This little guide is made to help you get all the right components you need to build an affordable gaming computer – we know that it’s not easy but we also know that it’s not impossible. What is easy though is getting lost among all the countless options and models offered on the market today. We’ll do our best to prevent this from happening too.

Here is the list of questions that you will need to answer first of all:

1. What is the sum that you have at your disposal and are willing to spend on your new PC?

2. What is your favorite kind of games that you want to play?

3. How big is the monitor that you’ve got?

Now let’s get down to putting the info we’ve obtained by answering those three question to practice… The money you can spend on your new PC is what matters most. If you have only got around $700, you will have to stick to basic gaming capabilities and fairly low resolutions. For $1,000 you can already get a better system allowing you to play most games with medium settings on a big screen of up to 20-22”. $2,000 will get you a gaming computer capable of running any game with the highest settings on any monitor. You need even more? Well, for $3,000 you can get a gaming PC that won’t need any upgrades for at least 2-4 years.

The games… Well, if you don’t want anything but your “WoW”, $999 will be perfectly enough for you to play this game on any monitor and with the highest settings. More interested in new shooters, something like Far Cry 2 or Crysis and want to play them with the highest settings? Be ready to spend around $1,500. Think you will be alright playing them with medium settings? Then $1,000 will be enough for you again. Fans of 3D shooters and flight and racing simulators usually have to have more powerful PCs than those who play strategies and online RPGs.

Your monitor… If the one you currently have at your disposal is a 17” or 19” model, you won’t be able to play games with high settings and, therefore, won’t need to spend much on your computer. 20” to 22” monitor will give you the chance to play at screen resolution of 1680x1050, which will make your PC work harder. In this case, make sure that your video adapter is not lower than GT 240. If your monitor is a real big one – 24” or even larger – and if you want to play the games on the highest settings, then don’t even try saving on the video card. You will need a high-end adapter, something like Nvidia GTS 250 or ATI 5850, perhaps with CrossFire or SLI.

The info provided below will give you even more info about the individual components you will need.

As you might know by now, the components that will produce the biggest influence on your gaming experience are CPU and Video Card.

Processor (CPU) – if you are not planning to go above $1K, check out the offers on AMD Athlon II and Intel Dual Core CPUs, which offer fairly decent value in lower price segment. The ones that are worth paying special attention to are AMD Athlon II X2 or X4 and Intel E6500 or i3 530. If you are planning to spend around $1,000 – a hundred more, a hundred less – consider purchasing Phenom X3 or X4 or, alternatively, Intel i5. All of these CPUs easily go above 3.0Ghz provided the cooling system is good enough, which will give you the chance to enjoy most of the coolest games at a fairly low price. Ready to spend between $1K and $1.5K? The Intel i5 Quad will be the best buy here, I guess – since more and more games are getting optimized for quad core processors these days, this one will surely make you notice the difference between duos and quads. Intel Core i7, in its turn, will cost even more perhaps – but this is the price you pay for the best CPU currently on the market.

Video Card – if real awesome performance is what you aim at here, don’t consider buying GeForce 210 or ATI 4650, which are probably the best in low budget niche – but still not good enough for serious gaming. Here you will probably need something like ATI 5670 or 9800GT at least. If you are after gaming at high resolution, check out GTS 250 and ATI 5750 or 5770! The cards that will surely allow you to get the graphic settings in all games to HIGH are ATI 5850 or 5870. The systems that will satisfy the highest demands are CrossFire and SLI.

CPU Cooling system – this is something that you have to pay special attention to. If you get a cheap one, you will have to cope with high temperatures, lots of noise and will never get the chance to see what overclock (this stands for free speed boost) is. Extra $30 you will spend on an advanced cooler will make the temp of CPU around 15’C lower, which will bring about more stable operation, lack of noise and 3.6Ghz boosts instead of regular stock 2.8Ghz. An effective cooling system is what brings about the best feedback at the lowest price.

Power Supply – if you think that with time you might want to upgrade your PC with a more powerful graphics adapter or some other components, you should get yourself a proper PSU in advance. For most video cards, even fairly powerful ones like GT 240 or Radeon 5670, a standard PSU will be sufficient but if you plan to get yourself an SLI or CrossFire and add the second video card to your system, you will need a 600W SLI-ready PSU at least. Buying a better power supply is never a wrong decision as it really has to hold quite a load every time you play games.

RAM – memory is very very important for your new PC too. These days 4Gb DDR2-800 is quite enough to match the requirements set by the majority of games – but you will still see the difference if you decide to upgrade to DDR3. More and more people are equipping their high-end machines with DDR3 and these days 6Gb RAM is already regarded as standard on i7 / X58 systems.

Motherboard – this is where things are as simple as they can only be. The more you pay, the longer is the list of features that you will get. Talking about the speed, yes, there is some difference – more expensive motherboards can give you a noticeable speed bump. Here are some examples: AMD 790x comes with FireWire while AMD 770 does not. Intel X58 includes 3 PCi-e slots intended for video cards, while H55 card by the same manufacturer has only one or 2 PCI-e 16x/8x for graphic adapters. There are motherboards intended for use with discrete video cards only while the others feature integrated graphic adapters.

Hard Drive – if you plan to use this new computer of yours solely for gaming, you will be perfectly fine with 500Gb or 640Gb SATA2 HDD. Well, in fact, even 320Gb can be enough. However, if you also plan to use this computer for massive data storage, better get yourself a 750Gb hard drive or even more. Talking about spinning speed, I think I should point out WD Raptor and VelociRaptors – they offer 10000RPM instead of regular 7200RPM, which, consequently, makes them work over 25% faster. Since the development of SSD technology is still in progress, the benefits that the hard drives using it have over VelociRaptors look rather vague. Thus, taking into account their high price, they don’t seem to be that much of a good investment for a gamer looking for maximum value at minimal cost.

Fans and Cooling – since heat reduces the potential of your PC so much, adding in a bunch of additional cooling units to take care of the processor, the video card and the motherboard is never a bad idea. These fairly cheap upgrades are the ones that make enormous difference, really. They also look cool if the whole thing is assembled well and if your tower has clear side panels.

Case – if the design is the only thing you care about, then get any computer case you like. However, if it’s the effective cooling system that matters, my advice would be to take Thermaltake, Antec 300, Antec 900, or CM Scout. If you really want your PC to be quiet, consider purchasing Cooler Master Centurion, Antec P180/P183, Antec 300, or Thermaltake Element. Here things are more or less the same with what they used to be with motherboards – the more you spend, the higher is the quality of what you will receive.

Windows 7 – the OS that you will most probably want to have at your gaming PC. It is compatible with all older hardware and software, it’s more advanced than XP, it has much less glitches than Vista and it’s so much faster! In fact, this is exactly why Windows 7 is the only operating system that we offer here.

Well, now the list of must-have components is complete – the rest is all optional but you can feel free to read more about any of the additional devices that we offer.