I’ve been thinking about this for a good while now, and the time has finally come. I need to build myself a new PC 
Back in my mid to late teens (some time ago now I might add, lol) I built my very first PC, an Athlon based rig running at the blistering speed of 2.17ghz
I built it when the original Sata drives first came on the market and I got a floppy disk with my motherboard to install the drivers so Windows would recognise it during installation, oh how times change.
Anyway, I’ve been using that same machine every since, it’s had a couple of graphics card upgrades, a decent sound card installed as well as the obvious flatscreen monitor upgrade, and a new keyboard and mouse, but it’s remained basically the same machine in the same case all that time. To be honest it’s been a good work horse, it manages all my basic needs, Word, Excel, editing photo’s and general internet browsing etc. But with regards to gaming, Battlefield 2142 was the last game I could really play on it, and even then I had to buy a new graphics card to run it
My Pc simply was too old to play the modern games. When the PS3 came out I bought on and played on that for may happy years. . .
Then a couple of years or so ago, one of my mates built a gaming PC, and donated his old small form factor Dell to me. It didn’t have a Hard Drive, only 1gb ram an old single core CPU and a ancient graphics card, but it was still newer, faster and a lot quieter than my ageing PC I’d built all those years ago.
I stripped it down, hovered it out, stuck in an extra 3gb of Ram, replaced the CPU for a dual core Pentium D and bought a Sapphire 7750 low profile graphics card in it all for under £100. It was transformed, I couldn’t believe how fast it was (compared to my old machine) and the graphics were superb (again compared to what I’d been used to).
I registered on Steam and started playing a few of their free-to-play games and started to get hooked. My mate gifted me a copy of Arma II Operation Arrowhead, and I then started playing DayZ (a lot). I played a few other games with my mate Path Of Exile, and Tera amongst others, and I was loving it. I registered on Overclockers.co.uk, and started spent many an hour browsing through peoples project logs, dreaming about having a setup like some of you lot have on here. Triple monitors, multiple graphics cards and Rigs that cost more than my car, haha. One can dream. And then it happened . . .
The Steam Summer Sale…
SO MANY GAMES! Such low prices. It was inevitable. I caved under the pressure and made some purchases. Torchlight II plays perfectly (although it takes about a minute to actually load up) but some of my other buys don’t run at all well. Tomb Raider and Borderlands 2, are basically unplayable, but they were such a good price I had to have them. I loved the first Borderlands (I had it on PS3), and the 2nd one can only be better, and I imagine playing it on a triple monitor setup would be awesome, there’s only one problem, or several problems actually. I don’t have 3 monitors and my PC won’t even run the game in a playable state.
The time had come, I needed a proper gaming PC, in a full size case with decent air flow and some half decent components . . . But first of all I needed money. Queue a mass sell-a-thon on eBay, to gather funds for my new project.
Some time later after some sales and a miniscule bonus from work I’m now in a position to start buying components. I’ve already made my first, a 2nd hand Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced case is currently heading my way. With regards to hardware I’m not entirely sure which route to go down, but my budget is quiet tight (compared to some on here) so I’m leaning more towards an AMD based build, rather than Intel. Ideally I’d like:
AMD FX-8350
Crosshair V Formula Z Motherboard
G.Skill Trident X 2400mhz 2 x 8gb Memory
I know those are pretty much the most expensive AMD based components, I think it’s worth going for good quality components.
I’m unsure on exactly what power supply to go for, but I want to get a powerful one that has a long warranty and will be future proof for when I go SLI.
I’ve currently got an Sapphire HD-7750 low profile graphics card, and that will be ok for the minute until I get funds for a new card, aiming for a GTX 680 4gb, but I’m a good way off having the cash for that just yet.
As far as cooling goes, I’d like to get a Corsair H100i for the CPU, as I’ve only heard good things about them, and my budget won’t stretch to a custom water cooled setup.
Likewise I’ve currently got a 24” Acer monitor that’s brilliant, and I’d ultimately like to get another 2 in order to run a triple monitor setup, but this is a good way down the line just yet.
I’ll keep this thread updated as and when there’s progress being made. My case hasn’t even arrived yet, but it should be here any day now, so fingers crossed it’s in decent shape for being 2nd hand.
