 and a half months.
Choice kills me. Someone sent me to the an overclocker site and their monthly recommendation of parts -if someone said I shall make this for you then I would have put my money down.
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Yes indeedy -unless, you know, I don’t (choice you see)
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Money is not an issue worth is -so I think it is worth somewhere up to about £700-800 for just the box and maybe mouse/keyboard as I have a spanking monitor already.
4.+ 5. I only wont buy if I fail to choose. I play on old laptop with integrated intel graphics etc
Civ 4 and mods takes about 25% of my hard drive space
My desktop is even older.
I read RPS for the articles not game buying advice (though I do buy it just seems incidental)
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Not clueless, not so much a build guide but feel free to earn some advertising revenue by pointing me at a link to a site to sell me a decent package.
Keep thinking of offering money to someone on the forums -I imagine a reader or two must be in the business of pc creation.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
And noisy.
With capabilites of the systems nowadays I think noise may now be the most important thing to me in a rig -yet not willing to pay a premium for the superquiet. Hmmmm, just how quiet do I need it -probably the question I need to answer.
13/01/2011 at 16:54 skinlo says:
Check out some of the overclockers.co.uk full systems. Reasonable value, and some guys who run it seem quite nice. Scan also do full systems, as well as Novatech. It might be a good idea to pick up a computer mag like custom PC and read about what they recommend some time.
13/01/2011 at 17:17 TeraTelnet says:
I’ve used all three of the firms mentioned by skinlo and must agree that they are generally decent. Overclockers took a while to deal properly with an RMA I had to conduct a couple of years ago but they are generally very good. Fingers crossed anyway, I just ordered stuff from them a few days ago and I’ve probably jinxed it now.
13/01/2011 at 16:40 Bluebreaker says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
upgrade maybe.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
less than 100€
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
I might change the graphic card by the end of the year
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
Not much point on upgrading now, ati 4670 runs pretty much everything at maxed settings (but filters) and changed cpu/mobo/ram (less than 300€) because previous one died. The rest of components have more than 2 years.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
laptop for gaming, is that a joke?
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
No, but would be could to tell people they can buy super computers for less than 400€
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Whatever good price/power card there is in mid-range by the time I need one.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Because they are scamming you, cheap ones do the same than expensive ones.
13/01/2011 at 16:47 KBKarma says:
1. I’m going to buy parts to build a new PC this year. Around June.
2. I’ve got about €700, plus another €1000. Trying to keep it under €1000, though.
3. Not an upgrade, so N/A.
4. Also N/A.
5. Yes. This is because it has an actual graphics card, and more RAM than my desktop machine.
6. I would, actually. I’ve been using the PCGUK build guide, but it’s only updated monthly, as it were.
7. Not sure. I’ll see what’s on the market in June. I was thinking an ATI, as I’m under the impression that they are a) cheaper and b) work well with AMD processors, which I was planning on getting.
8. I agree with that “price gouge” thing, but it’s probably due to them conforming to certain safety standards, and the price increase is caused by the testing they need to do to ensure that they DO conform.
13/01/2011 at 16:48 Flimgoblin says:
1. No :(
4. Still pretty decent, built from reasonable (but far from top of the range) bits back in 2009 for about 500 quid.
5. Only if you count the odd game on my (for work) Macbook….
6. I’m out of touch with more recent graphics cards, I’d say – also my computer building knowledge is somewhat circa 2000 – so all I tend to care about is CPU, memory and GFX – but I see comments about solid state disks etc. Too lazy to overclock though.
8. It’s the union payments: all the PSUs join the PSUnion when they get made – if anyone cuts the cost everyone’s computer would go on strike.
13/01/2011 at 16:52 skinlo says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Doubtful, I’m a student.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
N/A
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
When I do, all the main components (RAM, Motherboard, CPU, Graphics Card. Already have the other stuff.)
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
Mine is 3 years old, but I only play at 1440×900, so it still runs fine. Also, I don’t seem to have that much problem with low frame rates.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I use a laptop to game at uni. Much easier than hauling a desktop around every time you go home. Its good enough for most Source games and some others.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
No, I’m reasonably knowledgeable. I know the difference between PSU, PPU, GPU, CPU, APU etc and all the various components.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Not, although I would put the ATI Radeon 6950 if I was, and flash it to unlock it to the 6970.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
A good question, I agree. To be fair, they do have to cope with 30 amps running through them for many hours a day.
13/01/2011 at 16:53 RedNick says:
1 – Ordered parts for upgrade today
3 – New GPU (see 7) adding a fifth hard drive (1TB), and another 2x2GB sticks of RAM taking it to
8GB total.
(Current CPU = Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz, OCed to 3Ghz when I feel like it. [Can go up to 3.6Ghz stable, but then fan is rather noisy)
7 – Upgrading 8800GT to Sapphire HD 6850, old card will be used for PhysX
13/01/2011 at 16:57 HeroJez says:
Mine plays TF2, BC2, WoW and Google Chrome like a demon. I wont upgrade for a long time… unless Battlefield 3 pulls my pants down and makes me a lady. Even then it’ll probably just be a new GPU and an overclock.
13/01/2011 at 17:01 Hoaxfish says:
1. upgrade.
2. n/a
3. Adding a low-profile graphics card to a small form factor machine with integrated intel graphics chip. And a 1GB ram stick for my last empty slot (3GB currently in)… total cost of around £60.
4. n/a
5. lol no. Though I wouldn’t mind freeing up some desk-space.
6. No. It’d be fun to see what RPS thinks anyway.
7. Getting the cheapest Dx11/OpenGL4 “low profile” nVidia-based card. AMD/Ati’s number scheme is too confusing, Dx9/OpGL2-only is too old.
8. Depends on what you mean decent.
13/01/2011 at 17:08 darjeeling says:
I’ve been quite happy running my current rig for the last 5 years. ASRock (from our friends at AY-SOOS) has been good about making mainboards with upgrade possibilities from the standard CPU slot, using an optional daughterboard.
I bought mine back in 2006, with a basic AMD Duron core, and DDR1, and was lucky enough to find the daughterboard a few years later, which let me go up to a dual core Athlon X2, and 8 Gigs of DDR2-800. Not the top of the line, sure, but with the cost amortized over a 4-5 year period, I could upgrade when technology moved on, and the last generation of parts was cheap, without having to buy a brand new board.
That’s why I balk at giving someone $800-$900 for a Core i7 — it’s just not worth that much to me, especially if Intel releases and abandons another socket format (as they are wont to do).
For anyone looking to upgrade, the Radeon 5000 series is very nice. Products at most every price range, low power consumption, DX11, and multiple monitor support through Eyefinity. Apparently the Powercolor 5770 was drawing only 18W at load in one review I saw, so that’s pretty good. I’ve stuck with the Sapphire series over the years, myself. The 6000 series is on the horizon, too, so prices can do nothing but go down.
Really though, both ATi/AMD and NVidia are fine — it just depends what you want to play, IMHO.
13/01/2011 at 17:10 Robbert says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
No, my current PC can play all current and upcoming games on highest settings. If anything I upgrade my HDD to an SSD.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
SSD
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
I last upgraded it in 2009 when my old 8800 broke and I got a 5870.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
No, I use my notebook strictly for school. Mainly because it can’t run anything but retro and flash games.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
No
13/01/2011 at 17:12 TeraTelnet says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
- Why, just three days ago in fact!
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
- N/A, it’s an upgrade.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
- I’m changing the following:
Motherboard – from MSI K9N to Asus P8P67 Pro, for the Intel 1155 chipset.
CPU – from AMD Athlon X2 6000+ to Intel Sandy Bridge i7-2600K.
Memory – from 4Gb Corsair XMS2 RAM to 8GB Corsair Vengeance RAM.
Case – moving from a Thermaltake Tsunami Dream to a Coolermaster HAF X.
Backup – I’m adding on a Synology Diskstation DS211j and two Samsung Spinpoint F4 2Tb drives for a RAIDed backup station and iTunes server.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
- N/A as my old PC is still reasonably decent, but beginning to judder a bit on things like Transformers: War for Cybertron and LotRO. Large parts of it were 4 years old with the CPU, graphics card and hard drives being replaced between 2006 – 2008.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
- No, mostly the desktop. I game on the laptop a bit but not nearly as much as the monstarbox.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
- I’m not completely clueless but wouldn’t mind the odd tutorial or buyer’s guide.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
- Nope, sticking with my ATi Radeon HD4870. It’s not that ancient.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
- Yes, yes they are. Thankfully I have a PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad that should last for 3 – 4 more years that I can move into the new thing.
13/01/2011 at 17:13 dsiglin says:
1. Just bought a gtx460 (Galaxy 768mb) and MADE $30 in the process. :P Also just got a “new” CPU – Q8300 upgrading from an E6750. This should hold me over another year or so until I have the bucks needed to buy completely new mobo, ram, and cpu.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change? Generally I buy a new video card every 18 months or so and sell my old one. I pick which video card I want and wait for it to go on sale. Doing so you can negate costs. I always go for video cards in the $150 range.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? Mine was built in 2007 and periodically upgraded video card, added another HD, got a new monitor, got a new PSU (to give me some wiggle room for future video card upgrades.)
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? Yes I do but only light gaming like Minecraft and Supreme Commander 2. Laptop has an ATI 4550 512mb.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC? Not clueless but wouldn’t mind seeing what you guys recommend. Like Blake said, for PSU you can’t go wrong with Antec Earthwatts. I bought their 500w when it was on sale for $25 and it’s solid.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why? see answer #1.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway. See answer #6.
13/01/2011 at 17:20 subedii says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Probably not.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
IF I were to buy, probably about £500 – £600
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
If I did, likely the processor and motherboard. Maybe the case as well. Oh, and probably some new RAM. And possibly a copy of Windows 7 since I’m still on Vista. The graphics card I can probably keep for now, but might change that.
Basically a complete overhaul
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
Still good. Mine was built about 3 years ago now, maybe longer. Started off with an 8800GTX, but that actually burned out unfortunately. Currently using a GTX 260. Even back then I could run Crysis at largely high and very high settings, given a bit of tweaking. Most other stuff largely runs maxed out, assuming no AA. I’m more worried about what the Witcher 2 and Shogun 2 might do to this system.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Nope.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I know how to build it, the problem is that since I’ve been out of the loop for so long (really, there hasn’t been a need to keep up), I don’t really have any idea as to what’s what anymore, especially when it comes to processors, and ATI graphics cards.
