City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Thinking about building my own PC

Airhammer

By Airhammer,
Posted on: 2011-02-24 18:45 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

I have been looking for a new PC as I cant afford a Mac ( really want a Mac ) and I have seen to many negative reviews abut places like CyberPower and Ibuy Power and I dont think I really want something like a Dell or Gateway..

I think I have about 1000 to spend ..People have suggested building my own.. and although I know somethings about computers I dont know if I have the skills to build one. I dont know anything about motherboard or chipsets, I know a little about video cards.. I know squat about power supplies or cooling systems..

Is this the way to go? is there something good out there.. I can buy for around 1000..should I be looking at AMD or Intel...

Any advice would be appreciated.

The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.

If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-

 

Posted

Figure this thread might be helpful for you so people can give you some informed suggestions.

Grab the template from there, answer as much as you can, and paste the result here.

If you're not comfortable building your own, nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

Okay, currently

Best bang for the buck: AMD/ATI for chip and video.
Best bang period: Intel/nVidia.


For your $1000 budget, this could either be very generous or a tight build. The questions you answer will help determine that.


Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

Posted

True Cyberpower and the likes can be a nightmare but other times they do fine. They can and do substitute parts if they need to, so you may not get exactly what you select.

I am sure you will be able to build your own. Most parts come with adequate instructions.... and cautions. The down side is you will need to handle returns if need be.

Store bought pc's are ok but dealing with proprietary items can be a pain. Plus you have all that junk installed.

If you decide to build you will/can get plenty of help right here. I don't know you but if you have any patients and want to take time to search for installation videos to raise your confidence I would suggest going for it.

 

Posted

The hard part about building a computer is specking out the parts and making sure you got everything before you started.

Quick list: off the top of my head no promises I didnt forget a part

You likely have many parts already

Keyboard / mouse
Monitor
Case
Power Supply
Motherboard
CPU / heat sink
Video/sound (both can come with the mobo on board sound is OK video usually not)
Ram (ddr2 or dd3 depending on the cpu/motherboard)
Hard drive
Optical Drive

amd retail cpu's come with the heatsink OEM dont, some newer cpu's have built in video

Associated cables, likely came with the parts but not for sure.

Read up on your motherboard. Not just the part about how much max memory it supports, also how many dimm slots it has. More slots is better.

Operating System
COH

Notes: Nvidia video cards tend to work (a little) better with COH.

Once you have your parts you just need a screwdriver to put it together. Take your time and read up first and it is easy.

There are lots of websites like www.hardocp.com where you can get advise and instructions on how to do everything.

If it doesnt power up the first time or two you try and turn it on, dont freak, you just forgot to plug in a cable somewhere.

 

Posted

See if you have a friendly local computer store that'll assemble it for you. They'll usually throw in a year's support too, which can be handy. They'll charge you to do it, but that's usually fairly minimal cost. Plus you support a local business and they'll most likely understand when you say "I want a gaming box to play a MMO under $1000 total" and not sell you crap.

Alternately: find a friend to help you build it. My gaming group in general builds their own with me guiding their process to varying degrees -- some folks have me do everything on the build, some folks do everything themselves, just having me check their CPU orientation before they drop it in, and check the heatsink is on right before power-up.