Once again, the time has come to build a new PC. I normally do this once every 2-3 years or for a new upcoming game. In this case it was a bit of both. It has been around two years since I built my last PC and with Guild Wars 2 coming out, I figured it was time.
Quick rundown of my build:
I started out, this time, with an Eight-Core AMD FX-8150. I have always had a soft spot for AMD. They make great processors, price them fairly and give a lot of bang for the buck. They don’t always have the fastest processor on the market at any given moment but they are always competitive and normally priced less than the comparable Intel model. Plus, AMD is the type of company I think people should support, if only to keep competition up with Intel. Without AMD, Intel would have zero competition and processor prices would be outrageous.
Just as important as the processor is the motherboard. There are a lot of great motherboards out there for the 8150 but Asus has always been solid. When in doubt, go with Asus and you can’t go wrong. I ended up with the Asus Republic of Gamers Crosshair V motherboard. I even got the one with the Killer NIC in the package. It has gotten fantastic reviews and it looks awesome to boot. I am very interested to see how the Killer NIC performs. I have heard varying reviews on it but, what the heck, it is at least as good as a standard NIC and if it does end up improving lag and latency, all the better.
Up next is RAM. Luckily, I can get Corsair RAM at a really good price. I decided on 16GBs of Corsair Vengeance RAM. I went two sticks black and 2 sticks red, to go with the MB color scheme. 16GBs is a lot of RAM but I subscribe to the “you can never have too much RAM” school of thinking. The RAM is fast, there is a lot of it and it looks awesome. Can’t go wrong.
I decided on going with the Corsair H-100 Liquid CPU cooler. I’ve always wanted to go liquid cooling but I don’t want to take the time to build a custom set-up and this is the next best thing. I intend to overclock my processor a bit and this should help keep heat down immensely. Its gotten solid reviews and, for once, I will have a PC that doesn’t sound like a B-17 bomber on the runway.
Keeping with the Corsair theme, I finally got a solid-state HDD. The difference in general computing speed is amazing and the price has finally come down to semi-affordable regions. I chose the 240GB Force 3 version. I plan to put my O/S and select games on this drive and use my 3TB standard drive for storage. I really look forward to the 15 second boot times and level loading in games should be phenomenal.
My video card is probably the best on the market at the moment, Nvidia fan boys be damned. The AMD 7970 is getting rave reviews and it pairs with my CPU phenomenally. I plan to Crossfire two of these eventually but I just can’t afford it at the moment. Still, one will be fast as hell and I believe I can live with that for quite a while.
Finally, I struggled over the case but ended up with the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D ATX Gaming Computer Case. It looks nice, has plenty of room and I got it at a good price. Once everything is in and set-up it should be a handsome PC indeed.
For the most part, that is my build. I am really excited about it, as you can probably tell. The last of my parts should arrive early next week and I will begin setting it up. By this time next week, I should be rocking a much faster PC. Guild Wars 2, here I come….in style!!!
