Need a Battlefield 3 computer? Battlefield 3 is one of the funnest PC games to come along recently. It’s also not kind to older computers. Fear not for I will share my Battlefield 3 computer build with you.

PreBuilt Computers

Are you lazy, or rich? Both perhaps? If money is no object you can find some prebuilt computers that will run Battlefield 3 with ease. Here are a few worth checking out.

Pheonix Ultimate Gaming Computer with the Intel Core i5-2500K
If you have $1,400 to spend this PC will save you from having to put everything together yourself. This machine offers solid frame rates in BF3.

CyberpowerPC Gamer Infinity GLC950 Desktop Computer

A touch on the expensive side at $1,575. This computers GeForce GTX 570 will handle all the shine of BF3.

Build Your Own

My favorite part of PC gaming is putting a sick computer together. It’s easy to lose yourself and overspend when picking out parts. This guide will focus on balancing out performance and price.

CPU

Intel Core i5-2500 3.3 GHz
The I5 2500k is nice quad core CPU. This is what I use in my PC. It’s a great CPU for the $230 and  under price range. BF3 is a very video card heavy game so we don’t need to go  nuts the CPU.

Video Card

EVGA GeForce GTX 570 1280 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0
This is the most important part of a Battlefield 3 computer. BF3 was designed to have your video card doing most of the work. You have to shell out a few bucks if you want to run BF3 well. You’ll need to spend atleast $200 to get decent FPS. My recommended GTX 570 costs about $350 and will run BF3 with good FPS.

Power Supply

Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 700-Watt
The power supply will feed your video card so don’t skimp on this. We don’t want a cheap $20 power supply feeding our $350 video card. At about $70 the extreme power plus is a great deal for this build.

RAM

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB)

Battlefield 3 is a big game so your going to want some good RAM. You’ll need atleast 4 gigs to run smoothly. I play with 4 gigs but 8 gigs can only help.

HardDrive

Seagate Barracuda 7200 500 GB SATA 6.0

There’s two ways to go for hard drives. Solid state drives(SSD) and the normal. SSD is more expensive and faster. It makes your game load faster, and your PC boot almost instantly. If you decide to go SSD it’s a good idea to two get since they are pretty small storage wise at the moment. I went with a normal hard drive in my build because the price difference is huge.

Motherboard

ASRock P67 Pro3 B3 Intel P67 ATX
Now we need something to bring it all together. This motherboard is compatible with all the stuff I’ve listed. If you decide to swap things out from this guide make sure they are compatible with it.

Case

LEXA S Crafted Series Black Steel Mid Tower

Cases mostly come down to aesthetics and air flow. If it looks nice and has 2-4 fans for cooling your good. This is the case I use, it does work.

Monitor

BenQ XL2410T Black 23 inch

This is the most overlooked aspect of PC gaming. Most monitors are terrible for gaming. They lag, have ghosting, or limit you to 60hz. There are LCD monitors specifically designed for high performance. I won’t use a monitor unless it has a 2ms response time and 120hz refresh rate. If you want to be serious about PC gaming you have to get one of these. Spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new PC means nothing if your monitor is trash. A good 120hz monitor is going to run you atleast $350.

Battlefield 3 Computer – BF3 Tips