lunar.soliloquy

Don't ask me why I'm blogging at 4am in the morning, cuz I don't know either. I guess analyzing computer components at night before sleeping was a bad move. The complexity of computer architecture is so ridiculous, my head was literally buzzing with them all through the night and I had a terrible amount of sleep last night.

I suppose the main motive behind this new venture of mine is due to my simple annoyance at the fact that my $2300 laptop I got 3 years ago can't run Starcraft 2, even on the lowest quality without lagging the hell out of everyone in the game. Yeah, sure my Toshiba P200 meets the minimum requirements but those are the -bare minimum- for even running the app and that's still on lowest quality. Now I don't mind running SC2 on crap quality but what actually gets me is the LAG. 128mb dedicated graphics is the minimum, 512mb is the recommended. Guess how much I have. 256! T.T; And that was top notch 3 years ago. For a lappy, anyway. I won't ignore the fact that my motherboard broke on me two years ago but I didn't find it affected it -too- much in terms of gaming. My laptop's just simply out of date, and I need something I can play my Starcrafts on, and with Katherine's Intel i7 930 nVidia GTX 470 out of reach, I'm feeling the pinch more than ever now.

So those are my prime motivations for looking into a gaming rig. I just received a pay rise at work so I'm feeling I can be a little generous with my present for myself this Christmas and could probably part with $1500 for the purposes of building my machine. But no more. I know how easy it is to go over that limit with the endless numbers of computer components that are out there on the market now, and how you could get that extra "oomph" for just $50 more or so. But that's not going to happen to me. I'm going to strictly adhere to my budget on this one, and not oversplurdge on something ridiculous like the monster of a machine my sister has. Of course, getting the latest tech out there is sure as hell tempting, but I'm not a hardcore gamer as such, so spending extra money for a hobby I really don't have a lot of time for would be a waste of money in my eyes.

At $1500 I believe I'm looking at the mid-range of performance computers, so it's not going to be hitting the fps on Crysis HQ max anti-aliasing etc, unfortunately. But I don't care, so long as it runs Starcraft 2 with NO LAG I'm happy. Apparently you can build a decent rig for around $500 if your sole intention is for it to play SC2 but I don't want my rig to be outdated so fast to the point its going to be obselete next year (when they release Diablo 3 and god knows what else) so I'm quite keen on getting something that will last a while. Building a computer is serious business and being my first time at ever looking at a computer beyond the specs in the shops it's a little daunting. Luckily for me the internet exists, with its wealth of information (although can be a little subjective, as all media is) and I have friends experienced in such matters. I will be sure to pick their brains about this, as computers have never really been my forte since the only thing I used to do with them is play on them, lolz. Didn't really take them apart or try and put one together, it all seemed like too much work for what it was worth. Wish I could've learned a little computer architecture in high school.

So onto the parts themselves...

~Processor/CPU
So far I'm leaning towards Intel rather than ATI atm since from what I've been reading, Intel's chips are where it's at today in terms of gaming and overall performance. ATI's chips are a little cheaper and the specs do look good on paper but in practice, Intel makes the superior gaming chips. In particular the i5 series seems to be the favourite chip for budget gamers such as myself and the i5 core 750/760 was agreed by several reviews to be the one to go for. It's a little expensive at $309 (all prices are from PBtech, where I'm probably going to be buying it from) but the CPU is important and I'm willing to spend a little more on it, but if the budget disallows it, I'll probably go for something a step down. I'd still like to run a quad core, though. Interestingly, Intel's releasing their new chipset line early next year, so I'll probably wait til then and see what the i5 line has to offer with the new "Sandy Bridge" or whatever you call it technology. If I was going for an AMD chip I'd probably go for the hex-core (!) Phenom II X6 1055T but according to a number of reviews the hex core technology they use is still based on an old AMD chip or something and somehow it's not as good for games, but is better for multi-thread apps, whatever they are.

