Building a low cost gaming machine

[alexb]

Can anyone point me in the direction of some guides for building an affordable gaming machine?

My son has a reasonable laptop with an i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and plays a lot of games on Steam, usually online with his friends.
His laptop gets pretty hot quite quickly, so he's wondering if we can build a new computer together. I could do this, but I've really not much idea of what specs to build to.

Are there any decent on-line guides that are worth following?
Any advice that will save me a lot of heartache?

[Gattopardo]

Lots of fans make things noisy.

How old is the laptop?  Is it worth cleaning the fans and heat sinks, maybe replacing the thermal compunds on the heat sinks.  What about getting a getting a stand? 

On a desktop set up your video card ram will be on the card, look at size and how it will fit on the board.

[zendog]

I got mine from here.

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

As a start point pick a model about your price point and you can see the detailed spec avaliable.
Unlikely you could build much cheaper for the same quality. Spend lots of time on eBay
could be a different story.

 

[freeflow]

Lots of second hand stuff on ebay that would beat the pants off the laptop. What would your budget be.

[bobb]

I don't know about online guides, but you could go old skool and buy a book. I bought one of my nephews a book last Christmas. I can't remember what it was called - something like "How to build a gaming PC". There are loads of them - as long as it's up to date and recently published, it should tell you everything you need to know...

[T42]

Good idea. Then give the boy a budget and let him build it.

[Canardly]

ITC often sell refurbished Dell kit at v reasonable prices.

http://www.itcsales.co.uk/

[mrcharly-YHT]

Lots of my family spend their entire life (and budget) PC gaming.

A lot depends on the games being played.

Two things are key; graphics card and disk speed.  An SSD will greatly speed up the loading of games but is not the be all and end all.

A compatible graphics card with enough memory is the single biggest thing that makes a difference. My stepson spent most of his christmas earnings on a fast monitor and new graphics card to get better gaming performance (roughly £700, it was his money, he earned it, seems insane to me, it is more than I spent on my entire laptop).

Look at the games your son plays, look up the recommended specs for the graphics cards, those will be listed online alone with other specs for a machine. Start there and build a machine around those with an eye towards being able to upgrade in the future.

[Dibdib]

Once you decide on budget, https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ can be really useful - not only for prices, but it's pretty good at knowing what bits are/aren't compatible.

Assembly of most PC parts is broadly comparible to a Lego kit - if you're having to force things, you're doing it wrong.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Lots of fans doesn't necessarily equal noise.  You can get quiet fans and there are liquid coolers for CPUs and graphics cards.

In my last job my group built some pretty nice gaming rigs for colleges which taught game design and animation.
I have to say though that a lot of gaming machines are built to look good - fancy cases with transparent sides and lighting.
There are also fancy RAM DIMMS with extra cooling heatsinks etc.  - I am doubtful about them too

I agree with the above though - start with the best graphics card you can afford.
I guess my guidelines would be:
a) a larger case has the room for more fans and better airflow.
BUT do you have the space for a full tower case?

b) look at your motherboard. There are gaming-specific motherboards which ARE better quality - they will have better voltage regulators and component quality than the standard desktop mobos.
c) Are you going to look at dual SLI linked cards?  Probably not, but if you are then make sure you have room in the case and the slots on the motherboard
d) Regarding graphics, where is the output going? How many monitors do you need?
e) Following from (d) if you plan to use the TV in the lounge as a large monitor then you probably need a smaller case which looks nice, to keep SWMBO happy
f) get a good CPU cooler

So separating out the waffle above, my advice is that gaming specific motherboards are better. Get a full sized graphics card and a case which it will fit in.
When I was in last job, the GTX Titan X graphics cards were the choice for high end gaming. But were not talking cheap now.
There now seem to be GTX Titan Z cards.

[Kim]

The first rule of computer fans is that you want them to be as big and slow as possible.

My desktop PC experience has been greatly enhanced by a large case that's conducive to positive-pressure ventilation:  A couple of 120mm fans on the front, with a filter on the dust intake, and the exhaust ports (other than the PSU) left fanless.  The easily-cleaned filter fills up with dust, but everything else (particularly the various heatsinks) doesn't.

I've deliberately chosen passively-cooled graphics cards over the last couple of generations to avoid the noisy failure-prone (and often glued-on) fans, but I'm not doing anything more graphically challenging than playing video.  High-performance graphics cards for gaming are nearly always fan cooled.

