New Gaming Rig

[jonniebkk]

Calling all techies...especially techies who game after work, I would like to pick your brains as to components for a mid-price gaming desktop I plan to put together. I am not too hard-core a gamer but would like something that can handle most games, at their mid-high settings, without choking up. I like flight sims especially, and something that could run MSFT Flight Simulator X at high settings would be great. Also I have an extensive music collection so playing decent sound is important. The budget is around B 40,000-B 45,000, including genuine Windows OS and monitor. I have been researching the web for advice and pricing and it seems like I should be able to put together something decent for this money. Any advice and reccomedations on shops (Bangkok or Pattaya) and specific major components would be appreciated.

My starting list goes something like this:

OS - Win XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B; Win XP-SP2; or Vista Home Premium SP1. I would get genuine OEM/system builder disks. Cost: B3500-B4000. Please don't suggest I save money by buying a pirated OS copy - I want the support (updates and fixes) that come with genuine software.

Monitor- 22 inch widescreen View Sonic, Hp, or Acer. Cost B 10,000

Motherboard - Here is where it gets really confusing. There seem to be either cheap or expensive boards and not too many in the middle. From my limited knowledge and research, something like the ASUS LGA 775 Striker II Formula, at around B 11,000 would seem appropriate. Or something in the B 9000-11,000 range.

I don't plan to over-clock the CPU. Am I also correct that the all the network funtions like ethernet, Bluetooth and WiFi modules are incorporated on the motherboard?

RAM - 3 gig of Kingston DDRII 800Mhz RAM for about B2500.

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz or Core 2 Duo E6750 2.67GHz. Cost B 6500-B 7000. Any suggestion on CPU would be helpful as there are so many models. I have read good things about the E8400 and the price is very reasonable for such a new and powerful CPU.

Graphics Card - Something in Nvidia's GeForce 8600 or 8800 line at around B 6000 - B 8000. Like the 8600GS 384M. If I am correct, such a graphics card usually already has a TV tuner and Tivo like recording software included. Is that correct?

HD - Western Digital 500GB SATA II Transfer Rate 300MB/s 7200RPM Buffer 16MB. About B 3500.

Sound Card - Creative internal card - X-FI Xtreme Gamer SOUND BLASTER X-FI XTREME GAMER. About B 4000 One question I have is how much sound capability is build into the motherboard. Is an expensive Creative sound card needed these days?

UPS - APC UPS ES 525VA 230V Universal. About B 2500.

Optical Drive - CD-CDRW. About B 1000.

I could use a recommendation for the power supply. Something around 500-600 watts. About B 2500.

That is the guts of the system. Is there anything major I am forgetting?

The rest, case, mouse, keyboard, printer, and such will have to be bought too but don't have any effect on system performance.

Adding this all up comes to around: B 54000 As this is a little more than I want to spend, where would be places that cuts could be made without drastically effecting performance?

Thanks for any advice.

Edited April 11, 2008 by jonniebkk

[jeffer]

Adding this all up comes to around: B 54000 As this is a little more than I want to spend, where would be places that cuts could be made without drastically effecting performance?

Don't buy a soundcard until after you have heard the onboard sound first.

Have you factored in the price of some speakers? If not then 2000 baht would be my starting point but sound is always very subjective.

400w power supply might be all you need for your suggested set up.

Check the features of the motherboard carefully to be sure you are not paying for features you will never use if you aren't planning on overclocking.

E8400 is thought to be value for money in every review I have seen.

[Steve2UK]

The motherboard figure looks very high to me - B5-6,000 should get you a good P35-based board......... e.g Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P (B4,500) which has good onboard sound capability so that (as Jeffer mentioned) you might save by not wanting the separate sound card. If the WiFi is important, look at the Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP (B6,000). Not sure about the bluetooth, but the rest is there.

Good RAM affects performance - Corsair XMS DDR2 800 PC6400 is a good mid-range choice and should be about B3,000 for 3 gig.

