Building a LAN rig.

[Gartley]

So, I've been gaming for longer than I care to remember and building computers out of bits for longer. Here is the thing though, about 6years ago now I got fed up of trying to keep up with the technology and now only have a vague idea of what is on the market and what works with what. Heh, I can still remember upgrading my Pentium133 to a 166.

Anyway, to the point of my thread. I'm looking at putting together a cheap and cheerful LAN rig, something that is portable above all else. My current RIG is quite literlly a monolith. Sitting dark and silent. And weighs about as much as a 10meter tall block of granit. So can anyone make any recomendations on small form cases and components for a reasonable price and performance. I dont' want nor need something that can outstrip my current rig. But can easily play games like KF and UT2k4, bassicly any LAN games. (****e like SC2 doesn't even have LAN, how messed up is that?)

 

[Lt_Kettch]

Buy a laptop

 

[Gartley]

This might sound stupid...

but I never even considered that. (For a multitude of reasons)

any particular brands that don't cost an arm and a leg?

 

[u-s-e-r]

If youre willing to wait, soon AMD releases it's new Fusion APU's (CPU and GPU integrated into one chip) which could be a pretty good balance between price, heat and performance.

 

[Ender]

Might be a little late to the party but pcper has a list for different budgets.
PC Perspective Hardware Leaderboard

Like you i use to keep up with everything buy now its nice to just look at the list and find the best price.

 

[Forssen]

Might be a little late to the party but pcper has a list for different budgets.
PC Perspective Hardware Leaderboard

Like you i use to keep up with everything buy now its nice to just look at the list and find the best price.

Looks okay buy but for a relative cheap graphic card I would go for the new Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 or HD 5830 xtreme. Yes, it's an old generation but they are re-released for a very nice price kicking butt with everything else in the same price range. They have also been made smaller so you can easier fit them into a smaller case.

http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Rade...5ATI/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1303955869&sr=8-4http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Rade...5ATI/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1303955869&sr=8-4

Couldn't find the 5830 on amazon, by far the graphic card right now that gives you most performance per buck.

 

[lammah]

A few months ago I started researching gaming laptop that still remained portable and reasonably powerfull.
I was looking for sub 15" laptops as they are much more portable. I never understood the purpose of 16" and bigger laptops, its just too big to be portable and have almost no battery life.

My search finished with :
- HP Envy 14
- Lenovo Y460
- Sony Viao Z

I finally bought the Envy 14 because I got a $500 coupon and had the chance to get a 1600x900 radiance screen when it was available again for a few days in january. You would be surprised how few laptops below 15.6" have a screen better than a 1366x768.

I am very happy with it i can play KF , Left 4 Dead and other FPS's. Framerate hardly ever drops below 60 (as long as I stay in medium or low).
And yet that baby is highly portable (only a bit over 5 pounds) and the battery life when not using GPU is over 4 hours (with an i3 or i5, not i7).