Build a High-Performance Gaming Machine

The Case

The components required for a high-performance machine produce serious amounts of heat and the case must be capable of dissipating it. This means it must be well designed, of aluminum construction (cheap pressed steel cases are not as efficient at heat transfer), and have several cooling fans. The machine also needs to look the part - bog-standard beige rectangular boxes are not going to cut the mustard, so you will have to buy a specialized gaming case.

Power Supply Unit

The CPU and video card(s) will need much more power than in standard PCs. This means that the power supply unit must be rated at 450 to 500 watts instead of the more usual 300 to 350 watts. Furthermore, it must be capable of providing a well regulated, and thus rock steady, DC signal.

Motherboard

This will need to be one of the latest models that provide support for two PCI Express video cards using the new Scalable Link Interface from Nvidia, SATA hard drives, and dual-channel memory. Also, it will have an integrated RAID drive controller (see Hard Drive). In terms of speed, it will have a FSB of at least 800 MHz.

CPU

AMD and Intel both provide a CPU for gamers. Currently, Intel's offering is the Pentium Extreme Edition 840. This is a dual-core CPU with each core running at 3.2 GHz and having a 1 MB L2 cache. AMD's is the FX-57. With a clock speed of 2.8 GHz (making it the fastest AMD CPU), and 1 MB of L2 cache, this is one mean processor. Either of these CPUs will be ideal.

Memory

This is a very important component and here you will be looking at a matched pair of high-performance DDR2 PC3200 or PC4200 modules to install in the dual-channel motherboard (dual-channel doubles the rated speed of the modules). In terms of capacity, go for a minimum of 1 GB (2 GB ideally).

Video Card

Currently, the best video cards use the Geforce 7800 GTX chip from Nvidia. Look for a card that supplies 256 MB of DDR2 or DDR3 memory. For the ultimate in performance, use two of these cards in a Scalable Link Interface configuration.

Sound System

For gamers, surround-sound is critical. This will require a sound card capable of running a multiple-speaker system, plus the speaker system itself. Look no further than the Sound Blaster Audigy2 SZ from Creative.

Hard Drive

The best choice here will be a SCSI model. For top performance, use two in a RAID 0 configuration (each drive handles half the data, thus increasing data transfer speed considerably). Alternatively, use SATA drives. In terms of capacity, 80 to 100 GB will be ample.

Optical Drive

Virtually all games are supplied on CD, so all you need here is a 58x CD drive. A DVD drive is not necessary in a gaming machine.

Monitor

Our recommendation here is a high-quality 17- or 19-inch CRT. LCDs are not recommended as they only provide a high-quality picture at one resolution. As gamers tend to use different resolutions with different games, this can be very restrictive. If you do go for an LCD, it must have a response time of 16 ms or less, otherwise you will notice a definite ghosting effect.

Game Controller

For genres that are controlled mainly by the keyboard, such as strategy games, a dedicated gaming keyboard will provide many more options and features than a standard keyboard. Action games, particularly flight simulators, need a joystick; and driving games, ideally, a steering wheel/foot pedal setup. Otherwise, a joystick will do.

Assembly

The physical installation of the various components is easy enough. However, setting them up for maximum performance is more difficult and we recommend you buy a guide to help you do this. Building a PC in easy steps tells you everything you need to know.