Getting all the right components to play your favorite games and fit in your budget - usually that is hard to do but not impossible with our guide. There are a lot of options and models to choose from, but we will give you all the info you need so you’ll not get lost!

 Before we get started, you will have to answer a few questions:
1. What is your budget, how much are you willing to spend?
2. What games are you going to play - Shooters, Strategies, RPG, Flight Simulators?
3. What is the size of the monitor you’ve got, is it 17-19”, 20-22” or 24” and above?

 Now you are ready to make a first step in selecting the right computer for yourself!
Budget - that is the ultimate limiting point of your purchase - don’t have more than $600? Then you are limited to basic gaming capabilities and low resolutions. Can shell out one grand? You can get descent machine to play any game with at least medium settings on average monitor. Do you have $2K to spare? You will be able to run any game on any monitor with highest settings. $5000 will buy you an assurance that you will not need any upgrades next 2-4 years to be on top of the gaming!

Games You Play - if it’s going to be only “World of Warcraft” - you can spend about $999 and be sure that it will be enough to play it with high settings on any monitor. If you want to be able to run Shooters like Crysis or Far Cry 2 on High or Highest - be prepared to spend $1500 and up, of course you can play those games on $1k machine with Medium settings, it’s up to you.
 Generally 3D Shooters require more power from your computer, same as flight simulators. Strategies and online RPG usually need less.

Monitor - if you are limited to 17” or 19” monitor, you will play in low-medium resolutions and do not need to spend too much on PC. If you have 20” or 22” monitor then you will want to play at 1680x1050 resolution, and it will put some stress on your computer, make sure that you select at least 9600GT video card to be comfortable at this resolution. If you have 24” monitor or bigger, then you will need some serious firepower inside your PC, look for high-end video cards like GTX 260 or 9800GTX, get SLI to be able to crank all settings to HIGH.

Continue reading below to learn more about individual components!

Most important choices are: CPU and Video Card. These two components have most influence on your gaming experience.

CPU - If you want to spend less than one thousand dollars than you should look at AMD and Intel Dual Core processors, they have good value in lower segment, cheaper ones are AMD 5000+ and 5400+. Intel E5200 or E7200 will give up to 50% more performance closer to $1K, If you want to spend around $1K - look at Intel E8400 or similar, running on default 2.6Ghz and up it can be overclocked over 3.0Ghz without sweat if you have good CPU cooler, and at that frequency it “kicks some ass” for the money it costs. For budgets over $1000-$1500 check out Intel Q9300 - excellent Quad Core that can be also overclocked to around 3.0Ghz with good cooler, more and more games are optimized for quads, so you will see the difference! New Intel Core i7 might be expemsive but they offer the best performance on the market right now!
 
Video Card - be careful there, serious gamers do not look at 8500XX or 9500XX cards - they are good for low budget, but you will see HUGE performance increase if you get at least 9600GSO or 9600GT. If you want high resolution then check this best value video card - 9800GT, based on G92 core with 512Mb memory it really runs awesome! For higher end check out 9800GTX and GTX 260, these two will let you set HIGH settings in all games! For most demanding gamers - GTX 280 and ATI 4870 X2, most powerful cards in the world, actually. It will be enough for biggest monitors and highest settings, same as SLI setup of dual 9800GTX or similar.

CPU Cooler - do not underestimate it!!!!! If you select stock cooler you will get high temperatures, lots of noise and no overclock (Free speed boost). Do you think that spending extra $30 on a good cooler is too much to drop temps about 15’C for more stable operation, not hear any noise and jump-start your CPU at 3.0Ghz instead of stock 2.2Ghz? That is way too much value to not upgrade CPU cooler. Money you spend here give the most feedback for every 1$.

Power Supply - Very important if you planning on upgrading video card or any other components. PSU that are selected by default with all our models are sufficient for them with default options. If you upgrade video card you should select better power supply to accommodate increased power requirements. For example 9600GSO or 9600GT will work with standard PSU, but adding second card in SLI require at least 600W SLI ready PSU. 9800GT will benefit from 550W PSU, 9800GTX work better with 600W power supplies. Dual 9800GT & 9800GTX will work best with 750W PSU. GTX 260 and 280 will need at least 600W for sibgle card, around 800W-1000W for SLI. You will not make mistake by getting better power supply, your computer will always benefit from more reliable and consistent power it needs inder heavy loads when you play games!

Memory - important component that goes after CPU and Cooler and Video Card. Basically, as long as you get at least 2Gb DDR2-800 you are good to go. You will see incremental performance increases if you upgrade to DDR2-1066 or DDR3 memory. Getting 4Gb memory today is pretty cheap and will definitely help (especially in Vista). Newer DDR3 memory with frequency 1333Mhz to 1800Mhz will help on high end machines and will not be bottleneck.

Motherboard - pretty simple, more money you spend here more features you are going to get as well as some speed bump. For example nForce 780 will have FireWire but nForce 750 might not. NVIDIA nForce 750i have 2 PCi-e slots for video cards, but 780i &  790i will have 3 PCI-e 16x to install three video cards. nForce 790i and Intel X58 support DDR3 memory giving it big advantage + it’s future-proof! More expensive motherboards usually more reliable and have better overclocking settings.

Hard Drive - most gamers do not need more than 250Gb or 320Gb SATA2 HDD. Some will even be good with just 160Gb. But if you want significant storage - get 500Gb or more.
WD Raptor and VelociRaptors have faster spinning speed (10000RPM vs regular 7200RPM) and therefore work 25% or more faster.

Fans, Cooling & Fans - Heat is the worst computer’s enemy and all these upgrades help reduce heat by moving air more effectively inside of case and out of it, cooling important components like CPU, Video Card, Motherboard and memory. Cheap upgrades that can make huge difference. Plus better cabling will look cool if you have clear side window!

Case - if you care only about it’s look, then get what ever you like. If you are concerned with cooling capabilities, then select CM RC-690, Antec 900, Thermaltake Armor, CM Cosmos 1100. If you don’t want to hear any noise from your PC check these cases: NZXT Hush, Antec 300, CM RC-690, TT Tsunami. When you spend more on the case you get more features, better quality and better cooling.

Windows XP vs Vista - XP is 20% faster and has less bugs, Vista is newer and supports DX10 gaming. Final choice is yours.
64bit operational systems will be able to utilize full 4Gb or more memory, regular ones will see only ~3.2Gb. But 64bit systems still have huge problems with drivers up to unstable system on some setups, so we can not recommend it yet, but if you need it - get it.

All other components are optional and you can always click links on the left from each one of them to read more!

If you have more questions or need help - give us a call at  1-888-800-5515

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