Buying A New Gaming Computer

[Bepooi]

Hi,

I never bought parts to make a gaming computer in BKK before.

Would like to have recommendation about what to buy and where ?

Budget would be around 30-40K Bht

Thank you :-)

[Wolfie]

You can try Pantip which has a wide variety of shops to buy the components - depending on your negotiating skills you might also be able to play off some of the shops against each other to get better deals/discounts (i've had limited sucsess with that!)

Jedi is a good place to get your performance conponents from, the prices tend to be a touch higher but then they are a specialised outfit.

For 30-40k your not going to get much, to be honest. Depends what you can 'salvage' from your current set-up (monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drives etc)

If your looking for a gaming computer, keep in mind your going to need a good GFX card and a decent PSU - i have not spec'd out hardware recently but about 12mths ago when i bought my GFX card it was almost 20,000b (it is a 9800 GX2) - i've no idea on Motherboards and CPU prices these days.

[Ian_B]

Come October I'll get my PC upgraded and get Windows 7 (proper licensed copy- never mess around when it comes to the OS)

Am looking at the new Intel i5 CPUs which should be out around then and they should be reasonably priced

Will see what the best deal is for GPU cards (likely go with ATI this time) as the prices change as the latest GPU cards come out

I swear by Busitek in Pantip - They are always current with what's available

[dttk0009]

You can try Pantip which has a wide variety of shops to buy the components - depending on your negotiating skills you might also be able to play off some of the shops against each other to get better deals/discounts (i've had limited sucsess with that!)

Jedi is a good place to get your performance conponents from, the prices tend to be a touch higher but then they are a specialised outfit.

For 30-40k your not going to get much, to be honest. Depends what you can 'salvage' from your current set-up (monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drives etc)

If your looking for a gaming computer, keep in mind your going to need a good GFX card and a decent PSU - i have not spec'd out hardware recently but about 12mths ago when i bought my GFX card it was almost 20,000b (it is a 9800 GX2) - i've no idea on Motherboards and CPU prices these days.

You can get a very decent graphics card for under 8000 baht these days. ATI slapped Nvidia in the face last summer after releasing the new 4800 series. Better performance and half the price. Since then it's been good! Nvidia had the gaming industry monopolized for almost 4 years. It was terrible. The 8800GTS 320MB is probably still the worst value for money piece of computer hardware I've ever purchased. Sucked hard.

Anyway, to the OP, you can get a pretty good machine for 30-40k baht. Good CPU, ram and motherboard should be your priorities. The i5 that IanB suggested is top of the line and a wet dream for most hardware buffs, but it's probably way out of your price range as you'd have to compensate with additional top of the line hardware to make it worth purchasing. An i5 computer will run around 60-70k at least. Anyway, here's an example computer you can get at pantip for your price range:

CPU: Intel C2D E8400

(Should be around 6000 baht)

Graphics: HIS 4890

http://www.thanni.com/index.php?main_page=...roducts_id=5312

Motherboard: ASUS P5Q-E

http://www.thanni.com/index.php?main_page=...roducts_id=4534

RAM: OCZ 2x2GB DDR2-1066

http://www.thanni.com/index.php?main_page=...roducts_id=5010

Power Supply: Silverstone 500W ST50F (I dig Silverstone, but Coolermaster or Thermaltake are good too)

http://www.thanni.com/index.php?main_page=...roducts_id=4491

Case: Go with Lian Li or Coolermaster, doesn't have to be top model, in fact, cheapest models are still great. 1000-2000 Baht. Make sure you pick up an extra fan or two. Extra cooling boosts performance. They're cheap, too.

Hard Drive: WD or Seagate 1TB should be enough. Should run around 3,500 Baht.

DVD: Whichever. 800-900 baht.

Monitor: Have a look around. Aim for 22". They're nice and big for gaming and the price gap to 24" isn't worth it unless you feel like splurging the extra 5-6k baht, in my opinion. Should be around 6000 Baht. Can be cheaper if you find one on sale.

I added these up and got around 35,580 Baht. If you want you can spend the remaining 4k on a nice keyboard+mouse set. For gaming wired is preferred, so don't invest in a wireless laser set by Microsoft (ugh). Razer makes great mice for gaming. Keyboard is not so important. I find the 'gaming keyboards' to be a bit excessive. Standard ol' couple hundred baht brick does the trick just fine. This computer will run pretty much any current gen game at max graphics. It's not as future proof as an i5 machine but you'll happily game away for at least 2 years before you start noticing fallbacks, maybe even longer.