Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: text style from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pellette and
Speaker 1: I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: across from me as always a senior writer, Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: Jack Flack always escapes all Betty does. So what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Well, it means that we're gonna go into
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from James
Speaker 1: from Carmel, Indiana, and James says, Hello. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank you for making my irritating chores
Speaker 1: a little better. Secondly, I have a lot of free
Speaker 1: time now that my football season is over, and was
Speaker 1: thinking about building a low powered gaming computer. Right now,
Speaker 1: I have a Mac Mini, which is great unless you
Speaker 1: want to play games. I was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: do a podcast over how to build your own computer,
Speaker 1: or lead me to a site that does a good
Speaker 1: job explaining it. How stuff Works only has an article
Speaker 1: over converting your computer to a media computer. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for the podcast, James. Well, James, we thought
Speaker 1: we'd talked a little bit about what makes a gaming
Speaker 1: computer good and uh, unfortunately part of that is is money. Um.
Speaker 1: It turns out that low powered gaming computers may not
Speaker 1: really meet your needs if you want to play the
Speaker 1: latest and greatest games that are on the market right now,
Speaker 1: that's true, Um, a lot of cases you've got to
Speaker 1: worry about. It's really a gaming computer is not significantly
Speaker 1: different from a regular computer in that it has the
Speaker 1: same kinds of components. But what a gaming computer has
Speaker 1: that's different from your standard desktop or laptop computer is
Speaker 1: generally high, very high end components, such as the motherboard
Speaker 1: with a very high end processor, or the graphics cards
Speaker 1: sometimes more than one graphics card, um, and and things
Speaker 1: like that cause still a lot of money. But it
Speaker 1: really it really depends on the games that you're trying
Speaker 1: to play. If you're going to be, you know, working
Speaker 1: on Beguiled for hours on end, you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to need the same kind of processor that somebody who
Speaker 1: plays World of Warcraft might. Yeah, and if you play
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft, you may not need the same sort
Speaker 1: of processor that someone who's playing a really advanced first
Speaker 1: person shooter would need. These these different games have different
Speaker 1: different requirements. So things like real time strategy games and
Speaker 1: massively multiplayer online role playing games for the most part,
Speaker 1: don't need the like cutting edge of technical specs to
Speaker 1: be able to to run well on your machine. But
Speaker 1: if you are someone who wants to play games like well,
Speaker 1: you know the upcoming Duke Nukem, which will be out
Speaker 1: any day now again just like over the last twelve years.
Speaker 1: But no, seriously, Duke Nukem is supposed to come out again. Well,
Speaker 1: if that's gonna be a typical first person shooter, it's
Speaker 1: gonna try and take advantage of the latest and greatest
Speaker 1: tech that's out there that it necessarily requires that to run,
Speaker 1: but that if you have the it'll if you have
Speaker 1: something that's really advanced machine, it will take advantage of
Speaker 1: that and you'll have a better experience overall as a result.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you need um. The three biggest components are
Speaker 1: your CPU, your video card, and RAM. Now on top
Speaker 1: of that, you're also gonna need to worry about storage
Speaker 1: because some of these games are huge, and unless you
Speaker 1: are playing some sort of streaming service where the game
Speaker 1: is stored in the cloud somewhere, you're gonna need to
Speaker 1: have that storage on hand. So, um, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: look at the specs on on really advanced gaming PCs
Speaker 1: that are out there being sold as gaming pecs, you're
Speaker 1: gonna notice that that they have some wicked specs on them.
Speaker 1: I mean, the CPU is gonna be really fast. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you can even choose to have your CPU overclocked,
Speaker 1: which means it's going to run more cycles in the
Speaker 1: same amount of time and normally, like it would normally
Speaker 1: run a certain number of cycles, over means use cram
Speaker 1: more cycles into that same time period, which requires some
Speaker 1: adjustment on the part of the computer owner. Actually, of course,
Speaker 1: you can't go in and you know just a setting
Speaker 1: a software setting in your operating system to over clock it.
