What part of a computer can you "skimp" on?So I'm thinking about building myself a new rig. I want to go for value more than anything, but I also want to get myself a nice enough setup that I can play the latest games considerably well. Last time I built a computer I skimped on the power supply and it bit me big time later on.
I know the ideal answer is "don't skimp on anything", but are there are any parts of a computer you can do relatively well without having a particularly "good" component?
Video card. Don't buy the latest and greatest most bleeding edge. Buy the card that was super awesome 3 months ago. You're probably not playing many games that are really going to stress most cards for at least a year anyway. For example, I bought an nVidia 8800GT when it was at the $200 price point (recently after release) despite it not being the OMGWTFBBQ fastest card available. While I'm not a bleeding-edge gamer anymore, I've had the card a year and it runs DoW2, Oblivion, NWN2, L4D and TF2 perfectly awesome at 1920x1200, 8xAA etc etc.
That said, I've been building PCs for myself for 15 years, and even had a job doing that for 3 years in college. PC parts generally have price points, and these values really haven't changed much. That is, they're just as accurate (in the ballpark) now as they were nearly 15 years ago. Here's the quick guide off the top of my head.
Every PC I've built has been $1000-1500. I'm an enthusiast PC gamer, but I don't buy the latest gear. I stick to roughly these price points, and end up with systems that will run the games I want to play (mostly FPS) for 3-4 years.
First of all, don't skimp on you PSU. That is basically the most important part of a system.
When I buy systems, I skimp on the optical drive, and the processor.
As far as oprical drives go...you don't really need anything nice for every day gaming and use.
For CPUs I recommend looking for a lower end processor in a line of processors with faster clock cycles. You can usually overclock for a free performance boost.
*Other Notes* I recommend buying a fairly nice motherboard to begin with. That way, you have something you can grow into. You can always add more ram if you leave slots open, so I recommend buying big sticks. And, make sure your mobo has a new-ish chipset that will support new processors. Usually, nicer motherboards come with nice enough sound cards so you won't need one of those.
Speakers - If you can stand playing with suboptimal sound. With a hi-fi around you could just hook those up to the machine provided you have the right jack support. Or just use some el cheapo earphones/headphones.
Network card. You really don't need a Killer NIC M1 [1] for $250.
[1] http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/killer-nic-m1/Everything.
And nothing.
The same rule goes for everything: Don't buy the latest and greatest. Get last years stuff. It's 90% of the performance for 50% of the price compared to the latest toys.
There is one exception though: Anything with a fan. Get good, silent, brand fans. Other fans break down after a couple of months and start making horrid noises.
It is easier to give reasons why you shouldn't skimp on certain components. For example:
and so on.
One approach could be to look at what's easiest to upgrade. Another would be to look at components that aren't on the cutting edge. So you might go for last year's graphics card for example.
A reliable computer needs a quality motherboard, a quality power-supply, and reasonable quality ram.
You don't need an expensive motherboard with extra slots for 'upgrading' that you will never get around to. Or a high end CPU that costs more than a new car (for a few weeks, anyway).
You certainly don't need the next big thing in graphics cards. a mid range card from last summers series will be playing the latest games quite happily for the next 3 years.
2 gigs of ram is plenty to start with, buy some reasonable quality stuff, but you needn't fuss about the latest or fastest. In 18-36 months time you're going to want to put more in, and that will mess up the electrical signals, preventing you from using the advanced timings and highest speeds anyway.
I'd spring for a decent mouse and keyboard, if you dont have them already, but they're easy to change, and not worth worrying about till you can sit down and play with a few to find out what you like. options are going to be discussed here ad infitum, see here [1]. they're easy to change later anyway.
Again, cant recommend skimping on a monitor, but at least they're easy to change, and a good one should last you a long time.
Buy a decent PSU, it touches as many or more components as the motherboard. get one with a brand name on it, that way the numbers on the sticker are more likely to be honest.
[1] http://superuser.com/questions/253/which-keyboard-would-you-recommendram speed.
buy some cheapish (but not the cheapest) ram. you certainly don't need super fast timings.
No one has mentioned buying On-Board graphics. Nowadays, there are some really great on-board graphics cards. The AMD 780G and AMD790GX boards have great Radeon 3200/3300 chipsets, many with 128MB of dedicated video memory.
I build computers for under $500 using
AMD 780G/790GX ($70-90) board
AMD Athlon X2 Retail ($70)
4GB RAM ($60)
320GB hard drive ($50)
Case (get a $60 case with free shipping on Newegg for a great deal)
Total: $350 + shipping (newegg with free shipping saves a bundle)
Honestly, for basic computers I get a case with a built-in PSU. I've never had one die on me, but I only put them in regular (read: non-gamer) PCs. For my higher end PC I do have a namebrand PSU, but that'll add $50+ to your box.
Cables. Specifically, you do NOT need "Monster Brand" HDMI cables (those being the worst offenders I can think of).
You want cabling? Go to monoprice.com and save a bundle of money. I got FIVE 10' HDMI cables express shipped to me from Monoprice for less than HALF the cost of ONE six-foot cable.
Monster is the biggest ripoff in consumer electronics today.
Well obviously we all have different understanding of what is needed.
First off - I would reuse every single thing you can from previous computers that does not "directly" (read hugely) influence performance - such as chassis, optical drives, chassis fans and so forth.
