StarGateWars Forums

ok who knows a website where they will build a custom desktop ? and secondly, who wants to build me a PC that can play games like bf4, arma 3 day z mod, etc etc..

any offer would be appreciated

http://www.pugetsystems.com/configmenu.php
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

any recommendations or reviews of some reliable pc's ?

an intel i5 is the way to go. even though I am an AMD fan, their top end is only capable of reaching the i3s.

depending on your budget thus is a balanced system. (toms hardware gives you the specs this can do)
•CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-4590 3.30 GHz 6MB LGA1150 [-20]
•HDD: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)
•MEMORY: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1866MHz Dual Channel Memory (ADATA XPG V2)
•MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z97 Pro4 ATX w/ Intel GbLAN, 2 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1, 2 PCI, 1 x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gb/s (All Venom OC Certified)
•SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
•VIDEO: AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card [+387] (Major Brand Powered by AMD)
Grand Total: $1,194.00
via cyber power.
no monitor.
includes windows.

I just wish AMD was back in the CPU game

If your budget is smaller you can cut back on the graphics. On my budget I would get a A6-A8 or even a fx level CPU with probably a GeForce GTX 750 Ti (uses half the power (heat) as other cards in its ability.) total hardware would be around 400-450. I have OS & case.

I wouldn't really bother with ordering a custom job, do it yourself it's not that hard - unless you plan to run some liquid cooling system through it.

As far as what you need....Depends if you're willing to go new/second hand gear, and if you're strictly going for a gaming pc, using it for multiplayer, how well you want the games to run etc.

I would suggest going nothing below:
- 8gb (generally preferred in 4 x 2) DDR3 @ 1600 (for gaming, won't matter as much, unless you're knee deep in multiplayer with a heavy amount of players)
- intel i5 4670+ (find the i7 equiv) (again not so worrying for purist gamers, still a solid cpu is good, dual core/quad core wont really matter for gamers)
- whatever hard drive, never really matters as long as it's fairly new, people will usually have an SSD to host their OS, I've never really bothered because my boot time is fast enough.
- motherboard wise...there are quite a few, I would suggest just flipping through reviews, most are cheap. (name brand is almost always a good thing to go for)
- graphics card is probably where you want to sink in the most money, anything above a gtx 660 or R9 270.

It's easy and quite cheap to build a comp that would run the games, it just depends how well you want them to run. ^ that stuff would probably...just...run bf4 on max, campaign. Master Rahl's has a beastlier graphics card so it would run bf4 on max quite well.
It's usually much much better building your own, sourcing the parts from Ebay or whatever. You can get much more for a budget.

Master Rahl wrote:an intel i5 is the way to go. even though I am an AMD fan, their top end is only capable of reaching the i3s.

depending on your budget thus is a balanced system. (toms hardware gives you the specs this can do)
•CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-4590 3.30 GHz 6MB LGA1150 [-20]
•HDD: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)
•MEMORY: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1866MHz Dual Channel Memory (ADATA XPG V2)
•MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z97 Pro4 ATX w/ Intel GbLAN, 2 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1, 2 PCI, 1 x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gb/s (All Venom OC Certified)
•SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
•VIDEO: AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card [+387] (Major Brand Powered by AMD)
Grand Total: $1,194.00
via cyber power.
no monitor.
includes windows.

I just wish AMD was back in the CPU game

If your budget is smaller you can cut back on the graphics. On my budget I would get a A6-A8 or even a fx level CPU with probably a GeForce GTX 750 Ti (uses half the power (heat) as other cards in its ability.) total hardware would be around 400-450. I have OS & case.

so thats about £680 ish, I'm ok with that, now I'm a complete noob in building pc's so is this everything I would need ?

Sol wrote:I wouldn't really bother with ordering a custom job, do it yourself it's not that hard - unless you plan to run some liquid cooling system through it.

As far as what you need....Depends if you're willing to go new/second hand gear, and if you're strictly going for a gaming pc, using it for multiplayer, how well you want the games to run etc.

I would suggest going nothing below:
- 8gb (generally preferred in 4 x 2) DDR3 @ 1600 (for gaming, won't matter as much, unless you're knee deep in multiplayer with a heavy amount of players)
- intel i5 4670+ (find the i7 equiv) (again not so worrying for purist gamers, still a solid cpu is good, dual core/quad core wont really matter for gamers)
- whatever hard drive, never really matters as long as it's fairly new, people will usually have an SSD to host their OS, I've never really bothered because my boot time is fast enough.
- motherboard wise...there are quite a few, I would suggest just flipping through reviews, most are cheap. (name brand is almost always a good thing to go for)
- graphics card is probably where you want to sink in the most money, anything above a gtx 660 or R9 270.

