Building A Gaming Rig - A Living Document. (A HEXUS Project)

[rob_z3_man]

I learned so much from this. Thanks a lot. I used to always save on casing. Now I know better.

[Spicy]

myoh my! for me it was too much information at once!
...thought the text would never end...

[Darkling]

Wow a thread that at least hints at what I am after

lol spent hours trauling through various sites catching up on CPUs, GFX cards and such but still not really sure what I am going for.

I nearly cried when my PC turned round and flatly said no to running Oblivion very embarising at the time... But when I started to look into it I realised quite how out of date _everything_ in my PC was... hell they barely seem to make AGP GFX cards any more... So I am planning on doing an update as soon as I can in the new year.

What would be really good is if some one who hasn't lost the plot quite like I have over the last few years to tell me what is really needed to run things like Oblivion, Quake 4 and all the new games in decent resolution at good frame rates.

At the momment I keep ending up with a shopping basket with a grands worth in it would love to know what I can do to cut this down abit.

Shopping list includes
Motherboard
CPU + decent silent/quiet heat sink
2 gigs memory
and a GFX card

Any one willing to put together a list of these components posibly under the headings of "Cheap and chearful", "to be proud of", "you have too much cash"?

Thanks,
Chris

[nvening]

I think you need to make a new thread in the hardstuff forum mate, thwen it will be easier to hwelp you and more people will see it.

[spazman]

Wow how outdated is this, AMD hold all the aces needs a few tweaks i feel

[oimi]

Wow, cool guide. So what is the total price of each system depending on the choices made? I couldn't work it out.

[bardel]

This thread is a great idea, but it's obviously out of date. There seems to be a few calls for it to be updated, clearly this takes a fair bit of effort...

Since I am currently in the market to build a gaming rig (been out of it for a while and still using a four year old Athlon which is driving me mental for my daily office chores) I thought maybe the best way to try and kick start this was to post my current shopping list. That way, you guys can use it as a base to start critisising / approving my choices accordingly.

Looking forward to your responses peeps.

Mobo - BFG nVidia 680i SLi
CPU - Intel Core2 Duo E6600
Memory - Corsair Dominator Twin 2x2048-8500C5D (2GB)
Hard Drive - 2 x Seagate 7200.10 160GB S-ATA (in Raid0)
GPU - BFG nVidia 8800GTX
Case - Can't decide... I want something black, smart, decent and no stoopid windows and LED's
PSU - Corsair HX 620W
CPU Fan - Arctic Freezer 7 + Arctic Silver 5 Paste
Keyboard - Logitech G15
Mouse - Logitech G7
Monitor - Samsung 205BW 20" Widescreen
DVD-RW - Samsung SH-W183 Sata
OS - Vista Ultimate (64 bit) with XP Pro Dual Boot

**Notes** I already have a Samsung 930BF 19" TFT which I'll run alongside the new 20" Widescreen

Haven't selected a soundcard as I'll probably live with the onboard sound. Im a bit of an audiophile, but the speakers attached to my PC won't deserve an aftermarket soundcard!

Have selected 2 HDD's in Raid 0 over a single Raptor 10000rpm drive as they are sooo expensive and unless I can afford to run 2 Raptors in Raid 0 I believe the 2x cheaper HDD's in Raid 0 will perform better than the single raptor?

Get bashing!

[bardel]

Well, looks to me like this thread shouldn't be a sticky any more. It's out of date an no-one's replied to my post which means either:-

a) - no one's reading it anymore because you all know it's out of date

or

b) - no one want's to talk to me.

I'll take my shopping list and create a new post to see if I can prove either theory!

Barry

[Madafwo]

No need to change the TIM on the Arctic 7, it comes with MX-1 which is just as good as AS5 IMO, case, akasa eclipse or the Antec P180, both around £80 from Scan.

Can't fault the choice of Motherboard, GPU, PSU, CPU, Keyboard or Mouse. However I would get the slower andmuch cheaper Corsair PC6400 memory, if you did plan on over clocking then you'd still be able to get 3.6 out of the CPU without overclocking the memory.

Another thing, with RAID you'd be screwed if the board fails or the HDD fails, just have two disc's run in JBOD

[bardel]

Hi Madafwo,

I started another post in the end over here.

Thanks for the tip about the paste, I'll leave that as it comes then.

You've suggested saving some money on the RAM which is helpful cheers.

And as for the case looks like the Antec P180 is favourite.

Thanks for your response.

I still think this thread should be closed though... It's dead in the water!

Barry

[bardel]

Oh and meant to say, Raid 0 should be quicker which is why I'm going for it. Not worried about data redundancy, I have my data stored on RAID 5 array's elsewhere, and I'll take images of the system partition should anything go belly up!

[alterion]

this thread need de-stickyfying for being outdated arstechnica does a very good guide similar to this (albeit with all prices in USD) which I would recommend to people

[nvening]

Is there any point to this if its not kept up to date?

[aidanjt]

...

[prits_88]

lol i was reading the 1st post, and it said something about an x800XT as a good card,
i thought for a sec...."wait this card is old and not very good nowadays"
then i saw the date the post was written..

silly me

[nvening]

please delete this, its just taking up space now, it would be useful to be kept up to date but no one will do it lol