For a graphics card to complement either of those CPU's and for your main intended purpose, I would go a step higher to one of the 8800GT's with 512mb - for 8-9,000. They're all pretty similar but some have added features like being pre-overclocked with exotic cooling. Solid example of standard flavour 8800GT is Asus EN8800GT/G/4TDP/512Mb. I don't recall any of this family of card including TV tuner/Tivo, though - would probably call for a separate card.

More games are coming out on DVD now - so the optical drive needs to be something like Asus DRW-2014L1T - about B1,100.

For the power supply, my instinct is that 400w might be a tad pushed under full load - try to stretch to 500-550w if you can. Enermax & CoolerMaster are dependable brands for a key item in the assembly........ but you're probably looking at a bit over B4,000. Then again, the extra will get you a quieter fan as well as better-controlled running.

I agree about allowing a good figure for the speakers - Creative & Altec Lansing are good ones to explore.

Finally, the case is important to the performance. Most cheap cases have lousy noisy fans that don't last well - resulting in a cooked PC at some stage. CoolerMaster Centurion 534 would be worth looking at - about B2,600 - or Centurion 5 if you want to save a few baht.

A useful site for you to peruse (3 different levels of bang-for-your-buck games machine):

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200801.ars/3

Personally, I would stay away from Vista for a while and get a flavour of XP while it's still around to buy - but that's me. Other than that, (IMO) you seem to have the right list coming together.

[TopDogger]

I've got one of those Asus maximum formula motherboards which was about 10'000 also if memory serves. It has 6.1 Dolby Digital built in.

[dave_boo]

Calling all techies...especially techies who game after work, I would like to pick your brains as to components for a mid-price gaming desktop I plan to put together. I am not too hard-core a gamer but would like something that can handle most games, at their mid-high settings, without choking up. I like flight sims especially, and something that could run MSFT Flight Simulator X at high settings would be great. Also I have an extensive music collection so playing decent sound is important. The budget is around B 40,000-B 45,000, including genuine Windows OS and monitor. I have been researching the web for advice and pricing and it seems like I should be able to put together something decent for this money. Any advice and reccomedations on shops (Bangkok or Pattaya) and specific major components would be appreciated.

My starting list goes something like this:

OS - Win XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2B; Win XP-SP2; or Vista Home Premium SP1. I would get genuine OEM/system builder disks. Cost: B3500-B4000. Please don't suggest I save money by buying a pirated OS copy - I want the support (updates and fixes) that come with genuine software.

Definitely stick with XP. I would go with the plane jane version, unless you need the Media Center version. Currently there are performance issues with Vista. This could change in the future, but I'm assuming you want to use your rig now.

Monitor- 22 inch widescreen View Sonic, Hp, or Acer. Cost B 10,000

Motherboard - Here is where it gets really confusing. There seem to be either cheap or expensive boards and not too many in the middle. From my limited knowledge and research, something like the ASUS LGA 775 Striker II Formula, at around B 11,000 would seem appropriate. Or something in the B 9000-11,000 range.

Striker II is a bit of overkill. Granted, there's lots of features, but the demand is artifically driving up the prices. I understand the desire to get an X38/48, but I think that a P5E3 would satisify you quite well.

I don't plan to over-clock the CPU. Am I also correct that the all the network funtions like ethernet, Bluetooth and WiFi modules are incorporated on the motherboard?

I have yet to see Bluetooth installed on a desktop motherboard. The more expensive ones have WiFi though. All have a minimum of 10/100 ethernet (actually pretty much all of them have 1 Gb/s).

RAM - 3 gig of Kingston DDRII 800Mhz RAM for about B2500.

You can go ahead and get 4 gigs for ~B500. There's lots of people who say to only get 3 gigs, but that's a load of crap. Simply adding the /PAE switch 'recovers' the RAM for you.

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz or Core 2 Duo E6750 2.67GHz. Cost B 6500-B 7000. Any suggestion on CPU would be helpful as there are so many models. I have read good things about the E8400 and the price is very reasonable for such a new and powerful CPU.

Go ahead and get the 8400. It is obviously much faster and it has 50% more cache.

