Gaming computer system unit configuration
Today computer games have become a whole layer of human culture. A whole layer of people called gamers has formed, ready to play for hours both locally and in networked computer games. Naturally, the gaming subculture requires appropriate technical support, that is, computers specifically designed for games. How do you configure your computer for gaming, what should you pay attention to? Only about 20 years ago, the gaming community actively exploited Soviet consumer electronics in the form of computers "Search", "BK". Then the cost of the 286 personal car was comparable to the Volga car. The same searches and bk-shki served for work - they learned programming, wrote essays and term papers. In those days, no one suspected that for spectacular games it would be possible to use a computer worth a little more than $ 1,000. Time flows - life changes. Computers slowly, but confidently, step by step entered our life, becoming assistants in study, work, creativity. The gaming industry is constantly evolving, offering more and more spectacular and realistic games that are more demanding on the computer hardware. At a certain stage, the computer community of machines was divided into specialized threads, one of which was computers for games - gaming machines. What is the difference between a gaming computer and an office worker and a pet?The main difference is the high load on the hardware when running modern powerful gaming applications. In order to properly cope with the tasks and not lose face, it is important for a gaming computer to have:
The consequence of the "five-fold" power of the components is high power consumption and, accordingly, high heat dissipation of computer components. No wonder the cooling radiators are making more and more perfect, and the coolers are quieter and more efficient. Therefore, when choosing a computer configuration for gaming, special attention should be paid to the computer case and power supply. A computer case is not so much an aesthetic as a functional design of hardware equipment. Pay primary attention to:
Power supply, not a faint-hearted fanA power supply unit should be chosen with a low-noise fan (large diameter) with a capacity of at least 500 Watt. And when using two parallel video adapters, you need to think about either a higher power supply unit power, or about installing another additional one. The type of power supply connectors must correspond to the type of power supply of the computer components: connectors for SATA and IDE hard drives are not compatible. Chilling everything allOn gaming computers, 2 types of cooling systems are used more often - air and water. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Air Cooling System is good for its flexibility, because it is essentially a set of cooling fans. Its price is much lower, but the noise level is higher. Another implicit drawback of the air cooling system is the "vacuum cleaner effect", which is expressed in the accumulation of a dust mass inside the system unit, which is especially harmful for the efficient operation of cooling radiators. Accordingly, the computer case should be selected with the availability of places for installing additional cooling radiators. Water cooling (more precisely, liquid cooling) is used when it is necessary either to make the computer quiet, or when the level of power release of components is high (for example, when overclocking a processor or with a highly loaded server). The performance of a liquid cooling system is higher than that of an air one, which ensures greater stability of the temperature regime and the absence of unnecessary noise from the cooling fans. The disadvantages of the water cooling system are the possibility of coolant leaks when the system is depressurized and its high price. It's hard to buy a high-performance and reliable liquid cooling system for a computer for less than $ 100. Size mattersRegarding the size of the computer case, we can safely say - “size matters”. Preference should be given to a larger enclosure for purely practical reasons:
We have more or less figured out the case. Now let's move on to its "stuffing". We will first remove the choice of processor, video card and RAM for the gaming computer. Processor and video cardThe times when the gaming ability of a computer was determined by the performance of the processor, are not so long ago. His contribution to the quality of gaming applications is undoubtedly high even today, but the main emphasis in modern games is on dynamism and detailed rendering of graphics. To fully see all the efforts of the game developers and get full pleasure from the dynamics, you need to turn on all special effects and details, set the maximum screen resolution. And the processing of this kind of information is not the task of the central, but the graphics processor (or video card). The power of the integrated video chips for gaming applications is too low, so the choice of a gamer is a modern powerful video card. And for greater effect, NVIDIA Sli technology (Scalable link Interface) is used, which allows you to "shoot from 2 barrels" - to install 2 video cards for processing graphic information at once, each of which processes its own fragment of the screen. Nowadays, 8-core processors are being used more and more, 16-core processors are on the way at affordable prices for a personal computer. It is natural to think that the speed of your computer will increase. However, for the sake of fairness, we note that there are still few applications, including games, adapted for multithreading. If the computer is bought with a perspective, then the natural choice is a multi-core processor. How much memory do you needRegarding the amount of memory for a gaming computer, the old hackneyed phrase "there is never too much memory." When planning a computer configuration for games, it is possible to advise to provide 2-channel memory with a volume of at least 8 Gigabytes, with a high clock speed. Which mother to chooseWhen choosing a motherboard, be guided by the support of the selected components and the frequency of the system bus. The higher the frequency, the higher the speed of the gaming computer in the first approximation. However, it should be remembered that the lack of frequency matching of components can lead to disastrous results. And of course, the ability to install additional devices and upgrades is an important factor when choosing a motherboard. Where can we go without a hard driveThe contribution of the hard drive to performance is not as great as that of other components. In addition, modern models have practically reached their maximum speed of information exchange, due to the speed of the interface and are growing more in breadth. But in terms of the amount of disk space, we can say the following: if you buy a little, there will be little, if you buy a lot, there will be a garbage can. I think that 160-200 Gigabytes of disk space is quite enough for your favorite music, home archive of photos, a bunch of games, several movies. Without sound, you will not know where you should goAn important part of a gaming computer is high-quality sound. Whether it is worth buying a separate sound card is up to you, because today almost all motherboards on board have built-in multi-channel 5.1-7.1 codec, which provides very good sound quality on both simple and multi-channel speaker systems. A built-in audio chip is enough for headphones and simple stereo speakers. Better to spend the savings on buying a high-quality sound system of 2-5 speakers with a subwoofer. We have considered the general issues of configuring the system unit for a gaming computer, without going into technical details and specific models of components. This can be done, but the technical information that is relevant today is quickly becoming obsolete, because progress is running by leaps and bounds. But for the principle of forming a gaming computer, you can take this article. The Topic of Article: Gaming computer system unit configuration. |
