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Message
re: Build the Best Gaming PC Your Money Can Buy: A Detailed Guide (Updated Sep 2014)
Posted on 9/29/13 at 2:11 am to ILikeLSUToo
Posted on 9/29/13 at 2:11 am to ILikeLSUToo
------------------------
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
The Cooler
As you probably already know, processors need direct, active cooling solutions. We already discussed the types of coolers you’ll find for graphics cards, so now it’s time to consider the CPU cooling solutions. With only a few exceptions, retail box CPUs come with a cooler that’s designed to just barely keep your CPU at a safe temperature under a realistic load.
AMD stock cooler for AM3+
Typical Intel stock cooler.
The fans on these coolers are often quite loud at higher temperatures and sometimes not even adequate for a full 100% load on the CPU, even at stock speeds. This is especially true with Intel’s newest line of CPUs, which produces more heat because of the smaller die size and more integrated components. For any CPU, the stock cooler is mainly used in productivity environments—home/office with light workloads that don’t stress the CPU for an extended period. Most off-the-shelf computers at Best Buy, Dell, etc. are going to use this cooler.
Components in a gaming PC need to withstand high usage for hours on end without throttling due to excessive heat. Since your graphics card will be contributing to a higher ambient temperature inside your case, the stock CPU cooler becomes even less of a viable option. Granted, many people still use the stock cooler in their gaming PCs with any problems, but most experienced builders will recommend an aftermarket cooler of some sort. It will extend the lifespan of your CPU and allow for some mild to moderate overclocking when you are ready for it.
There are too many coolers on the market to discuss all of them here. There’s a wide range of prices on air coolers, as well as a wide performance gap with a point of diminishing returns. If you’re curious about the options, I would suggest you Google “Best CPU Cooler 2013” or something similar. Then, get comfortable and prepare for a few hours of reading test results, reviews, more test results, more reviews, followed by even more test results that conflict with the results you’ve already read. PC cooling is a hobby in itself, going hand in hand with overclocking. The options out there are incredibly vast, too extensive to cover in this guide.
Instead, let’s keep it simple. For all three sample budgets used in this guide, I recommend the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO or the Hyper 212+.
Both coolers have repeatedly proven to offer the best cooling performance for the price. They’re priced around $30, but the Hyper 212+ can sometimes be had for $20 with a rebate or promo. While the EVO is the newer and marginally better performer of the two, you’d be safe choosing whichever model is cheaper at the time.
Here’s a Hyper 212 EVO compared to an older stock AMD CPU Cooler:
Yes, it’s a large cooler. It’s not even the largest one out there, but you will still need to consider the size when choosing a case. The case will need to be wide enough to support the cooler’s height—generally an 8” wide case will be fine. We’ll discuss this further in the Case section.
Some people have had difficulty understanding the instructions that come with the cooler. If that’s the case, installation instructions can be found all over the web. Here’s one on overclock.net that covers both Intel and AMD mounts: LINK
====///====Thermal Paste====\\\====
When installing any cooler, you must use thermal paste, also called thermal interface material (TIM). If you want to know why, the thermal paste guide at techpowerup.com offers a good explanation: LINK
Every CPU cooler ships with thermal paste, including the stock CPU coolers (the paste is pre-applied to those types). There are dozens of thermal pastes available on the market, and there can be a significant performance gap between the best thermal paste and the worst—but as you’ll find in your research, the difference between the best and the 15th best thermal paste is only a degree or two. Performance is determined by load temperatures using each type of paste in the same cooling environment.
Luckily, the Hyper 212 EVO comes with decent performing thermal paste, but you will have to apply it yourself. There are several schools of thought when it comes to ensuring application of a thin, even layer of thermal paste. The Newegg build tutorial I linked earlier in this guide will show you one method, but I don’t recommend it. For other methods, I recommend watching this video: LINK
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
The Cooler
As you probably already know, processors need direct, active cooling solutions. We already discussed the types of coolers you’ll find for graphics cards, so now it’s time to consider the CPU cooling solutions. With only a few exceptions, retail box CPUs come with a cooler that’s designed to just barely keep your CPU at a safe temperature under a realistic load.
