Avian Gamers Network

This is going to be my first attempt to build my own gaming machine. That being said I dont have a clue what I am up against. I've read an articte at tomshardware.com but I dont know all the nuts and bolts to it. If you have any tips they would greatly be appreciated.

Do you want a great computer for the cheapest price? Or does money not matter?

Check out http://www.newegg.com/index.asp?DEPA=0

My friends, family, and myself, have been ordering parts from newegg.com for years now. It's a great site, with great prices, and great parts.


I've always ordered parts from websites, and built my own computer. Heres some brand names that are good with some parts.

Logitech makes great speakers. I have the Logitech Z640 5.1 sound system.

AMD Athlon XP's are great processors. I have an Athlon XP 2800.

Samsung makes great monitor's. I have a Samsung SyncMaster 700NF 18 inch.

Creative makes great soundcards. I'm using my motherboard on board sound since it is as good as an Audigy 2 Sound card.

Asus or Abit makes good motherboards. I have an Asus NForce2 motherboard.

Corsair XMS is good ram. I have about 512, but will be upgrading to 1 gig as soon as I get some money.

For video cards, it's really up to you, and reading reviews. Radeon and Nvidia are the two top video card names. I've stuck with Nvidia for the longest time. I currently have a Geforce 4 Ti-4400 128 mb video card. My brother has a Radeon 9800 pro 128 or 256 mb I think. Honestly, I'm not too sure, but his card is really good. You can go either way, Nvidia or Radeon. I'm probably going to end up switching over to Radeon when I buy my next video card, because they seem to be more powerful these days.

As far as cd drom drives, cd/dvd burners, I'm not too sure. You could try sony.


I've always been an AMD type person. You could definitely order intel stuff if you wanted to, but you should definitely choose one type, either AMD, or INTEL, and buy all parts from one....so there aren't any compatibility issues.

If you'd rather not customly build your own computer, and want to just buy a kick ass gaming machine for an all in one package, go here: http://www.pugetsystems.com/gaming.php - This is expensive, and I know there are cheaper websites out there but I can't seem to think of any...you could go Dell...but I hate dell...hehe.

Most of all this stuff here is just what I like, but it's also good brand names......but perhaps other fellow Avian members here can help me expand upon my info....

Yeah the reason why I want to build a computer than buy one is that it is cheaper and you get what you want. I've already picked my hardware. I tried to stay near Alienware's specifications.

Motherboard: ASUS A8V Deluxe
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
CPU Cooler: 3D Cooler
RAM:1GB Corsair Dual Channel
HardDrive: Maxtor 80GB ATA HDD
Graphic Card: ATI X800 XT
CD-Rom: Sony 56X
Network Card: Encore 32-bit Gigabit
Sound Card: Audigy 2 ZS

Is all of this stuff comaptible?

You gonna play SWG once its built?

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Romsuiag (Brad)
Former and Third President of Avian

I agree on choosing AMD CPUs, AMD has a much better price/performance ratio then Intel.

Be carful on the second point, using on-board soundcard.
Ive been doing this until I recently found that the on-board sound card uses a lot of processing power. I cant remember the exact figures, but think it was 15%+ of total CPU time. That is a lot when playing games.

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Meriander, Paladin
Rentin, Warlock
(Emerald Dawn, WoW EU server)

-Romsuag

I just might give SWG another chance. The only reason i wasnt having fun was because of my "stone age" computer.


I know that you would buy the case then a motherboard. From the hardware I picked, what order would you buy them if you could only buy one thing at a time?

My comp sucks pretty bad too. If I had a new, better one then I'm sure I would enjoy SWG more.

I say give it another shot.

_________________
Romsuiag (Brad)
Former and Third President of Avian

Will a 430W power supply be enough to run my hardware and a few lights?

My brother told me that the usage is trivial, it barely affects it. Perhaps my motherboard is such that it can handle it pretty well. I gues it differs from mobo to mobo, but I haven't had any downtime when I tested putting a sound card in, then switching to using my motherboard.

To be on the safe side, I gues for most people, just stick with a soundcard.

Yup, 430 is plenty!

FYI a good PC will make playing SWG so much better.

I play SWG on 2 of my PCs at home, however when I am at my fathers house, and I need to login to SWG I can do so.... but man does the game suck on his PC. It is so bad that I really really really only login from there as a last resort.

It is amazing how much better the game looks and plays on a good PC. Honestly my PC is kind of old now.... I would love to see the game on todays state of the art PC.

A good CPU (with a good cooler), a good graphics card and lots of ram makes a huge difference. Those are the three components you should put your money in, you can be usually be cheap with the rest

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Leno WeEda - Miner
Locin WeEda - Hauler/Trader