I wouldn’t mind a guide.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Not likely at the moment.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
When I first got this I actually invested in a Seasonic 600W PSU, and it’s still going. Would probably be one of the few parts of my kit I wouldn’t bother upgrading. So sure it’s expensive, but it can be worth it if it lasts, and helps keep your other parts in working order.
13/01/2011 at 17:23 TechRogue says:
First off, I built my computer from scratch.
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Upgrade, most likely.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Not planning on it.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Might upgrade the RAM to 4 gigs.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
I built my computer about six months ago.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I don’t have a laptop.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
No thanks. :) My beastly computer cost about $700.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
I always go with nVidia.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
It most definitely is. I got a good deal with a case + PSU combo at Newegg.
Some specs to finish it off:
nVidia GeForce GTX 465
1 TB HDD
2 GB DDR3 dual-channel RAM @ 1600 Mhz (Just one chip for now, so the channels don’t matter)
AMD Athlon II quad-core @ 3 Ghz
Saitek keyboard
Razer mouse
A wifi card
Total price $700 with a monitor from my last computer
Dual booting Windows 7 (for playing old games on) and Ubuntu 10.04 (for buying new ones).
13/01/2011 at 17:23 Persus-9 says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I’ve just got most of the parts for a new build.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
I don’t like to think, I suspect once I’ve got the monitor it’ll probably be pushing £1000. The SSD raid array was a couple of hundred pounds of that.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Not really an upgrade but I’ll probably move my largest harddisk and DVD drive across from my old PC.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
My last was built in August 2008 and it’s still good but I’ve moved to Sweden so I decided to take the opertunity rather than taking the old one with me.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Sometimes just for convience sake. Like right now since my new desktop isn’t complete yet and my old one is 900 miles away.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I’m not clueless by any means but I think that might be a cool feature.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Asus EAH6850. 6850 seems like it has the price performance crown and should be able to run everything on decent settings at 1920 by 1080. I choose the Asus because I’ve heard it’s pretty quiet compared to other performance cards.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
I haven’t a clue and it seems like you can buy some truly awful PSUs for high prices as well so you can’t just throw money at the problem either. On top of that almost no decent websites review them and they have different manufactures here than in the states so trying to find trustworthy reviews of low cost PSUs available in Europe is a total nightmare. I guess the problem is you’d have to be mad or shopping for a PSU to want to spend time read PSU reviews so they don’t produce the hits so the websites that are technically capable of reviewing them don’t. Also most people buy them blind so whether a PSU is any good or not probably won’t have much of an effect on the sales figures so manufactures just ship out all sorts of garbage. What a nightmare, I thought I was going to go insane.
13/01/2011 at 17:24 Man Raised by Puffins says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I suspect not.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
When I do upgrade, me graphics card and monitor (current max output is 1280×1024) are first in line for replacement. However they do the job well enough at the moment.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
PC tower was bought at the tail end of ’09, I skimped a bit on the graphics card but otherwise it’s rock solid.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Nope.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I’m not exactly clueless when it comes to components/PC building, but I prefer to buy built machines as I don’t trust myself to not fuck up when poking around in the innards (I’m comfortably swapping out cards, RAM and such however).
13/01/2011 at 17:35 dr.castle says:
This past summer I upgraded to a radeon 5850 graphics card. Given the low demands of current PC games (relative to the hardware that’s available), that’s really all the upgrade I needed to run most games at max settings (1920×1080). My old CPU/RAM/etc. get the job done (q6600 and 4gb ddr2). So my rec, I suppose, would be to take the easy route–stick a 5850 in there (and a new PSU if that’s necessary), and you should be good to go, assuming you have reasonable components. It’s a pretty fantastic card for the price (it can be had for less than $200 in the US). The only (non-crysis) game that doesn’t run ~50-60fps with settings maxed for me is metro 2033, and that is solved by turning off some of the dx11 bells and whistles.
13/01/2011 at 17:44 DevilSShadoW says:
core i7 950@ 3.07GHz liquid cooled (didn’t OC it yet)
GTX 470 OC edition (I’ll probably buy another one this year and that will be all the graphics whoring i will ever need(actually more like 2 years) (hopefully))
6GB kingston Hyper X RAM
Asus P6T v2 deluxe mobo
I will need to invest in a SSD this year and another GPU and that will be it for my pc spending needs for the near future.
I’d recommend the sandy bridge line-up if you are looking into building a new rig, Jim.
13/01/2011 at 17:54 Stellar Duck says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I plan on upgrading by painting my case red. I’m sure that will make it go fastah
13/01/2011 at 17:58 Engineseer says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Probably upgrade.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
-
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
New graphics card and a professional firewire soundcard.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
The PC is great, with a MSI ATI 4890 1Gb graphics card, i7-920 and 6 Gb of RAM. It runs win 7/64 bit and can alt-tab almost any game available. It was built 14 months ago.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Used one. It died. Never again.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I have been building my PCs for over ten years and have built for others, so probably not.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Tough one. I guess the new AMD 6970 from MSI or Gigabyte. I’m an AMD/ATI fan for graphic cards but their last generation is a little disappointing and overpriced. I’m getting it for tax reasons (counting it as an office-business expense). The two-generations-old 4890 plays everything i throw at it with ease though (frequent use of alt-tabbing. I get bored easily nowdays).
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Decent PSUs are expensive for two reasons: 1) the components used. The PSU supplies the power used for the entire PC. It should be reliable and have a stable output with little voltage fluctuations (Automatic Voltage Regulator), protecting for over- and under- voltages. A long MTBF (Mean Time Between Faults) is always a plus. 2) The wattage output. The PC as a device it has a 75% efficiency, so for 75 Watts DC you need 100 Watts AC. The PSU should be selected based on current and future use (extra graphics cards, hdd or new CPUs). By the way, i have a Thermaltake Toughpower 850 Watts, bought for around 170 Euros.
13/01/2011 at 19:42 simonh says:
While brand PSUs are expensive, it’s important to remember that graphics cards manufacturers’ wattage recommendations can often be twice as high as necessary. This is likely because they’re accounting for the absolute worst PSUs that somehow manage to earn those ratings.
I run 2x 9800GTX SLi and 4 harddrives on a 550W Corsair, I’ve checked with a voltmeter and at 100% load (CPU and GPU benchmark at the same time) it all uses around 450W at the socket (accounting for loss in the PSU, that’s probably around 380W).
13/01/2011 at 21:30 Engineseer says:
That is true. With quality components you can have a more efficient PSU (the Toughpower has a 89% efficiency, i think). Your two 9800GTX use 140 watts at maximum output each, thus 280 Watts (from NVidia site). An average HDD uses around 7 Watts each at sequential read/write (my WD Caviar Black 1Tb FALS for example, uses 6.8 Watts), thus 28 Watts. Your biggest power draw is, of course, the graphics cards. My PSU can use two AMD 5970 cards that each draw 294 Watts at maximum output, thus 588 Watts in total, and i bought it with something like this in mind. I can use the monstrous i7-980X with two 5970s with no problem on the PSU load. Now, only problem is where to find 2200 Euros and what to do with the damn thing…
By the way, how did you take the readings?
13/01/2011 at 18:12 thesundaybest says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
No.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Argh.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Mega-argh.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
I play everything on a two year-old, bootcamped iMac running Windows 7. It does a pretty good job from what I can tell, but I’m playing older games to catch up – very new to PC gaming. When I get a new computer it will likely be an Apple, bootcamped again.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
N/A
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I don’t know if I’m clueless, but I think this would be a great feature for RPS. Especially if Quinns is given increasingly smaller amounts to do it with, and must venture into the great unknown of basement tinkerers.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
N/A
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Me Apple. Me no understand.
13/01/2011 at 18:13 Cabbs says:
1. This desktop with an i7 / 4850hd / 4 gig RAM was bought last year and is more than enough for the foreseeable future. It can run Bad Company 2 at full 1920×1080 and that is more than enough.
4. What I intend to buy is a laptop, because this computer is a family machine, and my former laptop of 4 solid years finally decided to break.
5. My old laptop accompanied me through 4 years of moving around, university, and impromptu LAN’s, and I really will need that kind of all-in-one versatility and privacy again. Working on a family machine can be a pain when the brother wants to play battlefield or gmod.
So my problem is this: Do I grab an I5/425m sony vaio for a grand? or do I wait for sandy bridge processors? will RAM go up again? etc, etc.
6. I have never built my own PC, but I always reckoned I could when I wanted to. regardless of that, an RPS pc-build chronicle is something I would definitely love to see. Fo ‘sho. I would look forward to it.
Jesus I have butchered this poll thing.
13/01/2011 at 18:17 edit says:
I’ve generally spent a little over 1k (AUD) every 3ish years, and never had trouble playing new games on sufficiently sexy settings and resolutions. My current i7 box should be fine for a good year or more for gaming, I figure, but I’m starting to feel the pressure to upgrade from other directions. The deeper I get into HD video projects and DSP, for instance, the more severely I come up against the limitations of my system. I guess I’m going to have to start outlaying more dosh =/
13/01/2011 at 18:27 cliffski says:
I used to build, and troubleshoot and fix PCs down to motherboard component level for a living.
What system do i build?
I don’t.
I buy a ready-made box
It’s a *bit* more expensive, MAYBE, but your PC then *WORKS*. And if it doesn’t, there is someone to blame. The first day your PC bluescreens and you are in driver / hardware hell, you will regret every penny of that £10 saving you amde by building your own machine.
PC incompatibilities abound. It’s bad enoguh without throwing random bits of kit together yourself.
13/01/2011 at 18:37 dogsolitude_uk says:
These days it can often work out cheaper to buy a box rather than self build: large companies are able to negotiate discounts on parts etc.
Still, I like to build one every now and then if I have the right parts around. When I was young I was one of those kids who loved lego, and this is really the same sort or thing. Building and making things is fun to do in itself. :)
13/01/2011 at 18:56 phuzz says:
I used to do the same sort of work myself, but I still LOVE building PCs for people (and myself when I can afford it).
If I didn’t have PCs as a hobby, I’d probably be fiddling with a car, which is both more expensive, and has the key disadvantage of usually being done in a cold garage, rather than a nice warm living room with the radio on :)
As an IT geek at work, I relish the days when I get to pull something to bits, big servers are cool!
(however, building PCs for a living is dangerous, I always had one or two cuts and scrapes from the sharp bits inside PCs)
13/01/2011 at 18:32 dogsolitude_uk says:
Hope these help… I have a three-and-a-bit year-old 6600 Duo (bought just before the quads came down in price!) with an 8800GT graphics card, 3GB RAM, Win XP SP3.
I got it from Scan, who were bl00dy brilliant. The guy who built it actually had a name and a phone number, and so we had a few chats about HD configurations, drivers and all sorts during the build period.
