Attempting To Build My First PC, Wish Me Luck

by Gregory Laporte Editor Vice President on November 29, 2011 at 02:00 PM EDT

Follow me on Twitter: @theownerz

When I was wee lad, I grew up gaming on the Atari, Nintendo, Snes etc. I never could grasp the idea of playing games on the PC even though I have heard of great games like counter strike and certain MMO’s among others. I’ve recently gotten into PC gaming when I downloaded steam and snagged Portal and Team Fortress 2. Now I’m a pretty rational and open minded individual as you can see from some of my other articles, so attempting to build my first PC is no easy task. This I know and some of you may tell me to refrain from doing so or you may even encourage me to do so. Well the fact of the matter is that I want to broaden my gaming horizon. I want to able to experience all of the great things about a first person shooter on a PC in maximum settings or play MMO’s with you.

Asking others for advice on this subject always brings about these questions. How much are you willing to spend? What type of PC are you building? Are you going to game on it regularly? Now these are questions that I get all the time. My responses to those questions were as followed:

I’m willing to spend about $1000 on my first build.
The type of PC I want to build is something that has a very high performance where I won’t have to be held back or update parts a few months down the line. I want to be able to play games like Battlefield and Dragon Age on their maximum settings.
Yes, I will be gaming on it regularly to do great reviews for games that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do on any console for you all here.

Here are a couple of the parts I am currently looking at purchasing for my build. Please feel free to add your input on some suggestions or alternatives that I should look into.

Purchased so far:

G SKIL L Sniper 8GB: -$29.99

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced Blue Edition-$139.99 Got a $30 rebate today!

Looking to buy:

Now that you have seen what I am hoping to buy, are there any recommendations that you feel would more beneficial to what I am trying to build. Also, what are a few common mistakes that I should be aware of when shopping for components and parts? I would love to be well informed so I don’t waste my money foolishly. Thanks in advance everyone!

Note: I can’t take full credit for this build as it is my friend Enate who is helping me out on picking out parts and whatnot. Big thanks to him for his help!

Leave your comments below and add to this discussion.

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http://twitter.com/theownerz Gregory Laporte

I was just able to purchase a nice big full tower case. I got the link if any of you want to see.
http://www.thekoalition.com James

Greg look for this card, GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core
- http://www.thekoalition.com James
  
  just came out
- http://twitter.com/theownerz Gregory Laporte
  
  thanks james ill be sure to check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Derek-Laroche/14316798 Derek Laroche

I swear to god I didn’t inspire him with ideas…..the money will be well spent. You can copy my rig for about 750-800 easy and nothing will touch it. i7 with a GTX 570 and 8GB RAM
http://www.facebook.com/people/Derek-Laroche/14316798 Derek Laroche

I would strongly advise to go Nvidia over ATI. Although cheaper, ATI cards perform considerably worse than their Nvidia counterparts. They are also notoriously known for failing in their first year or 2, and have severe overheating issues. Driver support is also very lackluster. They do not roll driver updates out often, but when they do they are usually unstable and perform worse than Nvidia who usually update at least every 2 weeks with performance gains.

I’ve only owned 1 ATI card….had it replaced 2 times under it’s warranty and i’ve never looked back. roll with a GTX 560 if you are looking to save money
- http://twitter.com/theownerz Gregory Laporte
  
  yea I’ve noticed that Nvidia is all around better than ATI. I want to have a better performance and quality. I live life by these rules “Go big or go home” my PC will show that!. Thanks for the comment glad you like!
http://twitter.com/chinto20 chinto20

I’d get nvidia over radeon, not that ati’s bad by any means, but their driver support ain’t that good, games tend to perform bad on radeon @ release, also get a cheaper case and try to get an i7
damnimwhite118

i believe microcenter always has the i5 2500k for $179, save some money.
http://www.facebook.com/Randy334 Randy Explosivo Johnson

I’m getting the 6950 as well for my build, and I recommend the 2GB version which is only like 20$ more. Will give you a notable difference at times, and unnoticeable at others, but I feel the minor 20$ difference makes it worth it.