Reliable gaming pc for $1000?

[Pimento]

Or do I need more?


Right now my desktop runs off of an says Pnd-5 motherboard. 4 gig ddr2 ram liquid cooled quad core 2.5ghz processor and nvidia 9800 video card.

It's awesome. Runs everything well. But the fuckin thing is freezing constantly (might be able to just buy new ram/video cards and maybe new processor and be ok) I would do that if it makes sense

[suburbandecay]

I think you could easily build a decent gaming machine for $1000. However, I would probably try troubleshooting the old machine first. Depending on how it is freezing could indicate a number of issues. I normally look to heat first if it is freezing solid and not blue screening. Otherwise, I would test the memory with a boot CD from http://www.memtest.org/. I would also recommend finding a utility to check the hard drive health. My work machine was freezing randomly right before my SSD hard drive went south. You may also want to run through a couple of virus checkers to see if that is causing a problem. A number of htem can run in the background and cause all manner of odd issues.

[Pimento]

I have viper and it says no viruses.

Before itd freeze shortly after a boot up. No blue screen just a hard freeze. Took out one of my 2gb ram sticks (also were liquid cooled but I pinched a hose and can't find that size so they just have big heat sinks on them) and now it'll run until I start gaming or something then it freezes solid.

If you think the mobo is worth keeping I might just buy 4X 2gb ram sticks. A few new snazzy hard drives and 2 of whatever nvidia cards you'd recommend (since the mobo supports SLI...unless its not worth doing)

[emax4]

Can you tell by chance if a small leak of the coolant is causing one or more components to overheat? I've always used just fan cooling, but thought a leak might be a culprit.

You can always swap in a faster CPU, and/or get a solid state hard drive too.

[Pimento]

No coolant leaks. But I did notice a small amount of thermal paste on the spot where you hear the CPU.

Quite honestly in so out of touch with what's out there I'm not sure what CPU will work with this mobo that'll do better than what I have. I'm welcoming all suggestions.

As it stands I found 4 2gb sticks of ddr2 non ecc ram to Max out what I'm allowed

[KhirasHY]

Look into CoreTemp, a free program that monitors how hot your system is running...works well with the PCMeter desktop app. That can help give you a good measurement of whether heat is causing the problem for you.

As for building a gaming PC, you could do a decent one for $1,000. Watch places like Newegg for various specials and sales, and you can eventually build a computer that's pretty dang good over time, if you're patient enough. You might consider starting with things that you can simply plug and play in your current setup (ie, new video card and such), then xfer those items to the new build later on. I did that when I built this computer last October, and though I spend closer to $2,000 overall, it was such a gradual process that I was constantly switching parts in and out of my old PC. Using various sales, I ended up saving about $800 in total too (I went a bit overboard with my specs...).

Just make yourself a full list of what parts you want beforehand (so you can look for incompatibilities and sale prices), then go nuts

[Pimento]

Yeah. I would say my max budget is around $5000 but I also want to try my hand at building a laptop using the case for the one I have already to use for a portable recording studio so I want some "bail" money incase I just end up buying a MacBook haha

[KhirasHY]

In my experience, building a laptop is 10x harder than building a desktop...I couldn't tell you why either, just that every time I've attempted it, it has somehow turned out unreasonably hard. As such, I tend to have laptops built for me, and customize my desktop instead.

Maybe I just suck at it, but a number of people that I know have had similar issues...

[Pimento]

It's more of a "have a good starting point for a laptop maybe ill try to mess with it" deal. Since it too is crashing constantly

[Chromatix]

If you can reuse your current monitor, case, optical drive, keyboard, mouse, and other external peripherals - and there's no reason you shouldn't - then $1000 should be quite an easy target to build to. Don't bother with liquid cooling this time, just get a really good tower heatsink - I use a Noctua on my best machine at the moment.

Since you are building for gaming, I would balance your budget so that roughly equal amounts (ie. $300 to $350 each) are spent on the following three groups:

1) Graphics card. Just one good card is generally better than several smaller ones.

2) Motherboard, CPU, heatsink, RAM. This is a group that should be replaced all at once, in most cases, especially if you buy Intel - they love to change the socket slightly between CPUs so that you have to buy the m/board again.

3) PSU, hard disks, SSDs.

Yes, I recommend that you replace your hard disks and PSU. Those are fairly high on the list of suspects for stability problems. It is well worthwhile buying an SSD for the system and utilities, and a big hard disk to install your games on - alternatively, you can put everything on the hard disk and just use the SSD to cache it.

[KhirasHY]

Yes, I recommend that you replace your hard disks and PSU. Those are fairly high on the list of suspects for stability problems. It is well worthwhile buying an SSD for the system and utilities, and a big hard disk to install your games on - alternatively, you can put everything on the hard disk and just use the SSD to cache it.

Very much this. Using a SSD and separate HD is vastly superior, and it's not that hard to set up at all. I actually use that along with an external hard drive as well, so I have the SSD for Windows and a couple crucial programs, the internal HD for games, and the external HD for storage...so nice. I'll never go back to having just a single hard drive again.

[Pimento]

Ok. I'm gonna look stupid and you're gonna head desk.

PSU and SSD? Lol

Anyways. I plan to keep my motherboard and CPU. Ill keep the stupid liquid cooling cause it's already there and works actually quite well.

[sms001]

power supply and solid state disk (think "HUGE hunk of ram.")

[KhirasHY]

Anyways. I plan to keep my motherboard and CPU. Ill keep the stupid liquid cooling cause it's already there and works actually quite well.

Just make sure to do plenty of research to make sure anything you buy doesn't have any weird issues...ie, I almost got some RAM that for some reason ONLY has issues with my specific CPU. No one knows why, it just did, so I switched to another option

It can be a bit spammy, but you might consider subscribing to Newegg's deals. Pretty easy to turn off the emails, but they generally do at least one sale a week. Not always for the best items, but there are occasionally some great things that get a nice discount, or special offer.

[lordlundar]

In my experience, building a laptop is 10x harder than building a desktop...I couldn't tell you why either, just that every time I've attempted it, it has somehow turned out unreasonably hard. As such, I tend to have laptops built for me, and customize my desktop instead.

Maybe I just suck at it, but a number of people that I know have had similar issues...

It's not just you. Laptops are notoriously hard to self-build largely because they're not designed to do so. They're designed for portability and power efficiency and as such are mostly soldered into position. Desktops on the other hand are designed to be modular for the most part so they are easy to build.

Ok. I'm gonna look stupid and you're gonna head desk.

PSU and SSD? Lol

Anyways. I plan to keep my motherboard and CPU. Ill keep the stupid liquid cooling cause it's already there and works actually quite well.

Power Supply Unit - the big block at the rear of the system which converts the 120v power coming in to various 5v and 12v power outputs that the components use.

Solid State Drive - a hard drive with no moving parts that function the same as thumb drives (the "big stick of ram" was earlier generation units that require a power cell. Newer units don't use that) and are much faster than conventional drives. Drawbacks however are more heat generated and a lower capacity per price than conventional drives. If you're good with storage management and want really fast load times it's a good option.