Next up - get yourself a good PSU (as you seem to have understood already, I too made that mistake once), a quality motherboard (quality doesn't mean it has to be the most expensive, but get one from a known brand with a known good chipset in it - the chipset means ALOT in the motherboard). The memory and CPU I'd "skimp" a bit on as well like others have suggested. That is, I'd go with a Duo/Quad Core CPU - try to get the newest product-line possible, but pay close attention to the prices. Say their clock speeds and prices are as follows
2.4GHz 100$
2.6GHz 110$
2.8GHz 170$
3.0GHz 300$
In this case I'd go for the 2.6GHz, simply because you pay only a little bit more compared with what you get - but once we go beyond this the price jumps become too much for me wanting to pay that much extra for a few extra Hz. IMO the product line of the CPU is often way more important than the model within the product line.
As far as memory goes, decide how much memory you want - and again, try to find the cheap sweet spot. Memory is cheap at the moment and it shouldn't be too hard to find cheap good memory - try go get some that is not running with the slowest timings you can find, or get some that is rated to run just slightly faster than you intend to run them at, so you can get slightly better timings - but there's no need to spend a large amount of money on memory.
If this is a rig for gaming - the graphics card is where you want to REALLY spend cash - it is for the most part the deciding factor in everything related to your gaming performance so go nuts here. If not, you can EASILY save a ton of money there as well.
A harddrive for gaming really only needs to be big - a faster harddrive will get you faster loading times, but for the main part - that's it. Get a normal 7200RPM drive and you'll be good. If you want a general faster computer elsewhere though, a good harddrive is a worthwhile investment too - maybe even considering a RAID setup (I gotta warn you about RAID 0 though - it sucks when the RAID breaks - but a RAID 10 if you can afford it, is really nice).
The last bits and pieces all comes down to what you can save from previous rig's. Do you have keyboard and mouse? Do you have a monitor? Do you have optical drives? Etc. Apart from optical drives - the rest of the parts left are the ones you'll physically interact with. As far as the performance of the computer, it doesn't really matter that much. But when we talk about interacting physically with the computer this is where the differences are made - so it all depends on how you want that to feel. Especially a bad chassis can really make assembling a computer a pain, but then again, you don't do that so often - the rest is pretty much up to you - whether you think it is worth the money or not, and of course, whether or not you can afford it.
For gaming, soundcard isn't too important (if you even buy one), neither is optical drive (so long as it works, I have still never comes across one that does for more than 3 months), and potentially the case so long as you choose one suitable for your cooling requirements. I would argue though that balance is the most important factor - minimising bottlenecks in an intermediate specced system can make it faster than a higher specced system which has say a hard drive bottleneck: make sure that your PSU can adequately cope with peak load, that your memory is fast enough to cope with an overclocked processor/FSB, and that your disks aren't slowing you down.
You don't have to buy the most expensive CPU or Graphics card to be able to play the best games.
You pay a premium to buy the most spectacular model of either but you can save a lot of money by buying the model down from that one with very little real life performance differences.
If you want to play the latest games, then the video card is going to be your top priority - it's generally where you get the biggest bang for the buck in video game performance.
Generally speaking, when you build a PC you want to be buying hardware that's just below the bleeding edge level. As kastermester pointed out with CPU costs, there's a steep price curve from just below top of the line hardware to top of the line hardware. You'll notice this pattern in just about every PC component. Look at the top 3-4 offerings for a given piece of hardware and see where you get the most for your money.
Buying in this price range does a couple of things for you. First, you get the most out of the money that you're spending. Secondly, it maximizes the life you'll get out of your machine before you have to consider upgrading. It doesn't do you much good to skimp on something now if it means you're going to need to upgrade it in a year.
One thing you can skip out on though is a standalone sound card. Most motherboards have quality sound capabilities built in that pretty much eliminate the need for a separate sound card.
Hard drives and memory are so cheap now that you don't even need to skimp on them. The main areas you'll be cutting costs in is for the video card and processor, which fit the price curve I talked about earlier.
You can skimp on memory amount, you'll be just fine with 2GiB. You can buy more later. Don't however skimp on memory quality.
You can also skimp on the graphics card - a relatively recent mainstream graphics is enough for most of current games.
Optical drive is not a necessity, though if you buy a crappy one, it will die on you pretty fast. Just don't go the Blu-Ray route yet - it's too expensive for now.
You don't need a high-end CPU to play games - most of them need more GPU power than CPU.
Don't skimp on motherboard quality - it doesn't have to be a top-notch model, but if you buy a crappy quality one, condensers will blow up earlier than needed.
Having a super-silent-aluminium case is not necessary either.
A crappy monitor will either die fast, bad/hot pixels will pop up early, you'll notice blurring, display latency, strange pixel response-time compenstation artifacts, backlight leaking and unacceptable image quality.
Don't skimp on a keyboard, but you probably don't need to get any of those super-gamer-keyboards with LCDs and additional 128 macro buttons.
Mice are a gamble. I bought the Logitech MX620 Cordless Laser last year and it was great until left button's switch started failing, repeating button presses or failing to register them.
And yes, don't ever skimp on a PSU, although for a decent gaming system you won't need anything more powerful than 500 watts. You're not, after all, going for a high-end SLI GPU setup and an extreme 8-core CPU.
You can definitely skimp on RAM, it's cheap as chips.
Don't spend more than $15 - $20 on a 1GB stick of DDR2.
If it busts, you can just get a new one on warranty, or if no warranty is available, it's not going to hurt your wallet much to buy a new one.
