What is a Gaming Rig?
A gaming rig is a computer designed specifically to play computer games on. A gaming rig usually has high-end components in it, as current computer games are among the most hardware intensive programs. Often a gaming rig will also feature aesthetic additions, such as colored lighting, display windows, and additional displays.
Games in computers are often built to push the bounds of what computer hardware is designed to achieve. This means that to play the games in a way you can view them optimally, you often need a special gaming rig. Although the games can almost always be played without a gaming rig, this will often result in lower-than-optimal frame rates, and sometimes omitted rendering of details such as shadow.
A gaming rig will usually have as much processing power as it can, since both of these are important in running games at their optimal levels. The processing power of a computer will often be pushed beyond its normal limits, as well, by “overclocking” the CPU to run faster than it normally would. Since this can cause the computer to overheat, a gaming rig may also include additional cooling. In fact, some gaming rigs utilize liquid cooling in order to keep the system extremely cool no matter how much the CPU is pushed.
A gaming rig also makes use of the fastest RAM and hard drives it can, to reduce latency in running games. Some gaming rigs use RAID systems for their hard drives, to further lower the access times for games. Size isn’t particularly important for a gaming rig, since most games are relatively small compared to modern hard drives. RAM is still important, however, and most gaming rigs have quite a bit of RAM, to ensure there is always enough cache space for a game.
One of the key components of a gaming rig is its graphics processing unit, or GPU, which is a chip that is devoted exclusively to handling graphics rendering. The GPU on a gaming rig is usually attached to a dedicated video card, and a high-end video card allows a game to display its graphics at the highest possible level. Good video cards for a gaming rig can be one of the most expensive components, and with high-end physics processing units (PPUs) also being released, these additional cards can make up a good portion of the overall cost.
The case of a gaming rig isn’t functionally terribly important, beyond having adequate room for all of the components. Aesthetically, however, there are a number of modifications that often come along with a gaming rig to make it unique. This changes, referred to as case mods, often revolve around making the inside of the gaming rig visible, showing off the expensive and high-end components. Fans may be adorned with LEDs, glass or plastic windows may be inserted into the case to show everything, and etchings or images may be added to various visible surfaces, to make the gaming rigs a distinct representation of the gamers themselves.
Written by Brendan McGuigan