Speaker 1: You actually have to make a modification to your computer
Speaker 1: to make that happen. Yeah, and uh, and overclocking can
Speaker 1: lead to some problems. Um, the biggest usually is overheating. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's a That's another component about PC gaming rigs that
Speaker 1: we need to address and in this podcast, is that
Speaker 1: you have to have a good cooling system. That's true,
Speaker 1: some people use a liquid cooling system rather than just
Speaker 1: the standard fans that come with the box. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The three main methods that you'll probably see in most
Speaker 1: gaming PCs are fans. And then heat sinks, yes, a
Speaker 1: heat sink and thinking of that, but yeah, and and
Speaker 1: water cooling systems or liquid cooling systems. So yeah, all
Speaker 1: all of these are very basic ways of move heat
Speaker 1: away from the processor because of course, as processors heat up,
Speaker 1: just like any electronic element, if it gets too hot,
Speaker 1: it's going to stop working. And that's kind of frustrating
Speaker 1: when you're in the middle of a game. That's true,
Speaker 1: and I think it would be worthwhile to mention the
Speaker 1: reason that gaming computers are so sophisticated. It's uh, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, especially with these more advanced
Speaker 1: games and games in which there is a lot of
Speaker 1: rapid action stuff like um, I would say, racing simulators, uh,
Speaker 1: first person shooters, things like that, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: movement on the screen. And of course, uh, at the
Speaker 1: point we are now, these games are very very sophisticated.
Speaker 1: But the thing is the computer in order to make
Speaker 1: this action look so uh so real and so dynamic
Speaker 1: or unreal depending on how you look at it. Uh,
Speaker 1: not the game unreal, but yeah in that case too
Speaker 1: back in the day, yea, but yeah, I mean in
Speaker 1: order to do that, the computer is having to make
Speaker 1: a lot of calculations to render that on the screen,
Speaker 1: and it requires the CPU and the graphics processor to
Speaker 1: do a lot of computation, which is why they get
Speaker 1: so hot as they're doing a lot, a lot, a
Speaker 1: whole lot of work. Um. And that's that's what makes
Speaker 1: so much of the difference. And it requires the memory,
Speaker 1: which is what Jonathan was talking about about the RAM, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because what the memory is letting you do is it's
Speaker 1: s laying. It's slaying. The computer access information in an
Speaker 1: almost instantaneous, uh fashion. I mean, it's so fast it
Speaker 1: might as well be instantaneous to us. Now, if if
Speaker 1: you didn't have a lot of RAM, that would mean
Speaker 1: the computer would have to start to search for that
Speaker 1: information on your hard drive. It wouldn't be stored in
Speaker 1: that tipporary storage system for the computer, so it would
Speaker 1: mean that it would have to slow things down in
Speaker 1: order to search for that information. And that could even
Speaker 1: uh cause your game to have one of those annoying
Speaker 1: loading screens that all gamers absolutely hate. Um. That's something
Speaker 1: you want to avoid, which is why you want to
Speaker 1: have a lot of RAM. In fact, I was reading
Speaker 1: one specification or one one article that was talking about
Speaker 1: creating a a gaming PC, and they were their demands
Speaker 1: for RAM. We're pretty darn high said that an absolute
Speaker 1: minimum would be two gigabytes of RAM, and that to
Speaker 1: be on the safe side, you should have no fewer
Speaker 1: than four gigabytes. But if you have four gigabytes RAM,
Speaker 1: you have to remember that using a Windows machine. And
Speaker 1: we're really talking about Windows machines here because that's what
Speaker 1: the majority of games, that's the platform that they use.
