So you wanna be a gamer?
A 
few years ago, I bet the majority of people would’ve considered gamers to be four eyed, acne infested hermits, but that’s not the truth and practically never was. Gaming has reached a level that many people thought wouldn’t. The gaming industry has become a multi-billion dollar industry, growing much faster than the movie industry. Gaming has become a profession. Yes, if you didn’t know that I’d like to know: where the hell have you been? My main focus of this article is for PC Gaming.
What You Need?
First off, if your PC is older than 2 years, go to your garage, get that ten pound hammer and put it to work or just register at bidorbuy and sell it (Note: If you are under 16 parental supervision will be required for the hammer resolution).
The components you are going to need:
- A case (preferably aluminium as it has great heat dissipation). Avoid anything that is predominantly plastic, also try get something that has numerous positions for case fans so that you get a sufficient airflow as this is vital, Coolermaster stock a great variety of cases. Also some cases come with a PSU, Power Supply Unit to give everything in the case juice. You will need a 500 W power supply.
- A decent PCI-E motherboard, if you were thinking of going for AGP, take the nearest long, flat object and beat yourself now. PCI-E, Peripheral Component Interconnect – Express is what you should go for. If that sounds like Greek: it basically means that it connects to your motherboard as a daughter board. The express part means it is faster then normal PCI. PCI-E is twice as fast as AGP, Accelerated Graphics Port, and also PCI-E and AGP connections are for your graphics cards and majority of mid-to-high end rage graphics cards are PCI-E. AGP cards, or decent ones, have practically discontinued anyway. Also, the motherboard will need to support DDR2 RAM 800mhz, allows for faster processing. You going to need at least 2 gigs of this RAM.
- If you want to really enjoy your gaming experience you’re going to have to buy big, as the rate that games are released and the increase in specs as newer games come out, you’ll want something to last you for a while. Buy a nVidia 9500 GT 512mb DDR2 or a Radeon HD 4670 1gig DDR3 (Radeon cards are much cheaper in price then nVidia but nVidia driver support owns all).
- Sound card. That’s easy- you can use the onboard sound or get yourself a decent soundcard.
- A decent mouse and keyboard would be required. Zboard have very good keyboards, especially for beginners *cough* noob! *cough*. High end keyboards such as the Logitech G15, are also great. A decent mouse for beginners would be something that is comfortable in your hands, no jokes. You don’t want to spend R500 on something that feels like a brick in your hand unless you have anger problems and will be throwing it around when people school you. A good make of mouse will be from Logitech or anything that is laser (or optical) which has programmable buttons. Razer mice mouses mice are high end mice and are also very good.
- Now for the back bone of your PC, The Processor. There will forever be a debate or nerd barfight on which is better, AMD or Intel. Personally, once you go Intel you never go back. You going to need a multi core processor. Don’t be confused, all that it means is that there is more than one processor, i.e. it processes faster. A good start would be an Intel Core 2 Duo, at least 2.67 GHZ.
- Now for storage – the hard drive. One tip; if anyone ever offers to sell you a Maxtor hard drive, tell them you have friends in white coats with straight jackets for them. Get yourself a Seagate or a Western Digital hard drive, at least a 250gb.
- Last but not least you going to need a monitor. If you’re thinking a CRT monitor, position your keyboard inline with your forehead, grab your hair at the back of your head really firmly and send your forehead into your keyboard at the speed of light. Repeat this at least 3 times or until the words “20 inch wide screen LCD” are imprinted on your forehead.
You will more than likely need to have about R10 000 to R12 000 floating around to get set up. Best advice: shop around for prices for decent desktop computer bargains and then beef it up, you can always beat your first price quoted. After that, you can consider processor coolers etc.
Once you have your spent your life savings and have a decent computer you will need a decent internet connection. If you want ISDN, find the nearest plug point and stick your fingers in it. Get yourself a 512 ADSL line, they are pretty much designed for gaming. Next, get a decent ISP. 3gb should be sufficient for a month of solid gaming.
That’s it, n00bs. All that’s left for you to do is find yourself a game you really like, join servers online and start learning. At first you might get worked, but it’s a learning curve.
vincenthofmann
SheBee
AcademicGeek
gogi
gobz
cath-jenkin
JuicyJustin
BlindCripple
supercopygurl
Green_Guerrilla
Cassey
romeogeek
steve-tech
beetle001
Yay! Now I can finally know how to be a gamer!
You just need toi find what genre of gaming you good at and enjoy then you will be sorted.
Keyboard and mouse >>>>
Love love love my G15!
And the 10 grand plus is totally worth it to have a system that can do it
Avery well thought out piece…well done hope we see more of you and the games that you enjoy…love pc games!!!
[...] nerdmag.co.za » Blog Archive » So you wanna be a gamer? [...]
What I really want to do is do review of games but I am going to need someone to supply the games. I think after 10 years of gaming at a competitive level I should be able to review a game, right?
[...] in SA is not cheap. To have a decent computer you need at least R10 000 as I stated in my previous article and countless hours for practice. I currently play in two of AGASA’s leagues, The Telkom Do [...]