AMD stock cooler for AM3+
Typical Intel stock cooler.
The fans on these coolers are often quite loud at higher temperatures and sometimes not even adequate for a full 100% load on the CPU, even at stock speeds. This is especially true with Intel’s newest line of CPUs, which produces more heat because of the smaller die size and more integrated components. For any CPU, the stock cooler is mainly used in productivity environments—home/office with light workloads that don’t stress the CPU for an extended period. Most off-the-shelf computers at Best Buy, Dell, etc. are going to use this cooler.
Components in a gaming PC need to withstand high usage for hours on end without throttling due to excessive heat. Since your graphics card will be contributing to a higher ambient temperature inside your case, the stock CPU cooler becomes even less of a viable option. Granted, many people still use the stock cooler in their gaming PCs with any problems, but most experienced builders will recommend an aftermarket cooler of some sort. It will extend the lifespan of your CPU and allow for some mild to moderate overclocking when you are ready for it.
There are too many coolers on the market to discuss all of them here. There’s a wide range of prices on air coolers, as well as a wide performance gap with a point of diminishing returns. If you’re curious about the options, I would suggest you Google “Best CPU Cooler 2013” or something similar. Then, get comfortable and prepare for a few hours of reading test results, reviews, more test results, more reviews, followed by even more test results that conflict with the results you’ve already read. PC cooling is a hobby in itself, going hand in hand with overclocking. The options out there are incredibly vast, too extensive to cover in this guide.
Instead, let’s keep it simple. For all three sample budgets used in this guide, I recommend the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO or the Hyper 212+.
Both coolers have repeatedly proven to offer the best cooling performance for the price. They’re priced around $30, but the Hyper 212+ can sometimes be had for $20 with a rebate or promo. While the EVO is the newer and marginally better performer of the two, you’d be safe choosing whichever model is cheaper at the time.
Here’s a Hyper 212 EVO compared to an older stock AMD CPU Cooler:
Yes, it’s a large cooler. It’s not even the largest one out there, but you will still need to consider the size when choosing a case. The case will need to be wide enough to support the cooler’s height—generally an 8” wide case will be fine. We’ll discuss this further in the Case section.
Some people have had difficulty understanding the instructions that come with the cooler. If that’s the case, installation instructions can be found all over the web. Here’s one on overclock.net that covers both Intel and AMD mounts: LINK
====///====Thermal Paste====\\\====
When installing any cooler, you must use thermal paste, also called thermal interface material (TIM). If you want to know why, the thermal paste guide at techpowerup.com offers a good explanation: LINK
Every CPU cooler ships with thermal paste, including the stock CPU coolers (the paste is pre-applied to those types). There are dozens of thermal pastes available on the market, and there can be a significant performance gap between the best thermal paste and the worst—but as you’ll find in your research, the difference between the best and the 15th best thermal paste is only a degree or two. Performance is determined by load temperatures using each type of paste in the same cooling environment.
Luckily, the Hyper 212 EVO comes with decent performing thermal paste, but you will have to apply it yourself. There are several schools of thought when it comes to ensuring application of a thin, even layer of thermal paste. The Newegg build tutorial I linked earlier in this guide will show you one method, but I don’t recommend it. For other methods, I recommend watching this video: LINK
This post was edited on 3/20/14 at 3:35 pm
1
Posted on 9/29/13 at 2:11 am to ILikeLSUToo
------------------------
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
The Motherboard
Sometimes referred to as the mainboard, or “mobo,” the motherboard is the main PCB, allowing all of your components to communicate and even providing power to some of them. Hopefully, you already knew that. The stability of a motherboard can make or break a system because it holds so many crucial components. This fact leads some people to believe they should be spending as much as they can on the motherboard, assuming more money means more stability. This is partially true, but only because expensive motherboards tend to have more features that require extra power. If you aren’t actually using those features, you’ve overpaid for your motherboard.