Speaker 1: You can have really good games on other systems, including
Speaker 1: you know, the Mac, which for a long time the
Speaker 1: joke about max where that, yeah, it's a great computer
Speaker 1: unless you want to play a game on it. But
Speaker 1: that's changed significantly, but it's still true that most games,
Speaker 1: most of the advanced games come out on PC first
Speaker 1: and sometimes exclusively. Well, if you want to have more
Speaker 1: than around three gigabytes of RAM on a Windows based machine,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need a sixty four bit version of the
Speaker 1: Windows operating system. So we're talking, we're talking basically Vista
Speaker 1: or Windows seven. Right, you can't you can't use you know,
Speaker 1: the operating systems simply cannot support more the older operating
Speaker 1: systems versions of Windows cannot support that much RAM, so
Speaker 1: it wouldn't do you any good to add more RAM
Speaker 1: to it. Um. Before we get too far, you mentioned
Speaker 1: also the fact that the reason why you need this
Speaker 1: powerful computers because of the the fact that you've got
Speaker 1: all these you know this, these dynamic graphics, and that's
Speaker 1: the computer has to paint the picture over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. Yes, um, and we're talking about resolutions
Speaker 1: of around that's lots and lots of pixels. Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: And so when you think about the computer has to
Speaker 1: be able to paint each of those pixels or display
Speaker 1: each of those pixels. And if stuff is changing really quickly,
Speaker 1: it has to be able to respond to that and
Speaker 1: repaint those pixels. And the way that where the motion
Speaker 1: is nice and smooth and it doesn't look choppy, or
Speaker 1: there aren't trails everywhere unless it's part of the you know,
Speaker 1: the game's design, and uh and so yeah, that requires
Speaker 1: that's what where all that processing power needs to go to.
Speaker 1: So I remember back when I first had a computer
Speaker 1: that you didn't have to worry about this so much.
Speaker 1: Like the computers were increasing in power over time, Moore's
Speaker 1: laws More's law, so we would after every couple of years,
Speaker 1: you'd want to upgrade because you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: run some of the latest programs. But your basic computer
Speaker 1: graphics card and basic computer sound card was enough to
Speaker 1: handle pretty much anything out there. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: first person shooters started to take off, really, the Quake generation, uh,
Speaker 1: Doom and and Wolfenstein three D, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: The the games that came before it still ran pretty
Speaker 1: well on your basic three eight six machine. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until you started getting a little further in where you
Speaker 1: started need specific kinds of graphics cards in order to
Speaker 1: render graphics that were in a game. That's about the
Speaker 1: time I stopped playing PC games, Yeah, because it got
Speaker 1: to a point where it was clear that in order
Speaker 1: to play the latest and grades PC games, I was
Speaker 1: going to have to be on a fairly regular upgrade
Speaker 1: cycle for my machine, possibly as as frequently as every
Speaker 1: six months, in order to be able to run the
Speaker 1: the latest games. And eventually you would have to upgrade
Speaker 1: your entire machine, not just components, because your computer would
Speaker 1: no longer be able to support the latest cards that
Speaker 1: were on the market. That's true, and I think that's
Speaker 1: why so many gamers prefer the desktop computer to a laptop. UM.
Speaker 1: Not that you can't make some of these modifications to
Speaker 1: a laptop, for example adding more ram UM, but in
Speaker 1: a desktop computer. And this really does go for for
Speaker 1: MAX and PCs both. UM. If you have a tower
Speaker 1: uh desktop computer, especially although you know some of the
Speaker 1: other configurations also work. It depends on the MANU factor
Speaker 1: really more than anything else. But um. For example, if
Speaker 1: you took a one of the all in one pieces
Speaker 1: where the monitor has the computer built into it, um,
Speaker 1: those are generally sealed up a little more in a
Speaker 1: in a configuration in which it's very difficult to get
Speaker 1: in and say change out your CPU. Well yeah, especially
Speaker 1: since especially since most of those machines are designed in
Speaker 1: such a way where the components all fit very snugly
Speaker 1: together and there's very little room. So unless you're using
Speaker 1: a new component that's exactly the same size as the
Speaker 1: old one, you may be stuck. You may not be
Speaker 1: able to put it back together properly. Right. But in
Speaker 1: some of the other, the tower configurations especially, you can
Speaker 1: open up the box, pull out the card in question,
Speaker 1: and replace it with another one. If you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. It's good to be very very careful when
Speaker 1: you're doing those kinds of things, but it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to install a new card, replace your hard drive,
Speaker 1: add ram um, you know, in those in those types
Speaker 1: of boxes, simply because of the way that they're built.
