Building a balanced gaming machine - what to look for and what to avoid.

We frequently get questions from customers who do not know how to build a good, balanced machine. We hate it when we see a client order a machine for R20 000 that’s only 5% quicker than a machine for half the price - that’s not great value for money!

We’ve said it many times before, that we’re in the business of making people happy. Making a bit of money on the side is a completely secondary goal for us. I frequently make suggestions that someone should rather wait, or not upgrade right now, or take a cheaper component, or anything in this line (there are countless examples on our forums of this and you’re welcome to do a search or two to confirm this, if you wish). I want a customer to feel 100% happy with his purchase, getting great value for money and a system that meets their needs. We’d rather have you happy as a customer long term than make extra profit selling you something that doesn’t actually meet your needs in the short term!

With this in mind, let me quickly go through a typical machine, and explain what each component does in a gaming machine, and what role they play in the greater scheme of things.

1. Case:
   The computer case is one of those components that I cannot really recommend to a customer. It’s a hugely personal thing, and every person will look at something different, and like something different. So, for a case, there are only really two things to take into consideration.
   1. Cooling
   2. Quality
      
      Cooling is easy, since you merely look at the number of fans, and the number of vents/mesh panels in order to assess whether a case would be good for cooling. In general, cooling on a case makes only a small difference, and most cases are good enough for the average user. If you’re planning to overclock, it would be a good idea to investigate case cooling in more detail and specifically choose a case with exceptional cooling.
      
      Quality is also really easy. Just don’t look at cases that are too cheap. If you get a case that costs R250 and it has a PSU as well, then you can expect that type of quality, whereas, if you spend R700 on a case without a PSU, then you’re buying a good quality case. A good compromise is probably cases around R400 - R500 without a PSU, or around R800 - R1000 with a PSU.
      
      Here, you can find a list of our computer tower cases.
      
      
2. Motherboard
   The motherboard is your foundation of your system. A good foundation is crucial to building a well balanced computer system. However, a good foundation doesn’t necessarily have to cost thousands of rands (for an Intel Socket 775 system, you can get a good, solid motherboard for only R470). A solid motherboard does not mean the motherboard with the most bells and whistles. In fact, this is often the exact opposite of what you should be looking for. Here is a good, step by step guide to choosing the right motherboard.
   1. Think about what you need from a motherboard. How many SATA ports do you need? How many USB ports do you need? Do you need overclockability? Do you need any features like eSATA or Firewire or PATA ports? What size motherboard do you need (micro-ATX, ATX, Mini-ITX, etc)? Do you have a brand preference? And lastly, what kind of warranty do you want/need?
   2. Decide which CPU and RAM you want to use with this, if you already have it. If not, choose which CPU/RAM you wish to get and keep it in mind.
   3. Head over to our motherboards page, choose the architecture and sockets, and sort it by price, in ascending order.
   4. Choose the first motherboard in the list that adheres to points 1 and 2 above.
      
      Do not take a motherboard with features that you won’t use, or do not want. It increases the price, and it decreases the stability of the motherboard, and when it comes to motherboards, you want to choose the most stable one. You do not want a foundation that will cause your house to fall down, do you?
      
      When it comes to compatibility, the only things you have to keep in mind (in general, there are exceptions, but they’re so few and far between that the average user do not need to concern themselves with this) is CPU and memory. There are a few options here:
      1. CPU
         1. Intel
            1. Socket 775
            2. Socket 1156 (Core I3, I5 and I7)
            3. Socket 1366 (Core I7)
            4. Server CPU’s, which falls out of the scope of this blog post
         2. AMD
            1. Socket AM2
            2. Socket AM2+
            3. Socket AM3
      2. RAM
         1. DDR2
         2. DDR3
            1. Dual channel (used with Intel Socket 1156 CPU’s and AMD AM3 and some AM2+ boards)
            2. Tripple channel (used with Intel Socket 1336 CPU’s)
               
               
               This is all that you need to look out for. Ask if you’re not sure.
               
