A Noob’s Guide to Gaming PCs — The Basics
Have you ever looked at a page of computer specs and thought to yourself “I don’t understand half of what this is saying”? The answer is probably yes if you’ve shopped for a desktop or laptop in the past.
Lucky for you my friend, that is about to end — because this is a three-part series that will demystify the computer hardware lingo:
Part I
I’ll focus on explaining the six critical components for building a PC, namely, the CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage, Mobo, and PSU.
Part II
I’ll present a few PC builds “recipes” that cater towards different needs, such as gaming, workstation, or both.
Part III
Finally, I’ll share my experience with building the very PC thatI’m using to type this blog right now, including the pros and cons, budget, and some general advice.
I hope you’ll have a good grasp of computer-spec-interpretation by the end of this series — maybe you’ll even get interested enough to build your own PC ! Now, let’s get started.
CPU
The first big decision — almost as important as naming your character in video games — is choosing the brand of your CPU: Are you going to be Team Intel or Team AMD?
Let’s start with the basics: A CPU is the brain of a PC — it handles everything from running your Windows to opening your browsers, and it achieves those tasks by communicating with different components in the PC.
The first step of evaluating a CPU is to recognize that the question to ask is not whether one is better than the other, but rather which one is right for your budget and use case. For example, having more cores and threads allows your CPU to interact with more applications simultaneously, while having a higher clock speed provides better gaming performance, especially if you overclock the CPU.¹
In short, choose AMD if:
- You want a better bang for the buck (cheaper than Intel for similar level)
- You play low-to-mid-tier games and use PCs as a workstation, as AMD put its focus on pushing for a higher number of cores and threads.
On the flip side, choose Intel if:
- You want top notch gaming performance
RAM (Memory)
RAM stands for Random Access Memory and is used for short term storage, meaning that it only stores necessary data as your programs run.² RAM is not for long term storage like your hard drive is. Once you terminate your programs, the space that they take up in RAM also becomes free.
Here’s an analogy to help you understand better:
Imagine that you only keep the things that you’re currently working on on your desk (I sure hope), within your arm’s reach. Once you’re done with the task, you put the books/notes back onto the shelf. The shelf allows you to store things for the long term and gives you more space, but takes longer to access than your desk does. In this case, your desk would be your RAM, and your bookshelf would be your hard drive.
In summary, the bigger your RAM is, the more programs you’d be able to run concurrently. Since RAM prices have dropped quite significantly over the years, I’d say that 16 GB RAM would be the sweet spot, and 32 GB would likely be an overkill for most people.
GPU (Graphics Card)
The graphics card is a fascinating topic of itself, and there’s no way I can explain everything about it in one short blog (nor do I have the knowledge to), so here’s a brief Q&A section on some basics that everyone should know about the GPU.
Q: Are graphics cards needed only for gaming?
A: False. Anything that needs to be rendered on your screen requires some type of graphics processor, whether it be integrated or dedicated.³
Q: How do I know if a GPU is good?
A: The easiest way is to search “[GPU name] benchmark” on YouTube. You’ll see a bunch of tests and comparisons.
Q: AMD or Nvidia?
A: Nvidia is definitely the gamer’s choice, but AMD has become quite competitive in the recent years because of its product’s lower price point. AMD CPUs also come with very decent integrated graphics processors, so light gamers might not even need a dedicated GPU!
A cool thing worth mentioning about Nvidia’s newer gen GPU, the RTX series, is the Turing Architecture. This design not only supports a more advanced memory model (GDDR6), but also has better core design for AI and Deep Learning work. In addition, it introduced Ray Tracing technology,
“a technique that simulates the lighting of a scene and its objects by rendering physically correct reflections, refractions, shadows, and indirect lighting,”
according to its architecture whitepaper. The images below demonstrates the effect:
Finally, while these graphics card companies are doing some truly innovative stuff that drives our technological progress, there’s also A LOT of marketing involved that creates an illusion of choice. For example, companies sometimes release new generations of GPU with minor performance improvements that are hardly noticeable even in side-by-side comparison. Thus, it’s important to do the research and know what you’re paying for!
Storage
This is where you store all your data and install your software. What you need to know is that there are HDDs (Hard Disk Drive) and SSDs (Solid State Drive), and SSDs are way faster than HDD.
Why are SSDs faster? Essentially, an HDD has a mechanical arm that reads data from a spinning disk, while an SSD has no moving parts — it manipulates the states of transistors to store data.
Besides the regular HDDs and SSDs, we now have an even faster storage option: the NVMe SSD, which provides better performance and is smaller. What a good time to be alive, eh?