Graphics Card - Something in Nvidia's GeForce 8600 or 8800 line at around B 6000 - B 8000. Like the 8600GS 384M. If I am correct, such a graphics card usually already has a TV tuner and Tivo like recording software included. Is that correct?

I am unaware of any current nVidia cards that have a built in TV tuner. In fact most don't even have VIVO (video in-video out). A few have video out capabilities. If you're building a gaming rig, an 8800 will outperform an 8600, especially a GS model. However, the 8600 series offers hardware accelerated HD playback.

HD - Western Digital 500GB SATA II Transfer Rate 300MB/s 7200RPM Buffer 16MB. About B 3500.

My recommendation is to go with Seagate. They seem to have fewer failures in my experience.

Sound Card - Creative internal card - X-FI Xtreme Gamer SOUND BLASTER X-FI XTREME GAMER. About B 4000 One question I have is how much sound capability is build into the motherboard. Is an expensive Creative sound card needed these days?

A Creative soundcard is nice to have. However, unless you're playing a few select games, it'd be hard to justify it. Also you need to have a pretty good set of speakers to really have the Creative card's superiority stand out.

UPS - APC UPS ES 525VA 230V Universal. About B 2500.

Optical Drive - CD-CDRW. About B 1000.

Bad idea. A DVD-RW isn't any more expensive and it allows you to install stuff from DVDs.

I could use a recommendation for the power supply. Something around 500-600 watts. About B 2500.

Make sure you buy something quality. The cheap end models could wreak havoc in regards to stability.

That is the guts of the system. Is there anything major I am forgetting?

The rest, case, mouse, keyboard, printer, and such will have to be bought too but don't have any effect on system performance.

Adding this all up comes to around: B 54000 As this is a little more than I want to spend, where would be places that cuts could be made without drastically effecting performance?

Going with a less expensive motherboard, only 2 gigs of RAM (I know I recommended 4 gigs, but if you're going to run XP and are trying to save money you can do it there), getting a smaller monitor, drop the soundcard, and possibly go with a slower CPU.

Thanks for any advice.

[JSixpack]

A useful site for you to peruse (3 different levels of bang-for-your-buck games machine):

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200801.ars/3

Personally, I would stay away from Vista for a while and get a flavour of XP while it's still around to buy - but that's me.

+1

[jonniebkk]

Thanks for all the suggestions and links information. They have been very useful. I have also been reading Tom's Hardware and his recommended systems.

As I am looking to knock about B 10,000 (around 20%) off the price of my set-up, here are a few options I am considering:

As there is no particular rush to get this new computer, I could just wait 3-4 months. By that time, most of the major components in my system will likely drop in price by that much But seriously, the CPU, graphics card, motherboard, and monitor will definitely be cheaper then.

Graphis Card - Dropping down to the GeForce 8600GT512M for B 3500 from the GeForce 8800 series saves B 3000-4000. Would the drop-off in performance be that great?

Monitor - Dropping to a 19" from 22" size the price goes from B 10,000 to B 6500. Savings B 3500.

These 2 changes alone gets me B 7000-8000 in savings. Just about to my price point goal.

Edited April 13, 2008 by jonniebkk

[Tywais]

There's lots of people who say to only get 3 gigs, but that's a load of crap. Simply adding the /PAE switch 'recovers' the RAM for you.

That is not universally true. I just went through that recently with both Vista and XP with 4GB installed. In both cases only 3GB was seen. If I enable in BIOS, Remap Memory, then they (OS) only sees 2GB though the BIOS now sees 4GB where before it was only seeing 3. This is probably due to either poor re-mapping of the address space (BIOS) or bad handling of high space in the OS.

Right now my system properties shows 2.93GB of RAM and Physical Address Extension (PAE) enabled though I have 4 1GB Corsair XMS memory sticks installed. My guess is it will depend on the mainboard and the BIOS, but if one does a search on 3GB XP limitation there are a lot of hits.

BTW: My mainboard is an ASUS P5BE-Plus and E6600 core duo processor.

