Initial Alpha access restricted to 64 bit OS

Only if you already have an OS installed. So with a newly built system it would not work.

By the way, I want to move this thread away from my own system, since that doesn't really help anyone.

I do want to point out another scenario. If the current computer is serviceable, just not on the latest games, it may be reasonable to assume that someone could want to not upgrade. That means that it may make sense to replace components you have already in order to end up with 2 complete systems. This may not make sense for many gamers, but those of us who have families may see the attractiveness of that option.

By the way, I really wish people would stop suggesting Linux as an alternative to paying for the Windows license. That has absolutely no place in a gaming system discussion. Yes, PA will support Linux, but many games someone most likely owns are already running on Windows and don't run on Linux.

Another thing, the Home or Home Premium editions of Windows are crap and don't belong in the discussion either. We aren't talking about minimal specs for grandma so she can e-mail and web browse on the internets.

Case ~$80 (steel case with a few bells and whistles)
PSU ~$60 (450w-500w)
CPU ~$130 (Intel i3 or AMD FX)
RAM ~$50 (8gb)
MB ~$50 (just your basic MB)
GPU ~$130 (NVidia GTX 650 or AMD Radeon 7770)
HD ~$100 (120GB SSD or 2TB HD)
total ~$600 + tax + ~$10 shipping

Some might classify this as a mid end gaming box, but it's pretty beefy. Some may shy away from that i3 or classify it as "low end", but realize that it's on par with the top end of the AMD line.

CPU Fan - Use the one that comes with the CPU. Really, it's good enough and they've gotten way better in terms of noise than they used to be. Otherwise another $40 or so. Most ship with a little thermal paste too, and dropping $100 on some exotic compound is only going to get you half a degree better cooling at the high end, application matters more.

DVD - if you've got an old PC just use the one from that. It's unlikely you'll be installing anything new on it anyways. Otherwise add $20.
Motherboard - Unless you're doing multi GPU, RAID, or need 10 USB 3.0 sockets you really don't need to get in to the $80+ range.

OS - $100 for 64 bit OEM copy of Windows 7 or 8. Or linux & wine if you're adventurous. If you're dumping your old system and have Win 7 already, you can also just deactivate that copy and reuse it.

Case - While you're at it, if you're dumping your old box you can keep your current case too, chop off $80.

Keyboard, mouse, monitor - Again, just reuse your existing stuff, especially if you have decent quality gaming gear. If you really want extra input devices, buy cheap ones for the old system, you're not going to be using it for gaming anymore anyways. Keep your current monitor, or as others have mentioned, $100 can get you a really high quality 19" panel. $150 gets you to the 22", $300 can get you a 27" if you want to go that high, though then you're looking at resolutions that might need a higher end card.

Home editions are not crap. Unless you need the windows domain, bit locker or data encryption support, you don't need more than Home.

+1

Well since we are doing a rebuild you should be able to use the old PC to setup the install media before you tear it apart.

Indeed. And you can get far better data encryption from TrueCrypt and Remote Desktop is easily replaced with Tight VNC. Active Directory support, which home users/gamers don't need anyway, is really the only reason to get Pro/Ultimate.

Well Win7 Home Premium only supports a maximum of 16GB Ram. I think it might happen that I get the urge to install 32GB for a ramdisk before a new Version of Windows appeals to me, since I won't buy Windows 8 for sure.

Apart from that... yeah I doubt there is much of a difference.

While I didn't state so in the post you responded to, I did mention earlier that I use my primary machine for games/work/school. Also, the multi-system component may have implied home network, but if not, I should mention that as well. I utilize Remote Desktop for only one machine on my network, and then I use UltraVNC to access others within it. Since I only trust myself to be cognizant of the extreme perils of the internet all of the time, the gateway machine is mine. I have its security more stringently defined than the others for that reason.

This is another excellent point. I have mentioned before that one of my motivations for investigating a new machine is due to the fact that I play Minecraft and was thinking of building a machine that could be a server for that (not always on though). Coupled with the potential of running a PA server, I probably wouldn't want to be going with small RAM and a cheap CPU/MB/Memory setup.

Some of the suggestions for systems are sufficient for some individuals, but others may want more versatility as well as desire to play in more than minimum settings.

I don't think we will see games that need more than 16 gigs of ram for several more years at least. I have yet to see one that needs more than 8 gig. And its pretty easy to drop more ram in a box or upgrade to a "better" edition of Windows 7. 64 bit Windows 8 supports 128 gigs by default and 512 gigs in the "Pro" versions.

I don't see anything there you can't do with just VNC. No need for RDP really. As for security, just get a home router with a stateful firewall and don't worry about it. Watching what you click on and install is far more important anyway. If you need to do things that most home routers can't do I would look into the DD-WRT routers from Buffalo.

