I am looking into buying a new gaming pc, but I want to keep it under $1500, but still have a lot of good stuff. The only money saving things I can figure, as I am not really into computer hardware, is to use a CTR monitor instead of an LCD, lol. So, what hard drive, processor, motherboard, ram, graphics card, sound card, case, cooling, etc. etc. would you put together to get the best gaming rig you could, for under $1500?

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I'm no big gamer buff, but let's see if I can help out here.

$1500 should be enough for pretty good gaming PC. I assume this is for high graphic games right?

Actually LCD's are getting better these days. Some say that they can compare to CRT monitors now in the gaming environment.

Hard drive:
I say go with a 200GB hard drive with 7200RPM. If you can afford it, go with Serial ATA hard drives instead. I think Maxtor has a 250GB one for over $100.

Motherboard:
Get one that supports the newer chipsets for either the AMD or Intel CPUs. Asus, VIA and MSI are among the bigger name brands that come in mind now.

RAM:
At least 1GB. Get more if you can afford it.

Graphics Card:
I think any of the recent cards from nVidia or ATI should do. Get one with 128MB, or better yet, 256MB or memory for the video card.

Sound Card:
Get a card from SoundBlaster. Read some reviews here for more info.

Case:
Size does matter here. So think over what you want to put into this machine because if you intend to add a lot, you have to make sure to get a bigger case and a higher power suppy unit.

Cooling:
You should be ok with the fans. If you think it's going to get too hot or if you want to overclock the CPU, I say go with liquid cooling. Here's more information on it.

That should be enough to get you up and running. I think you should have some spare even after doing this, so upgrade other components accordingly if you want to spike it up a little.

Here are some tutorials on building gaming PCs:

ExtremeTech
FiringSquad

For those hardware parts, I suggest looking online for deals. Sites that come to my mind now are:

PriceMatch
NewEgg
eBay (usually find good deals, but be careful since it may be harder to return defective items here than if you bought it on a online store)

 

 

 

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It's quite useless to do liquid cooling for a gaming pc.

1. If you ever go to LAN parties, it's hassle with a extra waterthingy block.
2. The parts will die quicker, it's after all H2O
3. Most people that do liquid cooling are diehard overclockers or wanting it for the show.
4. Usually the warranty is voided on your other hardware if you use liquid cooling (not sure about it)

Btw. there's no doubt about it, AMD pwnz Intel, so go for a Athlon 64 3xxx+ and you should be ok

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You would certainly get a very good gaming rig for $1500. Check out www.overclockers.co.uk Top quality site.

The forums are also very useful. There are litrally hundreds of topics based on 'Recommended gaming rig for £800' etc

The hardware is fairly cheap, and deffinately of the highest quality.

Ed

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Hi there discharges. I think I say hello to you for the first time.
So you want to buy a computer about $1500? OK I'll give you my opinion and some advices, becouse you "hit" same price range as me...

===== PROCESSOR=====
First of all we have to decide what processor we are going to use. From that depends motherboard type and CPU slot. So Intel or AMD? I would choose AMD if talking about computer for gaming. Why? Becouse AMD is faster (in most cases - I'm not going to do detailed analysis) and cheaper. I'm not against Intel, actually I have never had another processor but Celeron...
So we choose AMD. Now what processor? What speed? The answer we will get right away after we choose the amount of money for that CPU. Let's say 250-300$. I would choose some CPU from Winchester family, becouse Venice and San Diego are still quite expensive, and I'm not even talking about doubled Toledo and Manchester processors... (If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here to see AMD processors chart).
So my sugestion is 2.2GHz Athlon 64 3500+ with 512KB cache, 90nm and price from $266.

=====MOTHERBOARD=====
Now after choosing CPU we need to choose the motherboard. The main thing I would care about is fast and full of functions chipset and newest technologies support. So double PCI-Express with SLI support gets in our sight. Lets list here some motherboards for the Athlon 64 from the best brands:

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe from $160
DFI LANParty NF4 SLI-DR from $172
Epox EP-9NPA+ SLI from $147
Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI from $150

I would choose Asus or DFI. The other two are good too. DFI: it's best for gaming, but it looks to good to put in a simple and cheap case (which will cost of course). And it's the most expensive. but $12 isn't much when buying a new computer.

