Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

---

The CPU is important for gaming, but you'll also need to focus a bit of money on a graphics card as well. At least a fairly new card that supports the latest versions of DirectX and OpenGL is recommended. Look for the version of the card with the best fans and the most video RAM. Never buy a passively-cooled card. If possible, ask the manufacturer if the video RAM is significantly cooled by the heat sink. The RAM should be touching the heat sink. With a good fan that can cool the GPU itself as well as the RAM, you leave options available for future graphics card overclocking. Don't buy a Fermi unless you want to cook beans on it while you play games.

Be certain that you find the right motherboard before you get it. Keep in mind any possible expansions or improvements you'll want to make to your computer in the future. Getting a new motherboard in the future means reinstalling everything, including the CPU and its thermal paste. Your motherboard will need to have the correct socket type for your CPU. It is possible to have multiple sockets if you have a CPU which allows for multiple CPUs. Xeons usually do. This will give you the option of installing a second (or even third or fourth) CPU in the future when prices drop significantly. Be sure you have enough PCI and PCI-e ports for what you need. Keep in mind some graphics cards occupy two expansion slots. These graphics cards will stay cooler, but they can cover a useful slot. If possible, find a motherboard that supports SLI. With an SLI motherboard and a special connector, you'll be able to hook two graphics cards together. As with CPUs, adding a second card in the future will give you increased performance at a lower price. There are even motherboards which support as many as four graphics cards. Try to find a board with the latest DDR* technology and the latest ports such as USB 3.0 and whatnot.

For the power supply, use an online calculator to determine how much power you'll need. Double check by adding it together yourself if you want, using the power consumption the manufacturers list. Use the higher of these two numbers. Account for any future improvements you may make. You may want to bump the number you get up by 5-10% to add some margin for error. Be sure the power supply has all of the connectors you'll need. Try to find one that will protect your components from power surges if you don't plan on buying a UPS.

CPUs vary quite a bit. 64-bit Intel is recommended. The i7 line is made up of Intel's high-end CPUs. Xeon CPUs are also high-performance, but can be scaled up to multiple processors, have a larger cache, and are used more often in servers. There are also many others, do research on processors within your price range. Deciding on which you want to use will determine which socket you're going to need in your motherboard. Deciding on a CPU will involve looking through general performance benchmarks and benchmarks specific to games you'll be wanting to play. If you can't find a benchmark for your specific game, at least try to look for a benchmark for a similar game that uses the same engine. Do the same with the graphics card. Multiple cores don't necessarily mean a better CPU. Not every application can even use more than one execution thread. GHz can only be used to compare CPUs with a similar architecture and core count.

For the hard drive, look for one that will hold every game you plan on buying and all of your software and files. If you find a better one in the future and want to upgrade, doing so if fairly easy. Hard drives are cheap and are probably the most forgiving part when it comes to upgrading. As far as failure, they do not forgive so easily. Try to find a deal where you can get two of the same drive so you can backup your data every month or so. The second drive should be removed after backup or you can keep it in an external enclosure. Look for data of failures for the model you wish to buy. Check the RPM of the drive and look for one that is 7200 or higher to ensure fairly fast I/O. If you're serious about hard drives, you can even set up a RAID. RAID sets allow for various things such as data redundancy or using multiple drives as one disk using striping to reduce seek times.

Solid state drives are not recommended. They cost much more that traditional hard drives and fail often. If you're adventurous or hate loading times with a passion, a SSD can be used to dramatically increase performance. Hard drives are the largest bottleneck in modern systems and solid state circumvents this. You're recommended to only keep what you need on it due to its small capacity and backup your data regularly. Be sure not to get one of those Intel SSDs that have a major bug.

RAM is important. 4GB of RAM is enough to run most applications, but at least 6GB or more is recommended. Excess RAM is used as a disk cache and can help remove the bottleneck of your hard drive slightly. You can even set up a RAMdisk for temporary files if you find that you have more than is ever used. This may not be very useful to you, though, depending on what you plan on doing with your computer in the future. Try to get as much RAM as you can with the left over money. You'll be able to buy the same type of RAM cheaper in the future if you decide to upgrade.

For the heatsink and fan, get something fairly good. They're the only thing between you and a giant computer-shaped paperweight. Note what reviewers say about decreased temperatures. The lower the temperature, the better for potential future overclocking and the better the current performance. Coolness and quietness are the real factors here. Water cooling is not recommended for beginners, but can offer increased temperature reductions.

UPS can be used to protect from power surges and give you a few seconds to a few minutes of backup power to save what you are doing and shutdown before the battery backup runs out during a power outage. Most will also give you a certain amount of protection from things such as voltage drops. They will usually have a way to hook up to your computer to warn you of power outages or shut down your computer to protect data.

The rest of the parts are of lesser importance:
- Find a monitor that you feel comfortable using. Buy a second monitor if you want one, but be sure that's actually comfortable for you. Many people do not like the feeling of multiple monitors. Keep in mind running at higher resolutions causes your graphics card to work harder.
- Find a wired mouse. Wireless mouses can run out of power in the middle of using it and are not recommended for gaming.
- The keyboard is almost entirely preference. Decide if you want a flat or more traditional keyboard. Find a cheap QWERTY keyboard or an alternative if you're more comfortable with that. With a keyboard, the bottleneck is you. Don't worry too much about the quality of the keyboard. Unless you want special functions such as macros, a standard keyboard will work well and last a long time if you don't fill it with crumbs or spill things on it.
- Find a good looking mousepad. It'll make your mouse work better by motivating it. You can order a custom mousepad with any picture you want.

Pro Tips:
- Always read reviews
- Read reviews on more than one site
- Computer users are often very zealous (Firefox vs. Chrome; OSX vs. Windows; AMD vs. Intel), do research to verify what we say
- Keep in mind many decisions don't really have a right or wrong answer, but instead depend on personal preference or what you plan on doing with your computer
- Look for benchmarks, especially ones relevant to your interests
- Look for more than one type of benchmark
- Core count and even GHz are often misleading
- Quadruple check you installed everything correctly
- Double that quadruple check when checking your CPU fan
- Discharge any static from your body once every minute or so, especially if not using an anti-static wristband
- Be very careful with the thermal paste, do not apply too much or too little
- Start looking for parts closer to the time you plan on buying your computer
- Avoid "gaming laptops" and laptops in general
- Keep ventilated
- Do not buy a Fermi