               
3. CPU
   I’ve basically explained the CPU already in the motherboard section above. However, the CPU does a lot of work. It’s necessary to make certain that you have a good enough CPU to do waht you need done. But, the CPU is not as important as the VGA card, when it comes to gaming machines. There is nothing wrong with an entry level Core I3 CPU, or a cheap AMD Phenom CPU when you’re building a gaming computer. Do not spend excessively on a CPU. Rather go for a cheaper CPU and go for more ram, or for a bigger VGA card. For a budget gaming machine, you should look at a CPU that’s around R600 - R1000 in price. For a mid range gaming machine with an expensive VGA card, look for a CPU in the R2000 range.
   
   You can find a list of our processors (or CPU’s) on our Processor page.
   
   
   
4. RAM
   When it comes to memory, quantity is more important than quality. With this, I do not mean you should buy the absolute cheapest ram you can get. At least look for a reputable brand (corsair, Transcend, Kingston, Team, OCZ, Mushkin - avoid no name brand ram, and Major brand ram, because usually they’re not a major brand) with a lifetime warranty. However, it’s not important to look for the fastest ram that you can get your hands on, and spend thousands of rands on your RAM. Rather get an extra 2 GB’s (4 GB’s is probably a good quantity to go for at this stage) of ram, than spend more on speed. For Intel Socket 1156 CPU’s, I would suggest 2 x 2GB kit of DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600 at most. For DDR2 machines, get 4GB of DDR2-800, and for Intel Socket 1366 machines, get either 3 x 1GB or 3 x 2GB of DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600 ram. I would probably lean towards the 6GB kit, rather than the 3GB kit, as it’ll provide you with a little bit of longevity for your machine.
   
   For a list of ram, look at our Desktop memory page.
   
   
   
5. VGA card or GPU
   This is the most important thing you can put in your machine if you’re building a gaming machine. This is the component that does the most work. As a general rule of thumb, if you compare products inside a brand, the more money you throw at this problem, the better. However, in general, it’s not worth it to purchase an overclocked version of a card, if the price is more than about 5% - 10% more than that standard clocked card, as this is the most you can expect in terms of performance increase over the standard version.
   
   I would in general try and stick to the latest technology, but often the previous technology is nearly as fast (especially initially) and comes in at a better price. This is usually where I would do some investigations when purchasing a new machine. Especially do Google searches for benchmarks for the card, and see what you can come up with, or ask us. We are generally quite up to date when it comes to best bang for buck cards available (right now, for example, the Nvidia GTX 460 is looking especially good). One mistake to avoid - don’t get hung up on one feature of a card (OMW, does it have DDR5?) without realising that it’s the overall performance that’s important, not any one feature. A card with memory running at a slower frequency, but on a wider bus, may end up having better performance.
   
   For a list of our VGA cards, have a look at our Graphics Cards category
   
   
   
6. Hard drives
   Nothing difficult here. Choose either Seagate or Western Digital, and just get the size you want. Avoid funny drives like SV or ES drives on Seagate, or RE drives from Western Digital. They’ll cost more and aren’t necessary for the average desktop user. For example, SV drives are drives optimised for use in surveillance systems, where more writes than reads take place.
   
   Personally I type in the size I want in our website’s search box (for example, 500GB, or 1TB or 1.5TB), sort by price, and take the first one that looks like a hard drive.
   
   The hard drive is where you store your programs, like Windows, Office, and your installed Games. most people won’t need more than a 250GB or a 500GB, unless you download a lot of stuff from your new 4MB uncapped account.
   
   
   
7. Optical drives
   They’re all the same. Don’t spend time on this. Just choose the cheapest Sata one. There are three major brands at the moment. Samsung, LG and Liteon. There are three main types in each of these. IDE, Sata, and Sata Litescribe.
   
   You don’t get DVD readers any more, and neither do you get any CD rom’s or CD writers. You only really get two types. DVD writers and Blu-Ray readers & writers. At this point, I’d suggest avoiding Blu-Ray. It’s expensive, and will likely not get very far as a technology. If you frequently rent Blu-Ray movies, then consider getting a reader if you want to watch if on your computer. Otherwise, just get a DVD writer.
   
   For a list of our optical drives, have a look at our Internal Optical drives category. For blu-Ray drives, look at our Blu-Ray drives category.
   
   
   
8. Sound card, speakers and headsets
   Don’t get one. Your motherboard has one, and it’s good enough. Spend the money on another hard drive, more ram or a bigger VGA card.
   
   However, if you do want a sound card, the Asus Xonar series are exceptionally good quality, and will not let you down. You can also look at our other sound cards, headsets, headphones and earphones, and speakers.
   
