Ian Reschke builds a gaming PC
When Ian Reschke built his PC he felt that, in a market flooded by new technology every day, his gaming PC needed to be capable of running not just the current generation of games, but also games of the future. He says: "Rather than choosing the biggest and baddest components and spending a tonne of cash, you can be more conservative, spend less, yet still have a gaming rig with upgrade potential that won't break the bank and remain competitive for the next 3 years."
Gaming is Ian's hobby, tech support his job. "It was only natural that building PC's became my passion. More often than not, I am building PC's for friends and family where I enjoy the challenge of understanding the buyers' needs and building a PC that suits their budget and lifestyle."
CORE SYSTEM
CPU: Intel i7 920 - $357The Core i7 920 provides plenty of grunt straight out of the box at a reasonable price. The cache, four cores and multiple threads will also help with rendering a video or 3D modelling, something gamers often try their hands at. There's plenty of room for overclocking and it offers triple channel memory support.
COOLING: CoolerMaster V8 - $99The CoolerMaster V8 will keep an overclocked CPU running cool without the added hassle and maintenance of watercooling. Looks great, well designed and fits the colour scheme of this build perfectly.
MOTHERBOARD: Asus P6T X58 - $290ASUS reliability, 3 PCI-e ports supporting Quad-GPU Crossfire and 3-Way SLI. Plenty of USB ports for all your gaming peripherals and easy overclocking tools for the inexperienced. Solid all rounder.
GRAPHICS: XFX Radeon HD4890 1GB Core Edition - $249Not the latest on the market, but still beefy enough to play almost every game flat out. Good value that keeps the price down now, so you can afford a 5000 series card when its time to upgrade later.
RAM: 6GB G.Skill F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ - $1833 x 2GB of 1600mhz goodness for a reasonable price. G.Skill has proved to be reliable for gaming PCs time and time again in my experience. Three RAM slots are also kept free, ready for future upgrades.
HARD DRIVE 1: G.Skill Falcon II 128GB SSD - $419The largest bottleneck in any system these days is the hard drive and when it comes to gaming, quick load times are in high demand. A 64GB variant just isn't enough storage when it comes to large games taking up to 15GB when installed. The budget is an unfortunate victim here, but the cost is justifiable.
HARD DRIVE 2: Seagate Barracuda 1TB - $106A data storage drive is a must for music, movies or that ever growing library of large game patches. Seagate offer great reliability and 1TB of storage space is more than sufficient.
OPTICAL DRIVE: Pioneer DVR-218LBK - $49Hard to justify the price of a Blu-ray drive right now. Dual layer DVDs are still mainstream and the Pioneer range offers SATA connection at an affordable price.
PSU: Thermaltake ToughPower QFan 750w - $205750w is more than enough for a single graphics card and more than capable of running a Crossfire system if an upgrade is required. Modular PSU with enough cabling to suit a Crossfire setup and less cable mess.
CASE: Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P50RSE Special Edition - $305It's not cheap, but the quality is unrivaled. The tool-less design makes installation and maintenance a whole lot simpler. The ability to remove the front and top panel makes it a breeze to get to the fans to clean out dust bunnies. The red interior highlighted with red case fans, coupled with the equipment chosen for this build, give this PC a stylish look. Case cooling is also well designed allowing plenty of air flow through the case.
Core System cost: AUD $2,262
EXTRAS:
MONITOR: Samsung 2333SW+ 23in - $199Samsung quality backed by a 3-year warranty and so cheap. 1920x1080 resolution provides a great picture for gamers and shiny black piano finish gives it a great look.
KEYBOARD: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - $92A favourite amongst gamers. LCD screen, macros, and backlit keys.
MOUSE: Logitech G9x Laser Mouse - $115Long gaming sessions can often hurt your wrist if using a poorly-designed mouse. The G9 has a well designed and ergonomic shape allowing you to control the mouse with your fingers more so than your wrist. Plenty of customisable buttons, interchangeable grip, weights and 5000 dpi to boot.
HEADSET: Sennheiser PC 161 Headset - $125Ultra comfortable headset with great sound that can be worn for hours without getting sweaty and/or sore ears.
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit OEMAny version of Windows 7 would have done the job, but Ultimate64bit gives you all the features of Windows 7, including access toWindows XP Mode for old games that may not be supported by the new OS.64bit also allows the system to recognise the 6GB of RAM.