Hey duders!

I want to get a PC for some gaming as well as video editing. I've been a console gamer my entire life and at the age of 28 I feel like my computer knowledge is like age 60. I don't trust myself to build a PC yet so i've been looking at sites like ibuypower.com that seem to offer nice packages with the choice to upgrade or downgrade various components. I don't simply want to ask what specs I should be looking for when it comes to processor, graphics card and everything else. I actually want to learn what I need to be looking for.

I started doing some research, but am feeling overwhelmed at the amount of info out there. I'm really looking for a beginner's guide to this sort of thing to help with terminology and just help get me a base knowledge for this stuff. So go ahead and laugh at my ignorance, and then please help and thanks in advance!

OK, so how much do you know about computers in the first place? Do you have a vague idea of what the innards of a computer might be or do you still think that pushing the power button on the monitor turns off the monitor? Don't laugh, I work answering phones to help stores keep their registers working, it can sometimes take a lot of explaining to make sure that the person on the other end and myself are on the same page about which part is the computer.

Can you think of a question that's a good starting point? Like, "what is RAM", "what is a CPU", "why would I pay more for this 7200RPM HDD", "why would I pick a SSD over an HDD", etc.

Learning enough about computers to use them well isn't as complex or hard as it seems these days. There's just enough for it to seem daunting at first. See if you can get a hold of a family member's old computer or a broken computer and take it apart as much as you can. Unscrew it, look at the inside, see if you can identify each part, take out the RAM and hard drive, etc.

I would definitely recommend building your own PC, it really isn't as hard as it sounds.

Check out this post for some advice http://www.giantbomb.com/pc/3045-94/forums/help-me-build-a-computer-1759616/

Really the only thing you need to look at when you are shopping for a prebuilt computer is the videocard; a prebuilt with a good videocard will have good specs everywhere else.

Depending on your budget; the only videocards you should be considering would be 280, 290, 770 or 970.

If you are planning on building from scratch there is more to know, but it soulds like you are looking for a prebuilt.

Could these sites help?
http://www.pcper.com/hwlb
http://pcpartpicker.com/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/BOM.aspx?Item=N82E16883227540

I remember tested.com doing a build as well juts not sure how long ago that was.

Definitely take the time to do the research, I can be pretty lazy and after getting frustrated with all the possibilities I eventually just went into a big PC chain store at the start of 2013, asked a floor sales dude if certain PC would run Crysis 3, he said oh yeah it can run anything on the market. Arkham City was the first high performance game I tried and the frame rate was a little off. I have trouble with a lot of FPS's too. Grow Home and Middle Earth run okay on certain settings though so i guess it just excels at different things sometimes. Oh well, live and learn.

PC Partpicker is your best friend. I just built one about four months back and all I did was research. Where are the trends heading as far as CPU involvement and what's most important, what's most popular blah blah blah and just kind of slid my way into the culture and I ended up with a good enough understanding of the specs I wanted and which components to get.

The way I went about the research was first delving into google searches such as "best parts for gaming PC" and then branching off of those website results. If I didn't understand WHY something was better, I'd look it up.

@believer258: "why would I pay more for this 7200RPM HDD", "why would I pick a SSD over an HDD". These questions seem to be where I'm at. I have some base knowledge for every day office type functions, but when it comes to gaming and what I need to look for that's where I'm lost. Also with me wanting to do video editing, I know some things that would make a good gaming computer may not be what I need for video editing. Am I right in assuming I need sizeable RAM for video editing?

I was looking to start with this pc build to get me started and maybe tweak some things for what I needed. Thank you for your help!

Help is out there, know your budget and work around what is and isn't upgrade able. The other big piece of advice is avoid overbuilding your PC. I see way to many people blow money on brand new top of the line gpu's and ram that will end up being less supported and more costly in the long run. Top of the line stuff is not cost effective and most games won't use the extra resources anywhere. Essentially because upper mid tier will sell more you'll see more driver support down the line then. Also SLI is not really worth the cost and most programs won't use it or might even run worse with SLI (really only helps with triple screen/3D/or 4K setups). If you are doing video editing and i7 is worth it over an i5. Also only 8gb of RAM, you won't need 16gb til the upgrade will be dirt cheap anyway.

@tarheels2302: An SSD has a far faster read and write speed compared to a traditional hard drive. That means much faster boot times and load times for programs installed to the SSD. A 7200rpm HDD is more expensive than most because it is faster than most other hard drives. Hard drives rely on moving parts, and the faster they move, the faster your drive will be. That means boot and load times will be fast for a hard drive, but still not anywhere near as fast as an SSD, which has no moving parts. Most people tend to get a smaller (250-500GB seems standard) SSD for their operating system, games and programs, and a larger (1tb+) mechanical drive for media.

I wouldn't go for that build you linked because it's an overclocking build (edit: actually, looking again, it's an overclocking motherboard with a non-overclocking chip which is... odd), which sounds like something you may not be looking to do, and it has an i5. If you're serious about video editing, an i7 is the way to go. Honestly, though, there's no real reason you shouldn't build it yourself. It's invariably cheaper, and putting together a PC is the easiest part of the process. If you ever put a lego set together, you've got all the experience you need. Picking stuff out that's reasonably priced and compatible is the hard part, and there are plenty of guides and helpful folks out there to make it easier.

