Don't panic, Clanmates: I'll still be around to sexually assault French-Canadians, French and other assorted Eurotrash on the 360.

However, it has become clear to me that I should start thinking about building a gaming PC, as well. My 360 is just too unreliable.

That said, it has been over a decade since I was hardcore into PC/FPS. Back then, all you have to know was "512 megs ram? Good. Nvidia card? Good."

I hear it's a little more complex these days.

What specs and/or hardware should I be looking at? Pricing?

If one of you tech-savvy gamers could just copy/paste your latest build info, that'd be great. I'm Moderate Retard when it comes to PC hardware or software tech stuff. Computers and I generally don't get along...

Thanks in advance...

Depends on budget, I suppose.

I take that back. Depends on priorities. If money's no object, you can build a pretty hardcore rig that'll do you just fine for years... but if budget's a consideration, you can still build a pretty sweet setup for under a grand

Lucky for you, you can build an awesome PC now for much cheaper than previous generations. They only thing you still get raped on is video cards, since they're basically price fixing. I buy almost everything off of new egg, their prices are hard to beat. Check out slickdeals.net for specials, they usually have a lot of computer related stuff on there. Get a quality power supply, it's one of the easiest things to skimp on since you'd figure it leads to no performance gains, but getting a shitty PSU means unreliability, especially if you overclock, and you'll be sorry later on.

Something Quad Core.

If money is no object then Intel Core i7 can't be beat.
If money is an object then AMD Phenom is the way, thats what I'm running.

Edited to add: If money is no object again you might want to look at the Intel SSDs, they look stupid fast on paper and a RAID0 system drive of them may scream.

+1 on the Newegg recommendation.

Also, I am a big Asus motherboard fan. Never have had problems with their MBs.

Video cards are a complete rip-off, but you have to pay to play.

Normally I just do without until I can afford the best, but this philosophy doesn't apply to non-SHTF electronics.

I need the CMMG of PCs: looks great, specs out like a Colt/LMT and all at half the price.

Preferably, I'd like to keep it under a grand. I have a 17" LCD monitor and Dell PC from 5 years ago that I could use as a base to save on power supplies and the like...

Yup. I've always gone AMD CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, Asus motherboards. Never let me down.

But as already mentioned, when you order the Video Card, it comes in a box like this to your door:

You'll need a high-quality, beefy PSU to power a reasonable gaming box. You definitely don't want whatever no-name POS Dell picked out.

Losing $1k of hardware to a $30 PSU fuckup hurts bad.

I guess the biggest question is, what games do you want to play? See what the recommended specs are, then look at hardware that exceeds the recommendations so you don't hate life too much when the next big thing comes out.

When I was in the "scene", I spared no expense on power supplies. Get a higher end Antec or Thermaltake, etc. Don't fall for buying the 50 dollar PSU. Man up and get the 125-150 PSUs and you won't regret it later.

Do some reading here: http://forum.pcmech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=43

Lots of information, build sheets, and ideas.

+2 for Newegg.  Check out the Intel Q6600 for a processor (quad core and quick for a decent price).  Very much agree on the Asus motherboard comment above.  Kingston 4+GB of ram (Hyper X, not the "value";  minimal price difference).  Be sure to get an aftermarket heatsink and fan like a CoolerMaster, Zalman, etc.  Graphics card?  Well, that's your puppy.  The price range is huge on these.  I'd stick with one that's highly rated.  Antec boxes serve their purpose well.  

My 0.02.  

DDR3 is a ripoff. Performance is not very impressive over DDR2.

For what it's worth.

Pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago. Memory, video card and Drive speed.  
The difference being that there are only two video companies worth mentioning, Nvidia and ATI.
Also, the chip of the mother board is important (sort of).
You can now put more than one card in your MOBO. they "crosslink" and talk to eachother. I have  three Nvidia cards linked together in my PC tower.
BUT each card must be same make and model and the MOBO must support such a set up.

Memeory is DDR2 or DDR3. DDR3 is faster and more expensive. same as always.

CPU- either Intel or AMD.   6 months ago Intel was the fastest and not really expensive.

Nvidia SLI rigs are the only way to go.  Dual SLI, even...four monster video cards at once!





NO to AMD/ATI.   They're heading for extinction and Intel/Nvidia is a better, more sensible combination with better support in the gaming community.





Choosing AMD/ATI these days is just....retarded.

CJ

Disagree. AMD's not going anywhere. Right now, Intel might be a better price/performance balance, but that changes regularly.

Doesn't really matter as much as the fanboys would like to think it does, both AMD and Intel make quality CPUs.

As far as GPU, I stay away from ATI. Nvidia makes good stuff.

my 4870x2 seems to be holding up quite well ..... I agree that AMD is nowhere near  as  good as Intel for processors/mobos

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2032280010 4023

Any of those will get you going.  I'd probably get one of the GTX 260 models in your price range.

As you can tell from this thread, a lot of it really comes down to personal preference. Might want to do some reading on hardware forums like HardOCP to find actual benchmarks and comparisons.

If you come up with some basics regarding what you're interested in, we can help make sure everything fits together well.

Nice rig. U2 UFO cases are the cats meow. My super lanboy doesn't have shit for room inside it.

Watercooling is too much pain for too little gain, IMO. You can do just fine with an efficient fan setup.

I'm a 120mm fan junkie.

For you maybe ... I am able to OC my Q6600 to 4.2 on water. was only able to get 3.6 on air and that is without trying.

Have you tried death raping your existing pc until it complied and played games?

Yes, but it's so old and slow that it will only play them while I'm actually fucking it's motherboard through a custom cut hole.

One tires rather quickly when one is trying to operate a keyboard, mouse and time his thrusts for maximum effect all at the same time.

Whatever you get, I would definitely look at EVGA for your mobo and video card.  They have a lifetime warranty on all of their components, as well as a trade up program.

My current rig:

Intel Quad core  Q9650 OC'd stable at 3.6ghz
EVGA 780i SLI mobo.
4GB Corsair Dominator PC2 8500 ram
2 WD RE drives in Raid 0 as well as 2 backup data drives.
EVGA GTX 285 Superclocked
BFG 800w PSU

As far as the video card goes, only get one that your processor can keep up with, or you will just be wasting your money.  My E6700 C2D that was overclocked to 3.0ghz and was still a bottleneck for my GTX 285, that's why I upgraded to the Q9650, which IIRC is the fastest LGA 775 chip you can buy.  The difference was huge in my FPS in games like COD5 and TF2.

The C2D processors have become very affordable since i7 made its debut.  I read at Anandtech that Intel will be coming out with another generation of processor early next year IIRC, so rather than upgrading my whole system, I just stuck with the LGA 775 chipset and upgraded my processor.

Also, from all of the benchmarks I have seen as of late, quad core really doesn't gain you much in games, but is a huge help in things like video/audio encoding.

Go to Toms Hardware to see some extremly good benchmarks on basically any type of hardware, they will give you a good idea of performance.  They also have guides for building PC's in different price ranges.

I don't overclock. Chips produced at the factory aren't produced to run at a specific clockspeed, they're produced for a specific family and individually clocked to see what frequency they run best at.

I don't need a computer that can give me wrong answers very quickly, I can do that well enough on my own.

Prices change all the time, but not to long ago this was well under $800.





Link will take you to the item on Newegg.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz LGA
775 95W Quad-Core Processor




ASUS Silent Knight AL 92mm Sleeve CPU
Cooler