Back in my mid to late teens (some time ago now I might add, lol) I built my very first PC, an Athlon based rig running at the blistering speed of 2.17ghz
I built it when the original Sata drives first came on the market and I got a floppy disk with my motherboard to install the drivers so Windows would recognise it during installation, oh how times change.Anyway, I’ve been using that same machine every since, it’s had a couple of graphics card upgrades, a decent sound card installed as well as the obvious flatscreen monitor upgrade, and a new keyboard and mouse, but it’s remained basically the same machine in the same case all that time. To be honest it’s been a good work horse, it manages all my basic needs, Word, Excel, editing photo’s and general internet browsing etc. But with regards to gaming, Battlefield 2142 was the last game I could really play on it, and even then I had to buy a new graphics card to run it
My Pc simply was too old to play the modern games. When the PS3 came out I bought on and played on that for may happy years. . .
Then a couple of years or so ago, one of my mates built a gaming PC, and donated his old small form factor Dell to me. It didn’t have a Hard Drive, only 1gb ram an old single core CPU and a ancient graphics card, but it was still newer, faster and a lot quieter than my ageing PC I’d built all those years ago.
I stripped it down, hovered it out, stuck in an extra 3gb of Ram, replaced the CPU for a dual core Pentium D and bought a Sapphire 7750 low profile graphics card in it all for under £100. It was transformed, I couldn’t believe how fast it was (compared to my old machine) and the graphics were superb (again compared to what I’d been used to).
I registered on Steam and started playing a few of their free-to-play games and started to get hooked. My mate gifted me a copy of Arma II Operation Arrowhead, and I then started playing DayZ (a lot). I played a few other games with my mate Path Of Exile, and Tera amongst others, and I was loving it. I registered on Overclockers.co.uk, and started spent many an hour browsing through peoples project logs, dreaming about having a setup like some of you lot have on here. Triple monitors, multiple graphics cards and Rigs that cost more than my car, haha. One can dream. And then it happened . . .
The Steam Summer Sale…
SO MANY GAMES! Such low prices. It was inevitable. I caved under the pressure and made some purchases
. Torchlight II plays perfectly (although it takes about a minute to actually load up) but some of my other buys don’t run at all well. Tomb Raider and Borderlands 2, are basically unplayable, but they were such a good price I had to have them. I loved the first Borderlands (I had it on PS3), and the 2nd one can only be better, and I imagine playing it on a triple monitor setup would be awesome, there’s only one problem, or several problems actually. I don’t have 3 monitors and my PC won’t even run the game in a playable state.The time had come, I needed a proper gaming PC, in a full size case with decent air flow and some half decent components . . . But first of all I needed money. Queue a mass sell-a-thon on eBay, to gather funds for my new project.
Some time later after some sales and a miniscule bonus from work I’m now in a position to start buying components. I’ve already made my first, a 2nd hand Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced case is currently heading my way. With regards to hardware I’m not entirely sure which route to go down, but my budget is quiet tight (compared to some on here) so I’m leaning more towards an AMD based build, rather than Intel. Ideally I’d like:
AMD FX-8350
Crosshair V Formula Z Motherboard
G.Skill Trident X 2400mhz 2 x 8gb Memory
I know those are pretty much the most expensive AMD based components, I think it’s worth going for good quality components.
I’m unsure on exactly what power supply to go for, but I want to get a powerful one that has a long warranty and will be future proof for when I go SLI.
I’ve currently got an Sapphire HD-7750 low profile graphics card, and that will be ok for the minute until I get funds for a new card, aiming for a GTX 680 4gb, but I’m a good way off having the cash for that just yet.
As far as cooling goes, I’d like to get a Corsair H100i for the CPU, as I’ve only heard good things about them, and my budget won’t stretch to a custom water cooled setup.
Likewise I’ve currently got a 24” Acer monitor that’s brilliant, and I’d ultimately like to get another 2 in order to run a triple monitor setup, but this is a good way down the line just yet.
I’ll keep this thread updated as and when there’s progress being made. My case hasn’t even arrived yet, but it should be here any day now, so fingers crossed it’s in decent shape for being 2nd hand.
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Or maybe it does and I just can't find it...