Edited April 13, 2008 by Tywais

[jeffer]

You're setting up a gaming rig yet the components you are thinking of cutting back on are the video card and the monitor? Surely they're the last items to cut back on. Why wouldn't you prune the sound card and settle for a cheaper but still well featured motherboard. Just curious.

[jonniebkk]

You're setting up a gaming rig yet the components you are thinking of cutting back on are the video card and the monitor? Surely they're the last items to cut back on. Why wouldn't you prune the sound card and settle for a cheaper but still well featured motherboard. Just curious.

Your point is very valid and one I too considered. These were only my initial pruning list...nothing is set in silicon yet

Personally, I am in favor of just waiting the 3-4 months and getting my preferred system. The monitor would be the same quality and widescreen...just smaller. 19" is still a pretty large monitor for a desktop (non-graphics professional work station) computer.

I forgot about the sound card. Like has been suggested, many mainboards come with pretty decent sound built-in so I will definitely test the basic sound first before adding a sound card. Leaving out a sound card cuts the cost about B 4000 or about half of where I would like to get.

[Steve2UK]

If the bottom line figure is absolutely what matters to you, then wait - but I doubt you'll see a massive drop in prices until a flood of new models appears and you might then pick up left-behind bargains. I'm inclined to agree with you that a 19" monitor is still a decent amount of screen real estate - having recently upgraded from a 19" CRT to 22" WS LCD...... I'm just glad I didn't ultimately go for the 24" option (just too big IMO).

That said, I really think you should be taking a long-term view of this purchase - it's going to do you 4-5 years of good service and you should be aiming for good quality key components at the right price "sweet point" and a sensible amount of future-proofing. On that basis, as Jeffer says, I would not cut back on the graphics card - the 8800GT is very well priced for what it gives you. Settle for 2gig of memory now and be able to add more later. As I mentioned before, there are good motherboards around at about B4,500 - but try to pick one that has spare DIMM slots for later additions. The Gigabyte range should get your attention. IF you're looking for a good performance/price ratio - drop WiFi from your agenda; do you really need it?

Otherwise, on your budget, I predict you'll be in "if only I had......." mode about a year from now.

[dave_boo]

I guess I'm going to be the dissenting voice here. I recommend, if you think you can live with it, getting the 8600. With the exception of Crysis, it can hold its own with the 8800 at the resolution your screen will be at. Even on my laptop it runs all games at the maximum settings--and that's with a 1,5 GHZ dual core running a resolution of 1680x1050. I do have to turn the settings down in Crysis to play it, but not to where it's ugly. By the time the 8600 is showing its age, it will be time to upgrade anyways, regardless if you had an 8600 or 8800 in there.

@Twyais:

Definitely sounds like there's something broken in your mobo's bios. That sucks to hear. On my workstation, I'm running 12 GB of RAM and when I boot up XP, it shows me 4 gigs. Of course that's with a Tyan K8WE and 2x Opteron 265.

@Steve2UK:

I generally steer people away from Gigabyte. I used to have one of their workstation mobos, and it blew big chunks. The bios was never updated, promised features were left out, stability was on par with Britney Spears, etc. I have friends who have had consumer level Gigabyte boards, and they've had nothing but problems from them. Even Anandtech have had problems with them.

[jckei]

Don't get a 8600 or 8400.... The 8800gt/gts recently dropped in price. It should be obtainable for around 5500 now in most stores. Adding a few k for a 8800gts instead is well worth it for a gaming rig.

This BBK shop got one for 5200: http://www.busitek.com/forms/pricelist.html

[Steve2UK]

@Steve2UK:

I generally steer people away from Gigabyte. I used to have one of their workstation mobos, and it blew big chunks. The bios was never updated, promised features were left out, stability was on par with Britney Spears, etc. I have friends who have had consumer level Gigabyte boards, and they've had nothing but problems from them. Even Anandtech have had problems with them.

dave_boo, I have to agree the Anandtech article doesn't make for happy reading. I didn't know about it at the time I put my sytem together this year, but I stayed with my past favourite Asus anyway - largely because they do generally deliver performance and support. I think you also make a good point about the lower spec of the 8600 being viable with a smaller monitor.

