A Simple PC BUILDING GUIDE for FIRST TIME PC Builders/CASUAL GAMERS (PART 1)

11:13 Hardware 0 Comments

Building a gaming PC is very simple task if you know what is your budget, what are you going to play on your PC, what are the necessary parts for that task and where to buy them. I wrote this simple guide for gamers with a medium budget who want to spend that money to find the best PC components possible within that amount for their gaming needs of today and near future, and by medium budget I mean around 100,000 rupees(equivalent of 1000 dollars) because that is the amount required to build a decent gaming PC with brand new components.

I will not go into the details of how to join all the components together to build it, I will only guide you for buying the right components from the right place. At the end of this guide, I will give links of some videos and articles which have extremely useful information about selecting PC components and how to build them all together. If it is still hard for you, you can always ask someone else who knows it, to build it for you (Just sit next to them while they are building it, because it is very simple to learn). For this build, I am suggesting mid-range components. I am not suggesting very cheap components which will cause performance issues and obviously regret now and in the near future and also I will not suggest the cutting-edge components which are too high in price and totally not your requirement anytime soon (unless you can afford them easily or you want the games to reach ultra settings at very high resolutions).

The cost for this build is higher than consoles but it is totally worth it and necessary for good gaming. If I wanted, I could have suggested even cheaper components, but I avoided it keeping in mind the minimum requirements of heavy games of today and future. Still, I only suggested the components which are very necessary for current demands of gaming and tried my best to avoid any useless expenditures. You can also lower the cost of this PC build by purchasing used components from OLX, ebay , amazon or your local computer market, but for buying new components, I advise you to buy from trustworthy websites like microcenter.com, NCIX.com , and specially newegg.com .I also suggest to never buy a used motherboard, power supply and hard drive because these may have problems which even the seller may not know about. Also never buy used GPUs and processors which have been overclocked. Keep in mind that searching for unboxing and performance videos, benchmarking tests and review articles about the hardware components on the internet will answer any questions you have in mind about a specific product. Also, I tried to keep this guide as simple in language and as easy to understand as possible for casual gamers and I only mentioned very important and major features to look for in any product. If you want to know any minor details or features, you should search online for the official description of that product. I haven’t discussed very minor details and specifications in this guide.
So,
lets go through the components of a GOOD GAMING PC one by one, you should also buy the components in this order :

Casing is the house of your hardware. Casing comes in various sizes, designs and colours.Mid-tower casings are standard size casings and full tower casings are very large size casings. When buying a casing, keep few simple things in mind :

- It should be big enough to accommodate all your hardware easily, especially the PSU, motherboard and GPU.
- It should be lightweight to carry around, but still strong enough to protect your PC components.
- It should have some front panel USB and headphone/mic ports (if you need them)
- It should have some fans for good airflow or at least a place to install an intake and an outflow fan.
- It should not have unpainted metallic areas on front, top and sides which may cause electric shock.
- It should match the colour of your monitor or other components for a better looking setup, but this is just your personal choice.

Casings can start from as low as Rs. 2600( 26 dollars) to as high as Rs. 35000(35 dollars) or more, so just spend carefully. Casing colour and design is all about your personal preference. Casing size should be according to the components you are going to purchase and the future upgrades you have in your mind. The casing I suggest for this build is the casing I use myself, it is a Corsair Carbide 100R Standard Edition.
Also,
Read this article for more information about choosing a casing :
www.gamespot.com/articles/building-a-pc-everything-you-need-to-know-about-ca/1100-6421197/

Motherboard is the main component of your system which lets all the parts connect to and work with
each other, casing and motherboard are also very important in determining how much you can upgrade your PC in the upcoming years. Just look for few important features in the motherboard :

- Processor Socket : An LGA1155 socket will support a 3rd generation Intel processor (Ivy Bridge Series) and an LGA1150 socket will support a 4th generation Intel processor (Haswell Series) , Motherboards with AM2 or AM3+ type sockets are for AMD processors, Only buy them if you want to buy an AMD processor (Check socket compatibility accordingly), Intel processors will not fit into AM2 or AM3+ sockets. Also do not buy motherboards with LGA1156 socket because this is a very old socket or LGA2011 sockets because these are for high-end processors and not suggested for a budget gaming PC unless the budget is very high.

- PCIe 3.0 Slot : It is where your GPU plugs in, PCIe 2.0 slots are old and have less bandwidth as
compared to PCIe 3.0 slots, so your motherboard should have at least one PCIe 3.0 slot for installing
your GPU.

- SATA 3.0 Port : It is where your hard drive will plug in, SATA 2.0 ports are old and have half speed as compared to SATA 3.0 ports, so your motherboard should have at least one SATA 3.0 port. If you have only one SATA 3.0 port on your motherboard, use it only for connecting your hard drive for better data transfer speeds, not for your DVD drive or something else. You can plug the DVD drive into SATA 2.0 port.

- USB 3.0 ports : You should aim for at least two USB 3.0 ports on your motherboard. USB 2.0 ports are old and have less data transfer speed as compared to USB 3.0 ports. A motherboard usually has both types of USB ports. USB 3.0 ports are blue coloured USB ports.