Speaker 1: That um. That's why if I were going to build
Speaker 1: a gaming computer for myself, either build one or buy one,
Speaker 1: I would prefer to get a desktop computer with a
Speaker 1: very large monitor, you know, so you could see lots
Speaker 1: and lots of action and um. You know, I would
Speaker 1: probably prefer a Mac, but I would want to get
Speaker 1: a Mac Pro where I could you know, upgrade it
Speaker 1: in the future, because you know, the specs, the specs
Speaker 1: shift over time, as you pointed out. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I think a good rule of thumb is
Speaker 1: to look at the system requirements on the box of
Speaker 1: the game you're playing. If you're just hitting the system requirements,
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a particularly good experience in
Speaker 1: my uh, in my you know, personal experience, in my
Speaker 1: history with it. It'll run the game, but a lot
Speaker 1: of times it will be jittery and laggyuch fun. You
Speaker 1: have to turn the detail level down so that you
Speaker 1: don't have as many polygons rendering on the screen, so
Speaker 1: you can you can play the game at a smooth
Speaker 1: clip without it looking really jagged. Basically, basically what he's
Speaker 1: saying is the graphic you have to kind of turn
Speaker 1: down the level of the graph fix processing so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't fill in all the depth, the depths of
Speaker 1: the shadows and highest highlights and textures, so that you
Speaker 1: can still see and you can play the game. You know,
Speaker 1: if if the game play is more important to you
Speaker 1: what it is to me than the graphics. I love
Speaker 1: good graphics, but you know, if the game doesn't play
Speaker 1: well kind of bugs me. You might as well deal
Speaker 1: with that. We'll go watch a movie. If if the
Speaker 1: games aren't play well, it looks pretty. It's all. It's
Speaker 1: all cinematics. But well, uh, and you mentioned the possibility
Speaker 1: of using more than one graphics card. That's that's a
Speaker 1: fairly recent development with you know, back in the day,
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where you would get
Speaker 1: one graphics card and you had to choose carefully because
Speaker 1: some games supported a certain family of graphics cards and
Speaker 1: other games we're using a totally different, uh graphics model,
Speaker 1: and you might not be able to play a game
Speaker 1: based upon the kind of graphics card you have in
Speaker 1: your computer. Um, now you can use that. Well. In
Speaker 1: Video and A t I have have really dominate the
Speaker 1: market quite a bit. And of course am D purchased
Speaker 1: A T I and from what I understand, they're phasing
Speaker 1: out the A t I name, So am D then yeah,
Speaker 1: and they each allow you to use more than one
Speaker 1: video card if you have the right motherboard. That's something
Speaker 1: else we should point out is that a lot of
Speaker 1: the the components that you have in a gaming PC
Speaker 1: will depend entirely upon which motherboard you have. Not all
Speaker 1: motherboards will support all formats. In fact, your CPU will
Speaker 1: really what you should do, and we'll get into this
Speaker 1: more when you're talking about building a gaming computer is
Speaker 1: pick the CPU you want first, then find the motherboard
Speaker 1: that supports that CPU. Because you can't just you can't
Speaker 1: just go into a computer store and buy components willy
Speaker 1: nilly and expect them all to work when you hook
Speaker 1: it up together. Some of them may not hook up
Speaker 1: together at all. Best, do a little research before you
Speaker 1: get started, or consult with an expert in the store. Right. So,
Speaker 1: in Video and and a m D have this Uh,
Speaker 1: this where you can hook up more than one video
Speaker 1: card at a time to your machine, which means that
Speaker 1: the two together can process graphics much faster than a
Speaker 1: single card could. It's kind of similar to how CPUs
Speaker 1: now come. In multi coore formats, you can get dual
Speaker 1: core or quad core or even more um for CPU
Speaker 1: and each core can do some calculations. Now, in order
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that, games have to be designed
Speaker 1: in order to to use that. That's true. That that's
