Building my own PC

Zeldaboy14

Owner of ZPW.
Ok, so I'm thinking about building my own PC. I already have some parts (DVD drive's, Hard Drive, Graphic card, etc) and would like to know the best motherboard, case, and power supply that would suit the sort of machine I need. Just to clarify, the graphics card I have for the build is a NVIDIA Geforce 610 card.
 
The graphic card you have is quite low spec which could suggest you may only want to build an equivalent low specification computer or you may lack funds, or you are just being prudent and so forth so to get some constructive suggestions what is really needed are some outline parameters.

a) What do you want to use it for. b) What are the financial constraints. c) Any physical size constraints, i.e. ATX, mATX, ITX etc. d) Expandability potential. etc. Peter
 
I'd start with either the i7-5775C or the i5-5675C around $300 from newegg.com and forget the 610 graphics card. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html depends on your cash of course.

Then go to Newegg.com and look for an LGA 1150 motherboard, I suggest ASUS but look for the reviews.
Case you need to decide if you're ever going to buy a GTX 980 in which case you need one that will take one, plus power supply to match. These cases are big and quite expensive so look towards Antec again on Newegg.com.

Do the sums but you might like to think in terms of a refurbished machine $500 or so should buy you a working system i3 or i5 with operating system from http://dellrefurbished.com/ buy a mini tower or tower to get a decent power supply. Also look at the outlet store both HP and Dell again mini tower and be careful about the power supply.

There are some refurbished xeon Dell workstations on ebay essentially i7 machines with ecc memory, very nice power supply and they should take a decent graphics card but not one with a top feed cable as they often have a hard drive over the GPU. They are usb 2 rather than 3 and the disk drive space could be bigger but it is possible to drop in a larger disk drive. Again win 7 but that upgrades to win 10 at no cost.

Cheerio John
 
The last thing you do is buy a video card
The last thing you do is buy a HD
The last thing you do is buy the DVD drive

The first thing you do is buy the Full Size tower
The next thing you buy is the motherboard
Then the PS, which you want a high wattage one that will power what ever you buy
Then you buy a video card that costs hundreds of dollars

Sounds like you are starting off building a low end PC that will fit your low end video card ... which is better to be not built at all
 
Just some random, maybe better, ideas for a cheap gaming PC...

http://pcbuildsonabudget.com/best-gaming-pc-build-under-500-dollars-2016
http://pcgamehaven.com/best-cheap-gaming-pc-build-for-under-500/
http://levelupyourgear.com/best-gaming-pc-build-under-500-dollars-cheap-budget

Those were $500, now for the next level of $600...

http://pcbuildsonabudget.com/best-gaming-computer-for-600-dollars-2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hFjWzzAXhg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIrOJYV7VNI
http://pcgamehaven.com/best-gaming-pc-build-under-600/

But, I would also suggest these guidelines, from personal experiences. You will need to save money for this:

CPU, go for Intel i7 series, get the associated socket type motherboard.
GPU, go for Nvidia 900 series, leaning more towards 960 or higher. I chose GTX 980, so I'm good for a lot of years from now.
RAM, should install 16GB total, for minimum. You'll actually want to do more, but you will be happier you went with 16 instead of 8.
PSU, good namebrand like Corsair or CoolerMaster, 750W minimum. I myself went with a CM Gold 1200W (Silence is Golden) series.
Hard drive, go for a Samsung SSD 850 Pro series, for at least your boot drive. You'll never regret that, and would never want to go back to standard HDD after this.
O/S, go for Windows 10 - very good operating system.


Those were just main concerns I had, as it sucks to build a really low-end computer that will barely run operating system, browser games, and email.

Paul
 
I have DVD drives from some scrapped PC's. I have 2 1GB Ram Expansions, and 3 256MB ram expansions. The 610 card should do me fine for now, as it would be able run everything currently that I'd throw at it. At some point, I'll upgrade the card to a much more powerful cards, as there is some other things a more powerful card would help run...
 
If you are using Windows XP and TS2009/2010... sure that will probably work. I myself do not like a stuttering trainz, so I don't know how well it will be for TS12.
 
You may find old ram and old DVD drives incompatible with newer motherboards. The Ram is it DDR or DDR2 or DDR3 which are not interchangable, different slots for a start and are they IDE DVD drives and not SATA? all things to consider when using old parts.
 
What's the differences between the EVO's and PRO'S? I'm getting ready to have a new machine built and plan on putting in 2 SSD's, like on my current machine, one for the OS and one for Trainz and right now have the EVO's penciled in. Would much be gained going for the Pro's instead?
 
I'd suggest you go with PRO instead of EVO. Unless you go with the 1TB EVO. The on-board controller and how things are controlled are one of the benefits. The PRO also has a 10 (yes TEN) year warranty. I went with a 1TB PRO.
 
I have DVD drives from some scrapped PC's. I have 2 1GB Ram Expansions, and 3 256MB ram expansions. The 610 card should do me fine for now, as it would be able run everything currently that I'd throw at it. At some point, I'll upgrade the card to a much more powerful cards, as there is some other things a more powerful card would help run...

The question is, can you get T:ANE to run on a Rasberry Pi?
 
The question is, can you get T:ANE to run on a Rasberry Pi?

Interesting question, you'd need an emulator for the instruction set, and you'd need to hardwire a GTX 980 in but I can see any technical reason why it should work. It would be frames per week of course rather than frames per second.

ASUS have a nice 950 GPU just out, it only draws 75 watts so doesn't need a seperate power lead.

Cheerio John
 
Here is a complete list of hardware you want to build your own PC in 500 dollars.
http://www.gamingpcunder.com/best-gaming-pc-500/

Besides being an old thread the solution unfortunately it doesn't include windows 10 in the price or silly things like a monitor, keyboard that most of us use. That takes it higher than $500. Trainz really wants a GTX 1060 to start with and even TANE seems to most work on two cores so a 6 core AMD is a bit redundant. Intel CPUs usually perform well in Toms benchmark.
Memory, a single memory card? read up on memory sometime especially about dual channel.

I take it that the person who wrote the web page is hoping to get commisinon from Amazon?

This is not a good choice of hardware for Trainz but there again you don't seem to own a copy of Trainz now do you.

So its probably a spam message.

Cheerio John
 
I take it that the person who wrote the web page is hoping to get commisinon from Amazon?

Either that or he works for Microsoft:

Windows 10 is what you should install in your PC you don’t need the reason why

Actually there is a disclaimer stating that he is in the Amazon Associate thing so he does get a commission if anyone buys through his links.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top