Building the Ultimate Gaming Tower - Part 1
It's a gamer's dream to build their own sweetheart of a gaming computer. I have 30 years experience in this field and I'm A+ certified. I have some free time on my hands, so I thought I'd write a how-to guide. There is no right or wrong way to approach this, but my approach should yield a very satisfying result.
There are countless ways to start with building your dream machine. Most people start with "should I go with an Intel or an AMD processor?". Personally I don't think this is the right starting point. Your number one enemy in a top-end gaming system is heat (or too much of it). Therefore, my approach to a custom build may differ from others. The first step in building your dream machine is the case and ventilation. Basically look for a case that is large enough for a full size ATX motherboard (more on that later), but suffice it to say taller and thicker is better for several reasons. A taller case will have room for more fans, both front and back. It'll support more hard drives, dvd/blu-ray drives, and other options such as digital fan control. The ideal tower should be a full ATX tower with excellent ventilation. The other thing to look for is built in USB ports and headphone/microphone ports. A thicker case will allow for a larger heat-sink and cooling fan on your processor.
In this post, I'll mainly focus on ventilation. Ventilation is basically the system used to blow cool air into the tower and remove heat from critical system components. Ideally you want a high pressure environment inside the case - that is, more air coming in the front than what is blown out the back. Ventilation is a balancing act between creating an air purifier (dust collector) and sufficient cooling. You can over ventilate and have system sounding like an F18 taking off from a carrier deck, or you can under-ventilate and you find your case fills with dust rapidly, shortening the life of your processor and video cards. also steer clear of cases that look like they want to assimilate you. While these are good eye candy, they do nothing for ventilation and they make it more difficult to access your optical drives.
There are countless ways to start with building your dream machine. Most people start with "should I go with an Intel/Processor or an AMD processor. Personally I don't think this is the right starting point. Your number one enemy in a top-end gaming system is heat (or too much of it). Therefore, my approach to a custom build may differ from others. The first step in building your dream machine is ventilation. Basically look for a case that is large enough for a full size ATX motherboard (more on that later), but suffice it to say taller is better for several reasons. A taller case will have room for more fans, both front and back. It'll support more hard drives, dvd/blu-ray drives, and other options such as digital fan control. The ideal tower should be a full ATX tower with excellent ventilation. The other thing to look for is built in USB ports and headphone/microphone ports.
Figure 1: DIYPC Skyline-07-G Black/Green SECC ATX Full Tower Gaming USB 3.0 Computer Case w/ 7 x 120mm Green fans
This is one example of a nice case. It has two 120 mm fans in the front and two 120 mm fan in the back, and one 120 mm fan at the top. Remember you always want more air going in than coming out, creating high pressure in the case, preventing dust from getting a chance to settle. So with this case, the two front fans and the top fan should be drawing air in while the two back fans blow hot air out. One last note: Don't get caught up in the trap of cases that include a power supply. Of the ones that do, they usually throw in a cheap, low wattage supply that will likely need replacing anyway.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Processors (Intel or AMD)