Speaker 1: true of any software for doing video editing or graphics
Speaker 1: editing of some kind. A lot of those programs are
Speaker 1: designed to handle the especially the newer versions. I should
Speaker 1: say older versions weren't necessarily but yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're operating system isn't designed to do it,
Speaker 1: and you're the game itself isn't designed to handle running
Speaker 1: across multiple cores, it won't be able to take advantage
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah. So right now, it's not unusual to
Speaker 1: find games that are good for dual core processors. You
Speaker 1: can find quite a few, and there's some they're coming
Speaker 1: out that are designed for quad core processors or two
Speaker 1: at least two. They're optimized for that. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's always a good idea to go ahead and look
Speaker 1: at what's what's sort of the leading edge on the
Speaker 1: market there, because that's where everything's gonna go. It may
Speaker 1: not be able to you know, you may not have
Speaker 1: games that take advantage of it right away, but that's
Speaker 1: where they're heading. So there there's no way to future
Speaker 1: proof a gaming PC. No, no, you can't do it.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the other things you have to
Speaker 1: resign yourself too, is that when you build a gaming PC,
Speaker 1: it may be state of the art right now and
Speaker 1: in a year it may be average. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: one of the big barriers to gaming PCs in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is because one they're expensive and too they have a
Speaker 1: very limited shelf life as far as being the best
Speaker 1: of the best goes. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You can
Speaker 1: you can look online and find a number of manufacturers
Speaker 1: of of gaming PCs and they'll have just watch the
Speaker 1: websites and the specs will change very very quickly. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think except for really the high
Speaker 1: end graphics and video processors. Maybe music. Yeah, there's some complications.
Speaker 1: Most most people don't really need cutting edge equipment like no,
Speaker 1: but so I mean, if you really want the sophisticated machines,
Speaker 1: the gaming machines are the ones I think. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: when we come to sound, that's another element you for
Speaker 1: modern games. You don't want anything that you don't want
Speaker 1: a sound card that won't support at least five point
Speaker 1: ones around sound. Yeah, you'd probably want seven point one
Speaker 1: because there are games out there that take advantage of
Speaker 1: the seven point one channel sound system. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're starting to get it pretty expensive here. And let
Speaker 1: me give you three different manufacturers of gaming PCs that
Speaker 1: that are kind of typical in the in the marketplace.
Speaker 1: So there's there's the CyberPower PC line. Yeah, there's the
Speaker 1: Velocity Raptor line, and then there's alien where, yes, um,
Speaker 1: these are manufact was known for producing high end, super fast,
Speaker 1: super sophisticated gaming PCs. Yes, I went on alien Ware.
Speaker 1: Just chose alien Ware because I'm really familiar with the
Speaker 1: brand and I thought it might be interesting to just
Speaker 1: see what happens if I were too heavily load down
Speaker 1: a gaming pc kind of give it all the bells
Speaker 1: and whistles. Okay, and we should point out to I'm
Speaker 1: I feel compelled to point out that that that's of
Speaker 1: the recording today, because we just finished talking about how
Speaker 1: quickly they go out of dates. By the time this
Speaker 1: podcast publishes, it may very well be that the state
Speaker 1: of the art is not what I have listed. And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give all those specs because that
Speaker 1: would just be ridiculous. It would take we need another podcast.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that I loaded it up with the
Speaker 1: fastest CPU that was available, the largest hard drive, the
Speaker 1: fastest optical drive which included Blu ray reading and writing UM,
Speaker 1: the best video cards that I could get in the system.