As you saw in the budget pie chart, only 11–17% of your budget should be allocated to the motherboard in a standard gaming PC. It’s preferable to keep that percentage on the lower side and choose a board with the features that meet your needs. This section will discuss the main features to consider when purchasing a motherboard.
====///====Brand—Does it Matter?====\\\====
Everyone has an opinion. Ford vs. Chevy, Intel vs. AMD, Heinz vs. Hunts, and so on. I’ll admit that I do have a certain level of bias for particular brands, but I recognize that bias as mostly superficial and based on isolated incidents (e.g., one particular brand failed on me twice, so I never bought another one again). I won’t pollute this section with my opinions on brand. The truth is most of these brands get their components from the same manufacturers, and motherboard failures are generally the result of either user error or just bad luck. There’s no point in polling for opinions about reliability because the answers you get will be corrupted by pride of ownership and hearsay.
These are common brands, in alphabetical order:
> ASRock
> ASUS
> Biostar
> ECS
> Foxconn
> Gigabyte
> Intel
> MSI
> ZOTAC
You’ll be equally safe with any of the above brands. You’d be surprised how incestuous the brands really are. For example, Foxconn makes Intel’s motherboards as well as boards and other components for nearly every major electronics brand out there.
When shopping for a motherboard, consider user reviews as you would for any other product, but avoid being influenced by the label. It’s best to make your decision based on reviews of individual motherboard models, not of overall brands. Still, individual reviews can be tainted by brand preference. Take under consideration any specific problems that are cited across multiple reviews. Otherwise, just choose the cheapest board that meets your needs.
====///====What Do You Need from the Motherboard?====\\\====
Motherboards come with a wide array of feature sets. For our purposes, we’ll look at the following features, labeled in the image below:
The motherboard shown above is an ASRock 990FX Extreme3, which uses the latest chipset for AMD’s Socket AM3+ platform.
====Form Factor====
There are four commonly used form factors in mainstream PCs: Extended ATX (EATX), Standard ATX (ATX), Micro-ATX (mATX), and Mini-ITX. The obvious differences are size and number of onboard components.
Side-by-side size comparison of form factors. The ATX form factor motherboard measures 12” x 9.6” (L x W)
I did not include EATX in the above comparison because the sizes can vary. It has an official size standard of 12” x 13” (L x W), but many motherboards that are classified as EATX are only slightly wider than an ATX board. It’s a form factor reserved for the highest-end (and expensive) motherboards with the most features. With any EATX, you’ll need to use a full-tower case or carefully research a mid-tower to accommodate it.
By far the most common setup for any performance PC uses the ATX form factor, as it offers the widest variety of options. The smaller form factors allow you to use cases that are more compact; they are well suited for HTPCs, home servers, and low-profile light productivity PCs.
Yes, you can build a decent gaming PC with mATX and even Mini-ITX motherboards in small cases, but you’ll have to be careful about selecting properly sized parts and cooling solutions. As you become more familiar with part selection and research, you may find the smaller form factor parts can net you a dirt cheap, compact, and “capable” gaming PC, or a high performance gaming powerhouse in a small space for a premium price.
Tom’s Hardware published an article in June 2013 that detailed a $1,300 Mini-ITX build that has less performance than the $1,000 sample build in this guide.: LINK.
Although the guys at Tom’s made several poor choices on components in that particular build, you will still undeniably get more for your money with an ATX build. That’s the setup we’ll stick with for now.
====CPU Socket====
I’m going to assume you know what this is. And obviously, you have to pick the right socket for the CPU you’re buying:
++++ALERT: You are reading an out-of-date version of the guide and wasting your time. Read the PDF for the most accurate up-to-date info.It's best to download the PDF and use a proper PDF reader. Google's formatting of PDFs breaks all of the links. Link to directly download the PDF. I have stopped updating the text in the thread because the forum's limited code makes it far too time-consuming to change images and add text.++++
------------------------
The Motherboard
Sometimes referred to as the mainboard, or “mobo,” the motherboard is the main PCB, allowing all of your components to communicate and even providing power to some of them. Hopefully, you already knew that. The stability of a motherboard can make or break a system because it holds so many crucial components. This fact leads some people to believe they should be spending as much as they can on the motherboard, assuming more money means more stability. This is partially true, but only because expensive motherboards tend to have more features that require extra power. If you aren’t actually using those features, you’ve overpaid for your motherboard.
