My First Computer Builds: Part 2 - Salvaging Parts

Welcome to part 2 of my computer build journal. Let me talk about the parts that I had retained from my old build. To recap, here's a link to part 1. Here are the parts from the old build:

Processor: Intel Core i3-3220
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77M-Pro
Graphics card: Palit GT630
OS: Windows 8
750GB hard drive 
4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM 
Generic casing
Generic 600W PSU

So to keep it simple: I re-used everything except the casing and the PSU. Not all of the salvaged components will be used together. Here's how they were split up:

Rig 1: The Student's Rig

This will be used by my lovely wife's kids, since their computer recently broke down. It will be used mainly for internet browsing, Open Office and movie viewing in full HD. 

The i3-3220 is still formidable, more than enough for your basic tasks and, if paired with the right video card (the likes of a GTX 760 or R9 270X), could run a decent mid-range gaming setup.

Recycling the hard drive and RAM is a no brainer since they're pretty much compatible with anything these days. 750GB is large enough, probably more than enough, for the average user. 4GB of RAM provides enough room for gaming and multitasking.

The GT 630 is made for entry level gaming. I've tried it with some of the most demanding games today: Metro: Last Light and Crysis 3. Frame rates ran below 30fps on low settings in 720p, comparable to a PlayStation3 or XBox 360. It might not look good on paper, but I still found these games playable. It's enough since we also don't want the kids to be addicted to games. 

Rig 2: The Gaming Rig

The target is to trump whatever the PS4 and XBox One offers. So while the above components are decent, I am gunning for the best GPU and CPU I could afford and build a high-end gaming system around that.

The ASUS motherboard provides a great upgrade path and flexibility. It's possible to run up to 3 video cards in SLi/Crossfire and also provides great overclocking options, though I myself don't have any plans to overclock. It's able to accept Sandy/Ivy bridge processors with up to four cores.

So that's it, I basically came up with two systems, with the one I will use for gaming being an almost completely new build. I actually think it would have been different if I had an i5 to start with, since with that I would only look at getting a true-rated PSU, additional RAM, and a top-tier video card. But given the circumstances, we went with this.

For Part 3 I will detail the new components I got for these two builds.

My First Computer Builds: Part 1 - The Reason

This will be a short introduction to how I learned to assemble computers. I have just completed two of them actually, and I will be writing about those too. So here goes.

I am one who loves playing video games. A brief history of my gaming life: I've had my first taste with Space Invaders on my cousins' Atari 2600, they were tweens at the time and I was a little kid who just was past the toddler stage. Since then I have been obsessed, begged my father (with great success) to buy me the Nintendo Famicom. I have never skipped a generation since, I had owned at least one from each (I had SNES, N64, PS1, PS2, PS3). Well that changes now.

I have never really been impressed by news of this current generation populated by PlayStation 4, XBox One and the WiiU. The WiiU is the one I want the most out of the three because I think it's the most "exclusive" of them all - you can't get those Nintendo games anywhere. The other two? They're trying so hard to become a jack-of-all-trades system that they've become... a watered-down PC. Of all generations of consoles, I think this is the most evolutionary of them all. The past ones always had something revolutionary to offer: huge jumps in graphical quality, online play, new ways to control. So even though they always trailed the mighty PC in terms of graphical power and online play, they made up for it in other areas.

So we are in the here and the now. Motion control it seems is just a novelty. The control pad now has been refined so much that pretty much the only thing it can't control is an RTS game. If I am to look for cutting edge technology, PS4 and XBox One won't cut it. So I just thought of upgrading my PC. We've had this PC at home for almost a year now. It was assembled for us. When we were purchasing it, I told the store that I plan to upgrade it in the near future. I asked for something where the upgrade path was far enough for high-end gaming. Here's what was built for us:

Processor: Intel Core i3-3220
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77M-Pro
Graphics card: Palit GT630
OS: Windows 8
and a 750GB hard drive plus 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM

All housed in a generic casing and powered by a generic 600W power supply. It's best to avoid generic power supplies as they have that big potential to harm your components.

I had fun with it. I was impressed on how fast Windows 8 boots up and shuts down. I never had any issues with switching from the Start screen to the desktop. I would say that it's a rough transition whenever you switch interfaces, but it's no deal breaker. Not even remotely annoying, but that's just me. In terms of games, I had Gears of War and Sims 3 on it, but I mostly played around with emulators. I had no problems running Dolphin or PCSX2, everything in my game library was completely playable.

So then the news about the PS4 and XBox One surfaces, and I was not impressed. The hardware was underwhelming and I was not excited about the upcoming games. I knew the PC would always have the superior versions of the games, so I went about researching about what parts I would need to have a console killer. I am happily playing with my newly-upgraded rig for a few days now, so for my next post I will be discussing the parts that I got, basically the fruits of months and months of research.