My cash-flow (rather than wealth) is such that I was able to take a longer-term view - a] spend to get what I want now so that b] it's less likely to need to be replaced in the medium term (the "if only I had....." factor I mentioned before). That said, I still felt comfortable stopping well short of the "extreme" end - e.g. 8800GTX, SLI etc. I think I was in a much easier price "sweet point" position than is jonniebkk. I was also including good provision for video editing now and the likelihood that more games to come will benefit from a multi-core CPU - so I went for Quad 6600 and an Asus mobo that overclocks it very easily and safely. Horses for courses......

Easy for me to say and probably nothing like as easy for jonniebkk to do, but I would both wait a few months and be prepared to increase my budget a bit meanwhile to get the right balance.

[ballbreaker]

I think you need to spend in the 45-50k range if you want game machine that's good for the future.

I would go with the 8800GT graphics card or you will loose performance.

You should be able to find good motherboard in the 4-5k range if you don't need bluetooth or Wifi. They can be added later.

Don't go with monitor smaller than 20 inch wide screen and make sure response time is 5ms or less. A 20 inch WS has about the same vertical height as 4:3 17 inch LCD monitor so you have a point of reference. A 19 inch WS has the height of a 17 inch 4:3 CRT monitor.

I think you need to spend around 4k for good 550-600 watt power supply.

[jonniebkk]

As to CPUs, my research seems to indicate that most recent and current games only access up to 2 cores, therefore, getting a quad-core chip is a waste of money. They say you will benefit more from getting a faster 2-core chip than a slower 4-core chip.

Some sites have also stated that for some technical reason XP 32bit can't access more than 3 gig of RAM, therefore, no use buying more. Chai - Mai Chai?

I am not too concerned about future proofing the rig as I mainly want to play high-end games that have come out in the past couple years at high quality settings. The old mind doesn't like to learn new games too often

Thanks again for the suggestions and comments.

[dave_boo]

As to CPUs, my research seems to indicate that most recent and current games only access up to 2 cores, therefore, getting a quad-core chip is a waste of money. They say you will benefit more from getting a faster 2-core chip than a slower 4-core chip.

You're quite correct. Many programs are becoming much more multi-threaded. However, similar to when AMD and Intel were first releasing dual cores, the software isn't up to the hardware. I.E., the programs are not threaded enough. This will of course change over time, but I'd be willing to bet that not to a significant degree until you're ready to upgrade.

Some sites have also stated that for some technical reason XP 32bit can't access more than 3 gig of RAM, therefore, no use buying more. Chai - Mai Chai?

There are some reasons, and as mentioned by someone else, your motherboard can have a direct effect on that. There are work-arounds, but they don't always work. For what it's worth, Vista is going to have a patch soon that will show all 4 gigs to the user. The reserved memory isn't actually going to be 'used' by the OS, but it will be shown. I'm of the opinion that even if you go with a 32 bit OS, you should still install 4 gigs. After all, even if you 'lose' 500-750 MBs, you're still ahead of your 3 gig install. Also, in the future, should you decide to install a 64 bit OS, you don't have to worry about throwing out 1 gig of memory to max out what you have installed. On the other hand, going with smaller amounts of memory usually yields better latencies.

I am not too concerned about future proofing the rig as I mainly want to play high-end games that have come out in the past couple years at high quality settings. The old mind doesn't like to learn new games too often

Without knowing what types of games you play, I can say that if you stick to the same genre, say FPS, you really won't have to 'learn' new games. However, switching from the previously mentioned FPS to say RTS, you'll have a learning curve.

Thanks again for the suggestions and comments.

