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whitstella

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Hi

I fancy trying to build myself a gaming pc but I don't know where to start. Been looking on Ethernet for answers but I just keep going from 1 site to another and getting nowhere. My budget is about £700 - £800 is it possible youngest a good 1 for that???? Any advice would be great thanks.

Steve
 
Hi Steve

I'm looking to do this myself and was pointed by local techy friend to Novotech. They sell barebones packs which have motherboard, processor and memory already fitted and tested for all budgets. Its a good place to start.

Pentium units are more expensive, while AMD are cheaper but run hotter so might need some more cooling. As you can tell I'm no expert but check out their site and let me know how you get on.

Maffa
 
I have done this for 20 years. Built about 50 PCs of differing specs.

The two tricky things are understanding the specs of individual components and understanding the sockets/slots/interfaces/buses/specs etc that make them compatible or not.

The best way to learn is to browse sites like ebuyer or overclockers and build PCs in the shopping cart. If there are specs you don't understand google them. When I started I had to use PC magazines and the endless pages of adverts.

Today, as mentioned the first thing you need to do is decide on AMD or Intel CPUs. There isn't much between them really, some pros and cons of each. Reading at least 3 different articles comparing them is a wise bet. Personally I like AMD, but that's just because I have had good success with them and don't see a reason to change.

You also need to decide now on "form factor", do you want a full sized easily expanded board or a micro-ATX or other special size for a smaller case or "cube" style. This will govern your case choice later.

You also need to choose if you want "On board" stuff or if you want to expand those things in later. You will find it hard to get a motherboard without sound and ethernet these days, but for a gaming PC you'll want to avoid onboard video etc.

Once you have your CPU choosen (don't be afraid to start from scratch a few times with different ones), you will have chosen a number of different paths. Most notably the motherboard CPU socket. So the next thing you want to do is choose your motherboard from the ranges that have that socket.

Next memory. To choose this is a combination of motherboard specs and CPU specs. Motherboards will provide dual or triple channel memory compatibility, dual faster than single and triple faster still, but to use triple channel RAM you need matched sets of 3 memory cards, pairs for dual.

The CPU will give you it's maximum memory clock speeds (sometimes both nominal and overclocked speed), choose memory above the nominal and ideally the overclocked speed or above. The faster the more expensive. Also note the latency specs on the memory, smaller numbers are better.

8Gb is a good minimum for a gaming PC.

(Gotta go to work)....
 
Hi I have been speaking to a bloke at work who works with pc's. He always uses Intel for the cpu cause he has had no reason to try and, just a personal chose and what has worked in the past. I'm going for Intel 7i cpu but he is bringing a computer shopper magazine for me to look at as there are reviews for different parts. I'm looking for good internals and full size tower to allow better cooling and more room.

Steve
 
Hi, new to the forum but not to pc building.

My advice would be to find an old computer and have a go fully dismantling it first, get an idea of what components are what and how to handle them. When I first started I just pulled the cpu and heat sinc out, didn't know there was a catch to release.

Don't forget to static earth yourself as well, you wouldn't want to destroy a nice shiny new graphics card :)
 

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