Perfect computer specs for PWI?

archosaur lags like crazy.. but personally, if your PC was built for vista, upgrade to 7. I have a vista 64 bit-built machine, and win 7 runs like a dream on it. (vista was REALLY crappy)

Step 1:

go to www.tomshardware.com

Read the "Best Gaming CPUs/Video Cards for the Money" articles and select your price range. Choose the parts that best fit your budget. Take note that anything listed in those articles WILL run PWI on high settings, however if you want to get into more heavy gaming like MW2 or Krysis choose something on the high end, if not then low end, bang for your buck, cards/cpu's will work fine for 99% of what you do.

Step 2:

go to http://www.newegg.com/

Now buy the parts you chose above along with a motherboard that will fit your CPU and Video card. Then get at least 4G of ram at the highest speed you can afford that will fit your selected motherboard. Next choose a hard drive with at least 7200 rpm, whatever size you feel comfortable with. After that pick out a case that you like with at least 2 fans to keep everything cool. I would suggest adding a Blu Ray player at this point, but if you don't want/need one then go for a DVD RW drive with at least 20X write speed. Finally use Newegg's power supply calculator to find out how many watts your machine needs to run, then pick a PSU with slightly higher wattage than your system needs.

Step 3:

Read guides on building a PC, or get a friend to help you put it all together. If you have a friend that is capable of that, then have said friend help you pick out the parts as well, so you don't end up with mismatched parts.

Step 4:

Choose an OS. I personally like Windows 7, but if you don't like it, go for XP. OSX doesn't run PW without using workarounds of some kind, and Linux is FAR to complicated to bother with if you just want to play PWI ; )

Step 5:

Enjoy your new PC. It will probably be faster than anything you have ever used before.

This set up, which I've been dreaming about may suit your needs for basically everything:

It's a desktop, just so you know,

** Prices Are Listed From Newegg.com As of Mon, Apr 26, 2010 **

-- Motherboard
---- (58 - 85 USD) ASUS M4A77TD Motherboard (AM3 - 140 W)
---- (58 - 80 USD) MSI 770-C45 Motherboard (AM3 - 140 W)

-- Processor
---- (~310 USD) AMD Phenom II 1090T Black Edition Processor (Hex Core - 3.2 GHz - 125 Watt - AM3)

-- Memory
---- (~250+ USD) 8 GB RAM

-- Video Card(s) (If You Cannot find Any, Use A Good (IE: ATI 5xxx) 1 GB or 2 GB With HDMI Output)
---- (390 USD) SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100282-2GVXSR Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

-- Case (Instead of Listing Individual Cases, I've Provided a Description)
---- No Fancy Gamer Case Or Whatnot, Something Simple Yet Sturdy.
---- Must Be ATX or bigger
---- No Liquid Cooling (You don't need it anyway if you have front and back fans, believe me, I've had that kind of setup.)
---- Front Headphone/USB Would Be Preferred As Well As Back Audio Jacks.
---- Should Be 17 Inches High Or Less If Possible
---- The above 2 GB Video Card may be a bit long, so please take this into consideration.

-- Power Supply (Go Up One Watt Level More (IE: 750 >> 800) If The Listed Wattage Is Not Enough)
---- 750W Power Supply

-- Harddrive
---- (~80+ USD) 1TB Harddrive

-- Optical Drive (No LG, Use LiteOn or less expensive brand.)
---- DL DVD+/-RW / CD-RW

-- Operating System
---- (199.99 USD) Windows 7 Pro x64

-- Extras
---- No Media Card Readers

If you look around, a core i7 desktop with these specs would cost 1200 USD more. AMD/ATI always wins when it comes to price and performance.

zaaphiel wrote: »

id go for 2x 750GB hard drives as they say 1 hard drive can fail and you may need a back up

Or get a 16 or 32 GB flash drive like me and keep all your documents on it.

I had one last for a few years, but then I bent the thing 90 degrees when I fell down once... will never make that mistake again.

If you can also afford it, I suggest an SSD harddrive, they have no moving parts, and thus produce less heat. But they are far more expensive than their moving part sisters.

I also don't understand why people need to overclock either.

zaaphiel wrote: »

I also don't understand why people need to overclock either.

I agree there, burns out the PC faster and if done incorrectly it can shaft your system, but gamers like the advantage in PK[/QUOTE]

Then get a machine (like the one I mentioned) so you don't HAVE to overclock in the first place.