Best Gaming Computer Components

Guide to choosing the best gaming computer components

If you’re looking to buy a gaming computer, but aren’t sure where to start, this guide is for you. We’ll be going over some basic gaming computer components that make the difference in game performance to help you choose the gaming rig.

Basic Gaming Computer Components

The most important aspect of a gaming computer is by far the graphics card, or GPU. The most popular graphics cards for gaming are produced by Nvidia and ATI. If you aren’t up to date with the latest graphics cards, it’s best to search for customer reviews, since it’s difficult to tell how well different cards will compare to each other just by looking at the specifications. In general, a card that’s around $150-$250 will be sufficient for most modern games. Keep in mind that technology progresses quickly, so a $150 card this year usually won’t be good enough to run next year’s games.

The next most important aspect of a gaming computer is the amount and type of RAM installed. First off, it’s important to note that there are different qualities of RAM. For a good gaming computer, you should choose the more expensive DDR RAM over SDRAM. DDR stands for double data rate, and as the name suggests, it performs about twice as quickly as standard data RAM. It’s also important to get sufficient RAM for modern games. At the time of this writing (Nov 2011), 4-8GB is recommended for most games. Look into specifications for modern games to see how much you need if you aren’t sure.

A very important component for your computer is hard drive space. Many games take up several gigabytes once installed, and that’s on top of the room you use for your operating system and any photos, videos, and music you store on your computer. Another thing to consider is looking into a solid state drive (SSD), which is a hard drive without moving parts. While SSD drives tend to run more expensive than a standard hard drive, it pays off by having a drastically lower failure rate and is much faster at handling data. Regardless of which you choose, you should probably try to get at least 750GB, and if you like to have a lot of files, closer to 1.5-2TB is advised.

Processor (CPU) speed, while generally less important than the GPU, is also an important consideration. Again, just looking at the GHz value for a processor can be misleading when comparing two processors made by different companies. When in doubt, it’s best to look at reviews of different modern processors in your price range to see which tends to be rated well by consumers. Recently (again, at the time of this writing), Intel has been developing new processors which integrate video memory as well, which is listed under the specifications. While expensive, these processors are hands down the best for gaming at this time.

As you can see, the major players in a gaming computer are the GPU, RAM, HDD, and CPU. If you want a gaming computer, make sure to check these gaming computer components against modern, game-recommended specifications to make sure you’ll be able to run the games you want to play.