   
   
9. Keyboard and Mouse
   This one is again a bit personal. The best would be to have a look at our Keyboard and mouse category, and sort by price. Choose one that looks good for you (logitech is great, and Microsoft is very good as well).
   
   You can find our keyboard and mouse combos on the keyboard and mouse combo category page
   
   
   
10. Screen
    Go for bang for buck. These days, it’s either LG or Samsung, and the sizes are somewhere between 21.5” (marked as 22”) and 24”. They’re all similar, and do not believe the marketing hype around contrast ratio and response times. There are definitely differences between screens, but they’re all similar, and unless you are especially attentive to minute details, you won’t even see a difference, even when the screens are put next to each other. Both LG and Samsung are great, and I’d get the cheapest one if I had to choose.
    
    You can look at our 20” - 22” displays or our 23” and larger displays categories.

Taking these tips into account, there should be no reason why you wouldn’t be able to build a very decent machine for under R10 000. You can obviously get much cheaper if you go for the cheaper components (like smaller screens, fewer ram, smaller cpu and cheaper motherboard) and you could get as cheap as R6 000 or R7 000, if you’re happy with a sacrifice here and there.

You can always ask here (no account needed to post), if you wish to find out what the best possible machine is for your budget. Remember to give your budget, and what you’d use the machine for, and the shop staff, as well as community members will respond to your thread with a few ideas. That way, you get expert advice, with little bias (as you get more than one opinion).

Please give us your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

Happy shopping!

Comments

[Henk Keuris]

Ok, I forgot to mention two more things:

The first is the case size. You basically get three sizes of cases.
1. ATX cases (you can call this the "standard" size). Most graphics cards will fit in most of these cases, although there are exceptions. Ask if you're not sure.
2. Micro-ATX case (only Micro-ATX motherboards fits in here, and you should be careful which graphics card you add in here, since not all will fit).
3. Cube cases or SFF (small form factor) cases. There usually takes Micro-ATX motherboards. Huge space contraints. Ask before you buy a graphics card or PSU for this type of case.

Secondly, the Power Supply (PSU, or Power Supply Unit for short).
This is a difficult one, but this is something I do not usually like to go cheap on. A cheap power supply can blow, and take out your entire system, or parts of it in the process. Take a good brand (Antec, Coolermaster, Vantec, Gigabyte, OCZ, Corsair and Zalman. Usually, the more expensive, the better, up to a limit. A good price is around the R1000 for a 600W PSU. You can get away with the lower specced PSU's (like Coolermaster Extreme Power Series, or Gigabyte Odin) and they're not bad at all, but stay clear of anything that's cheaper than these, unless you've got a 100% entry level system.

Most systems do not need more than a 550W or 650W power supply, unless you're going for SLI/Crossfire (running 2 or more graphics cards in unison on the same motherboard), which in general, is not necessary, and unnecessarily complicates things in your machine.

When choosing a PSU, note that there are two types of PSU ratings. Continuous power rating and Peak power rating. Peak is the highest a PSU can go, while continuous is what a PSU can push out on a continuous basis.

For example, a Peak rated PSU at 500W, may only be a 460W or a 420W continuous, and similarly, a 600W continuous PSU might be able to push out 680W or even 720W. Most cheaper PSU's are rated as Peak, while more expensive brands usually rates their PSU's based on it's continuous rating. Keep this in mind. You want to get a specific continuous rating, not a specific peak rating. If you require a PSU that can push out 600W for your system, then you want a PSU that can do that 24/7, not just for a couple of minutes and then blow. If you're unsure about this, ask, or use a PSU calculator, at the following link:

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Hope this helps and happy shopping!

[Kai]

Another thing you should have added was that there's no point in buying a RAM module that runs at 1066MHz and a processor that runs at FSB 800MHz. It's samll but still counts.

I've noticed that when it underclocks itself you lose a little, miniscule, more performance than something with matching speeds.

[PraissePlaini]

For the help please use http://www.google.com

[Montezuma]

My views on SLI/Crossfire (Unless you want it purely for the sake of having it):

Add up the additional cost of an SLI/XFire motherboard, the more powerful power supply unit and possible additional cooling. Then decide if this additional cost if added to your budget for a single GPU may get you better performance or not.