Building a gaming computer

[bmwgs]

I am thinking, well no, I'm going to build a computer for gaming, specifically for Aces High.

I have a couple of friends that will help put it together, but they are not gamers. 

What I need to know is what is the top end for power supply, mother board, sound board, and such so I don't have to do this again for a while.  I already understand graphics cards, but any recommendations would be of help.

So if someone has a couple of minutes and has the knowledge, can you post a list of what is needed to make a basic system for gaming.  I do not plan to use the computer for internet or anything else.

Thanks

Fred

[33Vortex]

A 1500W power supply, one of these with a intel Quad Extreme CPU and 3 of these. Slap on some fast RAM, hook up SATA disks in RAID mode, or if you're really serious get a solid-state disk. Then if you want best possible graphics experience get a good 30" widescreen LCD, and a TrackIR.

That's a pretty good high-end setup just off the top of my head. It will cost you $$$ but you'll have fun with it.

Good luck with your project!

[Fulmar]

Your first step bmwgs is to figure out a budget.  You can get a nice Aces High gaming system for about $500 on the average (w/o monitor).

[bmwgs]

Your first step bmwgs is to figure out a budget.  You can get a nice Aces High gaming system for about $500 on the average (w/o monitor).

I have a fairly new computer that works pretty good now.  I have no real budget in mind, but just looking to get the best bang for the buck.  I'm not looking for anyting more than what
Aces High can handle.  Just want to get the best experience possible.


Fred

[Getback]

My thoughts:

E8400 intel chip
Abit IP35 pro or newer, easy to overclock. Still though nothing wrong with a Gigabyte board.
I would choose a modular PS. I forgot what my PS is. But go for a least 550 watts.
Get a sound card: I use asus but that doesn't matter Just get one.
Video card. I'm no expert here. However, I use an ATI 3850. I hear the 4850 and 4870 are awesome.
Get a good heatsink and fan. I use a Zalman but the one Falcon is getting is highly rated and only cost 27 bucks.
Might as well grab 4 gigs of memory. Get it all at once.

Other than that it is as easy as playing with legos. Although I could never figure out what the yellow ones were for.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Best overall Power Supply going right now for a gaming rig is this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139002

They have one better, but it costs almost twice as much.  This one will run anything on the market right now and do it in style.  SLI and/or Crossfire ready, modular cabling, 3x12v rails that deliver 18A nominal power, 30A max and 2x120mm fans to keep it from overheating.  Plus, nobody that I know of is making better quality units right now than this one.  Newegg has 379 reviews showing on this one, and almost 90% gave it a perfect score.  It will run the most power hungry video cards on the market and do it without flinching.

[Chalenge]

Gigabyte or ASUS MB and definately Intel if you can afford it. I prefer Asus.

I went with bluegears b-Enspirer sound card because it uses the least amount of CPU (less is good in flight sims) AND it has the best reviews for audio quality in a sound card below $200 plus it gets along with XP and Vista. What ever you do dont go with onboard sound. It has never been good enough for AHII no matter what you hear. (ha!)

Get a new copy of XP SP3 before they run out! I love Vista but you might not.

If you decide to go with Vista (or even if you dont) you might want to stick to ATI video. ATI has fewer driver issues with Vista. Most of the 'anti-Vista' talk you hear is because of all the really really poor Nvidia drivers that were around when Vista was released (chipsets too). Still I like Nvidia because of the bang you get for every dollar its just you sometimes have to deal with waiting on problems to be fixed.

Get the fastest hard drive you can afford say 7200 rpm and 32 Meg cache.

I like the Antec or Kingwin PSUs myself and I have a Kingwin 900 right now but they are expensive.

Do your homework! Whatever MB you decide on get the manufacturers QVL for memory. Read reviews and customer reviews. I like newegg because you can see how the product rates with customers and you can get an idea of how the QA/QC of each product reveals itself in customer satisfaction. For instance if you see 240 reviews of a product and 79% are 5 stars you know the product is making people happy. Read the forums for the MB brand AND the memory brand you choose. Obviously I like Asus MBs and Corsair memory. You can get a feel for what to expect in setting things up by reading the boards.

Dont get in a hurry go slow and build your knowledge as you go so you will be satisfied.

[bmwgs]

Thanks, I'm getting some good advise. 

As for the OS I already have XP Home with service pack 2 on disk that I bought some time ago.  I assume I can download the service pack 3 from the internet.  Am I thinking wrong?

And no, I'm not in a rush, just want to do it right the first time.   

Thanks Again for all the responses,

Fred

[BaldEagl]

Here.  I just built this in March. It's overkill for AH but will give you some ideas I suppose (Just under $2000 all in including mouse, keyboard, cables, surge protectors, shipping etc. as I kept my old machine and needed to buy everything except the two ATA hard drives).

Coolermaster Cavalier
EVGA NVidia NForce 780i
Intel E6750 Conroe 2.66Ghz (OC'd to 3.2 Ghz)
Kingston HyperX DDR2 800 2x1Gb
EVGA 8800 GTS 512 G92 
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro
PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W PSU
Seagate Barracuda 250 Gb SATA HD
Seagate 200 Gb ATA HD
Seagate 160 Gb ATA HD
Asus SATA 20x DVD+R DVD Burner
Asus SATA DVD-ROM
Microsoft Windows XP Pro With SP2C (updated to SP3)
LG 22" 2ms Widescreen LCD
Klipsch Promedia 78 watts 2.1 Speaker

[falcon23]

Which brings me to a question,,not trying to Hijack,but my HD is 80 GB,would a bigger one help?
                                   Falcon23

[Masherbrum]

Here.  I just built this in March. It's overkill for AH but will give you some ideas I suppose (Just under $2000 all in including mouse, keyboard, cables, surge protectors, shipping etc. as I kept my old machine and needed to buy everything except the two ATA hard drives).