Speaker 1: I added a monitor, added a card that would allow
Speaker 1: you to hook up to I think three additional displays,
Speaker 1: so you could have four displays running off of this
Speaker 1: one machine, which is kind of absolutely insane. I can
Speaker 1: imagine having UM one display in front of you, with
Speaker 1: two other displays flanking it, kind of in a slightly
Speaker 1: tilted towards you slightly to give you kind of that
Speaker 1: surround feeling, and then have a fourth display that just
Speaker 1: has your regular like instant message and stuff on it
Speaker 1: just in the background, you know, just if you want
Speaker 1: to check UM or hey, put it behind you and
Speaker 1: put a rear view mirror up. Anyway, so once I
Speaker 1: added all of these things together, the price tag came
Speaker 1: to a total of ten thousand, three hundred twenty two
Speaker 1: dollars and ninety three cents. And that's in US dollars.
Speaker 1: That's an expensive computer. Yes, it is um actually expensive
Speaker 1: computer system because it did have lots and lots of
Speaker 1: extra stuff. But yeah, we're it was by the way,
Speaker 1: just so you know what the model was, it was
Speaker 1: the Alien where area fifty one a l X then
Speaker 1: with all the options, and that included a custom made
Speaker 1: water cooling system and all that good stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's expensive. Now, if you want to build your own,
Speaker 1: you're gonna save lots of money, but it is going
Speaker 1: to require research and uh and some careful shopping. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you'll be able to find some fairly cheap parts
Speaker 1: online as well as in various stores. Uh. I know
Speaker 1: Tiger Direct is a good resource for things like like
Speaker 1: motherboards and CPUs and that sort of stuff, but don't
Speaker 1: think and places like that. So, like I said before,
Speaker 1: the first thing you need to do is consider what
Speaker 1: CPU you're going to use, because that's going to that's
Speaker 1: gonna drive further decisions down the line. So you figure
Speaker 1: out what kind of CPU. You want you know whether
Speaker 1: that's going to be the fastest one on the market
Speaker 1: or if it's just going to be an a nice
Speaker 1: competitive one. Uh. Then you have to find the motherboard
Speaker 1: that will or the kinds of motherboards, because it's going
Speaker 1: to be more than one, but the motherboards that will
Speaker 1: support that CPU. You also want to be able to
Speaker 1: see what kind of connections you can make to that
Speaker 1: motherboard because when it comes to graphics, there are two
Speaker 1: different kinds of of of graphic hookups that you can
Speaker 1: go into. There's pc I Express and there's a g P. Yes,
Speaker 1: so pc I express is ah, well, you may remember
Speaker 1: back in the day, pc I was the way to
Speaker 1: hook up graphics to your computer. Remember that. Yeah, pc
Speaker 1: I uh was very limited, didn't have a whole lot
Speaker 1: of throughput for for information, and a g P kind
Speaker 1: of replace that. So a g P is sort of
Speaker 1: the current standard, I would say for graphics cards. And
Speaker 1: uh it's an a g P slot that's on the
Speaker 1: motherboard and most motherboards will support one or the other.
Speaker 1: They don't support both. Um. Now there's pc I Express,
Speaker 1: which is faster than a g P. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think I read somewhere that it's up to four times
Speaker 1: faster than a GP, so it puts through more information
Speaker 1: and less time. So it's if Since it's faster, it
Speaker 1: will probably end up eventually becoming the new standard for graphics.
