PC Building

Heres all you need to know...

Motherboard: Asus or Gigabyte
Vid Card: eVGA if you want nVidia, Asus or MSI if you want AMD
Power supply: Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, or Silverstone
RAM: Kingston, Crucial, or G.Skill
Hard drive: Western Digital, preferably the Black series. SSD's are very fast, but newer PC games take up tons of space and you won't be able to fit but a handful if you get an "affordable" SSD at 128 or 256GB capacity. I used a SSD in my gaming system for a few years, but constantly running low on space was a huge headache in comparison to the extra 2 seconds I had to wait for things to load. The best bang for the buck right now are the i5 or 8-core AMD FX CPU, 8GB of RAM is plenty, but 16GB wouldn't hurt. The GTX 760 is the best bang for the buck nVidia GPU, and the 270X on the AMD end. Get something with at least 2GB of RAM, the more RAM, the higher the resolution you can run and keep the eye candy turned up. Get a wireless Xbox 360 controller and wireless dongle, most PC games these days are made to work with that controller. The wireless dongle also works with 360 headsets. Shooters suck with a controller, but driving games, platformers, fighters, some RPGs, and others play far better with a controller. Above all, buy quality parts. The components I specified are very well known to be reliable and have very good warranty periods. generally speaking, you can expect components from reputable manufacturers to have a warranty from 3 to 5 years. Gaming PC's have longer lives these days. My 3 year old GeForce 560Ti, a mid-range card in 2011, still runs most games on max settings.

EDIT: One big thing to keep in mind for PC Games. Never buy anything as soon as it's released, shit goes on sale all the time, for very considerable discounts. My favorite site is http://www.cheapshark.com/ as it shows you all the bigger game retailers big sales going on. The Steam summer sale in July and the Steam holiday sale is when I buy my games, most of them usually hit 50% to 75% off. The up front cost of PC gaming is more, but you won't be spending out the ass on games like the console mouth breathers.
 
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the only thing I'd say to what Tin is that Asus seems to be having some quality issues. I will give their customer support though a 10 out of 10. I have an Asus MoBo and in the 2 years I've had it had to replace it 3 times. It's a pain in the ass to replace a mother board. So many other things can go wrong in the process. I wouldn't necessarily shy away from them, but if Giga has a close price with the same functionality, I'd lean that way.
 
stalked_R/T said:
the only thing I'd say to what Tin is that Asus seems to be having some quality issues. I will give their customer support though a 10 out of 10. I have an Asus MoBo and in the 2 years I've had it had to replace it 3 times. It's a pain in the ass to replace a mother board. So many other things can go wrong in the process. I wouldn't necessarily shy away from them, but if Giga has a close price with the same functionality, I'd lean that way.
Click to expand...

Gigabyte generally packs in more features for the money as well. That's my experience anyway.
 
tins pretty much on the money

i just put together a rig together myself just before battlefield 4 came out
i think my only regret is was not getting a amd graphic card but still happy with what i have.

amd 8core
gtx760
8gig ram
128ssd
 
Oh yeah, forgot to add something. Some games are on multiple platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux), and sometimes a game may be on sale for one platform and not the other. If the game is listed on Steam as "Steamplay", the product key will activate across all platforms and not just one. If it's not listed as Steamplay, it won't work in that sort of manner. Here's a list of places I usually pick up games from, all have the option to register the product key on Steam.

www.greenmangaming.com
us.gamesrocket.com
www.gamefly.com
www.gamersgate.com
www.humblebundle.com

They usually have some great deals, as does Newegg, Amazon, and Gamestop.
 
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I have a Mac air from work, but don't use it. I know some people run parallel, but have no personal experience doing it.
 
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