{"id":1979,"date":"2013-04-30T10:23:02","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T14:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nccomputertech.com\/?p=1979"},"modified":"2013-04-30T10:23:02","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T14:23:02","slug":"ars-technica-system-guide-gaming-boxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2013\/04\/30\/ars-technica-system-guide-gaming-boxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ars Technica System Guide: Gaming Boxes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2013\/04\/ars-technica-system-guide-gaming-boxes-april-2013\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/nccomputertech.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/system-guide-gaming-apr13.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since the early 2000s, the Ars System Guides have been helping those interested become &#8220;budding, homebuilt system-building tweakmeisters.&#8221; This series is a resource for building computers to match any combination of budget and purpose.<br \/>\nThe main Ars System Guide is great for what it is\u2014an updated, step-by-step look at the best components for an all-around desktop build. But even this beast has some limitations and a few gaps. And if our System Guide build got much bigger, it might not ever get published.<br \/>\nIn particular, there are sizeable gaps between the Budget Box (our low-end, affordable build) and the Hot Rod (that &#8220;just right&#8221; bowl of build porridge). Quite frankly, there&#8217;s also an enormous gap between the Hot Rod and the God Box (where money is no obstacle). But if you do a focus shift from capable-all-around boxes with gaming capability to boxes that are purely gaming focused, you have an equally seismic shift. There&#8217;s where the newest System Guide comes in. Meet the special Gaming Boxes.<br \/>\nThe goal of Gaming Boxes is two-fold. First, we want to help build boxes that are the best gaming performance for the money. Second, we want to do so while highlighting different price points than what we see in the main System Guide. Let&#8217;s get to it.<br \/>\nShrinking differences<br \/>\nThe differences between the specialty Gaming Boxes and others may be smaller than some think, though. Many gamers have large collections of downloaded games, which means Gaming Boxes actually need fairly large amounts of storage. The shrinking cost of LCD monitors, affordable SSDs, fast video cards, and other components all mean that the adjustments in a build from a focused gaming box to a more well-rounded box aren&#8217;t all that bad on the wallet.<br \/>\nMeet the boxes (and their requirements)<br \/>\nThe Gaming Boxes give a greater emphasis on gaming performance than the boxes in the main System Guide. Hot Rod-class performance on a Budget Box price, or so goes the clich\u00e9. For those who desire something more than the Hot Rod but don&#8217;t need all the storage or processing power of the God Box (and with a stronger bent on value), the Gaming Boxes can provide that, too.<br \/>\nPrevious Ars system guides<br \/>\nArs forums: Gaming Box discussion<br \/>\nFebruary 2013: Ars Bargain Box<br \/>\nDecember 2012: Ars System Guide<br \/>\nThe Value Gaming Box sits between the Budget Box and Hot Rod for price but aims for Hot Rod-level gaming performance. With gaming as the primary focus, things like low noise might take a hit. However, modern components today tend to have energy efficiency designed in, so the power and noise penalties aren&#8217;t too bad. A target price between $1,000-1,200 seems to be an attractive spot for the Value Gaming Box. It budgets for a reasonable CPU and GPU plus a small(ish) SSD while leaving flexibility for individual builders to bump up a component or two if budgets allow.<br \/>\nThe Performance Gaming Box has many similarities to the Hot Rod, only done bigger and faster. The base components making up the Hot Rod today actually look quite solid, so bumping up some areas (such as CPU or memory) end up being a relatively poor value. Keeping those in the same class as the Hot Rod and focusing on the parts that matter for more gaming panache\u2014the video cards and monitor in particular\u2014seems to find the best balance between performance and money. Other components do end up tweaked as needed to handle the increased power draw of a pair of high-end video cards in SLI\/Crossfire (plus these can accommodate more gaming-specific demands).<br \/>\nValue is still a key, and to that end, the Performance Gaming Box ends up targeted somewhere around $2,500. This forces some difficult choices. Bumping up both frame rates and resolutions can cause a serious strain on the video subsystem as well as significantly increasing the cost of the monitors necessary to support higher frame rates, higher resolutions, or both. Needless to say, things can quickly get out of hand as we found in our time searching for reasonable configurations.<br \/>\nGaming peripherals<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2013\/04\/ars-technica-system-guide-gaming-boxes-april-2013\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/nccomputertech.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/04\/logitech_drivingforcegt.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Full Story: <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2013\/04\/ars-technica-system-guide-gaming-boxes-april-2013\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ars Technica System Guide: Gaming Boxes | Ars Technica<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since the early 2000s, the Ars System Guides have been helping those interested become &#8220;budding, homebuilt system-building tweakmeisters.&#8221; This series [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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Years Of Video Game Consoles in 10 Minutes","author":"NCCT","date":"December 8, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/27_xEN5srVI Believe it or not, the home video game console has been around for nearly 49 years. Yes, that\u2019s almost half a century. Since 1972, we\u2019ve seen over 30 consoles created and sold in North America, which is a ridiculous amount of consoles. That\u2019s an average of more than one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/27_xEN5srVI\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9934,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2025\/05\/16\/8000-disaster-prebuilt-pc-corsair-origin-fail-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":1979,"position":1},"title":"$8000* Disaster Prebuilt PC &#8211; Corsair &#038; Origin Fail Again","author":"NCCT","date":"May 16, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mW5WQY7Ym0I In this review of the Corsair \/ Origin Genesis Pre-Built Gaming PC with an RTX 5090, we're tearing down the computer, running a cost comparison, benchmarking thermals, acoustics, power, and frequency, and looking at the overall build quality. Unfortunately for Origin and Corsair (which owns Origin), this build is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/mW5WQY7Ym0I\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9908,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2025\/02\/11\/fake-frames-tested-dlss-4-0-mfg-4x-nvidias-misleading-review-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":1979,"position":2},"title":"&#8220;Fake Frames&#8221; Tested | DLSS 4.0, MFG 4X, &#038; NVIDIA&#8217;s Misleading Review Guide","author":"NCCT","date":"February 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Nh1FHR9fkJk We talk about NVIDIA's DLSS 4.0 multi-frame generation (MFG), NVIDIA's weird decisions on testing tools, differences in transformer vs. CNN (convolutional neural network) models, benchmark performance, and generated frames. Frame generation commonly gets referred to as \"artificial\" frames, \"generated\" frames, or commonly online, \"fake frames.\" This video delves into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/Nh1FHR9fkJk\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9886,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2024\/12\/08\/12gb-vram-10-faster-than-4060-and-only-249-intel-arc-battlemage-is-going-to-be-nuts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1979,"position":3},"title":"12GB VRAM, 10% faster than 4060 and only $249?? 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We also talk about the Arm vs. Qualcomm news, an AR\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hardware&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hardware","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/hardware\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/YIEJJWnXEC0\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9364,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2018\/06\/03\/this-week-in-tech-669-15-minutes-of-fun\/","url_meta":{"origin":1979,"position":5},"title":"This Week in Tech 669: 15 Minutes of Fun","author":"NCCT","date":"June 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/KQc0YlNQNfY --Apple's WWDC this week looks like it may be a disappointment for anyone hoping for new hardware. --Facebook is killing its \"Trending Topics\" section. --Teens prefer Instagram and Snapchat to Facebook; close to half are \"almost constantly\" online. --The Atari VCS is coming soon for expensive retro gaming. --Scooters\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Apple&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Apple","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/category\/apple\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/KQc0YlNQNfY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}