- CostlyAxis
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- Intrepid Mythic Member
Posted by: spirit of sand
So I made a thread about building a PC last night but I was directed here, so here we go.
I know nothing about building PC's... At all.
I need to know everything I need to run a game like Skyrim on at least pretty good settings. Max is obviously desired, but I only want to spend about $800 - $1000 on the tower, so if that will be difficult with that budget, it's alright.
I also need to know if I should take it to a custom PC shop, as I will have no idea what I am doing. The money spent at the shop will not count towards my actual budget for building the PC, so you don't need to factor that in.
I appreciate any help you guys can give me, thanks in advance.
Well, for graphics cards (which will be your primary concern for gaming), I'd suggest referring to this page as they have nicely laid out the GPUs and what you can expect from them. If you're going to keep to your budget, the ATI/AMD cards will get you the most bang for your buck.
For a CPU, again AMD will be getting you the most performance for your money. I'd suggest referring to this page to get a good overview of the CPUs on the market and their current standings (with their average price). Most CPUs should come with their own heatsink so unless you plan to overclock or push your computer hard, you don't need to worry about an after market heatsink.
For RAM, you'll most likely want to look into DDR3 RAM and 4 GB should do you just fine with DDR3 1600 being about the fastest you would need (there is faster though, but require overclocking).
For the PSU (power supply unit), anything around 600 Watts should probably be good for your budget so that you have plenty of room for power usage.
The motherboard is a little bit more complicated in that you need to find one that will work with your CPU choice. The CPU should say what kind of socket it requires and you need to find a motherboard that has that socket. You also don't want to go too cheap on the motherboard as it's the hub for all your parts. Also note what its form factor is as you'll need this for the case (ATX is one for example).
Moving onto the case as I mentioned above, note what motherboard form factor it supports. You'll probably be looking for what is known as a mid-tower case, but the important thing to note is the form factor. Also make sure the case has the proper ventilation you will require (which mostly boils down to there being a fan on the back, the side, and maybe in other places too). Another thing to note is how well your parts will fit in general from the cables to the hard drives.
On the note of hard drives, there are a couple kinds, but for your budget, a traditional HDD should do just fine. 500 GB - 1 TB should be a good amount of space unless you plan to store very large files. Also, the thing to note in the price differences you'll see is the cache size (affects performance), RPM (affects performance), and the transfer rate (affects performance). However, these performance differences probably wouldn't be noticed while gaming so don't worry too much and find a good deal. I however, do recommend going for a 7200 RPM HDD if you can.
Continuing with hard drives, there are solid state drives (SSDs) which are generally smaller in capacity, but far faster. For your budget, I wouldn't really consider this option too heavily. There are also hybrid hard drives that are a mixture of the two, but the traditional HDD should do you fine. Do note that a "bare" drive does not come with any cables, but your motherboard should have the needed cables anyways.
Moving onto disc drives, you'll probably want one to install/read stuff. If you can, I would recommend a Blu-ray drive, but if you can't make it fit your budget, a regular CD drive should do just fine.
Now you might want to consider additional parts such as a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers. If you already have these parts from an old computer, you can use them on your new computer too. However, you might also want to consider how you plan to connect to the internet. If you do so wirelessly, you'll need an adapter of sorts (the most simplest of which is one that plugs into the USB port). Though if you plan to connect through Ethernet, the motherboard should have an input for that.
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For the actual building, if you're not confident in your ability to build the actual tower, you should probably consult someone who does. The worst thing to happen is for you to break something. That being said, putting a computer together can be simple as long as you don't rush yourself, and take your time (and without question, reading the manuals/researching). Installing the CPU and heatsink on the motherboard is probably the most difficult part. However, if you stick to the stock heatsink that came with the CPU (if one does), it should already be ready to be attached.
In any case, I highly recommend watching Newegg's tutorials:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Edit: Whoops, completely forgot about the operating system. In your case, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit edition should be good.
[Edited on 06.17.2012 2:19 PM PDT]