I am looking to build a PC for the first time after being given a boxed Coolermaster Centurion case and would be looking to build specifically a gaming machine. am fairly competent with PCs but have been out of touch for around 2 years and would appreciate some advice. I am not Intel or AMD loyal nor am I NVIDIA or ATI but would be looking for a machine that could run games like FEAR and Unreal Tournament 3 and CRYSIS on decent settings. Starting with the case - is it worth using as its brand new or worth looking to get something else ? Any help would be greatly appreciated
The coolermaster centurion isn't a bad case, you can keep it, but you will need to buy a rear case fan for it, as it doesn't come with one. I would recommend a Scythe S-Flex. What's your budget, and what size monitor do you use?
Hiya - thanks for the response The budget is around £600 and I already have 3 x 500gb Seagate Sata HDDs not specifically fast but enough storage to start with I hope. The monitor I have is a 21"
Lol - sorry, I can't believe I didn't see it in your thread title. You can build a fairly decent gaming PC for £600. I will post a parts list shortly. Do you need aother drive to put your OS on? Ideally I'd recommend doing so, as it speeds things up not having your OS drive clogged up with files.
Yeah another drive for the OS would be Ideal so I presume faster the better and size doesnt matter as much ? I would be looking to run Vista Ultimate or XP - not sure my older games like FEAR and FARCRY will run under Vista ? Unless you can suggest other alternatives. Thanks Gav
Games like that certainly run under Vista, and most of the stuff that doesn't, work in compatibility mode. Vista's compatibility mode is actually better than XP's in that regard. I still prefer XP myself, but creature of habit I suppose.
This lot comes to just shy of £600 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=702631 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Arct...-S775-Dual-Quad-Core-Ready-The-Favourite-One! http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Giga...-20-(x16)-DDR2-1600-1200-1066-800-SATA-II-ATX http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-...800)-240-Pins-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-CAS-5-5-5-18 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/30GB-OCZ-SATA300-Solid-Solid-State-Drive http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512M...z-GDDR3-GPU-625MHz-800-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDTV http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-Corsair-VX-Series-PSU-ATX-PS-2-UK-Version-80-PLUS-certified http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/LG-GH22NS30-22x-DVDR-16xDVDDL-DVDplusRW-x8-RWx6-12xRAM-SATA-Black-OEM http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Antec-Three-Hundred-Black-Midi-Tower-Case-w-o-PSU
Excellent - Vista it is then ! I am really looking forwward to playing FEAR I looks really cool - its a Game I bought when it first came out but have never had a good enough Graphics card to play it on even the lowest settings. So I spent years playing UT2K3 which seems to run on almost anything and play really well ! FEAR has always had great reviews but even now from the sites I had a quick look at even modern cards still struggle to run it at MAX with full AA and AF is that the case ? and CRYSIS seems to be a monster of a game that no single card can run on decent settings ? How come the games are so far advanced of the hardware ? surely they are designed to run on current system configs and ATI and Nvidia products
Funny you say that, exactly the same for me. I couldn't play it for a year after I got it as my Athlon XP wasn't enough to run the game smoothly enough. FEAR is a superb game, I guarantee you'll enjoy it. You can max out FEAR on a Radeon HD4870 or Geforce GTX280, but they really are the best of the current single card crop, three years ahead of the game. High end games often do this deliberately so that they will be plyed again once they get old, as "I can finally max out the settings"
Thanks for the parts list Sam really appreciate the advice. The Saphire Card - I take it will be good enough to run FEAR etc at full settings ? if not I would rather sacrifice other parts in order to be able to get a better GPU (As thats the main purpose of the machine). Thanks again Gav
Depends on the monitor you use. For a 22" (1680x1050), yes. If you use a 24", you should consider an HD4870, a 1GB one if you use Anti-Aliasing a lot.
Hi Again, Thanks again for the parts list there are some awesome components in there. For the case would you suggest I upgrade to the one you suggested or use my Coolermaster as I thought I could use the extra cash to get a better GPU maybe a HD 4850 1gb (not sure I can stretch to the 4870). Like I said before the coolermaster is brand new so dont want to dismiss it out of hand unless it really is useless. It seems to have plenty of space and expansion room and with the Scythe S Flex you suggested should run cool enough (I Hope). Thanks Gav
The Centurion is fine, as I say, as long as you stick a back fan in. There's no need to upgrade to the 1GB HD4850 unless you use a big monitor, you won't see the difference between it and the normal HD4850. If you can't stretch to the HD4870, you may as well just save the money.
What are the benefits of running 64bit over 32 for gaming purposes which the machine will be primarily for ? and how much RAM does 64 bit require if 4gb isnt enough ?
4GB is fine for a Vista gaming PC. The max I've used is 3.4GB with a fairly liberal dosage of background applications when maxing Crysis Warhead. In general I haven't seen anything to suggest 64-bit helps games except perhaps emulating the Gamecube, which I still don't think works satisfactorily.