I also have a couple of laptops, and a few older machines lying around. I use mine for graphic work in Photoshop CS3, web development, and music production, as well as games.
It runs STALKER:CoP very smoothly at 1680×1050.
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I may buy or build a new one for my G/F. Regarding my own PC I’d like to upgrade to Win 7 because I loves it on my Laptop, but that will mean a lot of faff. If I do, I’ll also partition the drives to dual boot a Linux distro as well.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Graphics card? OS? Definitely need moar RAM.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
My PC’s fine. I defrag regularly, run CCleaner, and generally maintain it. Still boots in well under a minute, and runs games/music software with nary a stutter. Regualr maintenance also means my old Athlon 1800+ is still good, even runs Oblivion.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
My main laptop I use for Chessmaster and Fritz, also casual Indie games and the odd old RPG. Anything that doesn’t require a damned DVD in the drive.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I’ve got a pretty good idea about building from scratch, but those articles are always really useful. There’s always more to learn, and every article about building a PC contains something I haven’t thought of before!
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Might stick with my 8800GT, unless I can find a silent one come to think of it… there’s bags of romm in my case for heatsinks… Hm. Off to Google I go after this…
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
A good PSU will aid the stability fo your system by delivering a steady power supply to the mobo, without glitches. It will also be quiet and unobtrusive, and won’t moonlight as a heater or hoover when it thinks you’re not looking. Some have LEDs in for that 1337 h@xx0r look too.
Modern GFX cards, CPUs etc. require a fair bit of wattage, so that old 250W PSU you nicked out of the case of your parents’ old PIII won’t deliver the goods I’m afraid…
The PSU is the unsung hero of a PC build. I once built a PC out of spare parts with a cheap old one I found, and the thing was a horrid mess. Swapped the PSU for a decentt one, suddenly it worked: fewer crashes and far more stable. :)
13/01/2011 at 18:34 rhizo says:
1. An upgrade is in the cards for 2011. Mainly due to Sandy Bridge.
3. Planning on upgrading mainboard, memory, processor and display. Budget is 800-1500€. The performance bottleneck at the moment is the Wolfdale E8400 under the hood. That and the memory. The worst part in the setup is the display though, with a meager resolution of 1680×1050. Probably going to get a 120Hz one though I have no intention to get any 3D gear.
5. I was thinking of getting a laptop with gaming capabilities until I realized that the mobile gpus are basically crap in anything you’d care to lift of a table.
6. Not clueless and I think RPS is doing well enough sticking to games. Would be interested in hearing something about the PCs you guys end up building though.
7. Not planning a GPU upgrade. Got a 5870 as soon as the prices came down a bit. I’ve usually bought the top model of last generation, unless something important is updated in the latest cards.
8. PSUs might be expensive but if you get a good one, you can rely on it for a number of future builds as well. I’ve had my 750W silent box for years and it’s still going strong. The next upgrade would make it 4 builds for that PSU.
13/01/2011 at 18:36 Agrona says:
1. Unlikely
2. N/A
3. N/A
4. I built it within the past 6 months.
5. Absolutely. I love my desktop to bits, but it is in my basement in my office, where my wife and daughter (whom I love to finer bits) are not. Playing low-system-demand games (such as the excellent SpaceChem) on my laptop allows me to be enjoy their company whilst doing the game-things that don’t require too much dexterity or computing power.
6. I am not, although I am familiar with the hassle of building your own PC, and if I may I’d like to plug mwave.com, who for a small charge will construct your PC and *test* all of the components together as a system for a modest charge. It is infinitely better than trying to determine which part is broken and dealing with RMAs. Perhaps a course in “So now you built your computer and it doesn’t work: troubleshooting which piece is faulty” tutorial would be nice.
7. N/A
8. Power is Money?
13/01/2011 at 18:50 phuzz says:
1) Going to upgrade in the next 4-6 months hopefully
2) £5-600, maybe more if I get of my arse and get a better paying job.
3) It’s going to be big upgrade, new CPU, mobo, RAM and GFX, and hopefully a quick SSD too. (boast) I’ve already got a nice case with a water cooling setup, so I’ll be expecting to re-use all of that. PSU will depend on how much electrons I’ll need for the new kit, should be ok with my present one though.
6) Personally I’d rate myself as a bit of an expert PC builder, and I quite often help out mates to build/upgrade. I good first place to look though is Bit-Tech‘s monthly Build Guide, which gives you a good idea of the best stuff to go for in different price brackets (there should be a new one out shortly).
7) Not sure yet, the market will be completely different in 6 months. I usually aim for something around the £100-150 mark, for a decent upgrade on my current rig, but it’s not worth going for the really high end stuff, diminishing returns and all that.
8) They’re expensive, but you shouldn’t skimp on a quality PSU, I’ve seen loads of computers have massive problems that turn out to be a crappy psu. Even a decent gaming rig probably won’t need more than 600W though.
A note about SSDs, to save space on the SSD, you can move most of your user profile in windows onto a different drive (eg your old harddrive), by right clicking on the folder (My Documents, Music, Video etc.), and on the location tab, picking a location on the other drive. If you’re upgrading to an SSD you could point it to the old folders on your old harddrive (C:\Users in win 7) so you can keep all your old files in the same place.
Steam can also pick up all the game’s you’ve already downloaded when you re-install, search for ‘Move Steam Folder’
13/01/2011 at 19:05 Paul says:
I will be upgrading in two months or so to:
Sandy Bridge 2500K with some Gigabyte MB, 4GB of ram and Geforce GTX 560 (most likely, although radeon 6950 is an option too).
13/01/2011 at 19:10 Birky says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Unlikely – I built a £600 gaming PC last year – However the graphics card was the main thing I skimped on (a Radeon HD4870 which will still run anything I throw at it), so depending on how 2011 looks for game specs, this might get an upgrade.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
£200 tops
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
See answer 1
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
Answer 1 again
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Lovely desktop box all the way. Unless I want to steal my wife’s laptop\steam login for a some Plants vs Zombies fun.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Not clueless, but RPS info on this would be fun. Anything which helps you cut down the horrible cross-referencing trawl of spec list comparisons is very welcome.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
No
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
I picked up a good mid range 500W Silverstone Strider PSU for £40 when I did my last rebuilt, which seemed pretty good to me. It may have been on offer though.
Wow, this is what life was like before html code surveys… I feel very sorry for whoever has to compile this mountain of tat. (RPS Louse perhaps?)
13/01/2011 at 19:21 MattM says:
1. I am planning to upgrade my PC this year. It currently is
Core i7 920 @ 3.5 GHz, 2x GTX 260 SP 216 in SLI, 6 GB Tri-Channel DDR3 RAM, Blu-Ray Optical Drive, 1050W 80+ Silver PSU, and a Acer GD235HZ 120Hz 1080p LCD Monitor.
3. Later this year solid state drives (SSD) based on 34nm will be launched. This should offer better Price/GB and I plan to get one. This should improve loading times and reduce in game loading hitches (common in open world games that stream data). I am also planning to upgrade my GPU. Ideally I would like to double current performance and get 60fps minimum at 1080p with 4xMSAA enabled in newer games with most settings maxed or near maxed. (An aside, there are a few settings that should never be maxed since they offer minor image improvements while having a large negative effect on performance. For Example in STALKER CS, high quality and low quality sunshafts look almost identical, but HQ can reduce framerate by 2/3rds.) The most attractive options out there right now are the GTX 570 in SLI and the Radeon 6970 in CF. The 6970 offers more memory 2GB vs 1.25GB and (on average) a little more performance, but 570 is almost as powerful, should perform fine at 1080p, and I prefer Nvidia’s drivers. A price cut to $250 (per GPU) would cause me to quit waiting and order.
6. Basic PC hardware coverage would be a welcome addition, but I think you should keep it simple and provide links to more comprehensive coverage where appropriate (Tom’s hardware, AnandTech, and Guru3D are all fine sites)
7. To expand on my answer to 3. a new 570 or 6970 SLI/CF would allow me to turn up settings in modern games while not having to worry about or notice framerate. I also believe that despite what some people claim, there is room for a huge amount of improvement in game graphics and this upgrade should play 2012′s games pretty well.
8. Under a certain price, virtually all PSUs are cheaply made crap that will break down or cannot reach stated output. Unfortunately, not all expensive PSUs are well made. You really need to read reviews for each specific PSU model that you are considering. PSUs have actually improved a great deal in the past few years and what was once best in industry Efficiency is now lower end. When buying be prepared to shell out for a quality PSU since 1. They use better quality parts. 2. The offer better efficiency. (less power, heat, and cooling noise) 3. The provide better quality power. If voltages drop out of spec when under load or if the power fluctuates too much, it can cause hard to diagnose glitches and crashes. 4. They last a long time. PSUs often last for 10 years.
13/01/2011 at 19:23 Jambe says:
1. Yes.
2. $1,500-2,000
5. Yes, but only lightweight stuff (Torchlight, Diablo 2, etc). Desktop for everything else. Why? Because my desktop isn’t mobile. Dur.
6. I assemble my own PCs and fabricate my own cases from scratch.
7. Whichever $300-400 card is the best price/performance buy from Newegg at the time (I don’t care if it’s AMD or Nvidia).
8. They convert messy mains AC to smooth DC for the sensitive components of your computer. Quality transformers, rectifiers and filters aren’t cheap, and the QC on high-end power supplies is pretty labor-intensive. It’s worth noting that you won’t need more than a (quality, i.e. properly-rated) 5-600W PSU for a modern gaming computer with a flagship GPU and CPU inside. Don’t be that schmuck with a kilowatt PSU in an otherwise rotm computer.
13/01/2011 at 19:52 Josh Brandt says:
You seriously make your own cases? Do you just make standard monolith-type cases or do you go all fancy?
Pics? 8)
13/01/2011 at 19:25 airtekh says:
I built my current PC in September 2009 and I think it’s just fine at the moment, so I won’t be building a new PC this year.
I figure that because it can run Crysis reasonably well on high settings (but not smoothly enough at max, alas), that it can handle anything coming out in the next year or so.
I’m slightly concerned that I ‘only’ have a dual-core processor (Intel E8400 3Ghz), but I’m sure there won’t be any surge in quad-core optimised games.
My graphics card is an ATI HD4890, so it’s not DirectX 11 compatible, but that shouldn’t be a factor since DX11 is so new.
