Am sure this forum has a couple of gamers who know a thing or two when it comes to choosing the best gaming PC> What do you look for exactly. Here is what is look for personally; 1. Processor speed 2. Memory 3. Graphics card type either Nvidia or ATI 4. Storage space Add a feature to the list that you think I have forgotten.
You summed most of it up there. You also want to make sure you have fans or a good cooling system because gaming PC's with good specs can get pretty hot. You also want to have a high enough power supply to handle the powerful hardware.
I would recommend everyone buying a gaming PC to check whether the PC has an efficient cooling system or not. This is due to the reason that gaming puts a lot of stress on the components and they get heated up quite a lot and if these heat is not dissipated quickly, your gameplay experience will suffer as the game would start to lag. Another thing to look out in a gaming PC is that whether it has the latest hardware or not.
For the hard drive make sure it is a decent speed because you may encounter problems with certain games. For example, my friend had a 5400 rpm HDD and could not play Diablo III really well until he upgraded it.
All those and other posts pretty sums it up, but if you ask me specifically what I look for, for my computer, I would say more RAM and possibly a better GPU. I have everything else I need already.
You said it already, but for a gaming computer, I look more on the CPU and the GPU, RAM, not so much. I've been a PC gamer pretty much my whole life and I can't tell you how frustrating it is to buy a supposed 'gaming laptop' only to find out that it can only squeeze a maximum of 30 FPS with lag. Check the CPU, i5 machines are good enough for gaming but don't expect much out of it. Go for an i7 or an equivalent AMD CPU. Now the GPU is the bread and butter here, I choose Nvidia, always, my first gaming laptop has an Nvidia GT520MX its not that much of a beast but after almost 5 years using it, it can still run Far Cry 3 at medium settings. RAM well, you can do well with just 4GB's.
I agree, but a really recurring mistake/misconception that people tend to have is that the speed of a gaming PC depends on its CPU. Like deathbyprayer said, GPU is the bread and butter of a gaming PC, and you only need to make sure that you have a CPU that works without causing a bottleneck (uncommon because most, even lower spec, CPUs work). Too many times have I seen people buy expensive CPUs and normal GPUs only to find that their overall performance is being bottlenecked by the GPU. If you're looking for a gaming computer, GPU is your first priority.
If you are looking to save money and build a very fast gaming computer, than build your own. It is much cheaper to do so and very easy to do. There are many guide on the Internet that can help you fit everything together if you don't know how. Buy the GPUs from like newegg when they are sale because it becomes very cheap but you can also get very high end GPUs at a affordable price. You can also find the benchmark on the Internet to see how fast it runs because the numbers they give you aren't the best indication of how fast they are. The same goes for CPUs but get the intel ones. The AMD ones are only if you want to spend the extra cash on water cooling because they have to be over clocked to try and get on the same level as the intel CPUs most of the time. Ii would say knw which company the mother board is capable with because it can mess you up. The storage space doesn't matter much since you can upgrade it any time or add more than one Hard drive. You can get a SSD if you want faster loading times but they are expensive and don't last long. For the cooling, get a case that has many holes so you can install more fans. You can get water cooling too if you have the money.
I agree with all of the things that you listed, but you forgot to list the price too, since you can save some money if you buy an AMD processor as compared to if you buy in Intel processor. Actually if you know how to build your own CPU then you can definitely save a lot of money like what blackbagel said, and that is actually one of my goals. If I have time, then I will self-study and research on how to assemble a pc.
This, I'm building a relatively good mid-range pc right now so I can run stuff like WoW at ultra while playing other games and utilizing a combo of smart shopping and the occasional auction snipe I'm doing very well. Budget probably won't go over 600 yet I see tons of topics on forums saying how you can't built a good gaming pc for under 1000. What a load of crap.
I like to have a good sound card ion there too so I can really immerse myself in the games that I am playing. Obviously everything will differ according to the types of games you want to play and price will also play a large part in the decision process. It's definitely worthwhile buying components separately and building a machine yourself if you have the time and patience to learn how to do it.
A good gaming PC isn't that expensive now if you buy the right parts. If I was going to buy one I would get an SSD if I could afford it. Games are much bigger now and are accessing more files than before. They just have a lot more loading in general. If I was playing The Sims or Skyrim I would save money for an SSD.
