Gaming computers

[draconianruler]

Looking to buy a gaming computer for games,some light graphic editing, business use, and of course checking out calguns Does anyone have any recommendations of places to buy one? I'm looking to spend around $1500ish.

[Double_D]

newegg

[Baconator]

Ibuypower

[draconianruler]

Any recommendations on what to get? How do the AMD's compare with the Intels? I've been out of the computer scene for awhile.

[Vudhu]

I just built my own rig. Used for 3D software and a bit of gaming.

Bought an AMD Phenom II X6 1090t @3.2GHz. The six Cores really help with my rendering. For gaming a quad-core can do just fine, but I'd recommend 3.2GHz+.

Also have a, ATI Radeon HD 5890 GPU. Highly recommended card.

8Gigs of RAM.

500Gig HDD.

Antec 300 series case.

ASUS motherboard.

$1500 including shipping.

[erik_26]

newegg

^This^

Build your own. Its fun.

Be cautious with SSD drives. I have one. It is fast. But I have read to never defrag and never go over 75% of its storage capacity. Plus the larger they are they increase exponentially in cost.

I boot on my SSD when I want to use AutoCAD 2010 or play games like FSX. Otherwise I boot on my other drive for day to day stuff.

Go iCore 7. Load up on ram. Get a good video card, power supply and a case. You will be up an running in no time.

-OR- you can get a pretty nice laptop that you can either dock at home or take with you for less then $1500.

[NorCal Einstein]

^This^

Build your own. Its fun.

Be cautious with SSD drives. I have one. It is fast. But I have read to never defrag and never go over 75% of its storage capacity. Plus the larger they are they increase exponentially in cost.

I boot on my SSD when I want to use AutoCAD 2010 or play games like FSX. Otherwise I boot on my other drive for day to day stuff.

Go iCore 7. Load up on ram. Get a good video card, power supply and a case. You will be up an running in no time.

-OR- you can get a pretty nice laptop that you can either dock at home or take with you for less then $1500.

In my opinion, the SSD is a MUST HAVE if you're going to build a system. Once you experience the speed with a solid state drive, it's hard going back. You're right, you never have to defrag a SSD, and you also don't want to since that puts the drive under un-needed wear.

I run SSDs in all of my built systems, and each computer has 2 hard drives, the SSD, and a traditional HD. Windows and frequently used applications get put on the SSD, while large chunks of data (documents, music, videos, etc) and infrequently used applications are put on the traditional drive. I've been doing fine with a 80GB SSD since that was what was available for around $200 back when I purchased. Now, you can find 128GB drives in around the $200 price point.

draconianruler, spend the money on a SSD, you won't regret it and it might be the source of the greatest gains in speed with your new system.

[sniper4usmc]

sometime,it is cheaper to buy it from tigerdirect or amazon..because Newegg charges CA sale tax+ shipping fee on most items.

[maddoggie13]

One word...Alienware.

http://www.alienware.com/

[UltraLNW]

I'll build it for you on paper. Let me know if you want me to build a wonderrig.

[d4v0s]

If you are looking for a laptop, Dell XPS 15s are right around 12-1500. I7, 6gigs of ram, 640mb hd (ssds are like 400 from dell, lame) and the newer nvidia gt435m, which will play crysis at medium settings. Best part is you can take it with you easily, I attend lan partys so this is a plus for me!

If you build your own, dont forget to include a monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, speakers, and possibly headphones. You can build some very wicked machines for very little coin using newegg.

For the money i would honestly go for the 6core amd 3.2 black edition, 4gb ddr3 with a cas latency of 6,7,8. Lower latency is better just make it work money wise, i love the gskill PI (ddr3 2000 cas latency of 6) grab a brand name mother board (hard to go wrong here) and a graphics card of your choice. Nvidia vs. ATI, once again cant really go wrong here, my money always goes to EVGA if i can help it, lifetime warranty, and great tech support. I like the cooler master haf series cases; And the antec 900, 300, 1200. once again cant really go wrong here.

last thing is to use a good cpu thermal paste like arctic silver, lowers cpu temps and lets the cpu cooler do its thing better. If you want any help building systems just let me know.

David

[Lilium]

In my opinion, the SSD is a MUST HAVE if you're going to build a system. Once you experience the speed with a solid state drive, it's hard going back. You're right, you never have to defrag a SSD, and you also don't want to since that puts the drive under un-needed wear.

I run SSDs in all of my built systems, and each computer has 2 hard drives, the SSD, and a traditional HD. Windows and frequently used applications get put on the SSD, while large chunks of data (documents, music, videos, etc) and infrequently used applications are put on the traditional drive. I've been doing fine with a 80GB SSD since that was what was available for around $200 back when I purchased. Now, you can find 128GB drives in around the $200 price point.

draconianruler, spend the money on a SSD, you won't regret it and it might be the source of the greatest gains in speed with your new system.

Regarding SSD, the reason you don't want to defrag is alot of the lesser SSD's start to degrade after a couple million or so read/writes. Since it's essentially a Hard Drive of Flash memory what ends up happening is after a million read/writes you might have a 0 or 1 permanemtly stuck there. There's also no need to defrag a SSD as it's flash memory. Get the Intel SSD's they're the ones that put the most RnD into it and most other controllers used are either old intel stuff or intel knockoffs. SSD's are not as efficient for small jobs as they are for big ones. Put your Operating system on the SSD and possibly heavy programs on it as well, but for general storage keep it on a seperate hard drive.

For a processor you don't need an i7. Just get a decently priced amd phenom 2. The x4's are very very competively priced, and to be quite honest most games bottle at the GPU, as long as your CPU can keep up anymore processing power is wasted, unless you're going to be encoding or rendering.

GPU's. Right now ATI is in the lead for quality GPU's, despite their crapy stock drivers. The HD 5000 is slowly falling in price since the 6000 series is out. If you're an nvidia guy, wait about a year. the industry tends to shift who's on top every couple of years.

Get a 64 bit operating system and compatible CPU if you want to run more than 4 gigs of ram in windows.

Finally the most important thing is your Power supply and Motherboard. Make sure your motherboard can support everything and has the right expansion slots and your Power supply can run everything.

Those are your basics, the rest is up to you. People tend to get the best stuff when they don't need it. I usually make my own budget gaming systems on 800 bucks that last me a good couple of years.

[NorCal Einstein]

So what? Sandforce SF-1200 is garbage?

[Lilium]

Havent had the pleasure to test out sandforce, didn't know they existed.
But it looks like they're raid controllers from what i skimmed in articles sound pretty good.
Raid controller is pretty clutch

The Tech world is changing too fast for me to keep up with. I don't know, i'd still stay away from SSD's for now. Let the prices settle and the technology get better.

From what ive seen in what my friends have built and what i got to play with your order of priority in quality you want in your SSD have the Raid Controller and DRAM(instead of flash) at the top of the list.

[copenhagen269]

Looking to buy a gaming computer for games,some light graphic editing, business use, and of course checking out calguns Does anyone have any recommendations of places to buy one? I'm looking to spend around $1500ish.

I would recommend building your own system, for $ 1,500 you could build a pretty nice rig. I would check out the new Sandy Bridge processors that just came out, I've heard that they over clock like a beast on air.

Oh, and get a an Nvidia Gpu if you ever thought about folding (think about it ), ATi's aren't working out so hot in that department.