There are desktops, machines made for home use, and then there are gaming computers, machines made to pump out so many polygons it would make your brain melt.

A gaming computer is just that - a computer built with high performance in mind. In this case, we'll be more concerned with the performance of games as opposed to the performance of a database. While every computer has the same basic components, a gaming computer will be more concerned with four essential components:

Motherboard

The first major component to look for when building a new computer, the motherboard is critical when buidling a gaming computer as its performance will dictate the performance of the rest of the machine. When looking for a motherboard you'll need to keep three major points in mind:

1. What type of CPU does it support?
2. What type and how much RAM does it support?
3. Is this a high quality component?

When looking at motherboards always keep these three questions in mind. The first two are obvious - you need to know how fast of a processor you can get, and how much memory you can have - but the third question may be the most important. By looking at product reviews you can estimate how long you can expect your motherboard to last, and when you're building a high end gaming rig you'll want your motherboard to last as long as possible - there are some horror stories of motherboards costing several hundred dollars but only lasting a few months!

Processor (CPU)

The processor is, obviously, the brains of the gaming computer. The faster the processor, the faster a program can run. With modern processors you have three main factors to worry about:

1. Number of cores
2. Speed of each core
3. Amount of Cache

Modern processors actually have multiple "brains" (cores) built into them, which means you are essentially able to do more with the same clock speed. It's pretty cool, but software hasn't come far enough to take advantage of allo of the cores being jammed into the space of one processor. So, how many cores should your processor have? As many as you can afford.

The reason for this is simple: your investment needs to last as long as possible, and that means buying the highest end you can buy today. It's a bit of a pain in the butt, but in the end it's worth it - especially a few years down the road when games are going to require that you have a multi-core processor.

The speed of each core matters less and less these days - modern processors hit a wall around 4GHz and never got past it. Essentially this means that all high end processors are going to have roughly the same clock speed. What you should pay careful attention to is the amount of cache on board.

Memory cache on a processor is critical to high performance. 2MB of cache is nice, but 4MB is better. The more cache you have, the more instructions can be cached on the processor, which means less time will be spent retrieving information from RAM.

Graphics Card (GPU)

The graphics card is often mistekn as the number one priority in a gaming rig. While it is an essential component, the processor and motherboard are far more important for overall performance; but, the graphics card is still an essential component that needs to be considered carefully. There's really only one question you need to answer:

Do I want to play todays games at a decent framerate, or tomorrows games at a decent framerate?

If you are just looking to play a specific set of games then you may be able to get away with a low or mid-range graphics card; however, if you're looking for top-notch performance today, and acceptable performance tomorrow, you're going to want to invest in a high-end card.

The main reason to get a high end card should not be for performance. When buying a graphics card you should consider how often you're willing to upgrade. You could spend $200 on a new card once a year, or you could spend $800 on a new card every 4-6 years.

Memory (RAM)

The final "must have" consideration for a gaming computer is the memory. There are two rules when buying RAM for a gaming computer:

1. The faster the better.
2. The more, the better.

When building a gaming computer, speed counts. If you have a choice between 4GB of fast RAM or 8Gb of slow RAM, choose the fastest RAM possible; if you can get 8GB of fast RAM, that's even better.

As a general rule of thumb, if you want everything to run faster and smoother, more RAM is essential. For 64-bit machines I recommend no less than 8GB of RAM (16GB if your motherboard supports it).

How to Build a Gaming Computer