I thought people would benefit from this by all the help people seemed to require; not very people need help and if they do they can just post a thread. 

Hi,

This thread will be an on-going progress and it will take me a few days to put the bulk of the information in. This thread is supposed to give you guys information on hardware parts currently for PC users (laptop users can post questions/comments and Mac users will be relatively similar to PC users to setup I assume).

 

Processors

 

AMD VS Intel

 

 

Quite simply AMD is better for budget builds and Intel is better for high quality builds. AMD usually offer more power/features for your $ where as Intel tend to offer more reliability and high end features. You should note your CPU is the brain of your system and that it is actually very hard to measure the power of a system based on clock speeds etc as they perform differently due to different architectures (etc) i.e. people argue MIPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture) is better for determining how good (?) a CPU is where as other people argue FLOPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS) is better (their was another one which I can't remember). The best way of determing which CPU is better for you is looking up reviews and real word tests (I like to look on Youtube and look up benchmarks [the reviews in my opinion are more important to pay attention to]).

 

CPU Generation info

Their are many other CPU's that are good but I'm not going to list them or I'd be here all day. I'm not going to mention workstation grade hardware but they tend to be good options too but you need to pick your parts carefully.

 

Intel

i7 3930k - $750 approx

This is a hexa-core (six core) 12 thread CPU (the threads only really matter for rendering etc so most of you guys can disregard the threading unless you like to do things like video editing). It's a very expensive piece of hardware and the compatible motherboards are generally $300+ but it's top of the line technology 

I mentioned this CPU separately as it's part of the i7 extreme series (?) due to the 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads, it's much more powerful than the normal i7 series.

 

i7 Series (4 cores/8 threads)

For most of you guys you'll not want this because the only benefits is hyper-threading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading) which many of you guys would not benefit from. I honestly don't recommend this (if your interested in them though look up hyper-threading to see if it'd help you out).

 

i5 Series (4 cores/4 threads)

This is basically the best value for money CPU series Intel offer for gamers. 

 

i3 Series (2 cores/2 [?] threads)

Contrary to popular belief you only need two cores to game. Two cores is plenty for web browsing, movie streaming and so on. For many people an i3 is perfect if you only want to use your Computer lightly. 

 

Pentium 4

I haven't paid much attention to this CPU, avoid it - it is extreme budget stuff. Just get an i3 if your thinking about getting this CPU or even better an AMD CPU (remember AMD dominate the low end market).

 

What generation of Intel hardware is best for you?

 

1.The first generation isn't worth taking note of, do not ever buy it (I forgot it's name but it starts with the letter B  ).

2. Sandy bridge (second generation) is an amazing generation of CPU due to the huge power difference compared to the first generation. It was a very cool (temp wise) generation which led to great overclocking, it doesn't have all the features newer generations of CPU's have but regardless it is still a great generation CPU. The APU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_processing_unit basically a mini graphics card in the CPU) is pretty awful. If your going to buy a Sandy Bridge CPU buy a GPU (graphics card). 

3. Ivy Bridge (third generation) was also a good a generation, due to minor improvements Ivy bridge gained an approx 10% speed increase however temperatures were much hotter when overclocked resulting in an over all slightly better generation at best. The APU in Ivy bridge CPU's is around 50% better than Sandy Bridge, the APU is usable but again I recommend you use a graphics card. Ivy bridge supports the newer technologies that Sandy Bridge does not.

4. Haswell, this is latest generation. It yet again due to improvements only gained 10% or so speed improvements. This CPU is much hotter so despite it's bad/okay overclocks it performs similar to lets say a Sandy Bridge CPU overclocked unless you use extreme cooling solutions (i.e. corsair 100i). This generation should be compatible with pcie 4.0 and DDR4 RAM when it is released in 2014 (?). Also, the motherboard socket will remain the same so if you wish to switch out the Haswell CPU for the next CPU that Intel releases it will be compatible. The APU is approx 40% better than Ivy Bridge's which is about 75% as good as AMD's current APU's (Intel are trying to catch up with AMD in this respect).

 

Reference design or k edition?

Basically you should go for the reference design (non k i.e. 3570 vs 3570k) if you don't plan on getting an after market CPU cooler but I recommend overclocking your CPU to gain the maximum performance out of your CPU. Please be careful when you overclock your CPU.

 

AMD

I'm a big AMD fan because they offer a lot for the value of cash that you pay (that doesn't mean you should buy an AMD CPU as their higher end stuff isn't too great). I'm only going to mention a few CPU's here despite their being many many other good CPU's, if you have any questions just ask me)

 

AMD FX 8350 (8 cores) $200

This is the only high end CPU I'd recommend you buy. It needs a lot of juice (nearly 2x an Intel CPU of the same generation) to power but the CPU itself is amazing value for money, it's competitor was the i7 3770k despite the i7 3770k costing waaay more. You should get third party cooling if you get this CPU and this CPU has no APU so you will need a graphics card. The cores used shared cache memory (2 cores share 2mb of lvl 2 cache I think) which means the cores are weaker than Intels cores but you do have more of them.

 

AMD A10 6800k (4 cores, great APU) $149

This is the best APU CPU out their, if you don't want to buy a graphics card buy this CPU. It offers great performance especially for the price and you can 720p game on this (i.e. black ops 2). The core performance isn't bad either because it uses true cores like Intel does (the AMD FX 8350 does not have 8 true cores as it shares cache memory).

