planning to make a gaming cafe<--need advise

hello everyone.. this is my first post, so be gentle..

i've been planning to build a gaming cafe with around 10 units at first but will buy more units when my loan from the bank gets approved.. basically, i am looking for a cheap quad core build, around £200-250.. without the O.S and dvd drive.. there are plenty of cheap quad core for sale in ebay with free postage..

here's the specs:
AMD Athlon II X4 645 QUAD CORE
Asus M4A78LT-M Motherboard
500gb 16mb Cache Serial ATA Hard Drive
4gb DDR3 1333 PC10660 Memory
24x DVD Writer
this mobo has an integrated ati radeon 3000..
this is a £239 build.. and i bet since i'll buy this in ebay, i can ask for a discount for multiple purchases..

i was planning to buy another 512 mb video card(£20-30) to enable hybrid crossfire. can you suggest the video card needed to enable crossfirex?

any suggestions? or criticisms?
thank you in advance..

hmm i doubt the 760G chipset will be up to gaming duties as my 785G can barley scrape it, also, seen as people wont be installing their own games, you might aswell buy one external dvd drive and update the machines as and when you need to.

Why go quad core? 99% of games now use 2 cores. Why not go with phenom X2 550 BE? It'll save you some money.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0327512

$87 for the 555 BE. I currently have a 550 and it runs all the games I throw around easily.

If you are going to be doing a gaming cafe, you need a gaming graphics card. Using onboard+some janky card isnt going to cut it. People wont pay money to play a game that is slow due to hardware, they will go elsewhere.

Id suggest putting in atleast GTX460s/ATI 5770 at MINIMUM. Try for maybe some GTX470/GTX560 or ATI 5850/5870/6950. Also, go for the highest clock CPU as you really shouldnt be overclocking the machines.

And contrary to what runs w/ 4 cores, more and more new games are running 4+ core capabilities and future games are being built around 4 cores. You arent going to want to waste money now on dual core if you want to plan for the future. Id suggest getting quad cores that are 3ghz.

Keep in mind, you are going to try and run a business based around gaming. You dont want your hardware making your customers unhappy as itll be all for nothing. Not all games need whats above to run, but how many people will be coming in wanting to play COD:BO, BF:BC2, Crysis2 and so on? What about the upcoming BF3? Its going to be a huge hit and youll need the hardware to run it.

thanks for the replies..

that set up that i posted is the cheapest i can find find in ebay.. and i thought that quad cores are better than dual cores, c2d and triple cores(i'm noob.. )
anyways, i'm not really after using max settings on every game i throw at it.. low and medium settings is fine for me as long as the units wont freeze up/lag.. i'm also after that mobo( M4A78LT-M) because it will save me some cash on the electricity bills(don't know how much)..

as for games, most people from my country(in asia), people there mostly will just play dota all stars, counter strike, some online games, and rarely, those pc killers that needs the best and most expensive hardware you can find..

any suggestions with the specs that i have written that needs improvement?
i really need inputs before i buy stuff.. as these machines will be good for the nexxt 2-3 years, it would be too expensive to upgrade a part often,

thanks guys..

Maybe Im not following, but why would you want to run games on low/medium settings AT BEST? What happens when players who want to play more demanding games come in expecting something more and spread the word that your lan cant handle games?

You are looking to jump into a BUSINESS. Business' arent cheap to start and you shouldnt look for the cheapest solutions. If Im paying for LAN time, I expect good running machines that will play the latest games on at the very least, medium settings. I dont want to pay to play some game w/ a low resolution and crap quality graphics.

People are going to come to your LAN to spend money. It takes money to make money, never forget that. And remember, word of mouth is strong. You may want to rethink your business strategy a bit if you plan on it being successful.

If you want your machines to last 2-3 years, Id suggest Intel sandybridge processors (2500 would be more/less what youd want) along w/ 6950 or GTX560 video cards at minimum. Also, 4gb of ram (low speed, high latency fine) like you already have. Go with a QUALITY power supply (a nice Corsair 550w or good quality 500w PSU would suffice since you wont be overclocking or going overboard w/ the system) to ensure you dont have issues.

I would HIGHLY suggest against XFire or SLI as this creates problems with certain games and certain machines. ITs more hassle than its worth.

doz said:

If you are going to be doing a gaming cafe, you need a gaming graphics card. Using onboard+some janky card isnt going to cut it. People wont pay money to play a game that is slow due to hardware, they will go elsewhere.

Id suggest putting in atleast GTX460s/ATI 5770 at MINIMUM. Try for maybe some GTX470/GTX560 or ATI 5850/5870/6950. Also, go for the highest clock CPU as you really shouldnt be overclocking the machines.