- DDR3 RAM Sockets : It is where your RAM sticks will plug in, a motherboard has a minimum of two sockets which are fine but four sockets would be better. DDR2 is totally obsolete and DDR4 is new, very expensive and not compatible with most medium range motherboards.

All other motherboard features are not to be worried about (unless you are a very interested into
technical details). Some good motherboard manufacturers are Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and Asus. Always buy a brand new motherboard because this is a very important component and old motherboards may have problems which you can’t check when buying them. The motherboard suggestion for this PC build is Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H which has an LGA1150 socket so it supports Intel 4th generation processors.

It also has all other necessary features I talked about. It has a current price of Rs. 8300(83 dollars) at
www.czone.com.pk or it can be found at a cheaper rate on other websites.

(NOTE : We are from Pakistan where Amazon and Ebay can't be fully used so , we are using czone.com.pk however Amazon , ebay and many other websites can be used if you are a foreigner) 

Processor is like the brain of your PC. For gaming, you can use a Dual-core processor like Core-i3, but it is better to buy a Quad-core processor like Core-i5 or Core-i7 because many upcoming games are now getting very demanding, they are designed to make use of multiple cores and a Dual-core will not be a standard for gaming in near future. Also a Dual-core processor bottlenecks the performance of a good GPU and cause relatively low framerates than a Quad-core processor. If you use the same GPU with a Dual-Core and a then a Quad-Core processor , you will get much higher framerates with a Quad-core processor.

The basic difference between Core-i3, Core-i5 and Core-i7 is :
Core-i7 has 4 cores and 8 threads
Core-i5 has 4 cores and 4 threads
Core-i3 has 2 cores and 4 threads

The more expensive core-i7 may have 6 cores as well.

Processor clock speeds and cache are the features to be surely considered but not to be worried about
these days because in modern processors, these are never set too low to impact any performance. But if you are deciding between two processors with same generation and same number of cores, just buy the processor with more clock speed and cache. For this PC build, I will suggest a Core-i5 which is the balanced choice between performance and cost. It is a Quad-core processor, but before buying a

processor make sure it will fit into the socket of the motherboard you purchased. First of all, Do NOT
buy a 2nd generation (Sandy Bridge) processor (the model number will start with a 2 like 2100 etc). A 3rd generation (Ivy Bridge) processor (the model number will start with a 3 like 3220 or 3470 etc) will fit into an LGA1155 socket but, as I have suggested a motherboard with an LGA1150 socket (which supports a 4th generation processor), so I will only suggest a 4th generation (Haswell) processor to fit into that motherboard (4th generation processor model numbers will start with a 4 like 4130 or 4670 etc), The processor suggested for this build is Intel Core-i5 4690 which is a 4th generation Quad-core processor with 3.5 GHz base clock speed and 3.9 GHz turbo clock speed (compatible with LGA1150 socket of the motherboard) and it is currently priced at Rs. 24300(24.3 dollars) on www.czone.com.pk.

Make sure you do NOT buy a simple Intel pentium, Intel Core 2 Duo or Intel Core 2 Quad processors
(even if they have higher clock speeds) because now these are old and will not fit into the socket of the suggested motherboard. Also AMD processors are considered generally not as powerful as Intel
processors even if they have more clock speeds or cores, and these will not fit into the socket of the
suggested motherboard so do not buy them. Although you can buy an AMD processor if you like it but in that case you also have to buy a motherboard with a socket required for that particular AMD processor. Some excellent AMD processors for gaming as well as server use are FX 6300 ,FX 8350 and obviously AMD athlon x4-860k. 

These AMD processors provide a good value for gaming :

You can read more about them here : 

FX 6300 ----------->http://techytonics.blogspot.nl/2015/09/the-amd-fx-6300-peak-performance-in.html

Athlon x4 860K--------->http://techytonics.blogspot.nl/2015/10/the-70-amd-athlon-x4-860k-is-set-piece.html

Also remember that more cores are better than more clock speed, so a Quad-core with 3.1 GHz is better than a Dual-core with 3.3 GHz (but this rule does not apply on a Quad-core of a very old generation which will be weaker anyway). In the end, I would only recommend buying a 4th generation Intel Core-i5 or Core-i7 processor. You can now also go with a 6th generation i7 or i5 processor which are recently released but for them you will have to choose a different motherboard.
Also,
Read this article for more information about choosing a processor :
www.gamespot.com/articles/building-a-pc-everything-you-need-to-know-about-cp/1100-6421072/

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So guys , this was the end of part 1 .We hope that you have enjoyed this part and that they have given you important knowledge about PC building as well as computer hardware. If you liked it then do,comment about how much you liked them and what improvements should be made. Furthermore do take a little while to share our blog as much as possible and subscribe to our blog for more articles like this ,  as it took us a lot of hard-work to make this possible. Finally ,I would like to tell that this post was made possible by '' OSAMA JAVAID '' , our former contributor .


The rest of the guide is included in'' Part 2 ''of this guide . To view the ''PART 2'' click on this link here ; http://techytonics.blogspot.nl/2015/11/a-simple-pc-building-guide-for-first_4.html