TechSpot PC Buying Guide

[Dateranoth]

So, I always get a lot of questions about computer upgrades and computer builds. I often refer to this for my own suggestions. Anyone looking to upgrade or build should certainly refer to this guide.  It lists builds from ~$600 all the way to ~$5000 and explains why it chose the products it did. Usually linking to reviews of the products.  It's a great place to start researching a new build.

 

http://www.techspot.com/guides/buying/

[DUBL DUECE]

Thanks for this, my oldest son wants to build his own computer and is wanting to buy stuff right away, but he has no experience with building them, I do and I work on servers all day but it has been awhile since I built my own computer and I want him to learn it himself, that site is a good start with the info and forums. Another question would be what OS do you guys use for Gaming? That is primarily what he wants to do, I just use the XBOX for gaming. I was hoping to get him interested in some Linux OS so he can learn more but do they work well with gaming, or is it better to just stay with Windows(Windows OS is all I have used).

 

Any other sites that are helpful would be appreciated as well. I could do all this my self but I really want him to learn how to do it.

[Dateranoth]

I would recommend Windows 7 (Any edition) for gaming.  He could do Linux, there are a growing number of games that support it, but most of them don't still.

 

Some Hardware review sites:

http://www.hardocp.com/

http://www.tomshardware.com/

http://www.anandtech.com

 

This is really useful for quick comparisons: http://www.anandtech.com/Bench

 

Oh, and if he wants to dig through forum posts he can find really good info and help here: http://www.xtremesystems.org

[Skylark95]

+1 for Techspot and Tom's Hardware. Tom's hardware also does articles every month for the best GPU and CPU for the money and gives different tier based on your budget.