Let's pretend I wanted to build a gaming PC...where would I even start? For a point of reference, last time I put a PC together, Pentium IIIs were just coming out and the video card debate was between a Voodoo 3 or NVidia TNT2.

Needless to say, I'm fucking clueless. But I want to learn.

A guy at work is leading me to believe that I could build a "near top of the line" rig for $1500, which seems to be lowballing it, but again, I'm totally out of the loop, so maybe he's not blowing smoke?

Any ideas?

Start here

pcpartspicker.com

For 1500 you could build a very nice system. Skylake Core i5 or if money is a huge issue an FX 8370, do your research on graphics cards. Pascal just had a paper launch and Polaris is just around the corner. AMD also has their Zen CPU coming late 2016, early 2017 as well. I'd be careful because a tech changeover is occurring. Moving on from 28nm for graphics cards and some new arch for CPU's from AMD and a total switch to DDR4. Just be sure to get a good case with good cable management, quality modular or semi-modular PSU and a good CPU cooler.

Anyone going to try Overwatch? Sure wish they would make it for the Mac, so unBlizzard like to not make it for the Mac.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I think the guy at work mentioned that site, so I'll certainly be checking that out now.

I planned on waiting for the new cards, as the Giant Beastcast said the less expensive of the two new options from NVidia will be considerably cheaper than the top of the line right now (Titan?) and is supposed to be considerably better.

Do processors even bother to say what speed they are anymore? Back in the day that was how you knew how powerful they were, but now all I see is i5 and i7.

I'm not interested as class-based shooters/hero shooters/please-stop-fucking-calling-this-a-MOBA shooters don't interest me, but I heard 10 million people played the open beta, so I think they'll do pretty well for themselves.

I'd have to imagine it will work it's way to Mac eventually.

I have always been a Blizzard fan, and they rarely make bad games. I do not like shooters, but this is a hybrid that has elements of League of Legends in it. I am a huge fan of LOL, although I am so terrible at it. LOL was the game that broke my nine year addiction to WOW.

I'd have to play Overwatch on my son's gaming systems. I don't own a PC anymore.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

They do, you just have to look closely as the Ghz wars have sputtered out.

Asfor Nvidia...they have only released the "Founders Edition" 1080 and 1070 cards. Initial risk production and are charging an arm and a leg. It might be a while until the custom boards come out but those could be super expensive as well. In the meantime AMD has Polaris debuting end of May/Early June at a 14nm process, if those are actually available from partners and such you should take a look at them too.

im building a gaming system... except not for pc games.

with a i5 system and intel hd5000 built in graphics, i can run every video game from wii, gamecube, psx, psp, dreamcast, saturn, snes, genesis, atari and others.

soon xbox and ps2 will be working smoothly.

emulators are becoming pretty damn awesome. consoles always had the best games, now you can have them all on one system. oh and you dont need to pay for the games either

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And you can definitely get a near top of line gaming PC for $1500...especially if you didn't factor the monitor in to that.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Seems like a lot of money for gaming when there are good consoles.

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this website is a nice starting point for building a PC, it hasnt been updated in 2 months but it gives a decent ranking of setups by price. $1500 should get you a high end machine (if you are re-using peripherals, monitors etc.)

http://www.logicalincrements.com/

Just planning on hooking it up to the TV in the man cave so no monitor needed...and I already have something like 5 or 6 pairs of wireless mouse/keyboard sitting around the house, so I'm good there.

if you are going to have this PC in a mancave near your seat make sure it is near noiseless. use large fans for the Case/CPU heatsink or even consider watercooling

So I took the easy way out and ended up ordering a CyberPower from Best Buy over the holiday weekend...thing arrived Friday and I am pretty pleased so far. Stellaris seems to run pretty good (until I get 200 ships on the screen) and Skyrim is fucking gorgeous.