It's easy and quite cheap to build a comp that would run the games, it just depends how well you want them to run. ^ that stuff would probably...just...run bf4 on max, campaign. Master Rahl's has a beastlier graphics card so it would run bf4 on max quite well.
It's usually much much better building your own, sourcing the parts from Ebay or whatever. You can get much more for a budget.

I would want to build it myself if it was as simple as you seem to think it is. but my problem is if it goes tits up haha

Guild wrote:

Sol wrote:I wouldn't really bother with ordering a custom job, do it yourself it's not that hard - unless you plan to run some liquid cooling system through it.

As far as what you need....Depends if you're willing to go new/second hand gear, and if you're strictly going for a gaming pc, using it for multiplayer, how well you want the games to run etc.

I would suggest going nothing below:
- 8gb (generally preferred in 4 x 2) DDR3 @ 1600 (for gaming, won't matter as much, unless you're knee deep in multiplayer with a heavy amount of players)
- intel i5 4670+ (find the i7 equiv) (again not so worrying for purist gamers, still a solid cpu is good, dual core/quad core wont really matter for gamers)
- whatever hard drive, never really matters as long as it's fairly new, people will usually have an SSD to host their OS, I've never really bothered because my boot time is fast enough.
- motherboard wise...there are quite a few, I would suggest just flipping through reviews, most are cheap. (name brand is almost always a good thing to go for)
- graphics card is probably where you want to sink in the most money, anything above a gtx 660 or R9 270.

It's easy and quite cheap to build a comp that would run the games, it just depends how well you want them to run. ^ that stuff would probably...just...run bf4 on max, campaign. Master Rahl's has a beastlier graphics card so it would run bf4 on max quite well.
It's usually much much better building your own, sourcing the parts from Ebay or whatever. You can get much more for a budget.

I would want to build it myself if it was as simple as you seem to think it is. but my problem is if it goes tits up haha

It really is that simple , just about plugging cords in. There are many many help guides for building a custom computer, anywhere from helping to buy, to helping to build.
I would suggest:
- Consider a budget.
- Figure out the priority of the components you need, e.g. getting a good graphics card > more hdd space. You may want a blu-ray player as well. With the priority list you can judge how much money you want to sink into certain components.
- start sourcing the components, motherboard/case first, then whatever plugs into it. Ebay is probably your best bet. But there are many other websites. If it's second hand make sure it comes with everything you need.

ANY person that has custom built their rig will always say they did it cheaper and/or better than what they could have built it for.
Compared to Master Rahl's post...My latest has a better CPU and way better motherboard, maybe better than the graphics card, got a blu ray read/write, nice case, RAM is corsair vengeance, 24 inch monitor etc. etc. for the same price in AUD.

If someone makes out that building a computer takes time and is hard then they're most likely confused about life in general. It can get difficult though, with things like liquid cooling, but on the whole it's not in the least. Read some manuals and google some things.

I just did a quick build on cyberpowerpc.com but reading reviews from multiple forums this that is a popular build.

for straight gaming I tend to agree with toms hardware where i7s just aren't as much bang for buck as i5s and diminishing returns start kicking in.

Many first person shooters need more graphics than cpu. I really hant played around with this stuff for quite a while. and my personal builds have a very cheap processer and low/medium graphics. and now a SSD. There is no delay anymore. no split delay clicking on something. I even used raid to host OS, previously and the slight lag killed me.



When building a computer it is very straight forward almost everything is very obvious where it should go. And once you build you first computer you will learn how simple it really is, and will probably never buy prebuilt ones again.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Jonny101/saved/mbpmP6

ok i went from a pre built one and changed a few things to lower the price roughly (obviously ill go trawling the internet for better deals).

could you guys take a look, and laugh at me for obvious mistakes and anything I've completely missed of that I'll need.

any improvements or advice would be appreciated

Guild wrote:http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Jonny101/saved/mbpmP6

ok i went from a pre built one and changed a few things to lower the price roughly (obviously ill go trawling the internet for better deals).

could you guys take a look, and laugh at me for obvious mistakes and anything I've completely missed of that I'll need.

any improvements or advice would be appreciated

Ok... CPU cooler, you wont need one. I'm gonna assume you're not going to overclock your cpu, in which case the stock standard cpu heatsink/fan will be perfectly fine. That's a goddamn expensive one anyway. If you do happen to want/need one I would go with http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler- ... 212e20pkr2. Always does the job.

