- Feb 16, 2013
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Long story short, my Lenovo laptop is dying fast, and I've decided to move my labor intensive computing to a good desktop and just buy a cheap netbook for mobile computing.
Thing is, I built my last desktop 10 years ago. I'm honestly not sure where to even start! I'm certainly not afraid of research, so I'm not asking you guys to build my system for me. Just some suggestions on what to look at
Anyway, this desktop will be made primarily for gaming. And by primarily, I mean almost solely. I mean, I'll be doing the usual Netflix and web browsing stuff, but no 3D imaging or graphic design or anything like that. One thing I do want to do, however, is begin experimenting with and building hardware for simulations as a hobby -- things like head tracking, working gauge clusters, eventually steering and throttle control, etc. Ambitious, I know. It'll be a huge learning opportunity and a nice break from college classes that'll still fit in my apartment (What I really want to do is fix up my car and motorcycle, but they don't let me park them in the apartment, so...)
So bottom line is, it'll be mainly used for gaming (most recent game I have is BF4, so things along those lines), but I also want to be able to run things in the background that may have to do with configuring the hardware I want to build. I don't honestly know the stuff I'll be using yet, so I know I'm flying a little blind.
My budget is probably between $1000-$1300, and I am looking at custom built unless there's a good place for prebuilt systems (xoticpc, for instance). I do have hardware knowledge, just not recent knowledge, so building isn't the issue. Knowing what to build is, however 😛 I also want something I can expand on later. When I built my last system I made the mistake of going with AGP, which was very quickly abandoned in favor of PCI, so I was left with no GPU upgrade options (surprise surprise, that quickly became the crippling point of the machine)
The two major component questions are the GPU and CPU. Is it possible to get a game like BF4 to run on the highest settings with my budget? Is it better to go with two not-quite-top GPU's, or one top of the heap GPU? (dual GPU's weren't really even a thing last time I built a system, so that's new to me) For CPU's, with what I want to do, should I be looking dual core? Quad? Six? Doesn't matter?
That's my main starting question, since memory and such will be filled in depending on the GPU and CPU performance.
Any suggestions you guys have would be great! I'll continue to research on my own as well, but feel free to link me to a good article or two. I'll take any advice you have
Thanks a lot!
Thing is, I built my last desktop 10 years ago. I'm honestly not sure where to even start! I'm certainly not afraid of research, so I'm not asking you guys to build my system for me. Just some suggestions on what to look at
Anyway, this desktop will be made primarily for gaming. And by primarily, I mean almost solely. I mean, I'll be doing the usual Netflix and web browsing stuff, but no 3D imaging or graphic design or anything like that. One thing I do want to do, however, is begin experimenting with and building hardware for simulations as a hobby -- things like head tracking, working gauge clusters, eventually steering and throttle control, etc. Ambitious, I know. It'll be a huge learning opportunity and a nice break from college classes that'll still fit in my apartment (What I really want to do is fix up my car and motorcycle, but they don't let me park them in the apartment, so...)
So bottom line is, it'll be mainly used for gaming (most recent game I have is BF4, so things along those lines), but I also want to be able to run things in the background that may have to do with configuring the hardware I want to build. I don't honestly know the stuff I'll be using yet, so I know I'm flying a little blind.
My budget is probably between $1000-$1300, and I am looking at custom built unless there's a good place for prebuilt systems (xoticpc, for instance). I do have hardware knowledge, just not recent knowledge, so building isn't the issue. Knowing what to build is, however 😛 I also want something I can expand on later. When I built my last system I made the mistake of going with AGP, which was very quickly abandoned in favor of PCI, so I was left with no GPU upgrade options (surprise surprise, that quickly became the crippling point of the machine)
The two major component questions are the GPU and CPU. Is it possible to get a game like BF4 to run on the highest settings with my budget? Is it better to go with two not-quite-top GPU's, or one top of the heap GPU? (dual GPU's weren't really even a thing last time I built a system, so that's new to me) For CPU's, with what I want to do, should I be looking dual core? Quad? Six? Doesn't matter?
That's my main starting question, since memory and such will be filled in depending on the GPU and CPU performance.
Any suggestions you guys have would be great! I'll continue to research on my own as well, but feel free to link me to a good article or two. I'll take any advice you have
Thanks a lot!
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