First Build gaming computer

[JakL10]

I'm looking to build my first gaming computer over this summer after I save up some money. I bought a laptop for college and it overheats if I try to play games for too long on it, it can only handle The Witcher for an hour or two. I was just looking for some advice, like between an amd phenom x4 and an intel i3 or i5, and nvidia or ati. I'm trying to keep this a budget model also. If you can provide any specs I should shoot for or anything, thanks for the help.

 

[Muffin Man]

well, we can't really suggest any specific parts until you decide how much you want to spend on this pc. but what we can do is you give you some ideas of some possible parts.

for a budget pc, you should go with an amd cpu; any athlon II (x2, x3, or x4) cpu or for a bit more money, any phenom II (x2, x3, or x4) cpu would be good.

gfx card; more bang for your buck cards will be from ati. between like $50-$100 you could get a 4650, 4670, 4830, or 4850. or if you're going to get win7 and want a card that supports dx11, get a 5xxx series card like 5670, 5750 or 5770.

then besides that, ram; either 2 or 4gigs of ddr2 or ddr3 (depending on what mobo you get), and a cheap but good psu from antec, corsair or ocz.

if you have an old pc you don't use, you might also be able to reuse its hdd and optical drive to save some money.

 

[JakL10]

Thanks alot. I've been throwing together a few different configurations on newegg for around $600, and I was thinking a 4670, but I might go with the 5xxx series instead. But since it seems like the Phenom II x4 is a better deal for $50 less and the cores are 3ghz instead of 2.66ghz for an i5, so I'll probably go with that. Thanks for the advice

 

[JakL10]

Oh, and what about a 5570?

 

[Muffin Man]

5570 looks to be about on par or better than a 4670 performance wise, so yea that also looks like a good low-budget gaming card.