First things first, what's your budget, and what are you going to be using your PC for? Also, what kind of gaming are you looking to do?

I haven't ever used it, but a lot of people use PC Part Picker. Looking into that would be a good idea.

RPM is the speed at which a hard drive spins. A 7200RPM hard drive is kind of a standard these days. An SSD is a Solid State Drive, a technology that aims to replace hard drives. Hard drives spin very, very fast so they have moving parts. Eventually, after several years of use, they can break down. They can also break while moving (though they're generally not completely fragile, so don't freak out if you need to move your computer a few inches or something). SSD's have no moving parts so they are quieter and draw less power, plus they load things much faster than a hard drive. HDD = hard disk drive, often shortened to just "hard drive". SSD's also don't usually hold as much storage space as regular hard drives and they are a lot more expensive. Some people swear by them - I think you can get by without one just fine for gaming, but for video editing you may want to keep one in mind.

While we're on the topic of video editing, that's a weak point of mine. I don't know much about it. That said, you're probably going to need a heftier PC for video editing than for gaming. I'd definitely go with more RAM than 8GB, probably 16 or more. Both new consoles have 8GB of RAM and PC's need more than that since they'll be using higher resolution (bigger) textures and they'll have to keep an operating system (Windows) loaded into RAM along with it.

I'll take a short break here and explain a little on what I'm talking about. A hard drive or an SSD is storage - everything you keep on your computer is stored on a hard drive, pretty much like a closet. Stuff that the computer is using is loaded from storage onto RAM (Random Access Memory) - think of it more like a desk. You keep the stuff you're working on on the desk, and the stuff you're not using in storage. Currently, 8GB's is a pretty good amount of RAM for gaming, but that's a minimum for photo and video editing, so try to go for more if you can. "DDR3-(number)" tells you how fast the RAM is.

For gaming, though, most of the strain is going to be on the graphics card, not the CPU, generally. If you're going to be doing video editing and gaming, you should probably at least go with an i5 CPU and make sure it's a quad core. The one you have picked out is pretty good. Note that the next step up is an i5 4970k - that k just means that you can overclock it, something I wouldn't really recommend. A CPU, if you don't know, spends all of its time processing data (hence the term "processor", processor and CPU are the same thing). That's all it does. It figures out what to do with data. It's "the brain of the computer", which is really cheesy but fairly accurate.

The purpose of a graphics card is, well, make what you see on the screen. A GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is, basically, a processor specializing in producing images. There's a GPU on every graphics card. There are two major producers of GPU's for gaming, AMD and Nvidia. AMD's most current lineup of GPU's are the R9's - so, for instance, the R9 290X. Nvidia's current lineup is the GeForce GTX 9_ _, they also have cards called "GTX Titans" which are for those who have more money than they know what to do with. You will see a measurement of megabytes or gigabytes on every graphics card - that's video memory, or VRAM. That's RAM specifically for graphics and video located on the graphics card.

I haven't looked at benchmarks for graphics cards in a while, so you'll have to forgive me for not having a recommendation on those, although I will say that Nvidia has been known for better support, better drivers, and better cards in the past. That's not to say that you'll go wrong with an AMD card - they've stuck around for a long time because they make pretty good cards at pretty good prices, but there are a few corners cut here and there to keep those prices below Nvidia's.

So that's a bit on graphics cards, RAM, hard drives, and processors. You probably do have more questions, but this is a lot to digest (and, if I'm to be frank, a lot to type and fact-check). There are quite a few PC guys hanging around Giantbomb, many of which can answer your questions, so keep asking! Once you have your PC parts picked out, though, make another thread specifically asking what users around here think of it and make sure you mention video editing so some guys who have experience with that can pop in and give their two cents.

On a final note, the parts in the following video are outdated but the process for building a computer is the same. Even though you're buying pre-built, it might be wise to give it a look so you can know what your PC's innards will look like.

Although it is kinda long so maybe watch it in bursts.

If you can put together some ikea furniture, you can build a PC. Or more exactly, if you can build a PC, you can build ikea furniture.

Thank you everyone! I think I have what I need now to put in some research and with everyone's suggestions, really considering trying to build it myself. I have about a $1,200 - $1,400 budget including monitor, keyboard, mouse and maybe some software. If my money can go further by building it myself vs a prebuilt, I'd rather build it myself.

As for what games I would want to play, pretty much anything honestly. I want to be able to play anything that comes out from a graphics point of view for the most part. On the video editing side, I want to do game capture as well as streaming. Is my budget in line with what I want to do or should I expect to pay some more? Thanks again for everyone's help.

@tarheels2302: $1400 is a solid budget for a max settings 1080p/60fps build. If streaming and capture is what you're looking to do with video, I'd say that Nvidia's shadowplay seems to do that job just fine. I wouldn't worry about getting a high end processor or masses of RAM.