~Graphics Card
nVidia or AMD? >< too many decisions. I heard ATI makes better cards but nvidia makes better drivers, so the verdict's out there of which of the two is actually better. I think in terms of bang for buck AMD cards are top on the market, but if you're looking at high-performance cards, nVidia beats AMD hands down with its GTX460 series and above. Since I'm a gamer on a budget, I'll be leaning more towards AMD on this one. I looked at nvidia cards but the ones I wanted were too far out of reach for my budget ($300 and upwards) whereas with the AMD ones you could get a similar performance for 2/3rds the price. The AMD Radeon HD 5770 seemed quite popular among gamers on a budget with the nvidia GTS450 close behind. Both cards were around $230 which seems a reasonable amount to spend on a graphics card for a gaming rig.

~Motherboard
So I'll need a motherboard that fits nicely with the two options I've chosen up here. I'll be waiting for Intel's new chipset to come in so obviously this may be subject to change, although I've looked at what I need and what's on the market. Gigabyte seems to make decent gaming motherboards and are cheaper than the EVGA ones so I'll probably be getting one of theirs. The Gigabyte H55M-D2H looks to be within my price range and has all the support I need including support for ATI CrossfireX technology in case I decide to purchase another graphics card in the future to keep up with the play. All for a reasonable price of $160.


~RAM
The architecture of RAM components didn't seem particularly as important compared to CPUs and Video cards for gaming rigs, so I just decided to go with something generic - the Kingston HyperX 6GB 1600MHz C9 DDR3. Any 6GB card with DDR3 should be okay to use, right? That's another $199, not much more than the 4GB ones, so I decided I may as well got for 6 gigs of RAM.

~Hard Drive
Idk, anything that will fit all my anime and junk, and won't break the bank or lose my stuff. Western Digital seems the economical choice, with 1Tb for $109.



~DVD/Bluray Drive
A Bluray drive would be nice but I'm not spending an extra $100 just for that. The LG GH22Ns50 seemed economical, at $45.

~Network Adapter
Need something that works. And wireless too, please. The Asus PCI-G31 was only $38 and seemed like it would do the job.


~Power Supply
Prefer something not too noisy. The Great Wall 550SEL boasted good energy efficiency and ultra-silent running for only $79, and that seemed reasonable.


~Case
Something stylish that would keep the goods nice and cool. Everyone who builds custom rigs seems to use Coolermaster these days, probably because they have the best ventilation. Even the ones at the net cafes back in Auckland use them. Must be good. I pick the most stylish looking one, the Elite 430 mid-tower.
So I think that's all the hardware I'm going to need to build my new gaming rig. I'll wait til next year for Intel's Sandy Bridge and see what's new before jumping in, of course. It's pretty exciting, the prospect of building something like this (abeit a bit nerdy) since I've never done this sort of thing before and I'm expecting to get some good results out of this thing. I have absolutely no experience in the art of computer assembling whatsoever (unless you count the time I replaced a broken 64mb graphics card with a 128mb one on our 8 year old bomb of a desktop in Rotorua many years ago) so I'll have to get someone else to do it.

Let's see how much this is going to cost me altogether...

Intel Core i5 760 2.8 GHz Processor - $309
Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 5770 Graphics Card - $229
Gigabyte H55M-D2H Motherboard - $160
Kingston HyperX 6GB 1600 Mhz C9 DDR3 RAM - $199
Western Digital Blue Edition 1Tb Hard Drive - $109
LG GH22NS50 DVD Drive - $45
Asus PCI-G31 Wireless Network Adapter - $38
Great Wall 550SEL Power Supply - $79
Cooler Master Elite 430 Mid-Tower Case - $171

Total comes to $1339. I know I have a little leeway to upgrade 1 or 2 things if I wanted to and still stay within my budget. I still haven't decided on a monitor yet either. My sis asked me if I wanted her LG LED one for Christmas so I might just use that, although I still want to have a look around to see what's on the market at the moment. I'm more than open to suggestions if anyone who's bored enough to be reading this blog can suggest anything in the way of parts cuz i'm utterly clueless about these things and I just compiled the list above in 1 day on a quiet day at work. I'm all for value for money so I'm after the parts that will give me the best bang for buck, not the ridiculously expensive ones that are going to break my small collection of savings. Thanks for reading, feel free to comment (I think I removed the restrictions on profile requirements for comments now so you shouldn't need to sign in anymore).