Do I need to build a "gaming" computer?

[InbetweenDreams]

Thanks for the seal of approval haha. I was hoping that monitor would do it because I like the price and the look of it.
I think I figured out what I need for the wireless connection. Is it a PCI card that plugs into the motherboard? I saw a couple without the little antennas for about 30 dollars but I don't know if that's what I need.

For Wi-Fi you have a few options. With the GIGABYTE GA-H97M-D3H motherboard you can use either PCI or PCI Express (PCIe). I would go for PCI myself because that board has 2 PCI Express slots and if you wanted to add another peripheral later on that uses PCI Express you would be able to do so. You're more than likely going to end up with something that uses PCI Express. It is also likely that the video card would occupy enough space that one of the PCI slots might not be usable, even though the card only occupies one slot (if I do remember correctly). Just depends on the actual size of the card and the peripheral you're adding. All in all it is likely that everything will be fine.

Anyway, wireless cards... First question how far away and what sort of router do you have, if you're not sure whether it is 802.11n, 802.11g, or the newer 802.11ac just look on the bottom of the router and give me the model number and I can look up what specs it has. Distance being the most critical however. If you're several walls deep you generally will get better performance. Whatever the case I would try to spend less than $50 on whatever I buy. I did buy this, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6833106251 and although it is PCI Express and I'm not fond of using the slots up it did work really well and got pretty good speeds (over 100 mpbs through 3-4 walls). Only problem I have with wireless in general is that it is never ever as reliable as a wire.

Running Ethernet to your computer is the best thing you could do overall but the initial cost is more and will likely involve crimping the RJ45 jacks to each end. So it is a bit more involved and can have a higher upfront cost but for gaming and the hassles I have had with wireless in my career I try to avoid it if at all possible. It just never worked well for streaming videos, I could make it better but not nearly where I wanted it to be.

USB wireless adapters are probably the easiest and cheapest. However, I would only go with that if you're pretty close. Even though they have antennas internally and for the most part work, they just aren't as good as having an external antenna or a higher performing adapter.

Hope that answered the question, kind of went on and on with that.