Unless the budget's really tight, don't skimp on the case.  A decent one will outlive several complete replacements of the hardware.

[Feanor]

When the words "low cost" and "gaming" appear in the same sentence, then I'd advise looking at the latest generation of graphics cards at the premium price point, and then going one generation back.
Very similar performance for a fraction of the premium price.

[Kim]

When the words "low cost" and "gaming" appear in the same sentence, then I'd advise looking at the latest generation of graphics cards at the premium price point, and then going one generation back.
Very similar performance for a fraction of the premium price.

This applies to pretty much any technology that's subject to Moore's Law style improvements, tbh.

[Canardly]

And be aware that the life cycle of 'state of the art' graphic cards is at best, limited.

[Kim]

And be aware that the life cycle of 'state of the art' graphic cards is at best, limited.

Gates' Law, innit.

[mrcharly-YHT]

And be aware that the life cycle of 'state of the art' graphic cards is at best, limited.

Gates' Law, innit.

Sadly, for hardware SoC designers that has not applied to the world of smartphones and tablets.

The demands on hardware have plateaued, so the manufacturers are reduced to inventing ever-more ludicrous feature on smartphones (double lens cameras, fingerprint sensors, iris reader, etc) in an effort to make people upgrade and buy a newer smartphone.

It is getting a bit like the mad razorblade war. First there was the double-blade razor. Then the triple. Then the 4, the 5, then the vibrating 5 with self-lubricating bits.

[alexb]

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.
We'll be starting the research this weekend. I'll let you know how we get on, but I'm really grateful to the solid advice offered here.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Just beware that this is an alice-in-wonderland rabbithole.

Stepson had expanded to a 3-screen setup with a near £700 graphics card. Latest purchase (cost shared with his sister) was a Vive VR rig - nearly £800 quid, and that would only work because of said graphics card.

All just to play games.

It's madness I tell you. Stick to N+1. They are cheaper (well, maybe not)

[Kim]

Stick to retro-gaming:  Once you're a few years behind the curve the games become cheap and the (PC) hardware a standard commodity.

Computer games peaked with Worms 2 anyway.  Doesn't take much hardware for that.

[alexb]

Stick to retro-gaming:  Once you're a few years behind the curve the games become cheap and the (PC) hardware a standard commodity.

Computer games peaked with Worms 2 anyway.  Doesn't take much hardware for that.

Yes, well. He is at least learning Maya and has been doing a bit of programming here and there throughout his life.
Big sis is also keen to learn 3D image manipulation, so this monster might do them both!

[alexb]

Progress so far: Scored an old IBM server running a Xeon processor from the IT department.
Installed USB mounted copy of Linux to check that everything is functional and were able to get onto the net and make various things work, so all the signs are good.
Installed a second-hand 500GB hard drive and bought and installed an OEM copy of Windows 10 from the internet.
Got the various fun things installed including Steam and again, things still seem to be working.

Have now ordered 16GB of RAM, a basic sound card and a fancy graphics card.
That should all arrive for the weekend.

So far, relatively painless, but time-consuming in the way that only computer builds can be (i.e. install, download patches, reboot, download and install next set of patches, rinse and repeat for an entire day!)

[Morat]

Hmm, are you sure you've got a nice x16 PCIE slot for the graphics card?

[alexb]

So the graphics and sound cards went in nicely, Win 10 installed and set up smoothly and all is well.
Except I have now discovered, by returning two sets of RAM which wouldn't work, that this server required ECC RAM.

I can't find any way in the BIOS to disable ECC.
Any suggestions?

The plus side is that ECC RAM seems pretty cheap on ebay.

[Morat]

Buy ECC RAM. It's usually slower and more expensive but if you have a source of used stuff on ebay then go for it. You can't just switch it off.
There's a reason servers aren't generally use for gaming machines, XEONs are slower for most games because they typically have lots of cores which won't be utilised by games programmers and ECC memory is superfluous for gaming too.

However, you can build a cheap gaming machine out of a second hand server if you're prepared to compromise a bit on performance. I'm just getting the feeling that mission creep has arrived and you're now actually building a top-end gaming rig. Anything that supports VR is guaranteed to be a lot more powerful than bargain basement!

Which games are you hoping to play? They do vary in their requirements.

edit: sorry - I got posts muddled up. You're not the one with the HTC Vive