So, I've been a gamer for a long time. But generally a console gamer. I feel the need to take my gaming to the next level and..build a PC built with high end gaming and high view distance rendering in mind.


What I'm looking to play:
Morrowind - MGE with other high resolution texture packs installed, massive view distance mod, etc. Modded Morrowind looks better than Vanilla Oblivion on the PC, so. Yeah. It takes a pretty beastly machine to run it on max with MGE.

World of Warcraft on Ultra settings - You may laugh at this being mentioned, but Ultra settings on WoW is nothing to laugh at. The sheer amount of players in one area (especially cities) coupled with the insane view distance (miles) of Ultra settings makes it a huge hog. Not to mention the new sunshafts, the new detailed water physics they added with Cataclysm, it requires a decent rig to run.

And last but not least, Skyrim. No, this isn't a "AWW MAG GODWUT DU I GET 4RUNNING SKIRIM?!/11" thread, I just thought you might want to know that's probably the most high end thing that I'll be playing. ^_^

And that's pretty much it. The thing is....I know next to nothing about PC gaming. I don't even know what a CPU is, let alone what it does. From what I've gathered from my nerdy/techy friends, what I'm looking for to suit my needs are:

-Lots of Ram (they said 6 gigs to be safe) to handle the massive view distance in the games I want to play
-Good CPU (what does that even mean..I don't even...) to handle everything in general
-Good Graphics card to handle the high res textures
-Compatible MOBO to make sure everything fits together and that nothing has combatability issues.

So..is this true? Are there really compatability issues that make certain things not work together?

So, all in all, what I need? Mobo, CPU, Graphics Card, 6 gigs ram, I want an at least 500 gig HD, then a power supply..and then a case that fits it all in there..Where to begin? It's all so confusing. :confused:

Can someone make me recommendations for what I've listed? I want a good CPU, I'll pay for that, but I don't feel that I need the BEST of the BEST graphics card, the one that cost 500+ dollars, because I'm not running games like Crysis, this is honestly for MOrrowind MGE, Skyrim, and WoW on Ultra settings. But I do want decent stuff so I have no FPS issues, I want 60+ FPS in these games with ultra/max settings.
So..yeah. I have about a 1000 or so US dollar budget, and that's NOT including the monitor or KB/M. Just the tower and all the candies inside.

For the tower itself, you will need a Hard Drive, CPU, GPU, Motherboard, Power Supply Unit, Operating System, Optical Drive, Memory, and a Case.
$1000 budget could get you a pretty nice PC.

Wait, so there's a GPU also? WTF does that do? :sadvaultboy:
Ok, I want Windows 7 64 Bit (I was told that was the only way to get 6 gigs ram) but I could be wrong on that part, he might have just been being stupid.
What does the optic fiber drive..thing..do?
Also, can you suggest what type of graphics card would fit my needs? I'm not looking for the most amazing high end 500 dollar card, just something that can run the games I want to play, as listed, but do it well.

The Graphics card is the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) In order for you to get more then ~3.2GB RAM you have to use a 64bit version of Windows.

The heaviest hitter out of the games you plan on playing is Skyrim. Wow is NOT graphically demanding in ANY way.

A CPU is basically the brain of the computer. Its where everything is calculated. It approves things, tells the computer what to do, etc. Nothing happens that your CPU doesn't touch. (For the most part, but you don't need to know any more then that)

6gigs of ram is useless unless you do lots of non-game rendering, or have like an image editor, movie, music, and a game running at the same time. Which no normal person will. 4GB is all you will need for the next... long time...

Yes its true, some things are just not compatable. However, it is very very unlikely you will ever encounter such a situation.


Watch this series of videos from NewEgg.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.674899
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231311&cm_sp=Cat_Memory-_-Daily_Deal-_-20-231-311 (Use the promo code EMCKDGK49 to get $15 off) Good deal actually
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986&cm_re=windows_7_64_bit-_-32-116-986-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150506&cm_re=6870-_-14-150-506-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533&cm_re=wd_caviar_black-_-22-136-533-_-Product

This comes out to about $994 after the RAM code. It is a pretty high end system, the GPU isnt the most powerful, but its still at low end of the high end cards.

Get a fast video card with the max onboard memory like a 1Gb?

Take a look at GeForce.

Not bad...close to what I would suggest. Can save a bit more by going with this HDD instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&Tpk=samsung%20f3

Same performance for lesser cost. The jump from 3 to 6 Gb/s and 32MB to 64MB cache won't net you much performance difference at all.

Also, this PSU is semi-modular and is of same quality as the Corsair: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207007&Tpk=xfx%20650w%20modular

Thanks a lot for the suggestions Starforce, I'm looking over that right now. And thanks also to Tig Ol bitties for suggesting a better HDD.

Looking over all this it's a little overwhelming still however. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and have my friend help me put it together for me. And it comes out to just my budget, 1000. Really nice.
Any other suggestions for a first time PC builder?

Also, @ Echonite, WoW might not be a graphics hog, but if it's not a hog of some sort, why does my FPS drop on my current rig when I turn on the view distance to anything other than "low", and turn on the water detail? My FPS goes from about 60 to sub 20. That's kind of a big deal, and it means it's obviously a hog on SOMETHING.

There are PC's that can't handle Angry Birds, this doesn't mean that Angry Birds is resource hungry but the PC isn't very good. Compared to other games WoW (and all other Blizzard games) are not very resource hungry.

If your purpose is solely for gaming, all you need is a good video card. As long as your system is running on 64-bit you shouldn't worry about any future spending beyond PSU, video card replacement/upgrade, but that's because I live in tropical city and overheating is not uncommon here. My machine is Core 2 Duo 2.3 since 4 years ago, all I've been doing was replacing new video card twice and getting a better PSU, oh and a 1TB HD for the hundreds of game titles I'm getting from Steam.

Skyrim is not pushing photorealistic, at least not from the published materials I'm seeing, so any mid range card could get you there, OR you may want a bargain deal card now just to run Morrowind and WoW in Ultra, then upgrade for a mid range one when Skyrim came out. Note that Skyrim came out just 1 month after Tegra 3, so I assume there will be a price drop around then.

Well, the same computer that sees massive FPS drops while turning settings on higher in WoW can run vanilla Oblivion on almost high settings with 45+ FPS, so, there is SOMETHING that is hogging resources there if the FPS in WoW (visually less demanding than Oblivion obviously) when turning up view distance. Maybe the sheer number of people and items being loaded at once in cities+trees and other static data for miles with higher view distance? I dunno. But whatever it is, it's an issue for me, so I want to build a rig that can handle max view distance+full water detail (I can't even turn water detail on at all, or my FPS drops from 60 to less than 20 from just the lowest possible form of water aliasing in WoW).

One more question;
A tech friend of mine who has a 6k rig and has 3 monitors, etc, so he knows his stuff, but anyway he says he despises ATI cards because all the ones he has bought fail. He uses 4 Nvideo ones that cost like 400 dollars each on his rig..he's REALLY into gaming and extremely rich..but I'm not really interested in that level of gaming lmao..
but yeah is what he says about ATI cards true? He says they always die on him and he just prefers other types of cards.

Latency issue possibly? High ping to the WoW servers would cause stuttering.

Well latency wouldn't cause the water detail to be an issue, as that's purely on your side not theirs. But my ping is 35 so I really doubt it's a latency issue.
I really believe that people don't understand how many items/players/how big the view distance is in WoW, it's like 5x the view distance than Oblivion, it takes a lot of memory to load that. People just hear WoW and think "lol2004 just dated" and don't realize the changes graphically that were made with Cataclysm.