Introduction
If you want to possess a high tech and efficient gaming system, you will find yourself left with only two option.
First option: Hire someone
Simply hire any professional and expert person to build a gaming pc for you. The main advantage of this method is an obvious guarantee that your system will work properly. This option is more reliable and most sought after if someone does not like handling all the components separately.
Second option: Build on your own
The followers of this school of thought recommend building your gaming machine on your own. The advantage here is great learning. If someone builds his own dream gaming PC, he can decide about hardware components and get a deep knowledge and understanding of working with gaming PC. Another benefit of following this approach is saving a lot of money.
Here, we are going to follow and represent the second option. We acknowledge, too, that many things have changed over the course of years and deciding which option to opt is a very difficult decision.
Cheaper components
Going back to few years, building own PC was a cheap option. But, on account of increase in prices of the best quality graphics card, partly due to cryptocurrency hype, this option is not available anymore. Although if Nvidia is designing graphics cards designed for cryptocurrency miners and some sellers trying hard to deal miners, it will be difficult to get a good deal of GPU.
Many expensive gaming systems can be availed within good savings, but the margin in some machines is not available, significantly at cheaper ends. For this reason, building gaming system is a good option as no money will be wasted on unwanted components. The money will be spent on recommended and required specs.
For instance, if someone wants to create a gaming machine that will not only handle PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds but also have enough power to run other 2018’s releases, he can simply build a PC provide better graphics quality than anything else.
Here, we will focus on designing a machine that you want.
Now you can build your desired machine with these hardware components.
CPU
Intel Core i5-4590 – £158 (around US$251, or AUS$323)
Intel has taken lead over AMD in this field and as games continue to use more and more multiple core architectures, there is little chance of this lead shrinking.
Now here are two choices.
- If you have more money and like overclocking, then unlocked Core i5-4690K is a good choice for you.
- Buying Core i5-4590 will be a financially wise decision, as overclocking does not guarantee to increase your boost in games. It still possesses Haswell core, speeds up to 3.7 GHz from its initial 3.7 GHz and has ample 6MB of L3 cache. It also has a cooler which is beneficial if the gamer is not overclocking.
Motherboard
Asus H97M-E – £72 (around US$114 or AUS$147)
This motherboard is powered by the H97 chipset, which is almost similar to the top-end Z97 chipset but it does not officially support overclocking. As a locked processor has been suggested earlier, we can find some other economical machines.
The Asus H97M-E is a “good buy” motherboard that gives your Socket-1150 Core i5-4590 enough free space, with support to USB 3.0, SATA 6GB/s interfaces and an M.2 slot. Another important in this motherboard is that it has only one PCI Express 3.0 slot, indicating that SLI/CrossFire is no more in it. But, this not an issue this time.
Graphics card
AMD Radeon R9 290X – £260 (around $413, or AUS$531)
Nvidia has many best quality graphics card, but it is not easy to outclass MD’s R9 290X. It has gained from recent drivers update, enabling it to compete with expensive GeForce GTX 970.
As prices of new GPUs are rising, both cards will be an affordable option for many gamers.
Both cards will happily run games like GTA V highest settings and other games like The Witcher 3.
Storage
MX100 512GB SSD – £145 (around US$230, or AUS$296)
Solid State Drives SSD have totally replaced spinning drives and there is no other technology to replace with it. As gamer need large memory so 512 GB SSD is an ideal option.
Power supply
XFX Core Edition 550W – £49 (around $77, or AUS$100)
Intel has reduced power draw of its latest processors and motherboard chipsets. It means we don’t need a separate power supply to run them. We only need a PSU to effectively operate our graphics card.
Since R9 290X does not consume a lot of power, the whole PC can operate under some 400W PSU. But increasing extra power will enable more efficient performance and up-gradation of hardware components. So, the gamer can go for any PSU he trusts and most reliably for XFX unit.