Given that the order of performance is NVMe SSD > SSD > HDD, you can expect their prices to be in the same order. When you buy a desktop nowadays, you’d typically see a dual drive setup where there’d be a smaller SSD just to install your OS (Windows), and a larger HDD to use as your main storage.
Is NVMe worth it? I personally don’t think so. Even though its max data transfer speed is much faster than that of a regular SSD, it’s unlikely for most users to ever reach that level of need. On the other hand, I think SSDs are worth the premium because they are many orders of magnitude faster than HDDs, even for very basic use.
Mobo (Motherboard) & Case
These are what hold all the components together (as the names suggest). Generally, you wouldn’t have to care about these parts when you buy a pre-built computer, since the differences are pretty minimal in most cases.
Currently there are three main types/sizes of Motherboards:
And here’s a quick comparison of them:
When choosing a motherboard, you’re basically making trade-offs among these 3 qualities:
- Workload/Future Extensibility
- Heat Dissipation
- Physical Space Taken
In my personal opinion, the Mini ITX is more than enough for an average person’s daily use as well as some basic gaming — definitely not for serious gamers though.
PSU (Power Supply Unit)
Choosing a PSU is quite simple, really. You just calculate the power you need by adding up the power consumption of your components; mainly the CPU, GPU, and RAM, and then find a matching PSU. For an average PC with a discrete GPU, the required power would be around 350 to 500 W; a high-end gaming PC could consume north of 800 W.
Here’s a quick sheet I made for you to demonstrate the differences:
You can also find many free wattage calculators online.
Optional Add-Ons
Things like the Wifi card and extra fan/water cooling are optional. From most of the gaming benchmarks that I’ve seen online, a CPU can get to 80~90 degrees Celsius if you use the most basic CPU fan, but it’ll stay at 40~60 degrees Celsius with nicer cooling and airflow.
So what does cooling your CPU get you? Most CPUs throttle performance before the temperature gets too high to prevent your chip from melting itself. This is why, by cooling your CPU properly, you could potentially keep your performance high while avoiding being throttled for heat management.
Another potential benefit of better cooling for your CPU is that your chip might last longer, since constant high heat just isn’t good for any type of electronics. But again, an average CPU lasts so long nowadays that the additional lifespan probably doesn’t really matter in most cases.
Summary
This is really it! Your PC is basically the product of installing CPU, GPU, RAM, and Storage on the Mobo and hooking up some wires for power.
Before you leave, here are some key takeaways:
- The CPU is obviously important, but the main difference for gaming still comes from the graphics card.
- You only need sufficient RAM — having extra RAM allows you to open maybe 100 more chrome tabs and Photoshop + Illustrator while gaming, but more RAM doesn’t give you better performance if you already have enough of it.
- SSD is worth it, but only go for M.2 if you have money to blow; the difference is hardly noticeable 99% of the time. Just watch this video.
Hope this article answers some of the basic questions regarding computer parts!
Finally, special thanks to James Wang, the game master that helped me with my first PC. This blog wouldn’t have happened without his help.
Notes
[1] Clock Speed & Overclock: 1 Ghz means that your CPU runs one billion time cycles per second. Each instruction can take a CPU one or more cycles to process, depending on the GPU design. Thus, having a higher clock speed doesn’t always mean that your CPU is faster when the comparison is between different CPU designs. For the same CPU design, though, higher clock speed = better performance. Overclocking is a technique to push the clock speed to the maximum as listed on the spec, fully utilizing the CPU. Because when a CPU is marketed to have a clock speed of, say, 3.6 Ghz, it usually doesn’t have that speed on factory default.
[2] Random Access Memory: Random Access Memory allows you to read data from any location, whereas Sequential Access only allows for data-reading data in order, meaning that if you’re only interested in data at location X, you will have to “seek” from 1 ~X, which is very inefficient compared to fetching X directly.
[3] Integrated vs. Dedicated(Discrete) GPU: “Integrated” means your graphics processor comes with your CPU, whereas “Dedicated” means you have a standalone graphics card. One of the many reasons that Dedicated GPUs are more suitable for gaming than Integrated GPUs are is the way they access memory. Since processing graphics requires memory for buffering image frames, Dedicated GPUs come with their own set of memory, while Integrated GPUs use RAM on mobo, shared by all programs. This difference is critical because GPUs move large files simultaneously, hence the GPU’s memory is designed to have a large bandwidth with lower rate. On the contrary, the RAM on mobo is designed to handle general usage, which prefers a smaller bandwidth with a higher data transfer rate.