And contrary to what runs w/ 4 cores, more and more new games are running 4+ core capabilities and future games are being built around 4 cores. You arent going to want to waste money now on dual core if you want to plan for the future. Id suggest getting quad cores that are 3ghz.

Keep in mind, you are going to try and run a business based around gaming. You dont want your hardware making your customers unhappy as itll be all for nothing. Not all games need whats above to run, but how many people will be coming in wanting to play COD:BO, BF:BC2, Crysis2 and so on? What about the upcoming BF3? Its going to be a huge hit and youll need the hardware to run it.

Click to expand...

Excellent post here. Quadcore or go home. 5870/460 or go home home.

maybe the situation here in the u.K and the Americas is different from Asia.. back home, people wont usually complain about the graphics, they would certainly complain about freezes/lags..

my set up currently is not the best there is but i am running multiple programs at a time, dual monitors, can play a few games at low/medium/high settings,. not too bad for a £230 machine and this is not even a gaming pc.

my pc:
amd athlon II x4 630
asrock n68c-s ucc
geil 4bg ddr3 memory
nvidia geforce 210
as you can see, the mobo is not good for gaming as far as reviews goes but this machine still performs very well.. and i thought that if i changed the mobo into an asus M4A78LT-M, it would be a big step.. what do you think?

again, i dont expect to play games at max settings, i.e COD , and other pc killers, as long as i get good frame rates, even if it's in the low or medium settings..

and also, can anyone recommend a good PSU that's not that expensive? thanks..

Motherboards have very little to do with gaming...especially if you are not overclocking. That gt210 is still a lot better than that onboadd card.

Im with dos.. go big or go home. A mediocre system by todays standards are going to suck in a year or two.rom now.

Save your money for when you can afford to do this right.

kfc4vr said:

hello everyone.. this is my first post, so be gentle.. ...

Click to expand...

to OCF.

While therre are a lot of folks here who know a lot about gaming rigs, I am not one of them. But I still have some thoughts on your plans.

I highly recommend that you build a prototype of your gaming machine before you build ten. Any mistakes will cost 1/10 as much. Put the games on it that you plan to play and use it as you expect your customers to use it. Be honest about how happy it makes you. Share it with friends and ask them for their honest opinion if they would pay money for the experience. And then try to figure out what you need to do to future proof it for as long as you want to use these before you have to buy new H/W.

Also think about the time involved in building 10 PCs. What's that worth if you have to hire a technician to do it? How far do you plan to scale up and will you have to hire a tech?

How reliable is your ebay supplier. If they can supply 10, can they supply 100? How far do you plan to scale up?

Have you put together a business plan. That's the most important thing you need to do. If you don't know how to do a business plan, you really need to learn.

Good luck with your venture!

Btw good luck with your cafe some dont succeed but the ones that do are located in good locations.

Yes, I have to agree that quad cores are more future proof. Dual cores like the 555 will do for NOW but 3 years down the line games will be optimized for quad core usage. Thus i highly recommend sandy bridge 2500k. No other chips except the $1000 990x 980x i7 can come close to it. The 2600k is not worth it if you are purely gaming imo. Micocenter has them for dirt *** cheap like $179:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0354589

You do need to invest in video cards also. The geforce 560ti twin frozr II are especially good for gaming hours and hours and still remain very cool. The custom dual fans and heatpipes cools very well and the military grade components will not detiorate over time:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565&cm_re=560-_-14-127-565-_-Product *There's also a $20 mail in rebate going on right now for em.

How big monitors do you plan on using? If you're going with standard 1600x900 20" one 560ti would do. Maybe putting up three 22" 1920x1080 monitors and charge customers a higher hourly rate ($4 more or so/hr) you would need 2 560ti's for that.

this is something i stole of someone from a different thread

id just thought i would put it in to show you what cards are relative performers to others, the 560Ti being highlighted as it seems to be discussed alot.

Great slow down in gaming cafe business

Today at the great extend the people is playing online games and there are lots of other cyber cafe also but the thing is that they are not getting what they want so what can i do

so are you in asia, uk or usa? i was confused by a few posts above. what systems did you end up purchasing? did you listen to what the guys above me were saying?

and are you the same person? your only supposed to have one account.

Thread is from April.. OP is no show since.

EarthDog said:

Thread is from April.. OP is no show since.

Click to expand...

im thinking vikram is the same guy just different account.?

EarthDog said:

Thread is from April.. OP is no show since.

Click to expand...

April 2011 no less lol. Gotta love thread revivals.

2011? ... I had no idea!

Ive been begging for this place to close threads after...XX time exactly for this reason too many necros here.

Earthdog, i dig up some good usable info in the older stuff, don't junk it.