The benefits of building your own gaming PC

@Jason7731523
*scratches head*

@silasthemariner
No soldering involved at all! In fact, it's as easy as opening the CPU socket hatch, plopping the cpu in (there are indents to ensure you do it correctly), locking the hatch again, placing the cooler on top (which has thermal paste pre-applied for your convenience), and pushing the RAM sticks into their sockets (which are color-coded). Install your PSU and drives with a few screws, then put in your MB and fasten it to the MB tray. Slide in your graphics card, and then connect all the components to the motherboard. They all have different connectors, so it's almost impossible to do it wrong. Then connect the PSU to your MB, the GPU, your drives, and any fans in the case with Molex connectors (the white plastic plugs with four big pins). Fans with small 3-pin or 4-pin connectors should be connected to your MB. The only thing which can be tricky is connecting all the little plugs from the case, for things like the HDD indicator, reset button, etc. Most of them have text labels that tell you what they are, refer to the MB manual to find the MB connectors. Assuming you don't need to change any settings in the BIOS, you should now be ready to install your OS of choice and play some games!

@szimm That sounds within my range of limited capability! I think i'll give it a go, thanks for your help :)

@silasthemariner
Good luck, and I hope you'll enjoy building it as much as I did my first computer, hehe! Just be sure that all the parts you choose are compatible before you order them, and the rest of the process should be self-explanatory. :)

@Otimus

I wouldn't call it "insane overkill" so much as moving into the highest echelon of the enthusiasts category. The $2000+ bracket certainly makes sense if you're playing games like Metro 2033 or Crysis with multiple, high resolution monitors. GTX 480 tri-sli or HD5970 Crossfire is an absolute waste of money for someone with a single 1680x1050/1920x1200 monitor but, for the person with three 2500x1600 monitors in Nvision/Eyefinity, that kind of hardware is a necessary investment. However, I can't really think of anyone who does that kind of gaming and I'm sure there are only a few thousand GLOBALLY who do. You "my god, PCs are uber expensive" console gamer tends to look at the price only without understanding WHY someone would need that kind of hardware.

Of course, the extreme enthusiast makers isn't limited to strictly gaming. It certainly makes sense for people who need to do very specialized, resource intensive tasks. As an example, a desktop with 4 GTX 480s would make for a mind-blowingly powerful protein folding rig. If you work for a company with an application written in CUDA, that same desktop (though, it'd much likely drop the Geforce cards in favor of the Tesla line) could do in two days what would take a "normal" workstation weeks to accomplish. Hell, we're even seeing computer clusters using off the shelf parts offering comparable performance (in only certain tasks, mind you) to super computers worth $10,000+ for a fraction of the price. I'd mention ATI here if I could, but most non-gaming applications tend to perform much better on NVIDIA hardware. I digress. Sometimes a super-powered, extremely expensive desktop does make sense BUT those instances are few and far between.

@delicatessen lama check this out, they do a great "build your own system" guide every year: http://techreport.com/articles.x/19159/1

@acefondu

500 dollars is a ton of money. That 500 could go to more ram and a second video card, which would make your PC way faster than the prebuilt.

@Maniclysane

No I agree, but I just hated seeing the false data. lol. Also there ARE people out there that would prefer shelling out that extra $500 to save them the hassle of putting one together themselves. Plus you get the added benefit of having a 1 year warrenty for free (longer if you pay a stupid amount of money). If you put together a comp yourself and screw something up you could damage several key parts costing you big time.

What's worse is the article doesn't even give the prices for the heatsink/fan, thermal paste and other cooling equipment usually needed for this stuff that the alienware also provides.

Personally, I'm more of a half and half guy. I bought a computer that I have since modded to extend its life beyond the initial $700 I spent five years ago. It ran everything that was out at the time, but then I had to upgrade it and now It runs all the new games I've played at max (not full res mind you, but 1280x1040 is good enough for me) with few to no hiccups. Total upgrades I've spent about $400.

@acefondu
I would say, on average you save about 40% on a highend machine, less on a simple desktop for browsing and office stuff. But the main advantage in my mind is that you get to pick out the parts yourself, thereby avoiding spending money on parts you don't really need. I've also seen many people buy pre-built systems, and then having to upgrade a component after a couple of months because that particular part wasn't quite fast enough.

@samhimburg Which i7 is it? Details man! I presume it's the 920 or 930 though...

@TheTjalian It's actually an 860. It ran at 2.8GHz stock, but overclocked perfectly to 3.49GHz. No heating issues at all!

@x850x PaTriCk

Newegg use to be the cheapest and a reputable site. But about a year ago they started getting really shifty. I don't shop there anymore because of recent bad experiences even though I was an exclusive customer of theirs for the longest time. Just parts shop on Newegg then copy the model numbers and get the part on Amazon. Cheapest you can normally go. Sometimes, though rarely, Newegg can beat a lower price on some arbitrary budget component like a green 2TB WD drive. Which is what I just got from there for 90 bucks for my external blacx bay.

I've always used Newegg, and have had no problems with them. I don't even think anything I've ever bought through their site has been DOA.

I'd recommend it, since they have good prices and are usually nice and fast with the shipping.

Same here - Newegg is a great site, and they have nice, quick service. Decent prices, too.