13/01/2011 at 19:29 Vague-rant says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Nope
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
Not good- more like just about ok. Got my laptop about 14 months ago and it seems to squeeze mid-low on all the recent games I’ve tried at my admittedly low res of 1280*800
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Because I am cheap and need a laptop no matter what. My 13″ is easy enough to carry around and has the power to get the job done (hur hur). But having one PC for everything does mean that things are much neater (though I rarely game on the go), and if I need the comforts of a desktop I can always plug it into my screen, keyboard and mouse.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Definitely not the most informed (especially on this site) but I tend to figure out what I need to. For example, I fixed my old laptop with post it notes to put pressure on a contact when it went kaput. But I wouldn’t tinker with someone else’s PC for fear of ruining it.
13/01/2011 at 19:34 Zerrick says:
The most important characteristics of my 4 year old desktop are an E6600-cpu, 2GB of RAM and a Nvidia 9600GT. This is still enough for playing nigh all older games (>3 years) on maximum settings.
1. Like last year I will only upgrade. How much will depend on how much money I set aside (and I’m also eyeing for a smartphone).
3. Next will definitely be a SSD.
6. For me part of the reason for buying a PC was the fun of assembling it. But a guide on RPS could be valuable. Only it should contain more than a list of currently midrange components. It could teach the reader to what he should pay attention.
7. I haven’t been following the graphics market recently, but I’ve always been content with the two Nvidia’s I bought.
8. You can’t allow yourself to pinch pennies when choosing a PSU. A failing power supply can take the rest of the PC with it. So you should choose a branded PSU with a high-efficiency rating (+80%). This will also leave some breathing space for upgrading in the future. (I have paid €110 for mine).
Good luck with the quest for components.
13/01/2011 at 19:46 Grinnbarr says:
My gaming PC just died on me, so I’d love an article explaining how to get a cheap fast computer. Having said that, I’m fairly sure I can recycle a few parts from it (graphics card – nvidia 9600GT, optical drives, PSU) so maybe a series of articles on custom building PCs for dummies like me?
That would be great.
13/01/2011 at 19:50 Josh Brandt says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
- I may upgrade my PC, but probably not. it’s pretty decent.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
- maybe $200.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
- I might replace my dual GeForce 9600GT SLI setup with a single Fermi (GeForce 450? 460? Something like that) card since it’d be faster and run cooler and take care of any weird SLI issues. I also might upgrade from 4GB to 8GB RAM now that I’m running 64-bit Windows 7 and can actually use it.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
- Yeah, it’s still good. It’s a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, and it still plays basically everything I’ve thrown at it. I haven’t touched it in 3 or 4 years…
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
- I do when I’m away from home. I have a 13″ MacBook Pro, but the video chipset is pretty sad and it runs REALLY hot when I play games on it… (I either play stuff from Steam in OS X or I boot into XP for World of Tanks.)
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
- I am not clueless, and wouldn’t spend that much on a PC anyway. Dang.
I don’t know if we necessarily need yet another PC guide on the internet– you RPS folks might be better off finding and linking to good guides rather than writing your own.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
- GeForce 4×0 something-or-other, and because it’ll run cooler and faster than 2 older cards in SLI. See above.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
- You’re just spoiled by cheapo PSUs. It’s very easy to make a mostly-functional PSU from cheap parts, and it’ll work for most people. But if you take one of those little $25 600W PSUs from Best Buy and try to run actual big hardware from it it’ll burn right up, or will at least give you an unstable system..
Here are some links on power supply stuff:
http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00020.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/psus.htm
You don’t necessarily need a $400 power supply for a gaming PC, but don’t skimp out and buy a cheapo unit either.
13/01/2011 at 19:56 Captain Kirk says:
8. — Everyone keeps saying that the reason that psu’s are so expensive is because they use expensive components, and while this is true, that seems like a tautology.
It comes down to design of the capacitors, of which there are a number of on the pc. Designing a capacitor that works well at 30C that will last the rest of our lives is easy. Designing one that can surivive the +70C temperatures produced in the psu is not. A primary way GPU’s also die is cap’s on the board blowing up (the cheaper gpu’s almost always use relatively cheap cap’s). So yeah, they need to design expensive/durable ones to survive the internal stresses.
Also, they are expensive because of the popularity of SLI and Crossfire. SLI and Crossfire can draw nearly 300W per card and add in another 150W for your CPU – plus maybe another 50-100W for all other parts, and you are quickly getting into the 800-1000W territory if you want a little operating headrom. The capacitors used in devices that are required to output 1000W for up to years at a time at high temperature with no/little down time are very expensive.
13/01/2011 at 20:02 niffk says:
i would love it if RPS would do a vague guide on current graphics cards, CPUs, etc – i have been out of the loop for a long time, and am finally going to build a new PC, but the last time i did that was when a 6800GT was top of the line. perhaps like a low budget, mid budget, high budget example build?
there are loads of opinions out there already, but i feel like you guys would be less biased than anybody else.
13/01/2011 at 20:02 dragonhunter21 says:
1. Maybe upgrade, probably not buy (barring catastrophic failure, natch)
2. N/A (Sub-$1000, preferably ~$800- I’m not up-to-date on pricing)
3. With luck, the processor
4. Bought two years ago (Gateway), but I blew up the graphics card trying to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The upgrade was from a 8800 GTX to a GTS 250, and I’ve never looked back. Awesome card.
5. Nope. I do have a media laptop, but it doesn’t have much power to it (Can’t play HL2, and I doubt it can play HL1)
6. Pretty much, yeah. It’d be nice to have a pricing guide and suggestions where to buy parts. It doesn’t help that I can’t really build (I have a funky EM field about me that wreaks havok with delicate computer insides)
7. Were I to upgrade, I’d get one of the new Nvidia models. I don’t know the ATI family enough to know which card I want (Although I’ve read some incredible things about them).
8. Uh.
13/01/2011 at 20:09 Heynes says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Unlikely, though I might upgrade if some new game(s) comes out that I end up enjoying immensely, but can barely run arise.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
N/A
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
GPU
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
Just purchased a new PC last year (which I added on some old carryover parts). Can run older games and well-optimized newer games at mid to high settings fairly competantly.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I have an somewhat old Macbook Pro, occasionally play the odd older game or new indie game on it; can’t really handle much more with it’s 8600GT. Main reason I use it more than my PC (though not necessarily for games) is that it’s nice and quiet for the most part (at least for those sort of games). I definitely would not consider a laptop as a primary gaming platform until they solve both the heating/ventilation and battery limit problems.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I have more than a vague idea, and have done so in the past, but it wouldn’t hurt I suppose – especially if there are some new fancy smancy stuff to take account of in these years and those to come.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
If I end up upgrading my GPU, will probably go for something from ATI’s 6000 series for the cost-per-performance. Have been enjoying my 5770 for the most part so far.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
No idea, probably but I hope my comment doesn’t end up as spam again. Can’t even seem to rectify the problem as the “dropping us a line” url leads to some 404 business.
13/01/2011 at 20:20 Hides-His-Eyes says:
>Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I’m a student, I have to bring my computer between here and my parents’ on a regular basis, and it means I can take it in and do work in uni, too.
This laptop cost £500 three years ago and I still got to enjoy “Just Cause 2″ on minimum settings fairly smoothly.
13/01/2011 at 20:24 DrugCrazed says:
1. Probably not, put in a 460 at the end of last year. As in, Dec 28th.
2. N/A
3. I may upgrade my wireless. It is crap. Beyond so.
4. Same as you, I’m just tinkering now, and its 2 years old. Yeah after will be the big overhaul if I can afford to.
5. Only for minesweeper. Refresh rate is horrible.
6. Nope. But make a video series. Preferably with sketch comedy.
7. See 1.
8. Because Jesus hates you.
13/01/2011 at 20:29 Carra says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
-I’m still doubting to buy a new one. My pc is nearing the three year old mark but it doesn’t feel nearly as outdated as the last one is. The consoles are making sure that my dual core, 4gb & 8800GT can still run everything. I’ll probably wait a bit longer until that game I *have* to play comes out.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
~800 euros.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
-When I want to buy a new game I’ll visit the specialized sites like anandtech.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
-No idea but I know that buying a cheap one is a nono.
PS: the biggest innovation I’m interested in are ssd. Is it worth it to buy one for gaming?
13/01/2011 at 20:33 destx says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Yes! I will build a new PC with the sandy bridge. I have a laptop for gaming at the moment. I am quite thick.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
About £900. Oceanic tech prices are atrocious, it does not help that I have a secret crush on Intel-Nvidia.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Yes, I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking. I’ve barely moved it from my desk.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Not personally, but I think it would be a great thing to do. In my recent journeys I’ve found most hardware review/benchmark sites to be dreadful for the following reasons:
10+ page articles for a single piece of hardware. Single sentences extrapolated to a paragraph.
Copy+pasted / templated content. Benchmarks that use completely irrelevant resolutions, graphics settings and games (Honestly, AVP? 640×480?).
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Nvidia GTX 460. cuz its cheap :]
I thought about going beefier, but then I’d be paying 2-3x the price for something that’s likely to either die or be replaced within 18 months.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
hello
13/01/2011 at 20:35 WJonathan says:
A GTX 460 is probably the best choice for performance versus price. A very energy efficient GPU, most are around $150 US. A quad core slightly overclocked will suffice for most new games, and doesn’t need to draw radical wattage to be effective. I really don’t believe expensive PSUs are at all necessary, a decent brand (Corsair for example) 500-600watt PSU will be more than enough for a strong gaming setup. If you’ve bought an 800-1000 watt PSU then you’re just doing something wrong, IMO. Unless you’re building something crazy with 4 HDDs and a triple monitor desktop etc.
13/01/2011 at 20:38 DestinedCruz says:
I bought a system for $800 four years ago. Core 2 Quad, four gigs of DDR2 and an 8600GT.
In these four years, I upgraded to a GTX 260 for $200, and recently a GTX 470 for $300. I can play absolutely anything from Bad Copany 2 to Crysis to Just Cause 2 to Call of Pripyat to Hot Pursuit to Arcania at max settings (I use those as examples because those are the games I’ve been playing recently) at 1680×1050 (my monitor’s native res) and 1980×1080 on my TV at a constant 60fps no matter what.
The only reason I even upgraded my video card the second time was for DX11 support, and I gave my old one to my girlfriend who was rocking the 8600GT still.
Anyone who tells you that you need to break the bank for a high end system now is and idiot.
13/01/2011 at 20:41 DrPepper8 says:
Not planning to upgrade this year – last year I splashed out on a shiny new gaming laptop, so I’m hoping it will last me a while longer.