Speaker 1: So if you want something again, there's no way to
Speaker 1: future proof. But if you want to try and ride
Speaker 1: that wave, pc I Express might be the right way
Speaker 1: to go. But again, that's going to your motherboard will
Speaker 1: will determine which kind of video card you can use,
Speaker 1: so make sure that the motherboard supports it before you
Speaker 1: go and buy your video cards, and also make sure
Speaker 1: that your motherboard can support more than one video card
Speaker 1: if you plan on buying multiples. Um, go ahead. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, uh, one thing too. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to sound like I'm down necessarily on gaming laptops,
Speaker 1: but in general a laptop isn't going to because there
Speaker 1: are some very very sophisticated ones. Dell's Alien Wear line, uh,
Speaker 1: since they've been acquired by Dell earlier this year. Um uh,
Speaker 1: you know has some really nice laptops, and I've seen
Speaker 1: some others. To the downside being that it's not as
Speaker 1: flexible as far as being able to make upgrades to
Speaker 1: the machine, and in general, laptops aren't it doesn't you
Speaker 1: know that laptops have slightly slower processors at least as
Speaker 1: of right now than most desktops, especially the high high
Speaker 1: end desktops that you would use for graphics and video
Speaker 1: and gaming. Yeah, and you can't you have a lot
Speaker 1: you're you're you're very much limited on how to cool
Speaker 1: your laptop compared to a desktop. Um, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: find a whole lot of really sophisticated cooling mechanisms zero
Speaker 1: essentially looking at heat sinks and fans, and they run
Speaker 1: hot anyway. It seems like a lot of people have
Speaker 1: commented on that. And you know, I actually was going
Speaker 1: to talk about peripherals a little bit, but we're starting
Speaker 1: to run short on time, and you know, maybe we
Speaker 1: could actually do revisit that at a later date, because
Speaker 1: they have some really sophisticated stuff. Yeah. And and even
Speaker 1: if you're again going back to building your own if
Speaker 1: you're building your own desktop, I mean, there are other
Speaker 1: considerations you'll have to make beyond the CPU and motherboard
Speaker 1: and RAM and your video card. You we will have
Speaker 1: to figure out what kind of case you want. You're
Speaker 1: gonna need a You're probably gonna want a case that's
Speaker 1: gonna be easy for you to access those those periper
Speaker 1: not peripherals, but those cards, so that you can swap
Speaker 1: them out if you, you know, either burn through a
Speaker 1: card or if you want to upgrade. You want something
Speaker 1: that's gonna be easy to access. Um, you're gonna want
Speaker 1: something that's gonna be easy to cool. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: need a cooling system of some sort of at least
Speaker 1: a fan, probably more than that, if you're really pushing
Speaker 1: the edge of the envelope here, and uh, and a
Speaker 1: power supply. You're gonna have to make sure that whatever
Speaker 1: power supply you get is going to be able to
Speaker 1: supply enough power to your machine to make it run.
Speaker 1: As it may turn out that you've got all these
Speaker 1: really awesome components in your computer, but your power supply
Speaker 1: can't support that much power, and then and then you've
Speaker 1: got to go out and get another one. I did
Speaker 1: think of one other thing that we haven't touched on.
Speaker 1: What's that Internet? If you're playing something that requires an
Speaker 1: online component, such as a massively multiplayer online role playing game, UH,
Speaker 1: you're going to want a nice fast Internet connection which
Speaker 1: is partly inside your computer and partly outside your computer,
Speaker 1: because if your internet service provider can't deliver reasonably fast,
Speaker 1: reliable connection, you're going to end up getting killed very
Speaker 1: frequently if you're playing something like a first person shooter
Speaker 1: online or UM or you get dropped from the game,
Speaker 1: dropped from the game, UM, and UH, part of that
Speaker 1: is inside your computer. You do need to make sure
Speaker 1: that if you're playing wirelessly. Now you know, wireless connections
Speaker 1: are not always as reliable as a UH an Ethernet
Speaker 1: connection would be. UM. You know, I think that's certainly
Speaker 1: a lot better than it than it used to be
Speaker 1: years ago. But still, I mean, you might you might
Speaker 1: have some latent between yourself and the wireless especially if
Speaker 1: you have other things in your home that are interfering
Speaker 1: with your connection and the distance between you and the
Speaker 1: wireless router. UM. But also you know, if you if
Speaker 1: you have a a connection that supports for example eight
Speaker 1: O two down eleven N, which is the most recent
Speaker 1: UH proposal for the standard, it gives you you know,
Speaker 1: the fastest UH most UH you know, the longest distance.
Speaker 1: They look at the range here, the widest range for
Speaker 1: the connection. UM. That's also something to take into consideration. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, wireless connections are going to be more reliable
Speaker 1: for people who are not necessarily needing to uh stay
Speaker 1: on top of a very fast action game. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not as much of an issue for them.
