GAMING COMPUTERS

STORAGE

You want to make sure you get a hard drive with enough space to install your games, but you also don't want to skimp on speed. A solid-state drive is ideal for speed -- everything from operating system boot times to loading new levels in a game will be sped up dramatically. However, SSDs are are smaller in capacity and more expensive than traditional hard drives. Therefore, a popular combination is a SSD for your operating system, programs, and favorite games, along with a second hard drive for storage space and room for more games if you run out of room on the SSD.

KEEP COOL

You need to carefully consider the cooling of your gaming computer, especially if you are interested in overclocking. Most systems we ship are air-cooled (which is fine for the vast majority of users), but if you want to push the processor beyond its normal specifications then liquid-cooling is advised. We offer CPU-only liquid cooling which is very reasonable in cost, as well as more complete cooling setups which can also care for the video cards, but in turn costs more and makes upgrading or changing parts out more difficult.

SPECIALIZATION

Different genres and styles of games tend to have different performance requirements. For example, first-person-shooters tend to be most demanding: they involve constant movement, and high frame rates are critical to ensure smooth gameplay and the ability to take out enemies quickly. Strategy games, on the other hand, tend to have less going on visually at any given time; as such, they don't put as much of a load on the video card. Microsoft's Flight Simulator X is another beast altogether: once you have a certain level of video card anything beyond that is wasted, and the differences between brands of video chipsets and drivers makes a much bigger difference than raw processing power. Puget Systems stays on top of current games and what gaming PC configurations serve them best, so you don't have to!