I use a laptop for gaming because I spend my weekends in a different place to my weeks, so saves me having to have 2 gaming rigs. It’s played everything I’ve wanted it to play no trouble at all, the only disadvantage was the price (plus the fact that it weighs so much that I have since also bought a much smaller, much cheaper laptop for those occasions when I just want to sit on the sofa and surf the net without cutting off the blood flow in my legs).
13/01/2011 at 20:48 James G says:
1. Yep, did it today infact. Doubt I’ll be doing another upgrade before the year is out, but didn’t exapect to be doing a good chunk of this one either. (As I’ll explain later)
2. N/A
3. Added a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E SSD drive, alongside my WD Caviar Black 1TB. Cost £90. Also replaces my Nvidia Geforce 8800GT with an Ati HD5770. The 8800GT was still perfectly serviceable, but I won the HD 5770 in a competition, no point turning down a free upgrade.
4. Before the upgrade was still serviceable. Added the SSD to give a bit more responsiveness for the non gaming side of things, and as I said, was still happy with the card. Processor is a Q6600, so a bit old, but still perfectly serviceable. Processor isn’t overclocked, even though it apparently overclocks quite easily. However those are dark arts I have never got into. Last major upgrade was almost three years ago (Bit surprised, thought it was just under two), so actually amazed I’m still happy with things. Added the 1TB HD last August to replace a 160GB drive from when the system was first built summer ’05. (Six years ago?! Bloody hell)
5. No major laptop gaming. Have a netbook, which I’ll occasionally play on, but only when the desktop is unavailable.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Reasonably clued up, though have to get up to speed again whenever I’m looking to upgrade. Wouldn’t begrudge a guide though.
7. HD5770 (His IceQ 5 Turbo 1GB), why, because I won it. If I hadn’t won it, I would have stuck with the 8800GT a little longer, and probably stayed with Nvidia.
8. Is there a good way of telling a decent power supply, other than looking at the brand? (And the power rating) When getting mine, I went for a 60W OCZ at the cheaper end of the OCZ price spectrum, but outside of the modularity of the more expensive supplies, it was sometimes difficult to tell what paying more got you.
13/01/2011 at 21:03 dc says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
No new PC, not enough moneys ;) Upgrade: Time for 120GB SSD once I have the cashflow going.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Below 200 Euro.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
HDD -> SSD, maybe also a small upgrade to HDD space.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
The basic setup is from the beginning of 2010 – C2Q 9550, 8GB of DDR2 ram. Added a new Radeon 6870 last fall.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Nope, Laptop is for travelling / presentations only.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Nope, all my PCs have been homebuilt after the first one in 1999.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Just got that 6870 mentioned above – and that was a total bargain for 120euros. Pricing error made me get that instead of a possible Nvidia card :)
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Cause only people who know what they’re doing (which is the minority) spend money on a PSU thus making it so that there are less good ones produced?
13/01/2011 at 21:11 DestinedCruz says:
Just so you know, the 6000 series from ATI is lower performance than the entire 5800, and the entire nVidia 400 series line. They released them as a budget DX11 line.
Higher initial numbers do not always indicate a better card. Case in point: the 8800GT was better than the 9400, 9500 and 9600 line from nVidia.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market
15/01/2011 at 03:30 Persus-9 says:
@ DestinedCruz: Erm sorry but I believe you are slightly mistaken. If you take a look at that article you linked to:
They aren’t top of the range cards by any means and the price is sort of a clue to that but they do trade blows with members of both the 5800 and 400 series cards and win some of the match ups quite comfortably.
13/01/2011 at 21:18 Vandelay says:
Probably should contribute to this, seeing as I’ve been talking about it in the forums:
1. Buying a new PC, probably next week.
2. Looks like it will be between £750-800
5. Don’t own a laptop, but might if I had pots of money to spend. Probably wouldn’t use it much for gaming though, except maybe some kind of 4x game or a slow paced adventure game. If you are going to game, going for the desktop is the much cheaper and simpler choice.
6. Not clueless about costs and I hate it when people who have never bought a computer outside of PC World or the Dell website think you have to spend hundreds of pounds every month to play PC games. Doing pieces on RPS about it would be quite nice. A lot of hardware sites only cater to those that are wanting something “XTREME” (spelt just like that,) or are looking to do things like overclocking. A more straightforward run down from people that aren’t hardware nuts and are more interested in the real world uses then the numbers would be good for many people.
7. I’m getting a Radeon 6950. I’ve been looking around at a few things. Initially thinking about the 68xx series, but then saw the Geforce 460 FTW edition, OC’d card, which produced very similar results for a cheaper price tag. However, the future proofing that came with the 6950 was very tempting, as was the ability to quite easily turn it into a 6970. It also allowed me to steer clear of an overclocked card, which I’ve had bad experience with before.
8. Agree and I don’t know why. Probably what dc said.
13/01/2011 at 21:18 zkylon says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I don’t want to, but it’s likely.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
About 200USD. Might go 250.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
I’d like to upgrade my 9800GTX to something a little more powerful. Rest is gonna remain the same.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
It still stands, just not as good. It was built in late ’08.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
NEVAH!
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Nope, i build it and pick/buy everything myself.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Prolly, a 450GTS. I’d like a 460GTX but 4 pesos = 1 dollar means nope.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
I dunno, but PSUs are that extra 200 bucks that i always forget to account for until i go buy the parts.
13/01/2011 at 21:20 vader says:
1. Most likley.
2. I’m aiming for below €1500 but I’m prepared to pay more to get what I want.
5. No. My laptop is strictly for work.
6. Not cluless. I work as a tech and build and troubleshoot computers for a living.
7. Whatever is the most bang for the buck at the time I buy it.
8. Because a good PSU uses quality components, stays cool, supply enough power properly and doesn’t die in a fiery explosion of burning electronics taking your motherboard, graphics card, RAM and harddrives with it in death. You’d be amazed of just how many computer problems are caused by a bad PSU.
13/01/2011 at 21:25 Kadayi says:
1. I tend to try for one significant upgrade a year, so I’d go for a new system (Processor/Ram & MB) one year and a better GFX card the following. Sadly last year my GFX card died on me a few months after my system upgrade so I ended up getting a new one last year. Though tbh prices are less drastic than they used to be now ATi is more competitive which is good (I buy Nvidia as I Fold when I’m not gaming). I was rather hoping to avoid any further expenses this year, unfortunately my monitor is now on the fritz, so I’m going to have to dig deep in the next month or two for that. Present system I7 930, 12 GB Ram & 460 GTX, and about 4 TB of HD.
2. Hard to say. Doing graphics work as well as gaming on it I want to try and get the best I can in terms of performance and price. An IPS screen makes sense and having used a decent 16:10 22″ my inclination is to skip the 23″ 24″ 1920 x 1080 16:9s and go for a 24″ 1920 x 1200 16:10 screen for more photoshop/illustrator/lightroom pixel real estate. Have my eyes on the Dell U2410, but at just under £500 (via elsewhere) and being January & post Christmas wallet tightening, I’m having to weight it up. It’s a lovely beast though:-
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukdhs1&sku=294438&baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=1&~ck=dellSearch
3. ^
4.I figure once the monitor is sorted I’m probably good for another 2 years where I’m at. Personally I’m not seeing the PC game space being pushed as it used to be, now everything is coming out via the hardware backwater of the 360. Good times in a way, but frustrating in others as it would be quite nice to see games really push the PC, rather than it simply be a case that PCs just run 360 games at higher resolutions.
5. No. I have no use for one.
6. I’ve been self building for about 10 years (lived with some comp/science students at Uni who got me into the habit). However the one thing I will confess is that between upgrade periods I pay near zero attention to hardware changes. When I need to upgrade I start doing the research (I didn’t even know about the new Sandy Bridge Chips until you guys started wittering on about them tbh), but I would appreciate someone making a post on RPS now and then as a buyers guide or some such. On the odd occasion I’ve bought PCgamer I’ve always found the hardware section/recommendations useful (budget/MoR/top spec), if nothing more than from giving me a quick insight into the kind of options to consider.
7. Not for the foreseeable.
8. I think I have a 600W and even with all my gubbins and 4 HDs I’ve never had any problems in terms of supply. Unless your going ‘to hell with the lecky bill’ Triple SLI/Cross fire super OC’D there doesn’t seem much point in getting a 1000w Monster.
On a side note. I like the sound of these new chips of intel’s, but I think it kind of blows that it’s another case of ‘yep, gonna need another motherboard to run these fuckers on’ . Albeit I’m sure there’s probably strong reasons why they won’t run on existing I5/I7 MBs, I can’t help but feel slightly pissed about the full upgrade cycling going on. Still by the time I’m next looking to change up I’m sure something even better will have come along (with a different MB requirement as well).
13/01/2011 at 21:49 DestinedCruz says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Most likely not, but if I do, it’ll be a new processor if anything. AM3, so I’ll need to get a new motherboard and RAM.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Like I said, it’s not likely I will, but around $300.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
CPU, motherboard and RAM.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
I bought a system for $800 four years ago. Core 2 Quad, four gigs of DDR2 and an 8600GT.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Absolutely not. Even the best ‘gaming’ laptops out there can’t compare to similarly specced desktops, and even then they cost at least two to three times as much.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Narp.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
I just picked up a GTX 470. It was the best price/performance around at the time and I am nowhere close to disappointed. If I hadn’t gotten it yet and was going to do it now however, I’d get a 570. Cooler, less power usage and more powerful than a 480 (yes the 8 was not a typo) and costs about as much as my 470 did.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
‘Good’ PSUs are expensive because they aren’t made from cheap components. It is way too goddamn easy to think you need a PSU that is too damn big. 600W should be the absolute most for any decent gaming system around today. Even with a GTX 480 or 580.
And for the love of god SLI IS A STUPID WASTE OF MONEY.
14/01/2011 at 00:01 Kadayi says:
“And for the love of god SLI IS A STUPID WASTE OF MONEY”
Agreed. It always seems to me that instead of buying two cards and getting 1.8x the performance out of 2 of them at double+ the power consumption (given the extra strain on your systems cooling), you might as well just buy a top of the range card (with a better feature set) and save yourself the horrendous electricity bill.
13/01/2011 at 21:49 manveruppd says:
Here’s a little tip from someone who’s had more PC components crap out on him than most people: don’t skip on any of the mechanical bits. Cheap electrronics aren’t much worse than good electronics (except when they’re slower of course), but a cheap hard drive or PSU will inevitably fail prematurely, possibly taking other bits with it in the case of the PSU, and causing you massive amounts of pain.
DON’T SKIMP ON THE PSU!!!
PS. Echoing the guy above me: a good 600W PSU from a reputable brand >>> a cheap 1000W Chernobyl-powered deathtrap!