If I can give one more real life example. I have a friend who always does a dual boot of XP (actually it's a tri-boot with Ubuntu...but that's not important). He installs one XP to a partition. He make sure that all his programs (minus his games) to include anti-virus, etc. He then installs the same XP onto another partition and installs only his games. All non-essential, for gaming, devices are disabled, so that his computer isn't attacked. No anti-virus, etc is installed. He only has 2 gigs of RAM installed, but it works great with this setup. He does play online, but the only connections are to game servers.

[jonniebkk]

I'm of the opinion that even if you go with a 32 bit OS, you should still install 4 gigs. After all, even if you 'lose' 500-750 MBs, you're still ahead of your 3 gig install. Also, in the future, should you decide to install a 64 bit OS, you don't have to worry about throwing out 1 gig of memory to max out what you have installed.

On the subject of Win OSes, a couple custom build sites of the major OEMs offer a "free" upgrade to Vista Ultimate 64 bit from 32 bit. For a personal use computer that is primarily used for web surfing, games, and multi-media (music and dvds), is there any advantage to going with the 64 bit OS over the 32 bit? Can all 32 bit game/entertainment/media software run on 64 too or does one have to buy/have native 64 bit versions.

Also, the processor being the same, will it run slower using 64 bit software vs. 32 bit?

Sorry if these questions are sorta basic but I am not an expert in this area.

[quiksilva]

I have heard that 64 bit Vista often has more compatibility issues than the 32 bit, and no there are not two different versions of the gamepublished. If it doesn't work on 64 bit, you are done for.

The only reason I can think of for going the Vista route is to get media center, but even then you can still get decent substitutes for this on XP. Software such as TVersity does an equally good job, but is free and streams to just about any device (including HD to the 360 by transcoding).

How to stream HD to just about any device

[dave_boo]

Well, to answer your first question, it's not really a free upgrade. If they're offering a real deal Vista Ultimate dvd (versus a restore disk), both versions, 32 bit and 64 bit are included on the disk. Furthermore, you can even upgrade all versions of 32 bit Vista to 64 bit. I also recommend going with Home Premium unless you feel you can utilise various features such as Remote Desktop Connection, Fax and Scan, Bit Locker, etc.

Currently the only advantage of going with a 64 bit over 32 bit consumer OS is the memory support. Most software will run in a 64 bit OS, but usually only if you use emulation of the 32 bit version. And as previously mentioned if it doesn't support your shiny new 64 bit OS you're boned. Multimedia is handled very well by the built in Media Centre. You of course have to add codecs, but that's not an issue.

And now, your processor won't run 'slower'. In fact, with the right combination of softwares, it will actually run more quickly.

[Richard-BKK]

Most people have great recommendations for the graphical part of your gaming computer. But why you go for only one 500GB WD harddisk, especially that most of the higher selection of mainboards have RAID capability. And everybody who is using 2x harddrives in a RAID 0 will agree that it is much much faster. 2x 320GB is even not that much more expensive. (+/-1500 Baht more)

[dave_boo]

Most people have great recommendations for the graphical part of your gaming computer. But why you go for only one 500GB WD harddisk, especially that most of the higher selection of mainboards have RAID capability. And everybody who is using 2x harddrives in a RAID 0 will agree that it is much much faster. 2x 320GB is even not that much more expensive. (+/-1500 Baht more)

There's a problem with that....reliability. By running a RAID-0 array, you increase your chance of your storage device crapping out by quite a bit. Instead of just one point of failure taking out the subsystem, you have two. While this can be allievated simply by doing back ups, those same backups add cost. Obviously the OP wanted his new machine to be in budget.

Having said that, I do use some older 15k SCSI in RAID-0 and do enjoy the speed. However, I have that array backed up on a RAID-5 array.

[jonniebkk]

Mainly it was because, as you post suggests with its techincal jargon, that setting up a multiple RAID HD system for me would add complexity that I might not be equiped to handle. Also, as this is a home/personal use set-up, having huge amounts of storage capacity (at least "in the box") is not that necessary.

I am considering going with a smaller capacity HD (maybe 250-320 gig) at a higher speed (7200 rpm) rather than a slower larger drive. For bulk storage and back-ups, I would use something like a WD My-Book or some other external drive option.