Memory
Corsair 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1,333MHz – £54 (around US$84, or AUS$132)
Memory is nowadays an essential component to be considered. 4GB memory has become obsolete and 8 GB is a recommended one. You can also jump directly to 16 GB.
To build an economical machine, we will use a pair of 4GB DIMMs. There is no need to find a particular model number but go with the deal as you will be buying other components too.
Chassis
Corsair Carbide 200R – £48 (around US$76, or AUS$98)
We have recently built many gaming PCs with small chassis for the reason that they do not limit our choice of components and it is also easy to build later in a bigger case.
The Corsair Carbide 200R is a great choice and it has been successfully used by our team to compare with other chassis as well. Its tool-free design makes it easy for a gamer to accommodates components in it. It has large space for R9 290X as drive cages can be split to place large size cards. There is also enough space for cooling system and cut-outs make it easier for cable management.
Now we possess all the components and have to just put them together.
Starting building
- Unpack your components
Unpack the motherboard from top of antistatic bag and place processor in its place. Insert two memory sticks and carefully put your graphics card.
- Apply thermal lubricant
A blob of thermal grease is recommended to be used as it will ensure that there is well contact between the top of the chip and cooler’s plate. It will fill any small scratches if there are. A blob of the size of grains of rice will be enough for the whole process. No need to worry about widening it; placing the cooler on it will spread it out.
- Simple boot
Just connect your screen with the graphics card and insert your keyboard. Next, switch on the PSU and start the machine. Place power pins on panel connector with the help of screwdriver to get PC running. Having done all this, go through manual to find the power button on the motherboard.
- BIOS setup
We are checking here that when the machine starts up and fan spins, it gets us into the BIOS. When the process reaches the motherboard logo screen, press [Delete]/[Del] and the computer will initiate BIOS setup. Now, carefully monitor if the computer is displaying correct ram memory and CPU.
- Shut down and go again
The system is working properly. Now Shutdown your PC remove PSU. Unplug the power cables from the motherboard and eject graphics card.
- Supplying the power
First of all, rightly place your PSU in chassis. Kindly, make sure that position of PSU allows intake fan to suck outside air.
- Fitting motherboard into the chassis
Simply attach motherboard’s backplate into the chassis. To avoid trapping any leads, screw board’s risers into chassis and leave the board in place.
- Fix SSD
Go for racks at front of the chassis. Even though you have many options to place your drive, this option is followed by our team. Insert the SATA cables and move forward.
- Graphics card time
First, ensure that there is wire trapping inside the chassis. Place it into the primary PCIe slot and screw to keep it secure.
- Panel power
Insert the front panel connectors of the chassis in the motherboard pins. It is important to consult manual at this stage to put some components, such as front panel audio and USB headers, at the right place. Other switches such as the reset switch, storage and power lights will be there too. Simply plug pins in those switches accurately and safely.
- Securing cables
Block the airflow through chassis. Firstly, insert mobo power cable, secondly CPU, thirdly GPU, and then storage power connectors. It is also essential to check that fans are working too.
- Air
Now you are ready to connect your screen, mouse and keyboard. Just leave the side of the chassis open during first boot up to certain that all fans are working accurately.
- Checking the speed
After entering into BIOS, just read system’s temperature (below 40-40 0C is normal) and confirm that storage device SSD has been detected and is visible. It is also essential to monitor RAM settings and its frequency. After going through this process, just save your BIOS settings and shutdown.
- Installing the OS
You can use optical drive or USB flash drive for installation of your windows.
- Boot the window and install it
Insert your desired media and boot it from the system’s BIOS and start the windows procedure. After completely installing windows, connect your PC with internet and update graphics card’s drivers.
A system for gaming is ready
Finally, we have been successful in building a great gaming PC with decent money. The system comprises a good combination of great performance without spending huge money.
This machine will successfully work for a couple of years for high-cutting edge games without the heavy price tag. This machine can effectively run GTA V, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Moreover, you can build a machine cheaper than this one, which can easily support 60fps games. But, our final goal is to create a machine that can handle any game to be released this year, 2018.