13/01/2011 at 21:52 Archaeon says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year? Yes I will definitely be upgrading my PC, probably within the next month.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend? Somewhere in the realm of $500.
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change? I’m at the end of my upgrade options with my current platform, so I’m forced to replace CPU and Motherboard and RAM in one fell swoop. Fortunately, due the freakish badassery that is Intel’s new Sandy Bridge platform, I can get a lot of bang for my buck. Currently, you can get the Core i5-2500K CPU, a good LGA1155 mobo from Asus/Gigabyte/MSI, and 4GB (even 8GB) of DDR3 RAM for less than $500 if you play your cards right on Newegg. See Bit-Tech or [H]ardOCP for reviews about why Intel’s Sandy Bridge is a God-given gift to those who want to upgrade on the cheap.
13/01/2011 at 22:06 phenom_x8 says:
1.upgrade only
2.skip
3.adding more RAM and better processor maybe (of course it depends on my financial condition this year)
4.Yep my PC is still tough enough (Athlon X2 4800+,2GB RAM) with only less than $200, I built it 3 years ago (2008) and I’ve only upgrade my video card (from onboard HD3200 to discrete HD 6850) 3 months ago (so its worthless than $400 today)
5.No, because I don’t have any (sometimes I use my sisters laptop Pentium dual core plus GMA X4500 and fill it with a lot of pre-2000 games like deus ex, MDK,etc)
6.NO, but a few advice would be nice. (I hope it less than $400 price)
7.I’ve already get my HD 6850 and its still my favorite because of its price performance ratio (match with my budget, its all about budget)
8.Not really, I’ve got my 450watt Amacrox(or speedpower) PSU with less than $50(maybe its much cheaper in you country) and its able to fullfill my gaming needs all this years (even after I upgrade my graphic card)
13/01/2011 at 22:33 rei says:
@Jom: I suspect you’ll never get this far in the comments, but you can get an excellent PSU for (fairly) cheap if you know what to look for. The key thing to understand is that in most cases the brand you’re buying means absolutely nothing as far as the quality of the unit goes, since Antec, Corsair, Thermaltake etc. don’t actually make the units they sell; they just put their own stickers on OEM units. Look for a model from a lesser known brand that happens to use a unit from a reliable OEM manufacturer (I recommend Channel Well), and you’ve just saved 50% on the same unit that Corsair charges a ridiculous premium for slapping their sticker on. Don’t fall victim to hype!
13/01/2011 at 22:33 en_zedd says:
1. Will upgrade CPU, motherboard and RAM.
2. The budget is $750NZD (about £400)
3. Will replace the CPU, motherboard and RAM. My 3+ year old Nvidia card died last year so I’ve already got a reasonable ATI card.
4. Current PC is 4 years old. Only upgrading to get beyond my dual core CPU which I think will struggle in 2011 (although it still works fine with all games currently available).
5. Gaming laptop? Next, you’ll be encouraging me to put a console under my TV!
6. I have a clue. But I would still like to see some hardware articles!
7. No new graphics card. As above, got an ATI HD 5770 last year.
8. Who knows? But running your rig with a cheap PSU is like visiting Amsterdam’s red lights without a condom.
13/01/2011 at 22:38 Nyst says:
I got an upgrade earlier this year. I spent about 1000€ on it, expecting it to last me good four years, maybe five.
I knew what parts I wanted in general, but had a friend-who-is-crazy-good-with-computers figure out the details (because I’m clueless).
And yes, I do use my laptop for gaming. Before, it was because when I bought it it was actually more powerful then my ‘gaming’ pc. Now I use it because there is this untracable…thing that causes the shiny new pc to BSOD at random times.
Every game on the market on max settings…and an invisible die rolling unseen to cut it off at any time :(
And my fancy pants new card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, with an Intel Core i7 CPU (I have no idea why they’re so expensive), 6 gigs of ram, Win 7 64bit and one of those fewfangled solid state hard drives my friend assures me are the way of the future, for all the bloody good it’s doing me.
13/01/2011 at 22:56 phenom_x8 says:
1.upgrade only
2.skip
3.adding more RAM (more 2GB DDR2) and better processor (Phenom II x6 95 watt)maybe (of course it depends on my financial condition this year)
4.Yep my PC is still tough enough (Athlon X2 4800+,2GB RAM) with only less than $200, I built it 3 years ago (2008) and I’ve only upgrade my video card (from onboard HD3200 to discrete HD 6850) 3 months ago (so its worthless than $400 today)
5.No, because I don’t have any (sometimes I use my sisters laptop Pentium dual core plus GMA X4500 and fill it with a lot of pre-2000 games like deus ex, MDK,etc)
6.NO, but a few advice would be nice. (I hope it less than $400 price)
7.I’ve already get my HD 6850 and its still my favorite because of its price performance ratio (match with my budget, its all about budget)
8.Not really, I’ve got my 450watt Amacrox(or speedpower) PSU with less than $50(maybe its much cheaper in you country) and its able to fullfill my gaming needs all this years (even after I upgrade my graphic card)
13/01/2011 at 23:01 michaelfeb16 says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I will be buying a new PC with my tax return.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Two to three thousand dollars
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
NA
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
NA
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
No.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I can build a cheap fast PC, but I have disposable income and want to blow seven hundred dollars on a mineral oil submergence kit. That said, I think such a guide (especially if periodically updated and linked to regularly in posts) would be very useful to the more casual readership of the site.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Newest top of the line X2 from AMD. Mainly brand loyalty and some bad experience with the other guys back in the day. Also, I figure having the GPU/CPU from the same company can simplify some things.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
I have no idea. PSUs are the one component I’ve never understood and never cared to understand. I occasionally try to research it, but I always come away bored and with the impression that as long as you have enough power (aka highest watts possible) there is little difference between them.
13/01/2011 at 23:18 Huggster says:
PSU – http://www.silentpcreview.com
Most people do not understand how they work! Check the recommended list on Silent PC Review. If you have a high efficiency 80+ PSU you can get away with a lower wattage – Mine is 380watts for example and I run a egg-cooking 4870, a I5-750, SSD HDD, sata HDD, DVD, 5 or 6 120mm fans. Its fine.
Along with mechanical HDD they are the No.1 cause of hardware faliure in a computer, so get a decent one (often rebadges of seasonic etc. are good). Also I stick to Sammy HDD now for that very reason of better reliability.
13/01/2011 at 23:23 outoffeelinsobad says:
“5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?”
Around October, I bought a refurb Asus G51VX-RX05 for 650 of my American Dollars. It is the perfect gaming machine. I have a nice mouse and Belkin backpack to take it with me and game anywhere. Notebookcheck said it would run Crysis and Metro 2033 on medium settings; I find that it runs both at max quite well. I haven’t ever had framerate problems. I’m thinking of shucking the whole desktop PC paradigm and just getting a nice, big monitor to plug into this baby.
13/01/2011 at 23:28 DestinedCruz says:
Another thing to remember that spending a lot of money in the name of ‘future proofing’ is a giant mistake and a rather large pile of bullspit. Think of it this way, if you spend £1500 on a system, a system with BETTER specs will be available in two years for roughly 500-600. If you spent 500 now, and 500 again in two years, you just saved £500 to stay in the game.
13/01/2011 at 23:29 Captain Kirk says:
I think it is important to mention to all you perspective builders that a lot of changes are afoot in the CPU world. Both Sandy Bridge and AMD’s new Bulldozer (when it comes out in a few months) both have a new socket. In intel’s case, it is a requirement, the new sockets will not be backwards compatible with anything that came before it – even the Nehalem i3/i5/i7 series. So that means if you are looking to build an Intel computer and want to have any possibliity of upgrading, you should get a LGA 2011 or 1055 mother board (LGA 2011 out later this year) rather than the Nehalem LGA 1056 or 1366 motherboards.
As for AMD, their new processor will most likely use an AM3+ socket – indicating that these new processors are most likely backwards compatible with older motherboards. However, you will not get the best performance out of your processor unless you get an AM3+ board.
In both cases (certainly less so in AMD’s case), it is somewhat advisable to wait for the new motherboards based on this new tech to come out if you are the type of person that will upgrade your cpu at some point during your computers life. If not, have at it now.
Also, pci express x16 ver 3.0 specification was officially released in November. The pci express specs typically last 4-6 years and are backwards and forwards compatible (I am pretty sure at least). So it is less important to worry about this, and there is no telling how long it will take motherboard manufacturers and GPU makers to start putting out pci-express 3.0 boards and cards – but this is the kind of change that will literally double the bandwidth between GPU and host CPU. If at all possible, I would suggest waiting until you could get a board that supports the 3.0 spec because there will be a pretty sizable performance difference.
Normally I would never recommend waiting to upgrade, but in this case, both the socket type and pci express version are changing relatively soon and will stay with their new types for a considerable amount of time (at least the pci express spec will stick and AMD is pretty good about keeping their sockets around for a decent amount of time – Intel, not so much as evidenced by the Nehalem socket switch).
13/01/2011 at 23:32 Shih Tzu says:
Well, might as well chime in! If I remember right, my current specs are as follows: 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia 9500GT with 1GB video RAM (it was cheap), 2GB RAM, Windows XP.
1. I am thinking of upgrading! Especially since a very nice friend gifted me Metro 2033 on Steam, and I know that it runs quite poorly on my current hardware because I tried the demo a few months ago. On the other hand, I just moved into a new and more expensive apartment, and I’m also considering finally getting a fancy HDTV, and then if I did that I’d probably finally get one of those Sony devil-boxes for Blu-rays and the good PS3 exclusive titles, and then as soon as all my money was gone my car would promptly explode, because that is how it works.
2. N/A. Most of my hardware is just fine, and I already replaced most of it about a year ago (CPU, motherboard, power supply, graphics card, RAM, keyboard, mouse…) when my power supply melted to my old motherboard and trashed both of them. Oh, and I just got a new DVD burner, because holy crap when did those get so cheap?
3. Probably the graphics card, because my current one is an el cheapo, although still an improvement over what I had before. I’d need to get some advice online though, maybe on the RPS forums. I’d like to make it pretty, and maybe get most titles to run smoothly at 1680×1050, but it’d be best if I could find something good for under $150.
4. N/A. My PC is mostly good, and even the AAA stuff usually runs OK-to-great if I drop down to about 1280×720. Source engine games in particular look just fine, and I expect Portal 2 and (hopefully) Dear Esther will continue the trend. But it’d be nice to buy some extra bling now that the PC has become my primary gaming platform.