Coolermaster Cavalier
EVGA NVidia NForce 780i
Intel E6750 Conroe 2.66Ghz (OC'd to 3.2 Ghz)
Kingston HyperX DDR2 800 2x1Gb
EVGA 8800 GTS 512 G92 
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro
PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W PSU
Seagate Barracuda 250 Gb SATA HD
Seagate 200 Gb ATA HD
Seagate 160 Gb ATA HD
Asus SATA 20x DVD+R DVD Burner
Asus SATA DVD-ROM
Microsoft Windows XP Pro With SP2C (updated to SP3)
LG 22" 2ms Widescreen LCD
Klipsch Promedia 78 watts 2.1 Speaker

Yep,

I just built a similar rig to Bald's.

E8400
ASUS Silent Knight II CPU Cooler
ASUS PK5-E MB
Mushkin Ascent DDR2 8500 2x2GB
JUST ORDERED the eVga 8800GTS KO
Using Onboard sound ATM, I do have an old SB Audigy I may use, but for right now, the onboard is more than enough.
PC & Cooling S75QB 750W PSU
150GB WD Raptor X
Sony DVD Burner Dual Layer
XP Pro SP2
LG 19" LCD monitor
Logitech 2.1 or Sennheiser phones with a Logitech Mic
X52
CH Pedals
Belkin Hub-to-go

BaldEagl's "template" was a sure basis for my PC build.   You will see similarities between ours, I went with spartan thinking.   What worked for him, has worked for me. 

Skuzzy was also instrumental.  He gave me a SOLID RECOMMENDATION for the PSU that was the backbone of this build.   I would have NEVER looked into the PC & Cooling PSU's.   IMO, the Corsair linked is underpowered for the money.   I paid $160 at Newegg for mine. 

[Chalenge]

Which brings me to a question,,not trying to Hijack,but my HD is 80 GB,would a bigger one help?
                                   Falcon23

Possibly. If you are using more than half of the disks capacity then absolutely you could use a bigger one anyway. Windows has to have some empty space on the drive or it starts to slow down really bad. But if you have SATA 2 7200 rpm drives with 16 or 32 MB cache AND all you have is windows and AHII on it then you wont see much improvement.

[BaldEagl]

Thanks for the nice words Masher.  I love my new machine... it rocks!   

[bmwgs]

OK, this is what I'm thinking about so far.  Take a look and see where I am going wrong.

10-Bay ATX Computer Case w/550W PSU&9.84" Blue Led Fan
Includes 7 expansion slots and USB mic and headphone jacks.

Intel Pentium 4 3.40GHz 800MHz 1MB Socket 775 CPU

Intel D955XBK LGA775 1066SB CrossFire ATX motherboard

Western Digital WD800JD 80 GB Serial ATA 150 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

Don't know about the graphics cards yet, also thinking about some extra cooling.

Fred

[TequilaChaser]

I went with nearly same build as Karaya & Baldeagl - I just went AMD instead of Intel  and ATI instead of Nividia

my PC specs:
ANTEC 900 Series Case ( all fan switches set to medium speed )
PC POWER & COOLING 750 watt crossfire edition power supply
ASUS  M3A32-MVP Deluxe with WiFi ( wifi not installed )   am using the memory heatsink pipe/cooler plates that came with MB
AMD Athlon64 6400 X2  operating @ 3.21 ghz   default  stock heatsink/fan that came with it
4 Gigs of Corsair PC6400   800 mhz DDR2 ( windows shows 3.25 gigs / on bootup BIOS shows all 4 gigs )
ASUS EAH3870 512meg DDR4  video card
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality Extreme Gamer Professional Series Sound Card
ASUS SATA DVD-DL RW with Lightscribe
ASUS SATA DVD-ROM
(2) SATA-II 320 gig hitachi hard drives ( am not running RAID setup at this time, will eventually with another HD added Raptor 10,00 RPM 150gig SATA HD <--this HD will be for Aces High use only and using multi-boot for seperate OS's )
Rosewill 1.44 Floppy Drive + 9 in 1  Card Reader
Windows XP Pro SP2 ( have downloaded SP3 )
CH Products HOTAS ( fiterstick/throttle/pedals  12+ yearold gameport version )
DELL UltraSharp 19" LCD ( fixing to upgrade to HannsG 28" LCD WideScreen )
JAZZ J-902 Subwoofer & Speakers
Plantronics 90 series headphones/Mic  with vol/mic mute control inline  ( these are 5 years old and work great for $20 bucks )

just recently put it together, have a few tweaks to work on to be Aces High ready.......

videochip running around 34 to 36 degrees C / MB running 37 to 39 C  under load, will see if temps go up under running Aces High )


edit:
Antec 900 Series Case
AMD 6400 X2
ASUS  M3A32- MVP Deluxe MB with WiFi  ( both AM & AM2  processor compatible )
4 gig's of PC6400 800 mhz DDR2 Memory
ASUS Ati 3870 512mg DDR4 Videocard
Sound Blaster  Fatality XtremeGamer Professional Series Sound Card
(2) 320 Gig SataII Hard Drives
ASUS DVD- DL Burner with Lightscribe SATA
ASUS DVD-Rom SATA
9 in 1 card Reader with 3 1/2 floppy drive
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 watt power supply

after Shipping & Taxes total cost was a little change over  $1,120.00  @ newegg