So, I need to build a gamer computer (which I have never done). Can someone advise me? The most important spec to meet is graphics card requirement – we will need to support occulus and other VR type stuff. So, they recommend “NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater”. I’m not usually in the market for these things. Computer building is not my forté, but I can do it.
To make things even more complicated, some development in future needs to happen on Linux. So, ideally, I’d like to be able to dual boot. I did see that NVIDIA has now provided GTX 970 drivers for linux…
Can someone more expert than myself advise me? Last time I did this it was a much more obscure hobby, and now it seems like there are 10 million choices to make. I’m totally overwhelmed.
Basically:
A decent computer with an overkill GPU for best possible budget.
I’m not an expert either, as I do have a gaming computer, but it was put together for me by former coworker, although I did upgrade the graphics card recently. While there are a lot more choices, at the same time it is pretty streamlined compared to what it was at the start of computer building. For the application the computer will be used for, is there a list of software that is planned to be used that you could pull a list of system requirements and recommendations from?
I don’t know what most people in the group would recommend as sources for the parts, although personally Newegg and Tigerdirect can give some really good deals if you keep your eyes open. Listen to what other resources others might give as well, more options to buy from is always best.
Just don’t skimp out on the power supply. I now know what a fried PSU both sounds and smells like.
Microcenter has been having increasingly competititve deals on stuff. Don’t forget the locals.
Cooling and power supply quality is typically very very very important on a gaming machine compared to a more “typical” machine.
Anandtech / toms hardware / etc. tend to have fairly decent reviews if you want to be particular.
It’s easy to spend $1000-2000-3000 on a gaming machine that is worth half that in six months. Very fast moving.
I used to build a lot of these… Ran the computers for a gaming oriented cybercafe from 2000-2005 or so.
I setup my gaming PC with the Occulus Dev Kit on Windows 7 and got it working reasonably well. Building a computer that’s well supported by Windows and Linux is a bit tricky, because picking out the right hardware is an absolute must. I should be at the meeting on the 24th if you want to talk.
Thanks Brandon, I would enjoy going over things with you. In the meantime I am assembling a short list of components. The big deal is the GPU. Need it for both the graphics and the linear algebra (doing motion sensing and processing - so, linear algebra DSP, fourier expansion, all at quicker pace).