I assure you that the parts I have been linking will play everything on settings quite a bit higher than "low".

By versatility I assume you mean do things besides play games. To my mind that would be workstation tasks like Photoshop, AutoCAD, and 3DS MAX. That would require much better hardware depending on what you wanted to do but I feel that this is outside the scope of what we are talking about here.

Windows 8 looks as ugly as Vista to me. I'll definitely skip it.
Also ofc no game will need that much Ram (well I wonder about 40 player PA ;D), but Ram can be used for other things. Like running VMs, using Ramdisks as speedy cache, etc.
Also just by running more applications at the same time ram can easily be filled. Closing my IDE just to play a game sucks

I have a DD-WRT flashed Linksys router I use. The problem is, that yes, I watch what I click on... I don't know that my wife does so much... :? .

Sort of, but the point I think is being missed by the minimum spec gaming systems some people are proposing is that not everyone can build a separate gaming system and workstation. Some need to build a system that can do both.

Then just swap the i3 for an i5 for another $50 and add another 8GB of RAM for another $30. All the other components can stay just the same as with the "mid end" PC. There you go, that thing should fit your needs in most cases.

Sure, it isn't the same as a $6000 dual socket workstation with Tesla card, 32 cores, 64 threads and 128GB of RAM which would be about 7-8 times faster when it comes to CAD (this is NOT true for gaming!), but it also just costs 1/10nth. Besides, if you need such a machine, thats usually also what earns your livings and your job pays for that. If not, you certainly don't need such a machine just for editing your homemade pictures and videos.

In that case the version and edition of Windows she is using and how fast her hardware is don't really mean anything.

Any system than can run real workstation tasks reasonably well can also run games pretty well. Workstation tasks are much more demanding than games are. Quadros and Firepros may not be quite as good at gaming as their gaming bred cousins but they certainly aren't bad at it either.

Internal 5.25" SATA optical drives can be had for peanuts; DVD-RWs are £15 (I'd expect maybe $20), and BD-ROMs from £25 (so maybe $30-35). It only gets expensive if you want external (USB) and/or BD-RW

I'm possibly edge-case, but as a Technet subscriber I get all my Windows install media as .ISO downloads from MS, so I have to have a machine available just to get hold of it; creating a bootable USB stick from it can be done at the same time.

I know this is a personal (and contentious) thing, and I completely understand people not liking the Metro UI. I would, however, point out that like for like, you get more with Win8 (Win8 x64 versions have at least a 128GB RAM limit versus Win7 x64 Home editions having an 8-16GB limit) as well as the base level Win8 only missing enterprise level features, unlike the Win7 Home editions.

I've been using Win8 Pro since late last year, and if you stay on the desktop it is mostly like Win7. I thought I was going to hate it, however it is surprisingly easy to get used to

Also note: the "Blue" update to Win8 (effectively Win8 service pack 1) is apparently going to add quite a lot, including an alleged capability to login direct to the desktop instead of Metro (removing one mouseclick), and the possibility of a return of the Start button in desktop mode. I feel compelled to try out the public preview when it's released towards the end of June :mrgreen:

Or we can just use a linux kernel and support so much ram we never have to look back. In reality microsoft dropped the ball with windows 8, its not "better" than windows 7 as the current improvements shave time so small that its more up to the hardware than the actual software. Also the UI changes are fairly massive and difficult to get around for average users and at best annoying for tech users. I hear everyone telling me to just install X, Y or Z to make it like windows 7, but then whats the point when I already have windows 7 ?

Eh? How do you figure? Most workstation tasks are CPU bound and most games are GPU bound. This almost sounds like the fallacy that you can speed up all processing code by throwing it at a CUDA.

Because both tasks are both CPU and GPU bound. Games are a bit more GPU bound and workstation apps are a bit more CPU bound. A workstation will generally have a beefy CPU well past what is needed for games such as an i7 or Xeon and a workstation class graphics card such as a Quadro or Firepro. While these video cards aren't quite as good at running games as their GTX and Radeon cousins they aren't exactly bad at running games either. In fact they are pretty good, they just cost more than an equivalent gaming class card.

Are we agreeing? Based on my requirements for gaming, work and school I have decided to go with an i7-4770k Haswell processor (provided the estimates are correct about the pricing being similar to current equivalents). This is probably more CPU than is needed for gaming, but does provide very good support for workstation tasks. Since I already have a 'decent' GPU: GeForce GTX 560 Ti, I can wait for the 700 series to upgrade it. This kind of setup is what I feel is a good "dual purpose" system that should last me a while.