Questions About Building My First Gaming PC

First of let me recommend you to http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc, they'll answer any questions you have about about getting the specs you want and building the pc there, and the sidebar contains all of the basics to designing one. Second, there really aren't that many problems you'll encounter while building the pc as long as you have a steady hand, and the upgrading is fairly simple.

If you don't mind me making a recommendation; Windows 8 is absolute garbage for anyone looking at getting into gaming due to the amount of bloatware on it and incompatibility with many older games, which you may want to eventually try. You're better off with Windows 7.

For graphics if you prefer nvidia, I'd recommend the gtx 770, it's a total beast in its price range, I'd go with an amd processor to be off cheaper, I could hook you up with a link to my build which costs about 770€, it's quite a bit more worth in dollars but just message me if you're interested

If you're not overclocking I'd recommend something like this http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XsBQGX
It'll play better than the PS4, but it won't be tooooo far away either. The difference is that if you begin to like playing in more than 30 fps you can tweak the settings to get there, where you usually can't do in the console.
About building a PC: it's quite easy compared to what it was like 10 years ago, it's more like a building a lego with a blueprint. You can watch this video that explains how to do so and the precautions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls .
About upgrading, what you can upgrade in your system is to get a ssd to boot your OS and have a couple of games there and later on get another graphics card, cpu wise sadly it's not that easy to upgrade now, as intel is changing every new line of cpus with a new socket.
Hope it helps ;)

Want to play Watch dogs and Crysis 3 @ very high setting and a high framerate for a 700$ PC
HAH! your future PC is lacking at least 6+ 100$ bills to do that

PhysX is cool yes, but it's a lame also, Nvidia is just trying to fool you, you should not buy an Nvidia just because of PhysX.....there is not a lot of of games with PhysX, 99,9% of games don't have PhysX, you should buy a card AMD or Nvidia by best performance for the price. Building a PC is very easy, you just need to do it once and you will be able to do it more times without tutorials, you can watch Youtube videos if you need like this or others. Things you should not buy on a gaming PC specially for that money are: more than 8Gb of RAM, an i7, DVD Burner(is useless nowadays, unless you are for some reason still using disks, you can install OS from USB and drivers from internet), bad PSU brand, an SSD.

Visit the links here for something more serious.
http://www.reddit.com/r/BuildAPC
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/wiki/builds

Watch dogs run like 50-60 fps on my gtxz 770 in ultra with 1080p :P there are fps drops though but that's the usual fps

Edit: For physx you can actually use it with an amd card too I think, but it won't look as great as nVidia's

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xKRfhM
There you go.

I can't really justify a Nvidia card in the lower to middle prince range since AMD cards have given given a price reduction which gives them more performance than Nvidia graphics cards in the same price range. If you really want a Nvidia card go ahead and pay more for worse performance.

"How difficult is it to build a gaming PC? I have never opened up a PC let alone build one and would like to know how difficult it is for someone with zero experience and what kind of potential issues I might face with building it."

Most people get stuck on the case pins not knowing where to connect them since they don't look at the manual, but if you do it's pretty simple.

Normally this is my field where I help, but you have a bunch so I feel horrendously useless and late. Again.

Watch Dogs = broken imposible to play smotthly with any rigs atm lol

Hey, I'm building my first PC too; My budget is $500-630. I made this mid-range build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/aznboy1109/saved/#savedbuild_1134265 .If I'm right, this build should be able to get 25-30 fps on games like Crysis 3 on high-ultra settings. The build is not the best, but I mixed and matched cheap but good parts so hopefully it would be good for a first PC. If I'm correct though, I believe there's no sound card in the build, but it shouldn't cost more than $90. Feel free to criticize my build so that I can improve it. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what to build.

ok so, I suggest you get rid of windows 8 because that's for scrubs. second building a pc is like the adult version of legos, so just think back to your childhood and all the fun you had with legos. and if you didn't have legos then you're a scrub. i next suggest only buying when parts are on sale, don't be a scrub that's in a hurry and spends an extra $200 because they can't wait until black friday or christmas sales, or what ever other sales. also get at least 1tb hdd because steam and porn will fill it up quick, 2tb would be best though. also, pick parts based on when you want you're pc to do but also don't ignore your budget, so unless you got a high budget don't set stupid high goals. my 800$ rig plays bf4 ultra, average 60fps at 1360x768.... which reminds me you should probably figure out what your tv's native resolution is because you might want 1080p but your tv may be like nope i don't think so scrub. umm, anything else.... 8gb ram minimum or else scrub... uhhh, don't be a scrub
my rig in case you want to see: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/y6WZxr

ok (your name but you wanted me to censor so the nsa don't find you), i gave you my 2 cents like you wanted

so here's to the future: Welcome to the Master Race buddy!

edit: personal preference, get the HDD and ram last since those parts require no thought to pick out, they'll be compatible with almost everything, or better yet get your parents to buy it, then you can spend more on a gpu or something

Here is a good general tutorial on how put actually put a computer together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsyxM_j3Y4U

Few things to remember.

