Killing my console

I was more curious about what overclocking is being new to the computer world the only thing i really know about it is it heats up components but makes more power than normally possible.

A little late here, but if you're on an extreme budget think about this:
Lurk craigslist/kijiji in your area.
Sometimes you can find parts for a steal, people getting rid of old parts (2600K?) older prebuilts, and especially used servers.
Now if you're lucky, you'll find an old Nahelem server. These are a few years old, but will only be down 20% from a modern i5. In london here, I've seen some go for as low as $200. If you land one of these with around 8GB of ram, you're set. Spend the rest of your cash on a good graphics card like a 380X or used 290X. Down the road you can get an SSD or more RAM as an upgrade path.

Just make sure it's a quad core at least 2 GHz, supports DDR3 and has at least one 16x PCIe slot.

Good luck, man!

Honestly that's pretty much the short and long of it. You can find guides pretty readily for how overclock the CPU in the BIOS for most motherboards. Some manufacturers nowadays also have software that will help you overclock the CPU.

I have found that it can be kinda frustrating to try to learn to overclock without a specific part in mind. e.i. its a lot easier to find an Intel i5 4670k overclocking guide than a generic overclocking guide. If you think you'd like to overclock, I would just pick out the parts that are in your budget and research how to overclock with those specific parts. In particular look into how overclocking works on the motherboard and CPU you select.

One big thing to keep in mind is that you will need an aftermarket cooler, as the stock cooler can't dissipate the heat generated by the overclocked cpu. Look into overclocking air cooling solutions from makers like Noctua and Cooler Master. There are also all in one liquid cooling units from manufactures like Corsair, Cooler Master, and NZXT.

Just make sure if Its your first computer build that you know the first two steps.

  1. Take the sides off and put them in another room. THEY WILL GET SCRATCHED

  2. BEFORE YOU PUT IN ANYTHING ELSE INSTALL THE I/O SHIELD You are going to be so mad if you get your system all installed and then realize its not there and have to take it back out.

EDIT I have done both

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I started out wanting windows for my pc build, but i've heard alot about linux do you guys recommend using that for an OS?

Really depends on what you want to use the machine for. You can always install it and if you want windows install that later as dual boot.

But if you want to use the machine for gaming then pretty much has to be windows right now. You can take a look on steam or GOG at the library of games that are available on Linux.

Hes not trolling, On xbox 360 you can pull the hard drive and remove the plastic casing to get a sata drive, also works on ps3 and next gen consoles. Just wipe it and your good to go

Yep. They're just 2.5 inch mechanical drives. I didn't say that you couldn't, just that you shouldn't.

I recently built a custom console killing pc for a customer of mine. The pc was designed to fit his criteria of 1. can be played from the couch 2. is similar size to a console, and 3. is similar price to a console.
He was very satisfied with it, the only problem we encountered during the build were some thermal issues and for some reason his gpu doesn't want to talk to his TV over HDMI. If you'd like I could send you the notes and parts for his built so you can do it yourself. I'd offer my services but I only work locally. Off the top of my head without checking I believe his build came out to be around 580$. It was a bit more expensive because he insisted on getting wifi with it.

Not sure if you have already decided but, a few good ways to protect your pc:

Run an ad blocker (ublock origin) and if you really want a noscript addon too.

Run malwarebytes once a month/3 months or pay the 24USD for a year sub to make it an active scanner.

Since malwarebytes doesn't stop everything run a lightweight AV such as panda cloud av free. It is highly ranked and does well, I have used it for years. It does have an ad that pops up ever so often to try to get you to buy the full version, but I have never had it do so when in a game. and is typically just when you first login /startup the pc and is very small, smaller than the windows 10 upgrade popup

I want to thank everybody for their input and help my build should be done in a few weeks and it will be running windows 7 i might upgrade to 10 soon

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.50GHz
Manufacturer Intel
Speed 2.5 GHz
Number of Cores 4
Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Manufacturer NVIDIA
Chipset GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Dedicated Memory 2048 MB
Total Memory 4.0 GB
Memory 6.0 GB
Operating System Microsoft Windows 10 (build 10586), 64-bit
Service Pack 0
Size 64 Bit

My computer is built its not very powerful but is was cheap and gets the job done i pretty happy now that ive killed my console and i already love PC gaming. Thanks Tek Syndicate for showing me the beauty of PC gaming.

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It's totally possible, but I don't think it's worth it. The read and write speeds + size are going to be horrendous. A used hard drive from ebay would fair much better.

Good that you're happy with it, @ztk3294.


Closed to prevent future necroing.