5. No laptop for me! I still have my laptop from 2001, but it runs ohhhh so slow now.
6. Yes, I am mostly clueless, and yes, that would kick ass. I did manage to install my new CPU and motherboard by myself (with the phone aid of a more knowledgeable friend) and was ever so proud. Then I left the casing bolts in from the previous board and they were touching in the wrong places and shorting out my new board, but to my credit I was able to figure out the problem myself after a bit of Googling.
7. I have no idea what I am getting, beyond “something significantly more powerful than a 9500GT, but not above $200, because it’s likely not worth it for just an incremental difference”. But I need to do more research and get more advice.
8. I dunno, but I got a decent deal on mine due to a rebate.
13/01/2011 at 23:37 yhancik says:
1) Well that’s funny that you’re asking this question, because, as a matter of fact, I do! My Sempron 2600+ is showing its age :p
2) Not sure yet. I haven’t upgrade in a long time, but maybe between 800-900€. Anything will be a giant leap anyway ;)
5) I’ve used a laptop for gaming mostly to LAN with friends.
6) Not clueless, although after all these years, I wonder what’s the current situation regarding AMD vs Intel / Radeon vs Geforce. I’ve happily spent my 00s with AMD & ATI, although I had some drivers issues with my X1650. The PhysX thing is appealing, but I read that the Geforce 400 series has OpenGL issues… which bugs me because I’m sometimes (and currently) developing in OpenGL. Mh…
7) see 6 :p I suppose I would go for an HD5000 or 6000. Curious about the passive cooling ones I’ve seen recently (mostly because I’ve had so many annoyingly noisy GC fans
13/01/2011 at 23:38 Frye2k11 says:
i7 920 OC @ 3.6 Ghz + a single 9800gtx here.
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
nope
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
0$
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
my graphics card possibly, not likely.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built?
Runs everything sufficiently smooth. 9 months old except the gfx card which is about 3 years old.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
laptops suck, they’re too big to be portable.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
nah, stick to games.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
nvidia for sure. Because of their linux drivers.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
The recommended PSU is you find in the mainboard manual is based on a full pc with 4 hard drives and 6 usb devices plugged and with 5 fans spinning at full speed etc. Real computers use far less power. So get a small, good one imo.
13/01/2011 at 23:47 JohnnyMaverik says:
1. No
2. N/A
3. N/A
4. It’s fine, it’s a Laptop but the model is only about a year old and the laptop itself about 6 months old.
5. Because my family home is in Portugal, I live in London and go to uni there, also live in halls, I needed something fairly powerful but I couldn’t afford a good desktop for my home back in Portugal and my room in the UK and TBH I don’t really want a desktop at halls. So I got a fairly powerful laptop which is aeroplane travel friendly and can still max out nearly all the new releases, as well as be more tan competent for the work I do at uni (modelling, animation etc…).
6. No I’m not but tips are always helpful and welcome so yes please.
7. I’m not but if I was I’d probably go for a GTX 460, simply because it’d be with-in my price range and I know it’d last me a few years.
8. Because when it comes to PSU’s quality is everything, as the old saying goes, with PSU’s if you buy cheep you buy twice, and the manufacturers and retailers know that, so any A grade PSU’s get a big mark-up.
13/01/2011 at 23:53 multiname says:
The Tom’s Hardware series on building a balanced PC is quite enlightening if you’re thinking of upgrading your PC. For instance, a Core 2 Duo like mine is still a fine CPU. Ideally graphics-wise I should be usng for something significantly more powerful than a 5750, but a dual-GPU setup would be too much.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/balanced-gaming-pc-overclock,2699.html
14/01/2011 at 00:46 televizor says:
I’m getting a new Acer laptop tomorrow (Intel i3 2,4Ghz, 3GB of ram and a nVIDIA gt 420m graphics card) for about 600 euros. Why get this over a desktop? Cause of the mobility, I often get together with my friends for LAN parties or go over to my girlfriend.
My old computer is about 5 years old ( got a PS3 3 years ago so that was my main gaming thing) but it’s still able to run Starcraft 2.
The game I’m most looking forward to? Mass Effect.
14/01/2011 at 01:14 Fitzmogwai says:
I’m running a monstro PC at the moment, homebuilt last year when I decided that my redundancy money was better spent on replacing my old Athlon single core relic than paying the mortgage.
Now that I’m working again, I’ve got my eye on a DX11 ATI (oh, all right, AMD) card and a shiny shiny 30″ Dell monitor. Why AMD? Because nVidia are lying scummy bastards and I don’t trust them an inch.
I need the extra pixels for video editing, you see. No, really. It’s got nothing to to with BF:BC2 or FSX at all.
14/01/2011 at 02:21 Snargelfargen says:
I’m going completely overboard this year and spending just about 450$ (canuck bucks) to upgrade my computer. I’m switching to the new sandy bridge chipset with an i5 2500k and an asus p67 pro motherboard. I already picked up an extra hard drive and some ram (4gb for 20$ on boxing day!).
Really, I don’t need to upgrade quite yet as my current set-up (intel e8400 and a radeon hd4870) plays most games fine. So I suppose I fall into the “hobbyist” category.
Once Amd releases their Bulldozer processors later in the year, I expect they will get into a pricing war with intel, so it should be a good year for people planning to buy a completely new computer.
An RPS computer bits guide sounds like a great idea. Most forums are full of “hobbyists” like me giving terrible advice, especially when you can build a decent computer for very very little these days.
Regarding power supplies: Unless you are using 2 video cards or RAID or something else fancy, you will never need more than a 500 Watt psu. Getting a 750+ Watt psu is like buying an suv for picking up the groceries: expensive and noisy.
14/01/2011 at 02:22 skalpadda says:
It’s been almost 3 years since I last bought any new stuff for my PC (apart from a new keyboard and mouse last year). and it still plays everything I want it to. Been thinking of investing in an SSD and some faster RAM, but so far it seems that money is better spent on new games to play and other toys to have fun with.
What I should do is actually assemble my PC in its case rather than having the mobo sitting all naked on my desk with hard drives scattered all over and cables running everywhere..
14/01/2011 at 02:26 Tunips says:
1. One or the other
2. ~AUD1000-1500 for a new box
3. The graphics card is really the only component of mine that is upgradable. I’m looking favourably at the Nvidia 570
4. My current box is ~2.5 years old. Everything short of ARMA2 and Metro2033 runs playably, although it’s creaking a bit now that I’ve got a 24″ screen
5. Sometimes I steal my sister’s laptop to play Artemis Bridge
6. A map of “THIS IS GOOD BUY THIS” would be inestibably useful
7. Looking at the Nvidia 570. It seems it goes as fast as the 480, but without the crazy sound effects and city-wide power drain.
8. Because you can’t get away with not buying one. Insta-cartel
My current specs:
Core2 Quad
4GB DDR2 1033MHz* RAM
ATI 4870 512MB
ASUS P5Q motherboard
Big heap of HDDs
Antec p182 – The case which most resembles 2001′s monolith
My computer still works just fine, and almost works on the highest end games set to highish settings. But it’s got it’s little problems.
Apart from the GPU, nothing is upgradably to current parts.
The P5Q motherbaord, which had some pretty neat features, was a mistake – it’s listed as supporting 1033MHz RAM, but in fact it does not. I’ve had to turn it down to 833MHz to get it to boot.
But most of aggravating of all: Fucking ATI. The 4870 was spectacular value when I bought it, and still runs pretty nicely. But on multiple occasions, I’ve found – after exaustingly exaustive searching – the the wierd graphics error or crash or unplayable framerate in a game is down to a single issue: Fucking ATI and their terrible drivers which never get fixed. When is struck Morrowind in my Skyrim-fuelled reinstall I was on the point of ragebuynewvideocard, until I finally found an overcomplicated semi-solution.
Seems like this year is pretty good time to upgrade. Intel and AMD are both switching to a new CPU plug, which hopefully they’ll stick with for a while. Sandy bridge is a bit of a wash for gamers who don’t video-edit, so I’ll wait and see how AMD’s offering turns out. I haven’t read that DDR3 is going to be replaced any time soon.
I think my course of action will be to buy a GTX570, and give the rest time to setttle down.
14/01/2011 at 03:07 Creeping Death says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Depennds greatly on my living arrangements this year. Hopefully so
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
Up to £1000, but I normally try to limit myself to around £700
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
-
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
Last PC I built was 2 years ago, it got about 2 months of gaming before it had to be boxed away and I moved to a place that didn’t have space for a desktop pc :(
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I use a laptop for gaming because I’m currently living with my gf and we don’t have space. Assuming I manage to get a job soon we can get a bigger place and then its back to a powerhouse desktop pc!
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
Not personally, would be a good idea for a feature though!
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Whats the top of the range Nvidia card atm? Yea, give me 2 of those…
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
From a quick check it seems to be somewhere around £70-£90 gets you a 700w PSU. That seems pretty decent to me…
14/01/2011 at 03:20 daphne says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I’m going to buy a new PC.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
I’ll be spending about $1500, but an important portion of it is due to the value added tax and import premiums where I live.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
I am currently on a laptop but I wouldn’t really prefer it to a desktop when gaming (though I did end up playing stuff like ME2 on it)
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I have a paranoid temperament and I probably wouldn’t ever be able to build or assemble my own PC with my own hands due to some fear that I’ll be clumsy, or something. RPS does not need to show how to buy a cheap, fast PC as many already hardware sites already cover that and really it’s not difficult to pick components if you do some research on your own beforehand.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
I’m getting a Radeon HD 6950 that I’ll probably be unlocking to a 6970.
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me.
PSUs certainly are gaining in importance and they will only become more prominent as time passes and video cards etc. continue their relentless march of power draw.
14/01/2011 at 03:43 DOLBYdigital says:
1. No
2. N/A
3. N/A
4. My PC is still phenomenal for me and can play almost every game at highest or very high settings. I built it over 2 years ago and will probably upgrade the GPU in a year or two.
5. My last gaming PC was a laptop that played BF2, CSS and many HL/HL2 mods wonderfully which is all I played at that time anyway.
6. No but I’m sure it would help others, since many people think they have to spend tons for a great PC.
7. Not for a year or two but probably Nvidia since I like their drivers. I’ve heard that ATI has gotten much better but I’ve had great experiences with EVGA Nvidia GPUs.
8. Because they are basically one of the most important parts of your PC for stability. I like Corsair and Antec personally.
14/01/2011 at 04:07 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Yes, Actually preparing to do an upgrade within the month
New mobo, new (more,better) RAM, new CPU, new liquid cooling =D, new hdd(s), and new monitor (22+ inch, I’m sick of my 19″)
And I hope it will cost $1400 more like 1600 though, so yeah. should give the comp a bit of a kick up the arse as they say.