Get a good power supply. I have seen systems die quickly because of a cheap PSU. I have a Corsair TX750. Its a 750watt power supply, which is far more then I need, but I got it on sale and it had a 5 year warranty. It also can deal with a room temp of 50c which is really good if you do not have an AC in your room. I would not go smaller then a 600watt PSU as that gives you more then enough power to upgrade in the future. Also you never want to run a power supply near its top limit all the time. Go with a 80 or 90 percent efferent power supply, less heat.

Get a decent motherboard. The better the mobo, the less you will have to upgrade in the future. I went with an asus sabertooth 990fx r2.0. It can do 32gigs of ram (I have 16gigs) and AM3/AM3+ which is a large number of CPUs. Lots of SATA ports and has USB3 and USB2 and lots of other stuff. There is a new version of the board that has a few more things.

Make sure your case has lots of cooling. The cooler the inside of your case it the better for your system. I went with a Cooler Master HAF-X full tower. I have big hands so a large case is nice. It came with 4 fans, 200mm, 230mm and (2) 140mm. Its decently quiet and keeps it cool.

Stick with a normal 7200 RPM hard drive. The SSDs are nice and fast, but very expensive compared to how much they hold. I personally prefer Western Digital Black drives. They are good and solid (at least for me) Green and Red drives are slower and more meant for storage. Also the black drives have 5 year warranties.

PhysX as mentioned is not worth basing a video card buy on. Its not in a lot of games, and even if it is and you have a card without physX on it, the game just sends it to the CPU. nvidia based ones are usually more expensive then the amd based ones.

Intels are slightly faster but very expensive, AMDs run hotter but are cheaper. The best bang for the buck is an AMD. I have an AMD 965 black edition quad core and I can run everything fine.

3rd party CPU coolers are the best way to go. They will usually take the temp down an extra 10c to 12c. Expect to pay 50 to 80 dollars for a good one.

When you get ram, get 2 sticks of 4gb. There are games out there now that do require 8 gigs of ram heck I think I remember one requiring 12gigs, so I would actually suggest getting 16gb but you can at least start out with 8 and see how things go and as long as you have 4 ram slots total you can upgrade later. I have 16gb (2 sticks of 8gb) but thats because I also do some video rendering and when dealing with stuff like that, the more ram you have the better.

And as long as you have 4 gigs of ram or more, always go with a 64bit OS. I would personally stay away from windows 8/8.1 just because its a tablet based OS forced onto a Desktop. If you do not have a touch screen monitor, then all the extra junk they put in it, is useless to you. Stick with 64bit windows 7. (heck I would still be using windows XP if it wasn't for the fact I have more then 4 gigs of ram and 64bit XP sucks for drivers.

TomsHardware.com is your friend here. Coupled with Newegg.com, you should be able to find all the info you need to build a decent system within your budget.

As far as technical difficulty goes, PCs are trivially easy to put together nowadays. As long as you have all the parts AND READ THE MOTHERBOARD AND CASE MANUALS, then you'll be just fine.

Make sure you get Windows Xp! Cause Yolo Swag. Also don't be black and pay your friend to build it for you. Also make sure you contact geek squad for advice. Cause once again, Yolo Swag! Hope this helped Willy!

-Your best friend!
Hunter G.

P.S.
Just cause your're black does not mean you have to act black and steal the parts, Willy.

Maybe (but a big fat maybe) you can buy a PC that will outperform a PS4 with that money if you already have a monitor, mouse and keyboard, and a PC case with an adequate power supply. If you don't, I suggest you save some more cash before you buy something you will later regret.

Nah. I wouldn't buy a PC. Building one is 10x more better and can be cheaper,If you start buying during black friday sells. (Which is ways away)

R9 280/280x
8gb ddr3 1600mhz
amd fx 8320/8350

/thread

Thanks for the help everyone! When I am actually ready to build the PC i'll check back here since i'd like some second opinions before I order any parts. I apologize for asking silly questions or having unrealistic excitations but I really just want to get the best I can get and not cheap out on anything that I might regret later.

Thanks!!!