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PC - How to build for gaming
PC gaming is becoming more and more complicated everyday. Multiple textures, complex shadowing and massive marketing budgets by component manufacturers, all claiming they have the fastest "must have" PC components. So how do you choose a gaming PC?
Gaming PC Myths - First, lets kill some of the terrible myths floating around the PC industry.
Myth: PC processing power is important to gaming PCs - A PC designed strictly for gaming does not need much processing power at all, but it is nice to have for multi-tasking. Gaming survives on timing, not raw processing power. Games are made up of multiple lines of tiny data that need to be processed as fast as possible so you get the image to the screen faster. For this, you want a nice cache and FSB over processing power on a gaming PC. Also pay attention to the NM of the processor. This is a measurement in nanometers of the thickness of the weld used to create the processor, this will ensure better transfer rates and cooler operation. All of the statistics, including the stepping technology, or how the processor routes the information, are more important then actual processor speed to a gamer.
Myth: RAM is on an "as needed" basis - RAM is one of the most important aspects to a gaming PC , but again, like the processor, it needs to be able to handle multiple lines of small info as fast as possible. This is not in raw processing power, this is in the CL of the RAM. Most people buy the newest, "fastest" RAM but don't realize this is similar to the internet connection they use to play PC games online, it needs to be big enough, but your ping or latency (similar to the CL on RAM) is more important overall to the quality of PC gaming.
Myth: My PC needs the latest, fastest video card - A video card is used to compliment the other components and take stress off them. This can just as easily add more stress to your PCs components and lag the PC, especially if you don't have enough RAM. This is when overall balance and internal PC transfers come into play. This can be hard to measure, but this should be "fit" into the PC budget, not be the center of balanced PC. This is also another category where transfer speeds are incredibly important. The video card needs to accept and send as much, or less, information then the PC can handle. To complicate things further, the graphics card has RAM and a processor on it, so the above listed rules and myths apply here. If the video card transfer rates are perfectly matched, but the timing is off, it takes to long to cycle the information and will cause bottlenecks and lag.
Myth: Building my PC at home will save me money - This is a hard myth to debunk. It is wrong, but varies so much it is hard to address all the points. Also, I want to make this clear: You cannot beat our pricing on components unless you are doing a lot in revenue with national distributors. Selling components is more expensive then buying them. We have to pay sales staff and have adequate warehousing to avoid drop shipping fees. We buy for much less then we can afford to sell for.
The second and more important point is our build facilities. L2 computers are built in ISO rated clean rooms which have proven to provide up to 40% more performance then building at home, even with a static strap and mat (although a strap and mat do decrease that percentage significantly). It has also proven to have less errors. So building at home not only costs more for the parts, but it costs up to 40% more in performance. This is why we do not recommend EVER opening your PC at home. To support this we even offer free upgrades and support for the life of the PC (see warranties for more details).
To build a gaming PC:
Start out by choosing the components based on statistical findings, not marketing. Just because a game or even a component says "best played on XXX", does not mean the component and/or game is anyway better on "XXX". That space is for sale and is nothing more then a commercial. Although, this does not always apply to motherboard chipsets, they will (sometimes) work better with some components. So do your homework.
Homework is not reading reviews! Why you ask? Because there are plenty of review sites that are for sale. Also, even legitimate review sites only test the PC with one application open, this is not real world results. We have seen GPUs that score incredible on review sites, but are unusable during our testing. Not only do they fail our testing, but they perform worse then cards that cost half as much, and as far as we know, no review site builds a PC that is optimized for the components they are testing. So this is all pot luck.
The statistics on components are clearly listed. They will tell you all you need to know about the performance of the component and what it needs from its supporting components. Do your research and do the math.
Monitors for your gaming PC:
Choose a monitor with high refresh rate and low timing. What is the sense of building a nice PC, when your monitor cannot show the graphics in real time? While CRTs are still the best, they hard to come by and bulky. So we will assume you want an LCD. A 2ms monitor is different from a 2ms gtg (grey to grey). More colors equals more time, so get a true 2ms monitor. You also need to check the refresh rate on your desired resolution. While only CRT monitors can keep up with today's video cards (well not really, but they are, on average, more then twice as fast as LCD), you still want the highest refresh rate possible. What is the point of high FPS in game, if your monitor is still running the same low FPS as before!? Ultimately your monitor is going to decide your FPS.
Where to now? Articles on computer components - How to Choose a PC
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