Sound card....don't know why you would need it, your motherboard has built in 7.1, unless you want other premium sound or something.

Since you're not super hardcore and are willing to buy nearly 100 quid worth of RAM I would suggest the good ol corsair vengeance: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair ... m2a1866c9r (anything above 1600 MHz you probably wont even notice the difference, even if your cpu would use it at speeds above, the dominator is just sort of overkill on the money, that link is for a 1866 version of vengeance which is only something like 3 pound extra).

You've also just got a 256 gb ssd....I recommend some secondary drive like a 1 tb @ 7200 rpm. Just some cheap typical one.
If you want to shave money off here, I would downsize the SSD. Some people just store their OS on the SSD (32-64 gb) others store core apps and games on it as well (128-256 gb ssd), and all have some bulk secondary storage for just typical crap like movies and porn.

Sol wrote:

Guild wrote:http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Jonny101/saved/mbpmP6

ok i went from a pre built one and changed a few things to lower the price roughly (obviously ill go trawling the internet for better deals).

could you guys take a look, and laugh at me for obvious mistakes and anything I've completely missed of that I'll need.

any improvements or advice would be appreciated

Ok... CPU cooler, you wont need one. I'm gonna assume you're not going to overclock your cpu, in which case the stock standard cpu heatsink/fan will be perfectly fine. That's a goddamn expensive one anyway. If you do happen to want/need one I would go with http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler- ... 212e20pkr2. Always does the job.

Sound card....don't know why you would need it, your motherboard has built in 7.1, unless you want other premium sound or something.

Since you're not super hardcore and are willing to buy nearly 100 quid worth of RAM I would suggest the good ol corsair vengeance: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair ... m2a1866c9r (anything above 1600 MHz you probably wont even notice the difference, even if your cpu would use it at speeds above, the dominator is just sort of overkill on the money, that link is for a 1866 version of vengeance which is only something like 3 pound extra).

You've also just got a 256 gb ssd....I recommend some secondary drive like a 1 tb @ 7200 rpm. Just some cheap typical one.
If you want to shave money off here, I would downsize the SSD. Some people just store their OS on the SSD (32-64 gb) others store core apps and games on it as well (128-256 gb ssd), and all have some bulk secondary storage for just typical crap like movies and porn.

+1. Sol knows what he is talking about here.

yep. sol got it.
but I love talking so if you want my worthless reassurance... using a similar type of CPU cooler.... I don't like the ones where the copper "directly touches", less surface area in contact with CPU.... that being said I run a (old/slow) CPU OC 150% in winter and 130% in summer (I don't have AC) with no issue. its going on what 6/7 years like this.

to your build, nice case plenty of room for that beast of a graphics card.

I would recommend a slightly larger power supply. If you stress your video card and CPU, you are burning power with all those fans other items... I always like having some wiggle room with them. I made the mistake with this build I have. I upgraded my CPU and graphics from the initial build and now I sit at its "recommended" amount of power for both but I run short of power some times with my fans, USB items/ 3 hard drives attached....

you might see .1 difference in frame rate with that fancy ram if your lucky. You can save easy money here.

no need for sound card, unless you actually at that level... then I would suggest a better one. onboard audio is usually very good and last but not least.... its kinda fun looking for this stuff isn't it?

Only other things you need is keybord/mouse (game controllers), monitor, and sound. and that's all.

Actually yeah, something Master Rahl pointed out that I didn't (and I'll re-iterate), make sure you graphics card can fit in your case fine. Higher end graphics cards tend to be long as hell.

Personally I always use a non-stock cpu cooler, It needn't cost you the earth to get lower temperatures but graphics cards tend to get rather hot and stock coolers do not cope well in my experience.

thanks for the responses sol and rahl really appreciate them !

ok changes ive made:
I switched up the cpu cooler for the one you've recomended, saves a bit of money but I'mthinking since it ain't that much I might aswell have one just in case.

swapped up the memory, deferring to your greater knowledge

I went for a 120 gb ssd and added a 1 tb internal hard drive at 7200 rpm like you said.

and got rid of the sound card, if I want one later I'll slash out and get a decent one if needed


The one thing I'm not sure on is the power, since I've come this far with your wisdom I once again defer to your knowledge, http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-po ... 20pg0750gr went for a 750 watts power supply, do you think this will be enough to run everything smoothly enough ?

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Jonny101/saved/mbpmP6

oh and yes it is can't wait to get on buying some stuff and getting on with it, just been watching videos on youtube of people building PC's, doesn't seem too hard