2500 Dollor Gaming Rig for 2007
From Hak5
Contents |
[edit] Quick info
This is basically a rough script for $2500 gaming rig, I'm building for a segment/episode for i386.tv
Now I'm total newbie at scripting and need some advice/assistant/ to help me out alittle. Enough to script and format it correctly
[edit] Discussion
I've started a thread on the hak5 forums
http://www.hak5.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4019
[edit] How can we be of aid
Where could i use some help I'd suggest having a read thru it first. Feel free to change/add lines and give some format to it. You can do what you like also to be informative, coherent and not boring!
You can also add information or lines into the script
[edit] Here we go!
[edit] Cold intro
With just days until the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007. What better time to be consider either a new gaming rig/beast to end or start the new year and second episode i386 episode. With the Building the 2007 gaming PC
[edit] Background introduction
The idea for segment is one of the first idea that we came up for a segment. Friend was in the process of building her new system and we intended to film it for the show. But the travelling and finding overnight accommodation for myself was hard enough and rather expensive exercise. Especially when the shows works on a very low budget
Two weeks ago i was chatting to my buddies Zack on MSN, He was asking what sort of PC should his friend build for gaming rig. One the two first question that you ask when building a gaming based system
How much money are you willing to spend : $2500 What sort of games do you play : Shooters and FPS
Building a gaming rig works on a simple on balancing trick on how much your willing to spend for performance without breaking your budget
Now $2500 is our total budget for this gaming gaming. Means we should be able to afford blow most of our money on the graphics card and memory. Trying not to skimp on things like:
RAM – Haven't not enough of it to run certain graphic intense games
Video card – Either the speed graphics card or again not enough video memory
Hard drive – Long Loading times sucks with a cheaper slow drives like a 5400rpm
This question becomes more common, The has only recent change. CPU's are fast enough to become less-stressed and people noticing no additional performance boost. For example people have gone from a AMD 3500+ and upgraded to 4600+ with dual core without any noticeable improvement in frame rate. Maybe a quicker loading time thats all
But back to Zack on MSN. After offered to build the system and given a wad of cash to spend on $2500 gaming rig. We begin by search the best prices and create quotes for different systems for our money
Find your Zen. AMD or Intel?
It's really comes down to personal choice. Either your an Intel or AMD fanboi
Intel are pretty much the leader in the faster CPU with there Intel Core 2 duos. Since 2003 AMD have had the fastest CPU's on the block thanks to the K8 micro-architecture. Intel have gone away and came back with a better offering than AMD. The conroe architecture promises to bring a 20% increase in performance
AMD have stumbled off the block with AM2, Moving to new socket isn't easy for anyone and introducing DDR2 made even harder for AMD sell the new CPU tech community to accept. With no big performance boost and socket 939 users would need to fork out money for a new AM2 motherboard, CPU and Memory too. Where Intel owners on some motherboard already had DDR2 support and required a simple firmware update to support the new conroe architecture. We can only hope next year AM2 and DDR3 will perform better
For this system, I've chosen to build a Intel conroe core 2 duo based system
Okay the task
To build a gaming system for a budget of $2500 with the best parts without running outside the budget. We already have a keyboard/mouse with enough money left for to buying the monitor. Also copy of Windows XP Professional too (No Devilz0wn copy)
The System Specs
CPU: Intel Core 2 duo – E6400 (2.13Ghz)
MOTHERBOARD : ASUS P5B"
RAM: Mushkin 2GB DDR2 ddr5300 (667Mhz)
VIDEO: Gecube Radeon X1950Pro 256mb
HARD DRIVE: Seagate 320Gb 7200RPM, SATA2, 16mb Cache
CASE: Coolmaster Mystique 632 Aluminum
PSU: Silverstone ST60F 600w, Module design
Monitor: Benq 202wp
DVD Burner: Lite-on DVDRW +- with lightscribe
The Total cost for the system: $2467 (inc delivery)
CPU: The E6400 pretty basic and good value CPU. For comparisons comes close or is better than an AMD Athlon64 dual core 4600+ in benchmarking tests. The E6400 is also cheaper too
Motherboard: Nothing really wrong with the motherboard it's got what you need. If you think the on board sound “sucks†buy a PCI or USB based sound card
Memory: Munkin are sort of a new memory market and considerable cheap for the price. 2X 1GB or 2GB simply give you the best gaming performance and a open window upgrading to for vista, Hard Drive: Plenty of storage space and wasn't enough money to get a second drive. The 8mb cache should come in handy at transferring files LAN events and decreasing game load times
Case : Looks okay. The front of the case has these pop-open suicide doors with a strange orange glow light will remind you of a car light blinker. With the bit I/O ports ontop, I'm a little worried about people easily walking off and forgetting their wearing headphones. You can just picture the moment in your head the aloud bang sound and swearing On the inside most of it's a screw less design with plenty of room to connect hard drives The case seem pretty light too. That maybe cause the brick or PSU wasn't included with the case
PSU: Modular PSU seem to be the cool thing to have lately. Making your case look a lot more presentable with lesser cables, A 500-600w should be sufficient for this systems with plenty of power for the Graphics card and add more hard drives in future
Monitor: I own this monitor myself (So consider me little bias). It has a 8ms refresh rate and the lag is unnoticeable, Typical reason for buying this monitor either you digg wide-screen or watching a lot of videos and movies. 20†wide screen for nilly $400? why noticeable Benq have recently released an updated 22â€ich version of the monitor. For $100 more with an lower 5ms response rate