My Gaming Rig (with tips on building your own)
While it’s not the fastest of the lot, it serves me the purpose. I bought it 5 months ago, so the prices were very different back then. Ok, here it is:
Intel DG41TY Chipset (I wanted on-board graphics support as a backup)
4 GB DDR2 RAM (DDR3 motherboards were expensive! Tip: To make the most of 4 GB RAM, you’ll need a 64bit OS. I highly recommend Windows 7 64bit)
Core2Duo E7400 clocked at 2.8 Ghz (I made sure the motherboard supports Quad CPUs for a later upgrade. I chose to splurge on graphics)
Palit nVidia GeForce GTS 250 with 1 GB GDDR3 (it cost me a BOMB! Was close to Rs.12,000..that’s around US$250). I did a lot of research for the GPU. I chose this over the Radeon’s, namely the Radeon 4830 and the 4850 because unlike the US markets, these were priced comparably to the GTX 250, severely overpriced! While the 4870 is its actual competition (due to the extremely fast 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM it sports).
Samsung HD322HJ 320GB hdd for storage. Had the best value for money back then. Hard-disk performance should never pose a problem, you can always buy two and put them on RAID!
Before I conclude, you would need a decent power-supply too. Buy that keeping the future upgrades in mind (like twin hard-disks, or a more powerful CPU). I’d say be safe and go for a 500-600W supply.
