G4TVs “Ultimate Gaming PC” is Ultimately Wrong

“How-To” guides are popular because people like direction. This is especially true when it comes to guides for building a new PC, especially an “ultimate gaming PC”. Techgage’s Senior Editor Greg King gave me a shout earlier, after he saw a segment on G4TechTV for accomplishing just that. Of course, most of you who frequent this site don’t need a guide on which parts to purchase, but that’s besides the point of this news posting.

With Morgan Webb behind the camera, it’s hard to not listen to what she has to say. How often do good looking girls chat about computer hardware? Regardless, throughout the video, she lists various components that are needed to build an ultimate gaming rig. Some parts are great choices, such as the Antec 900 chassis, eVGA 680i (for SLI-support) and Intel’s Quad-Core QX6850 (since 680i doesn’t support 45nm). Other components include Corsair 2GB XMS3 Dominator memory, 2x 8800GT’s, CM air CPU cooler, Raptor 150GB, etc.

Though it sounds like a killer machine, there are a few problems. First, they recommend an eVGA 680i board, and then minutes later suggest $725 DDR3 RAM that will not even work in it. What I also gain from the video is that high-end RAM makes a bigger difference with gaming than GPUs do. While most components are actually “high-end”, for the GPU they chose two mid-range 8800GT cards. These are solid cards, but are far from being ultimate, and would also result in huge bottlenecks with big resolutions.

What should we take from this? Well, its been quite a while since G4 merged with TechTV and things sure don’t seem to be getting better. Oh, and don’t believe everything you see on TV.

Source: G4TV.com