As you saw in the budget pie chart, only 11–17% of your budget should be allocated to the motherboard in a standard gaming PC. It’s preferable to keep that percentage on the lower side and choose a board with the features that meet your needs. This section will discuss the main features to consider when purchasing a motherboard.
====///====Brand—Does it Matter?====\\\====
Everyone has an opinion. Ford vs. Chevy, Intel vs. AMD, Heinz vs. Hunts, and so on. I’ll admit that I do have a certain level of bias for particular brands, but I recognize that bias as mostly superficial and based on isolated incidents (e.g., one particular brand failed on me twice, so I never bought another one again). I won’t pollute this section with my opinions on brand. The truth is most of these brands get their components from the same manufacturers, and motherboard failures are generally the result of either user error or just bad luck. There’s no point in polling for opinions about reliability because the answers you get will be corrupted by pride of ownership and hearsay.
These are common brands, in alphabetical order:
> ASRock
> ASUS
> Biostar
> ECS
> Foxconn
> Gigabyte
> Intel
> MSI
> ZOTAC
You’ll be equally safe with any of the above brands. You’d be surprised how incestuous the brands really are. For example, Foxconn makes Intel’s motherboards as well as boards and other components for nearly every major electronics brand out there.
When shopping for a motherboard, consider user reviews as you would for any other product, but avoid being influenced by the label. It’s best to make your decision based on reviews of individual motherboard models, not of overall brands. Still, individual reviews can be tainted by brand preference. Take under consideration any specific problems that are cited across multiple reviews. Otherwise, just choose the cheapest board that meets your needs.
====///====What Do You Need from the Motherboard?====\\\====
Motherboards come with a wide array of feature sets. For our purposes, we’ll look at the following features, labeled in the image below:
The motherboard shown above is an ASRock 990FX Extreme3, which uses the latest chipset for AMD’s Socket AM3+ platform.
====Form Factor====
There are four commonly used form factors in mainstream PCs: Extended ATX (EATX), Standard ATX (ATX), Micro-ATX (mATX), and Mini-ITX. The obvious differences are size and number of onboard components.
Side-by-side size comparison of form factors. The ATX form factor motherboard measures 12” x 9.6” (L x W)
I did not include EATX in the above comparison because the sizes can vary. It has an official size standard of 12” x 13” (L x W), but many motherboards that are classified as EATX are only slightly wider than an ATX board. It’s a form factor reserved for the highest-end (and expensive) motherboards with the most features. With any EATX, you’ll need to use a full-tower case or carefully research a mid-tower to accommodate it.
By far the most common setup for any performance PC uses the ATX form factor, as it offers the widest variety of options. The smaller form factors allow you to use cases that are more compact; they are well suited for HTPCs, home servers, and low-profile light productivity PCs.
Yes, you can build a decent gaming PC with mATX and even Mini-ITX motherboards in small cases, but you’ll have to be careful about selecting properly sized parts and cooling solutions. As you become more familiar with part selection and research, you may find the smaller form factor parts can net you a dirt cheap, compact, and “capable” gaming PC, or a high performance gaming powerhouse in a small space for a premium price.
Tom’s Hardware published an article in June 2013 that detailed a $1,300 Mini-ITX build that has less performance than the $1,000 sample build in this guide.: LINK.
Although the guys at Tom’s made several poor choices on components in that particular build, you will still undeniably get more for your money with an ATX build. That’s the setup we’ll stick with for now.
====CPU Socket====
I’m going to assume you know what this is. And obviously, you have to pick the right socket for the CPU you’re buying:
This post was edited on 3/20/14 at 3:35 pm
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