Please not you can overclock this CPU, this is truly an amazing budget card!

 

Older generation AMD CPU's

I'm not going to list them but they are very good for their time and you can grab them for $100 or maybe even less. They would still be viable options for mid end gaming (i.e. 1080p medium/low budget). AMD Athlon/Phenom are good examples of this. I'm using an older generation AMD CPU (AMD Athlon x2 260 which is a pretty old CPU, dw I'm in the process of upgrading) and it does me fine even today. 

 

 

Motherboards

I'll come back to this later or link something for motherboards.. there's a lot to cover.

 

CPU Cooling

 

If your going to use a non k edition CPU generally speaking the stock fan is fine to use, they usually come with pre-applied thermal paste so you just stick the fan on.

The bigger the fan size (like the actual fan itself, not the whole piece of hardware) the quieter the fan will be to push the same volume of air compared to smaller fan size (i.e. a 135mm fan is better than a 120mm fan typically speaking). You want a lot of static pressure for better performance with CPU coolers. Also, try to get a quiet cooler, we're in 2013 there are many quiet options out their that perform amazingly!

 

Air cooling VS liquid cooling.

Quite simply, liquid cooling is better. There's no arguments their but that said air cooling can still put up a pretty good fight. High end air cooling solutions tend to be quieter and cheaper and at the end of the day get the job done unless you want an extreme overclock (even then you can happily get 4.5ghz with air cooling + 2011 and after CPU's which is not far behind liquid cooling in all honesty). If you can afford liquid cooling get it but if you can't don't stress it air cooling works just fine. Liquid cooling doesn't tend to block any ports/sockets (w.e. it's called) on your motherboard too so that should be considered when you choose your cooling.

 

Air cooling.

Due to a huge variety I'm just going to recommend my two favourite air coolers.

 

Noctua (there are many variety's hence why I haven't specified any models) - this is basically the king of air cooling, you don't get any better but in my opinion it looks ugly which is why I wouldn't buy it. Some models of this is very big and some are fairly small.

Dark rock pro 2 - this is my favourite (I'm going to get one of these bad boys :3), it's almost as good as the Noctua and it looks beautiful. This thing is huge (and heavy so secure it on your motherboard properly or you might damage it) though so make sure your Ram is not too big and that your case can fit it!

 

Liquid Cooling

I'm not going to mention how to make your own liquid cooling but you can and it's fairly easy to do so but it can be fairly expensive and you can mess up so if your a newbie don't try it unless your confident!

I'd recommend getting the Corsair h80i if your case is fairly small or the h100i if you have a very big case (as the radiator for this thing is huge). I'd recommend more but Corsair are in my opinion the best for closed liquid cooling.

 

Cooling your system & case info.

 

You will require intake fans and exhaust fans (exhaust are typically at the back of the case but you can configure it how you want if you know what your doing) which are usually included with your case but usually you could do with buying two or so more fans to provide a bit of extra air flow (you want air flow optimised fans rather than static fans for your case). Your power supply position will be discussed later on. I'm going to quite simply recommend the Fractal Design R4 case as it's silence optimised, big (plenty of space for pretty much everything) and and beautiful (windowed and non windowed varients) with options to do pretty much anything you want while retaining a fairly low price (unless your making a very budget pc then you won't be able to afford this $90+ case). Their are many cases you can get but you can't go wrong with this case. Feel free to look up other cases of course (i.e. Corsair have many good cases which range from budget to extreme casing which are great).

 

Power Supply (psu)

 

You have two options, modular or non modular. Modular is basically neater so it looks nicer (detachable cables). Seasonic are quite simply top dog when it comes to psu's but their are many other good brands if you can't afford Seasonic psu's. I could go into a lot more depth here but I doubt many of you guys would find it helpful (there are important things I'm missing out but generally speaking buying a higher quality psu and getting a few more watts than you need remedies the issue - feel free to look up psu info though).

 

RAM

 

You can overclock RAM but generally speaking this isn't too big of a deal. The higher mhz your RAM is the faster it is basically. Ram isn't too big of a deal, you can't really go wrong with it apart from actual dimensions if your using a air cooler for your CPU (in that case get low profile Ram like the Corsair XMS3). You should try to get newer DDR3 RAM as the voltage it runs on tends to be 1.5v compared to older ram running @ 1.65v which leaves you with more overclocking head room. Depending on your motherboard you can have up to 4 sticks of ram.

 

Hard Drive

 

If you can afford it, get an SSD to load your Operating System of - I'll continue this later, I'm getting tired so what I'm writing isn't as good compared to the start. 

 

 

 

 

I'm still working on this, it is currently unfinished please bear with me. This will takes ageees to write up because theirs so much info I'll need to tell you. If people want to help me I'd appreciate that, even simple things like formatting it. Thanks :3.

Edited September 12, 201312 yr by Fringie

What would you tell a nooby who doesn't know anything about computers but is looking to get a good performance gaming laptop?

And what would the price range from :?

Edited September 9, 201312 yr by Imop

What would you tell a nooby who doesn't know anything about computers but is looking to get a good performance gaming laptop?

And what would the price range from :?

It depends really.. but you'd be looking at spending $1300+ for a good quality gaming laptop. Last time I looked there were quite a few good deals on atm (Acer etc).