@laserbolts said:
So is building your own rig as simple as just picking what you want and ordering it? What if I miss something? God I wish I knew what I was doing.
It's really pretty easy, just fitting parts together, and these days they all clip together. In my rig there were maybe 6 or 7 screws including those on the case. As pointed out it's choosing what parts you want and how they fit together. The first two choices you make should be what motherboard you want and what CPU you want. In the specs of the motherboard it should list what type of CPU socket it has (it may be compatible with a few). In regards to buying a CPU, my personal recommendation is Intel, rather than AMD. Here's a recent rundown of the current recommended CPUs from Tom's Hardware, they're pretty much the best guys to turn to when looking for parts. As they say, anything getting over about $250 begins to lose real value for money, especially if you want to overclock (which, like building a PC, sounds intimidating, but isn't super hard if you get used to your computer blue screening a couple of times during the process).
Your next decision is graphics card and it will probably be your most expensive purchase. There's the old ATI vs Nvidia debate. A few years ago it was Nvidia all the way, these days both companies are basically neck and neck, although ATI's very latest iteration I believe is currently the very best on the market for single GPU cards. Here's basically what you need to know; ATI cards are usually more cost efficient when we're talking about the lower end side of things (which we're not so we can ignore that) and ATI cards are usually more power efficient (kind of irrelevant unless you're a greenie). Nvidia on the other hand have a big advantage left over from the days they ruled in that most game developers develop on Nvidia cards, making you less likely to run into issues using them (having said that, I have an ATI card and have had maybe one issue in 2 and half years which was fixed easily). Considering you were willing to pay $1200 for a computer, I don't think there's any reason to not go into the higher end stuff. Here's a Tom's Hardware roundup. Don't bother with double graphic's cards in SLI/Crossfire, they're not worth the trouble. I would also steer clear of dual GPU cards, as they are usually far more expensive without the pay off, and again, sometimes have some trouble. Personally, I would recommend the GTX 680, that badboy will deal with all your graphics desires for the next 3-5 years. You have to remember that once you get into high end graphics cards, with exception of handful of games, even a lower high end graphics card will let you play on high for the next few years. I have an ATI 5870 from when they first introduced DirectX 11, that was in 2009 (I think), and it can still run almost every game with full settings, although she's only just started to lose some AA options on games like Battlefield 3.
Next is an easy decision, RAM. Here's the rundown; 8 GBs, more if you got the cash because RAM is cheap as hell, DDR3, I would personally recommend something from Corsair.
Then comes even easier decisions, power and hard drives and a wireless card if you need one. Oh and of course case and aftermarket coolers if you plan to Overclock. The one thing I would say is invest in a small (64GB) or so Solid State Drive to boot Windows off of. Don't put anything else on there, because normal hard drives will do the job for games, but an SSD for the boot will make you fall in love.
Sorry for the wall of text, message me if you want to know more.
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