We get asked a lot on this forum about what parts we recommend for certain builds. Many are gaming systems. My passion is to build Multi CPU servers and Gaming rigs so I am writing this to help those who are looking to build gaming rigs, staff are welcome to sticky it.
First thing I recommend is always get a high quality power supply, in my opinion that is the most important part in a gaming rig. I keep seeing part lists that included the best processors and video cards yet the power supply is the cheapest you can get. That makes no sense.
We have a great resource for power supplies in our
general hardware forum however I will mention here the brands I recommend:
Seasonic, Antec, Corsair, FSP and Enermax.
The second thing to consider is what kind of gamer you are, are you a power gamer (online player vs. player) who must win every time? If you are then you need top notch hardware.
If you are a gamer on a budget or a casual gamer, besides power supply buy the rest of the parts in this order of importance:
1.
Video card, buy the best your budget can handle.
2. Memory, get the best memory you can get for the money, brands like
Kingston, Crucial and Corsair (
those companies actually run memtests before shipping) are your best bet for a gaming rig, the last thing you want is a system crash in the middle of battle.
3. Chipset, a fast chipset will help make sure game data installed on your hard drive will appear on your screen more efficiantly and will enable the video card to perform at it is best.
4. CPU, a dual core CPU is all you need, a base AMD Or Intel dual core will do the job nicely, so don't waste your money on the most expensive i this phenom that, it is all hype and has little to do with how well your machine will game.
EDIT: More and more newer games are recommending a quad core now.
Short post but I hope it helps those who are looking to build gaming rigs!