Speaker 1: So you might might find people using wired connections, you know,
Speaker 1: for people who really need to stay online constantly for
Speaker 1: a for a nice reliable connection to the internet. Right.
Speaker 1: And and if you're one of those people who still
Speaker 1: likes to do land parties, yeah, then you're going to
Speaker 1: want to take the end to consideration too, because clearly,
Speaker 1: if you if you're doing land parties, maybe a gaming
Speaker 1: laptop is the right way to go, or maybe you know,
Speaker 1: you might want to consider a desktop that's you know,
Speaker 1: easily portable and doesn't have a big water cooling system
Speaker 1: attached to it. Yeah. I actually saw when I was
Speaker 1: doing research for the podcast some that had handles built
Speaker 1: into the case for the desktop, which is an improvement.
Speaker 1: I had some friends at a former job that used
Speaker 1: to play games over land parties, and uh, they had
Speaker 1: slings set up for a desktop tower computer, an actual
Speaker 1: and if you haven't seen these before, it's an actual
Speaker 1: sling fabric sling that they would use to carry over
Speaker 1: their shoulder with their stuff so they could bring it
Speaker 1: in to the to the land party. And it just
Speaker 1: seems like it would be very, very unwieldy to try
Speaker 1: to manage that, but you know, they wanted their best
Speaker 1: machine for the job. So and if you believe that
Speaker 1: land party are dead, then you haven't been reading the
Speaker 1: StarCraft two complaints because from what I understand, they've they've
Speaker 1: pulled the ability to do land parties from the game,
Speaker 1: which is one of the things that StarCraft players really
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing. They're just playing over battle that there's nothing
Speaker 1: quite like playing playing a networked game in the same
Speaker 1: general physical space as other people. Because yeah, you can
Speaker 1: smack talk over various protocols that that will carry your
Speaker 1: voice and everyone will be able to hear it. It's
Speaker 1: not the same as being able to make eye contact
Speaker 1: with the person while you're making smack talk. That's true
Speaker 1: that you're not like you're looking away from the screen anyway,
Speaker 1: but momentary glance I do, but that's because I'm so
Speaker 1: darn good, um nice, please don't kill me on Xbox Live.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the that that kind of wraps up the discussion. Now,
Speaker 1: now James did ask about sites that would let you
Speaker 1: kind of tell you about building your own computer. One
Speaker 1: one resource I found that was very helpful was build
Speaker 1: game Computers dot com. And that was build dash Gaming
Speaker 1: dash Computers dot com. That actually has a pretty good
Speaker 1: um round up on all the components that you might
Speaker 1: need or want in a gaming computer and sort of
Speaker 1: the stuff you need to look for and the things
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. I drew a lot of resources
Speaker 1: from that particular website, so that one comes recommended from me.
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess that wraps up this discussion about
Speaker 1: gaming PCs. I don't think I'll be but building one
Speaker 1: anytime soon, just because despite what I said earlier, I'm
Speaker 1: really not that great of a gamer, and uh and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of lame. I've gone to the console gaming
Speaker 1: world and I don't see myself turning away from that
Speaker 1: anytime soon, except for maybe Civilization five. I've got to
Speaker 1: get on the CEV five train, because I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to that. It's I've got friends who have been playing
Speaker 1: it for a few days now and they love it,
Speaker 1: and I want to. I want to play against them,
Speaker 1: you know, Tom Maritan, Ronica Belmont for one. Really Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both big bands and they're both playing, So I
Speaker 1: want to conquer tom Merritt's little village and and then
Speaker 1: and then mock him mercilessly, although he'll probably wipe me
Speaker 1: out anyway. If you guys have any comments or questions,
Speaker 1: let us know on Facebook and Twitter, remember where tech
Speaker 1: stuff HSW on both of those, or if you want
Speaker 1: to send as an email. Our address is tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and Chrisma ill taught
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