Welcome to the ultimate guide on the internet about building and tweaking the right PC for you. The answers to your deep nagging questions all in One Place! How convenient is that?? Also you may discuss these recommendations further in our Forums!!!

Well lets get going straight away.

The right components for your future PC depends completely on your budget. So you should first decide on how much you can afford and then go to a product search guide like Google Product Search and type in what you're searching for and it will spit out the current prices for that component from all the major online stores. This is extremely convenient and very accurate.

If you're stumped as to what to get follow the links below for guides on the perfect hardware for different budgets.

http://anandtech.com/guides/

http://www.tomshardware.com/theme-reviews-build-your-own,156-1.html

This is the fun part. Getting down and dirty with your brand new hardware, putting everything together piece by piece and seeing it boot up for the first time.

Heres an awesome Video Guide that you must check out. Its the only one you'll ever need. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/video_how_build_pc_ever_step_explained

And heres one you need to read ;) http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/how_build_a_kickass_800_gaming_pc

Tweaking refers to optimising your BIOS, Operating System and hardware for maximum performance.

The BIOS has a lot of stuff that u can enable or disable to get better overall performance and lower boot-up times. Eg. if your not using Gigabit LAN or Floppy drive or Onboard audio disable them and you will definitely see at least lower boot times.

Heres a very good guide to every single BIOS setting imaginable. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ultimate_bios_guide_every_bios_setting_revealed Read that along with this Optimization guide and you will soon have a PC that screams.

Tweaking your operating System is different.

For Vista there are several ways of doing this. Because as it is its loaded with excess that suck up resources and slow down your system.

You can read about a few basic tweaks here. http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

Easiest way for a newbie to mess around with its more complex settings is to download TweakVI. With its easy user interface and top-notch tweaking abilities you will soon have a OS that is lean as well as mean.

The MSconfig utility is another essential way of tweaking your sustem. Go to Start Search and type in 'msconfig' and behold one of the most important pieces of software in Windows. Click on the 'Startup' tab and see all the programs that are starting with Vista and are running in the background. These have a massive impact on overall system performance and speed. Remove all nonessential stuff for best speed. You should be able to live without everything other than your Anti Virus software and maybe the Vulume Control panel. Everything else is excess.

The services tab on the utility show what services you have running the background. Click 'Hide all MS services' and all thus displayed can be removed without dire consequences other than your Anti Virus as before.

Disabling Microsoft services are a bit tricky. Most you will need while most others you wont depending on what you do with your computer. Heres the best guide on the net to disabling unwanted Microsoft services. http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

Tweaking hardware is generally getting the latest drivers for them, be it graphics card or motherboard or sound device. Oveclocking will be discussed below.

Overclocking can be applied to either GPU or CPU to increase performance substantially, and since all are different there is no way I can describe how to OC all types here. Basically CPU needs to be OCed in the BIOS and and your graphics card within the OS.

Heres a good OCing guide for Core 2 Duo CPUs with a P35 motherboard. http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overclocking/2-c2d-overclocking-guide-beginners-p5k-add.html

And another guide for Core I7 CPUs.

Here are some fantastic software that would assist in running your PC at prime levels, tweaking and overclocking and for monitoring temperatures and voltages. These should be installed in any self-respecting gaming PC. Most are free.

 

This is the culmination of extensive research carried out by myself on the Internet and the multimedia press. However the following conclusions and recommendations are purely my own and as such should not be regarded as carved in stone. This being said let me also state that I am a pure gamer and realise the immense enjoyment one gets by playing computer games and also the heartache one suffers when he or she realises that their computer system is too underpowered to run the latest First Person Shooter.

Thus I have decided to create my own Ultimate Gaming System that could happily run even the toughest polygon heavy game on the market today and those that are around the corner. This system dispenses with down-to-earth realities such as being on a budget and is a no holds barred showcase of the latest and greatest PC hardware. (Macs are not worth the trouble).

To counter the rapid changes in hardware technology I will be updating this list as soon as faster or better components hit the market. (Which will probably be every week!)
 
 

Home | Star Wars | Games | Top Ten Movies | Hypersearch | Ultimate Gaming System | Sign my Guestbook

(c) 1999-2001 Mahesh Walatara  All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.