Building a gaming/development PC

[Rodney]

Hi,

As I'm going to start building my new gaming/development pc in the next few weeks I figured this might be a good place to get some recommendations (or what kit I should avoid). This might also prove useful for new gamers coming here in the future.

My current PC is not too bad, it plays an excellent quakelive and is a core2duo 2.66, 2g ram and 512mb nvidia 9500gt but it's not so good at UDK.

I haven't really done much research but processor wise I'm currently thinking along the lines of a Quad Core Q6600 or core i5?

I'm tempted to get one of those SFF cases as they look good but I'm worried about overheating. Anyone tried these or know if they are bad news?

Also anyone found a wireless mouse that has a decent battery life under excessive use?

[Stuart]

The UDK website says you need about 8gig ram for development so maybe you should just upgrade the ram instead of building a new pc? would probably cost about £180 for 2 x 4 gig ram sticks but check the crucial website for actual prices.

Not sure about the mouse but you can buy rechargable batteries.

[Rodney]

That would be an excellent money saver but unfortunately my motherboard is too old and has a limit of 4gig.

[Thomas]

(12-03-2011 11:45 AM)Rodney Wrote:  That would be an excellent money saver but unfortunately my motherboard is too old and has a limit of 4gig.

Ive been looking to see if theres such a thing as external RAM... but no go there. Looks like if you want more than 4 gigs a new motherboard is the way to go.

Yet again the need for an office and new hardware is illustrated.

[Rodney]

You can use some usb memory sticks for extrernal ram with vista "ReadyBoost" but it never really caught on. Think it was probably too slow.

Researching today, core i5 seems the way to go.

So far: 8gig core i5.

Next graphics card, anyone?