=====RAM=====
I suggest two 512MB 400MHz DDRs for dual data processing. I would choose Corsair, but there are more good brands of RAM, like Viking, Mushkin, Kingston and others...
Here is my pick:
Corsair TWINX10243200XL 1GB PC3200 DDR Memory from $175
With EXTREMELY low latency! 2-2-2-5

=====VIDEO CARD=====
A quick answer for this issue: nForce 4 chipset in our motherboard means that we have to choose nVidia. And with SLI support, of course... Gaming performande depends on GPU the most. RAM and CPU go to the second place. So for gaming PC the most important is to have the newest card available. The newest today is 7800GTX. It's really expensive but I think she is worth the price.
I found for of them in newegg. The price is from $599. After some time if performance will get not acceptable for gaming in high graphics, there is an option to connect another 7800GTX via SLI.

=====HARD DRIVE=====
I would suggest Serial ATA. Forget IDE. It's old. Capacity depends only from your needs. But I think that 200GB should be enought.
Check it out =1:394/popup3[]=5:144/sortby=priceA/popup1[]=45:393/popup5[]=3:380]here for some HDDs. The brand is not such important (WD, Seagate, Maxtor - all of them are good).
The price from $94

=====SOUND=====
Sound card for gaming is not that important as good video card. Motherboads with integrated 7.1 audio provides quite high quality sounds. I suggest first try out the integrated sound, and then, if you don't like it, buy a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 or even Audigy 4.

=====Mouse=====
Yes! the mouse is very important too! I would choose Logitech best gaming mouse up to date:
Logitech® MX™518 Gaming-Grade™ Optical Mouse from $37

=====OTHER COMPONENTS=====[b]
All the parts I have suggested are worth [b]<$1350. The case is not important at all. It is only the matter of beauty: nice case cost more, but doesn't deliver more performance. Same with other parts, not affecting performance: monitor, DVD drive, keyboard...
If you think that the price is to big, then choose older video card (but better with SLI) and slower (and cheapier) RAM.
For cooling will be enought stock coolers I think, becouse we're building cheap and fast PC.

Good luck buying your new PC. I hope my advices will be usefull.


Sadas

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I would agree that the AMD 64 processor is the way to go, but I would go with the MSI RS480M2-IL MoBo (I was able to find it for $108) as well as the MSI Radeon X800 XL RX800XL-VT2D256E Video Card (found this for $297) both are very good products and the MoBo supports both UIDE and Sata so that you can use older tech and save money now and still be able to upgrade in the future.

Another reason for using the 2 MSI products is that it makes driver updates very, very simple. MSI has a programe called 'Live Update' that will, if set up to do so, periodicly check to make sure your using the latest drivers. Seeing as how most of the people I know, including myself, don't check on to make sure they are using the latest drivers, this is a handy little tool that runs in the background.

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Alright, here's something I don't get from this AMD talk.

How is AMD the best for gaming? I don't know the specific details of the processor, but from all the talk I've heard on boards, I'm quite curious as to how it's the best? I'm not going against it or anything of course, just want to know

Speaking of videocards, would a refurbished videocard be ok to buy? It says it has a warranty of 1 year or they'll refund your money and give you 5% off the next new item that you buy. It's a GForce 6600GT 256MB, and it's about 290 right now. And as you know I won't say where it's from or else it'll be sold out fast.

One last thing, what's a good price on a 140-180gig hard drive? Hopefully they don't cost that much. Thanks a lot for the help if there is any.

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a Gforce 5700 and above can handle almost all current games if you wanted to spend the money elsewhere =)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 - OEM
$123 on newegg.com
very reasonable price

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The main reason I would go for the AMD over the Intel is the fact that for the same price or a bit more you get a processor that can do TRUE multi processing. The newer games, especially the pure online games such as the newer Quakes, Unreal Tournaments, Guildwars, Final Fantasy's, EverQuests, Dark Age of Camalot, ect...not only require mid to high lvl graphic cards but also major amounts of processor work.

With a processor that can do true multi processing will make these games run smoother.

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Your budget of $1500 is more than enough to build a decent gaming PC, depending on your currency but if it's US, then you're in luck. Extremetech came out with its approved products and I'm sure you can choose from the parts there. Also, $800 is enough for a gaming PC since they also have specs there as well. As for monitors, I would recommend that you get an LCD even though it may be more expensive, it will not strain your eyes, based on my experience. Other than that, don't be just hardwarewise. Consider getting some optimization tools like Cacheman XP and system utilities such as TuneUp Utilities 2004. Antivirus and firewall is also important as well and go for those that are resource light.

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