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You have someone in your life who loves gaming. You want to get them a gift. But you can’t get them Black Ops II, because they snatched that up the day it came out. Boost their gear arsenal instead.
Stick 32 GB of memory in your mate’s gaming system, and they’ll be sorted for years to come. This is probably the best upgrade you can give a PC gamer, pound for pound. £235 from Amazon.
Water cooling makes your gaming rig cold and quiet–every gamer wants that. But not every gamer wants to go to the trouble of configuring a custom, home-designed water cooling rig. This all-in-one kit gives you the benefits of a liquid system without all the planning headaches. £122 from Amazon.
PC gamers live and die (virtually) by their mice. And if they’re still getting killed with this thing in their hands, they have nothing to blame but their own proclivity to being (virtually) shot in the head. The Mamba boasts as many customisable buttons as you can stick on a mouse without ruining it, fits comfortably in most hands, and has killer precision to line up that next shot. And hey, it’s wireless. £101 from Amazon.
Why would anyone need an iPod when their phone is an MP3 player? Because iOS is the best casual mobile platform in existence. Sorry Nintendo. The Touch is capable of web browsing, snapping pics, and installing almost any kind of app you can stick on an iPhone, but the thing is also a powerful pocket gaming monster, perfect for trips or toilet breaks. £239 from Amazon.
The fastest broadband connection in the world is utterly useless unless it’s going through a good router–and a good router is a must for any online gamer. This beast will handle all the connections and devices you throw at it, and because it uses Wireless AC tech (so new it’s not even used by anything yet), you’ll be racking up kills for years into the future. £114 from Amazon.
The Kinect is an amazing piece of tech marred only by the fact that it’s a pain to actually put in your home. With this little mount, you can stick it on the wall above your TV and forget it’s even there. £5 from Amazon.
Sony’s own gaming earphones are pretty damn fantastic, combining snappy voice chat, cans that won’t crush your ears and, above all, sound quality that’s worth sparing your roommate’s sanity. It’s not the same as a real surround system, but it’s probably the next best thing. £100 from Amazon.
Sorry I fail to get the point iPod touch for a PC gamer? Really?
Article title says Gamer, not PC gamer.
Ah gotchya but iPod over NINTENDO DS? Are you serious!
In terms of game choice, price, quality and functionality the iPod Touch kicks the crap out of the DS and leaves it bleeding and weeping in the corner.
I disagree, DS is a proper console, iPod is not.
There are plenty of controllers you can buy for the ipod with the money you would be saving on overpriced ds games
Is this Darrell raving about an Apple product? Is this Gizrape? (Grape?!)
Spot on mate
His account clearly has been hacked.
Ha, when I got to iPod Touch I thought to myself “oh, cue comments about there being an Apple device in here”. The article is about the gamer, not the PC gamer. How about the Kinect mount? How about the PS3 headphones? Just forgot those as you were dazzled by the Apple product eh?
Aye, jumped straighted to conclusion by skimming past them
Why 32GB??? What is the point? Even the most hardcore of PC gamers will struggle to use even half of that. Waste of money IMO. Just get 8GB or 16GB if you really must.
You can never have too much memory in my experience. In 3 or 4 years people will be wondering how they managed with a measly 16GB.
Except most verisons of windows can’t use that much, heck even the most common 64 bit version of windows 7 can only use 16, 32 just isn’t useful right now
4gb is plenty for low end and still do plenty of stuff, 8gb perfectly fine for the majority, 16gb if you want it to really last you a while (most really wouldn’t need it) and any higher will be if you know that you need it, otherwise no, it’s a waste. Plus you can get ddr3 for less than £65. DDR4 I believe will be used for intels next chips so if you plan on upgrading you’ll need new ram. There just isn’t any need for such insane amounts of memory. RAM is simple to upgrade anyway, buy what you need and if you ever need more, add more sticks.
I logged in just to mention this…… more than 16gb will not be needed for next 5-6 years for running games.
As per comment below, I can still run every game with the 8gb ddr2 1333 ram i bought 2 years ago on max settings, let alone 16gb of ddr3 1666+
The best gift for an obsessive gamer would be an Android phone (assuming they don’t have one) and an Ingress invite. That way they can go OUTSIDE, get some exercise, see the sun, meet real people and still obsessively game.
Are you mad??? Go outside, get exercise.
Shirley you jest?
I am not jesting and don’t call me Shirley. You reaction to the concept of getting exercise in the outside world just proves my point.
Tried that one. You know out there you get unplanned showers and the waters not even heated! It’s crazy, no wonder they invented indoors.
Damn I picked the wrong day to give up the gym!
Also the NPCs give me funny looks when I ask the way to every type of shop as soon as I enter a town.
Kinect Wall Mount?
Mamba?
iPod Touch?
32GB RAM?
…
Is there an echo in here?
The Corsair H100i or H100 hydro series are a much better choice of all in one liquid coolers for the same price.
These are terrible – the RAM most of all. £235 for 32GB of RAM, with ridiculous and inconvenient heatspreaders no less? 32GB of Samsung Green would cost you £143.07 and perform far better.
Man I sure wish they’d hurry up and add basic functionality to this site. Where’s mah edit button?!
…Of course, not that a gamer needs 32GB, nor could you fit 32GB of Samsung Green on anything but an X79 mobo. Still, you can pick up 4x8GB for less than £120
Personally I think this (*) is better ram I have mine at 1800Mhz and it runs super cool and takes up little space compared to normal ram.
* http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006507R7I/ref=asc_df_B006507R7I10992556?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
Better than what? The Kingston? Probably. The Samsung? No (People have been able to get it beyond 2700MHz – no typo).
You realise you can buy an identically specced 32GB of 1600mhz DDR 3 for less than £75 right? Just grab 2x http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9-1600MHz-Vengeance-Memory/dp/B004CRSM4I/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1355336956&sr=8-7
That’s actually for 16gb, but yeah that would be much better value.
The Kinect Wall Mount is additional fun because it gives you an excuse to drill holes in your wall. May want to look up some proper wall plugs though as the ones that come with it seem designed to bore holes in your plaster.
R.A.T. 7 (or 9) > Razor Mamba Elite
iPod Touch. Are you serious? There are two good reasons why that’s a bad idea.
1. You may as well pay the extra and get a full-blown iPhone.
2. You can’t realistically play anything on it but dedicated touch-controlled games. For example, GTA Vice City simply doesn’t control properly on an iPhone.