clane23

Need help finding or building a new PC for LCPD: First Response and other video games? This is the thread for you. This particular topic will be pinned and left open for anybody who has any questions on what to do about getting the right PC for their needs, and anybody who has input or suggestions for those people. The G17 community team has decided to put this up here in order to keep things here on the forum organized and convenient. Without further delay, let's get to talkin'. I'll start off by having a quick list of the most powerful equipment available right now, which I'll try and remember to update as new parts come out.

Processors:
Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition - Six cores at 3.9GHZ clock speed
AMD FX-8350 - 8 cores at 4.0GHZ clock speed.

Graphics Cards (single GPU):
nVidia GeForce TITAN - 6GB GDDR5 RAM on PCI Express 3.0
AMD Radeon 7990 - 6GB GDDR5 RAM on PCI Express 3.0

Motherboards:
ASUS P6T7 WS Ultimate Gamer - 3-Way SLI & PhysX, SATA 6GB (Intel based)
ASUS Crosshair V Formula - 3-Way SLI/CrossFire, Thunderbolt, SATA 6GB (AMD based)

Memory:
Corsair Dominator DDR3
GSkill Trident DDR3
Corsair Vengeance DDR3
Patriot Gamer DDR3
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline DDR3
Kingston HyperX DDR3

Power supplies:
Thermaltake
Seasonic
Antec
Coolermaster
OCZ
Corsair

Hard drives:
Western Digital (HDD & SSD)
Seagate (HDD & SSD)
Hitachi (HDD & SSD)
Toshiba (HDD & SSD)
Intel (SSD)
Patriot (SSD)
Corsair (SSD)
Kingston (SSD)
Samsung (HDD & SSD)
Crucial (SSD)
Mushkin (SSD)

Monitors:
Samsung
LG
Acer
AOC
ASUS
Panasonic
Viewsonic
Sony
Hanspree
Westinghouse

Peripherals:
Logitech
Microsoft
Razer
Roccat
Saitek
Steel Series

Key websites for information, reviews and benchmark tests:
HardOCP.com - News & review website
TomsHardware.com - News & review website
Guru3D.com - News & review website
HWCompare.com - Real world & synthetic benchmark tests of every major graphics card

Sort of. I'd stop wasting money on RAM, no gamer needs over 6, get rid of the two 550's and buy one really good card instead and use an i7 if possible. AMD's are worthless for games at this point in time.

IBuyPower's a fine website. I would not go to a local retail store to get a gaming computer, they're usually underwhelming for the money and will be from a generic brand like Dell or HP and have weak video cards. A lot of people here forget that some people are completely clueless with a screwdriver in their hands, and having it built for them is sometimes a better solution. I support that site as they give you some quality stuff that ends up being cheaper than Alienware and other comparable brands.

Buy all the parts yourself and then buy a screwdriver, you'll save a few hundred in the process. Maybe even a thousand if you're lucky. Granted, it's still going to be pretty damn expensive for a high-quality gaming computer, but compared to manufactured computers, building your own computer is extremely cheap and it'll perform better for longer. Some can even say that they're more stable, too, but that's really only if you know what you're doing.

For example: just the other day I had discovered the root cause of a seemingly simple problem. For the past year or so, every time that I did turn off my computer to work on it (maybe two or three times, no more) it would be a pain in the ass to turn it back on and get it to POST. Pressing the power button once never worked, no. Fiddling between the power button and the reset button back and forth really fast for a few seconds did work. So I had simply assumed that when I had installed a new motherboard a couple of years ago I had fucked up the wiring for the power button and reset button and the right signals were going to the wrong places. However, after installing an extension USB card (I always seem to run out of ports, haha) my computer failed to POST and absolutely nothing worked like it had in the past. Upon reading my motherboard's manual, it turns out that the onboard self-check-test indicator LED's were pointing out a memory error. I began to pop out each stick and fool around with it to see which stick (or sticks) might be causing the error and found out that it was one stick preventing me from turning on my computer. Popped it out, left it out, computer turned on right away, and I only lost one gig of memory, bringing me down to a total of 5. Not bad, seeing as how the stick itself was two or three years old anyway. If I had this issue with a manufactured PC then they probably would have had some long phone conversation with me and eventually tell me that I needed a new computer. Fuck that, I'm not going to ship away my computer and wait for another one which I would need to repopulate. tl;dr Build your own if you're smart enough and calm enough to deal with any issue that could arise.