Here's what I would suggest:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zzDrnQ

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zzDrnQ/by_merchant/

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.88 @ OutletPC)
• Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($68.98 @ OutletPC)
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($124.99 @ Amazon)
• Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($131.88 @ OutletPC)
• Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.89 @ OutletPC)
• Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card ($347.99 @ Amazon)
• Case: Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($96.99 @ SuperBiiz)
• Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($69.98 @ Newegg)
• Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.98 @ OutletPC)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($87.75 @ OutletPC)
• Monitor: Dell U2414H 60Hz 23.8" Monitor ($251.57 @ B&H)
• Keyboard: Logitech MK120 Wired Slim Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($14.25 @ Directron)
• Total: $1449.13

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-02-23 20:39 EST-0500

If you wanted to trim that down slightly, you could get away with 8GB RAM and no SSD, but I think both are probably worth it long term, and if you have a copy of windows installed on an old laptop or something, you could transfer that and save a bit. The keyboard and mouse I picked are pretty low end, that's just my personal bias. I don't really care much about those as long as they work, especially seeing as so many games work better with a controller nowadays. Also, if you have none you'll need speakers and/or headphones obviously, but I'm sure you have some lying around.

@pcorb:

Thanks a ton, I really appreciate the recommendations!

@pcorb:

So after some research I've done today, I had a few other questions.

First off what is overclocking and why would anybody need that or want that?

Second in your list of parts above I notice you went with the i5 as opposed to the i7. Would it be more important to have an SSD or a better CPU? From the original research I had done, I was set with thinking the i5 was fine for what I needed. I guess I'm just trying to see what an i7 would do for me over an i5.

Thanks again for everyone's help, there's a reason I come to this site all the time because the people seem great!

@tarheels2302: Overclocking makes the processor work harder than it was intended to. It's not super important but can get you a few extra frames with minimal risk.

An SSD will make games load a lot faster while an i7 will make the actual game run better but not that much so right now. The difference between an HDD and an SSD is much bigger than the difference between an i5 and an i7.

It's gotten much more simplified since I learned it. For me it's best to know that everything connects to a motherboard. To a motherboard goes:

• CPU
• RAM
• Hard Drive
• Fans
• Graphics Card
• Power

Keep the list small for starters and to get familiar with the main components. After that is finding the right case and making sure your cable connections are good. A well built PC can last you a really long time. At the most you'll swap out components at some point. My first build lasted me about 7 years. I gave it to my roommate to used it for two more years. My latest I didn't feel like building so I bought a Dell XPS that over time I replaced most parts except for the processor, ram and motherboard. This will be my 8th year with it this March and I can play the latest games with no problem. I also added swapped out the case finally.

@tarheels2302: Overclocking is making a processor run faster than it did when it was manufactured. It used to basically be a free performance upgrade, but it's no longer quite as effective. To get a good overclock you need an unlocked processor (for intel that's chips ending in 'k'. the i5-4690k is overclockable, for example, while the i5-4690 is not), a higher end motherboard, aftermarket cooling. It can be useful down the line if you want to get a bit of extra life out of your CPU, but honestly it's probably not worth the time, effort, and expense for most people.

There is basically no advantage to buying an i7 for gaming. What makes i7s more premium chips is the fact that they make use of hyper-threading. Hyper-threading makes some processes a lot faster (here's a short video that gives a good explanation of what it actually does), but has a negligible impact on others. Games are in that latter category, because, as I understand it, it's incredibly difficult to code a game that uses multi-threading. Video encoding is an example of something that an i7 does a lot better than an i5, but if your video needs are limited to capture and streaming, Shadowplay will more than meet your needs.

An SSD is basically the opposite, in that its improvements are immediately felt on almost everything. Boot and load times are almost non-existent with an SSD, and pretty soon you start wondering how you ever had the patience to use an HDD. So yeah, I'd say the SSD is much more important to have.

@tarheels2302: A lot of RAM is good for video editing, and it's such a cheap component to max out that you should probably get a lot of RAM regardless of if you'll be editing a lot or not.

Video editing is the best of both worlds in that it will require a ton of hard drive space - but at the same time you will want a fast hard drive because jumping around on a timeline you will be constantly reading video from the drive into RAM. I would keep an SSD where you hold current video footage, and then a lot of regular hard drive space to store things longer term. Having more RAM straight up translates into being able to cache more seconds of video while you are editing it in programs like After Effects and Premiere, which is very desirable. Rendering video will put strain on the CPU in most programs I know anything about, video card only for real-time preview. That was basically it as far as I could provide tips for the editing part of choosing components.

@pcorb:

Will video encoding still be an option with the i5 or more specifically for the build you mentioned above? Thanks again!

@tarheels2302: There's nothing preventing an i5-4590 from performing encoding tasks, they're just not as fast as something like the i7-4790k. In fact, the current generation of i5s perform better than i7s from a couple of years ago (see this page for some benchmarks). It's up to you whether you see yourself doing enough video work that the $100+ premium for the i7 is worth it for the bump in speed.