- Apr 1, 2013
- 32
- 0
- 10,530
Hello. This is my first time here on Tom's Hardware. I've finally saved enough money to invest into a long-term gaming PC, and I figured this would be the best place to go to start my venture into custom PCs. Reading through the articles on this site, I'm getting somewhat of an idea as to what I need, but I've little idea where to start. I'd like to get some kind of springboard to start off with; I know that's asking for a bit much, but it would be greatly appreciated.
Approximate Purchase Date: About 3-4 weeks; I'm doing research into actual PC building during my spare time, and will actually begin purchases after the current semester ends.
Budget Range: $1800-2200 before rebates is my ideal range. I can go slightly above if it's justified, though.
System Usage from Most to Least Important: I'm aiming for this PC to be my primary source of home entertainment, with gaming being the top priority (I play a wide range of genres; I'd like to be able to run current and near-future games at a strong framerate on max or close-to-max graphical settings); movies (both streaming and Blu-Ray) are also important, but far less so.
Parts Not Required: I have a gaming mouse, but no other peripherals. My university (UF) is selling students Windows 8 Pro 64-bit for $15, but I'm not entirely sold on 8, to be honest; I'd like people's opinion on Windows 8 and gaming before I decide to jump on this. The above-mentioned budget is meant to include the keyboard and monitor.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: From what I've seen doing preliminary research, Newegg is pretty good. I have yet to shop there, but I'd likely use it for pricing.
Country: I'm in the United States.
Parts Preferences: I'm partial to Intel, nVidia, and Asus brands; aside from that, I favor whatever parts are compatible with each other. I have a preference for i7 over i5 Intel CPUs, but I don't know if that is justifiable. I would also like to include a Blu-Ray optical drive on top of whatever else the build turns out to be.
Overclocking: Maybe. I'm still new to PC building, so I don't want to do anything that'll end up with me losing hundreds of dollars. If I need to invest in a sophisticated cooling system, I'd like to learn that now, before I actually go to order parts. That way, I can educate myself on how to deal with those situations.
SLI or Crossfire: Again, maybe. Depends on if I need it or not; I'm not sure if one top-of-the-line GPU is better/worse than two SLI/Crossfire-linked ones.
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080; I'm pretty set on using 1080p at the moment (edited to reflect current choice)
Additional Comments: As I mentioned before, I'm completely new to PC building, and am both excited and nervous at the prospect. I was strongly considering prebuilt for a while, since peace of mind is important to me, but I've seen many arguments against it (including price). Furthermore, I want to be able to easily upgrade this build in the future, and I figure building the computer would better prepare me for upgrading it in the future. However, if a good pre-built computer does come to mind (and can be easily upgraded in the future), I would like to entertain that idea as well.
With that being said, I apologize for not having a parts list ready to go for rating (it seems like that is the norm for most of these threads); while my understanding of what parts are worth investing in is improving, there are issues of part compatibility and bottlenecking that I worry about, among other things. I would like to get advice from more experienced builders who know good builds that avoid a lot of those kinds of problems. In the meantime, I'll be reading more into actual PC parts and building and trying to make sure I understand everything as clearly as possible before actually buying parts.
Thank you all in advance!
Approximate Purchase Date: About 3-4 weeks; I'm doing research into actual PC building during my spare time, and will actually begin purchases after the current semester ends.
Budget Range: $1800-2200 before rebates is my ideal range. I can go slightly above if it's justified, though.
System Usage from Most to Least Important: I'm aiming for this PC to be my primary source of home entertainment, with gaming being the top priority (I play a wide range of genres; I'd like to be able to run current and near-future games at a strong framerate on max or close-to-max graphical settings); movies (both streaming and Blu-Ray) are also important, but far less so.
Parts Not Required: I have a gaming mouse, but no other peripherals. My university (UF) is selling students Windows 8 Pro 64-bit for $15, but I'm not entirely sold on 8, to be honest; I'd like people's opinion on Windows 8 and gaming before I decide to jump on this. The above-mentioned budget is meant to include the keyboard and monitor.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: From what I've seen doing preliminary research, Newegg is pretty good. I have yet to shop there, but I'd likely use it for pricing.
Country: I'm in the United States.
Parts Preferences: I'm partial to Intel, nVidia, and Asus brands; aside from that, I favor whatever parts are compatible with each other. I have a preference for i7 over i5 Intel CPUs, but I don't know if that is justifiable. I would also like to include a Blu-Ray optical drive on top of whatever else the build turns out to be.
Overclocking: Maybe. I'm still new to PC building, so I don't want to do anything that'll end up with me losing hundreds of dollars. If I need to invest in a sophisticated cooling system, I'd like to learn that now, before I actually go to order parts. That way, I can educate myself on how to deal with those situations.
SLI or Crossfire: Again, maybe. Depends on if I need it or not; I'm not sure if one top-of-the-line GPU is better/worse than two SLI/Crossfire-linked ones.
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080; I'm pretty set on using 1080p at the moment (edited to reflect current choice)
Additional Comments: As I mentioned before, I'm completely new to PC building, and am both excited and nervous at the prospect. I was strongly considering prebuilt for a while, since peace of mind is important to me, but I've seen many arguments against it (including price). Furthermore, I want to be able to easily upgrade this build in the future, and I figure building the computer would better prepare me for upgrading it in the future. However, if a good pre-built computer does come to mind (and can be easily upgraded in the future), I would like to entertain that idea as well.
With that being said, I apologize for not having a parts list ready to go for rating (it seems like that is the norm for most of these threads); while my understanding of what parts are worth investing in is improving, there are issues of part compatibility and bottlenecking that I worry about, among other things. I would like to get advice from more experienced builders who know good builds that avoid a lot of those kinds of problems. In the meantime, I'll be reading more into actual PC parts and building and trying to make sure I understand everything as clearly as possible before actually buying parts.
Thank you all in advance!
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