"Bottlenecking" question

[soxamaca]

Hey people. This looks like the place to ask, so:

I'm gonna be building a gaming machine (probably around summertime) so I asked my cousin, who's crazy with computers, about how to choose parts that synergize together. He said the most important thing to do is find a budget and then match hardware within that so that none of the parts contribute more than any other part to the whole outcome. Made sense, the whole "weakest link" idea.

That said, I'm kind of computer savvy, but not enough to know the intricacies of how hardware interacts with other hardware (just how to buy parts that work).

TLDR

Are there definitive "markers" that I can look for when choosing parts so I know the system is completely optimal? Or is it more of a "feel" for how parts work that requires more knowledge?

 

[Shlouski]

It is best to work around a budget, unless you have tons of cash and can buy all the best parts anyway, easy the best parts are more expensive, usually. If its a gaming machine you want, in my opinion the two most important component are, the cpu and graphics card, not to say other components aren't important. What is your budget and are you planning on overclocking?

 

[soxamaca]

Not sure about the budget yet. I'll be looking into that more when I get my job that starts in the summer. It will probably be somewhere between $1500-2000. I have about half that saved to spend on whatever, but I want this computer to be good for a while.

I know the CPU and GPU are most important, but how will I know if one outdoes the other? Or is overclocking the solution to that problem? I'll definitely be trying it out when I get a new PC.

I haven't overclocked before, but it's been about 4 or 5 years since I've even owned a PC (currently own a Sager gaming laptop). I heard it's not too great to overclock laptops because of the heat issues, so I never tried.

I just noticed someone else here talking about nVidia's new Fermi GPUs which sound amazing. Their release price looks to be too much for my budget, but hopefully the price of them will go down $100 or more by the time I'm looking for parts.

 

[Shlouski]

Yeah, im guessing the GTX 480 is going to cost the world and at the same time not be much better than the cards we have now. I take it you need everything, mouse, keyboard, monitor..........?

 

[soxamaca]

Yea. I'll be getting everything except a mouse and speakers.

I'm thinking once the Fermi cards come out, the current top end cards will drop in price quite a bit, so that could be a good option instead. I think I'll be going with Samsung or Panasonic for a monitor and maybe Razer for a keyboard.