Now I just have to clean the area around my computer -_-*
14/01/2011 at 05:08 Skusey says:
I may upgrade a few bits, just because I enjoy fiddling with computers. If I could afford it I’d like to build a future computer but never mind. I do need a new hard drive and I’d like a second monitor but everything is holding up fine, it’s only a couple of years old. There’s also a chance that I’ll decide to buy a new graphics card, and I have no idea what I’ll buy. There’s new ones coming out every week and most of them seem to be unnecessarily powerful compared to the games coming out.
14/01/2011 at 05:48 ezekiel2517 says:
1. Hopefully
2. 1.5k+ USD
3. New from scratch
5. I wanted a common laptop and found one that could run all games to date in medium to high range. Seemed like a steal (old PC couldn’t even run Rome: Total War).
6. Def would like some article about it.
7. Likely an NVIDIA. I am very happy with the one this laptop has.
8. =(
14/01/2011 at 09:25 Lukasz says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
Will do a major overhaul of my current system.
2. If buy, how much do you think you might spend?
1000-1300 AUD
3. If upgrade, what parts do you expect to change?
Everything except gpu (which should be fine for the rest of the year) monitor (might change it with gpu but if i do this only in november or december) speakers
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
My current is 4.5 years old with added ram and changed gpu (512 to 2GB of ddr1 and 7600GT to 4850) Also replaced a 120GB ide HDD with Spinpoint F11T 2 years ago and 2 months ago I added another 1T drive Spinpoint F3
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
No laptop
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
No need. i know enough.
7. If you’re buying a new graphics card, what are you getting, and why?
Not at the moment but if i got extra cash i will get 6870
8. And why are decent PSUs so expensive!? Seems like a big old price gouge to me. But anyway.
Beats me. Illuminati are involved?
14/01/2011 at 10:45 Kefren says:
1. No, happy with my PC. About 1.5 years old, and I tend to keep them for c.5 years, maybe with one upgrade. There are so many older games to play or replay that it seems silly to upgrade often. By the time I upgrade I have a list of about 30 games to get, all of which are cheap by then, and my next five years are assured.
4. See above.
5. No. I tried using my netbook when away from home for work but the 600 pixel height ruins things.
14/01/2011 at 11:32 shlomme says:
1. Yes
2. n/a
3. Monitor (larger), RAM upgrade (dirt cheap), possibly graphics card (vanity)
4. n/a
5. I did for a couple years, and it wasn’t fun.
6. I built my own machine, wouldn’t mind the info though.
7. Depends on the next NVidia update. I have a AMD HD 5870 which is still reasonably okay, I’ll probably decide mid-year.
8. No idea.
14/01/2011 at 11:45 Savage Henry says:
Oooooh, utterly topical, as I’ve just splashed out on a new PC. Anyone looking for a new setup should have a browse at the one-day deals on Scan as they seem to be very, very good at the moment. I bought a combo deal for a Coolermaster Case, MSi mobo, i5 Sandy Bridge, 4GB of Ram and a Samsung 1TB HD for a smidge under £370. A few extras, canny recycling of old kit and a blag or two off my flatmate should give me a worthy PC for about £500. Chuffed!
14/01/2011 at 11:46 Rikard Peterson says:
1. Are you going to buy a new PC, or upgrade your PC this year?
I’m not planning to do so.
4. If you don’t intend to buy or upgrade, is that because your PC is still good? When was that PC built? (Mine has not really had much of an overhaul in two years, for example, and I am only just thinking of tinkering with it now.)
It’s almost decent, and runs games with low requirements alright. Built about four years ago, I think, and I’ve replaced the graphics card since.
5. Do you use a laptop for gaming? If so, why that rather than a lovely desktop box?
Sometimes I use my MacBook because I have it with me, or because I’m using it for something else or because I’m playing that rare beast that is a Mac game that I don’t have on Windows.
6. Are you clueless about building stuff and think it costs £2000 for a new PC? If so, would you like RPS to show you how to build a cheap, fast PC?
I’m not completely clueless, but my last purchased PC (not counting the MacBook) was a prebuilt HP because it’s cheaper and easier than the put-it-together yourself thing that my previous one was.
14/01/2011 at 15:53 AlexV says:
1. Certainly won’t buy new. Probably upgrade at least something.
2. N/A
3. I’m hoping Sandy Bridge’s LGA 1155 socket requirement makes LGA 1156 obsolete(ish), causing CPU’s for that socket to plummet in price – at which point I’ll grab a i7 875K on the cheap for my existing P55 board and see how far it will overclock.
Other than that, if my old SSD finally runs out of erase cycles, I’ll have to replace that with a newer, shinier SSD.
4. Still good. Can always be better, though! :-)
5. No, never.
6. No. But I could easily spend £2K on a new PC if building one from scratch (so needing all new peripherals, monitor, etc.)
7. Not planning to, until something doesn’t run at full native resolution with high details on my current one. I’ve stuck a rather nice aftermarket silent cooler on it, so it would be a pain to replace.
8. Quality of components? Just a guess. I’m currently using a Seasonic X-750 which is very, very nice. Runs fanless unless lots of power is called for, and even then is pretty quiet. I don’t like CrossFire/SLI – not using more than one graphics card cuts down considerably on power and cooling requirements.
14/01/2011 at 18:09 ZeDestructor says:
1. Building a new system
2. 1500-2500usd
3. NA
4. NA
5. Yes. Because I couldn’t have both :(
6. No. I know enough to try my hand at water-cooling :D
7. GTX 560. reasonable priced and powerful. (also because I’m a bit of a nvidia fanboy)
8. Good quality parts and more importantly, good engineering and QA cost quite a bit :(
14/01/2011 at 18:11 piippo says:
1. Yes, I already did. Mainly done for other-than-gaming needs. I was running Core 2 Duo E6400 based system, but I upgraded to the new “Sandy Bridge” 2nd gen Core i7-2600K.
2. Upgrade cost me around 550euros. Minus the money I get from selling the residue from my last rig.
3. CPU, motherboard and memory.
4. The old rig was some 4 years old, so it needed and upgrade.
5. Laptops aren’t great from gaming, you end up spending a lot more for such laptop and it still lags behind desktop. Also, it’s no longer a “laptop” at that point.
6. No, I’m not clueless at all :)
7. Not getting a new graphics card right now, but later in the year possibly some DX11 cabable nVidia card. GTX 570 if it’s reasonably priced, around 200euros.
8. Good PSU will last you for many builds. My current Seasonic has seen a lot, and quality PSU is key. When PSU breaks, it CAN take other stuff with it. Hack-job Chinese no-name PSU’s can’t deliver on their promises and will not last. Corsair has done some great PSUs, well Seasonic has built them for them but still. Corsair has also done cheap shit that they now sell since they have the brand for it. So it’s best to check PSU case by case basis. Seasonic is good choice, all their PSU are safe bets.
14/01/2011 at 20:26 TWeaK says:
1. Probably not
2. ..
3. I could actually really do with a new monitor. 17″ Dell analogue TFT’s just don’t cut it…
4. I upgraded from an Athlon socket 939 with an 8800GT to a Core i3 530 and Radeon 5830 just last year, even that can handle everything I throw at it at reasonable settings. Also, with a Gelid Tranquillo cooler on the CPU it clocks up from 2.8GHz to 4GHz without breaking a sweat.
5. Definitely not worth it, you’ll throw more than twice the money at it and barely get half the performance. Also, good gaming laptops aren’t really portable, which defeats the object.
6. Nope I follow hardware almost as much as games :D
7. I’m not, but I’d say hold out and see if Nvidia bring out a GTX 560 and if it’s any good. Either that or get a GTX 460. 1GB version mind.
8. A decent PSU isn’t that expensive :P ~£60 will get you a good one, such as an OCZ ModXtremePro 500W. Unless you’re going for dual GPU (not worth it with the driver issues) you won’t need more than that.
My current set up is the afformentioned i3 530 and Radeon 5830, hooked into a Gigabyte H55 UD2 board, with 2x2GB OCZ 1600MHz memory (oh noes! My warranty!). I also was lucky and got an OCZ Vertex 1 as a birthday present, though it’s not the best out there at the moment. If you’re looking for something good I’d point your nose at Crucial’s C300 drives (or the model that will supercede that, the C400 I believe).
Excluding the SSD, the new kit (CPU, mobo, memory and GPU) cost around £500 last year. Case, PSU (Seasonic 500W IIRC) and storage drive (Samsung Spinpoint F1) were all taken from the previous rig.
@edit: also on the CPU front I’d definitely recommend Sandybridge socket 1155 CPUs. They’re pretty much making the old top end stuff (i7 socket 1366) redundant. Overclocking them is very different though, so if you plan to do that you need to make sure you get a motherboard with a P67 chipset and a CPU with a ‘K’ at the end of its name.
14/01/2011 at 21:55 LazyGit says:
1. Yes, upgrade.
3. CPU, mobo, RAM, maybe PSU.
4. PC is actually still good. It’s been going for 4 years with the addition of a new graphics card last year. Running an E6600, 4GB RAM, and a GTX 460. Can run Crysis at maximum at 30fps.
6. Please do show people that you can build a quality gaming rig as powerful as a console for effectively less than the cost of a console: you need to own a PC of some sort these days anyway so the cost of monitor, case, mobo, most CPU, most RAM, kb + mouse is written off, therefore you’re only really paying extra for a card like a GTX 460.
8. PSUs are expensive because they’re important. You shouldn’t have to pay more than £50 for one though unless you’re building a monster.
16/01/2011 at 16:56 P3RF3CT D3ATH says:
I’m building a computer solely for maxing out Crysis 2 when it comes out. If I can do that, I’m set for any other game out there.
19/01/2011 at 20:49 Droniac says:
1. Hell no!
4. I upgraded my PC in November of last year with some of the latest hardware. It damn well should be good for any new game. The hardware consists of a Core i5 760, Radeon 6870 and 4GB RAM – it even runs Black Ops multiplayer without stuttering, which is pretty much the quintessential performance achievement for a gaming PC nowadays.
5. I have a gaming notebook, but barely use it now that my PC is superior again. It still comes in very handy for both organizing and attending LAN parties.
6. No. My full-system upgrade (including Windows 7 and a new high-performance HDD) came in at less than 700 euro.
01/02/2011 at 10:05 andrewsargeant says:
I found something that might help on reddit this morning:
US WhatGFX
UK WhatGFX
Looks pretty useful. I bookmarked it as I will be upgrading my graphics card soon.