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[Glix]

Hi PC Gaf. I'm not great with the PC (although I'm very good) and I have some questions. First off, here are my specs:

OPERATING SYSTEM:
Windows 2.5.1.2600 (Service Pack 3)
CPU TYPE:
Intel® Core™2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
CPU SPEED (GHZ):
2.15
SYSTEM MEMORY (GB):
3.25
VIDEO CARD MODEL:
Radeon X1800 GTO
VIDEO CARD DRIVER:
ati2dvag.dll
DESKTOP RESOLUTION:
1280x720
HARD DISK SIZE (GB):
835.66
HARD DISK FREE SPACE (GB):
285.38

The hard disk is 4 drives in a RAID 5. I hate it. I just got a 1TB drive. I'm gong to try and de-raid, and use one of the raid drives as my OS drive, and the 1TB and 3 others as data drives. Can I have that may drives hooked up? Can I have drives hooked up to a RAID controller but not raided? I'm kinda scared of this part.

With my specs, should I upgrade to Windows 7, or stay on XP? I'd love to go to 7, but not if its gonna resource hog my machine and make it run slow.

How much greater would my experience be, if I upgraded the GPU? I could probably only spend $150 or so, but my gpu is such ass, that I thought maybe I could see a big performance increase only by spending that much.

OR

Is the Processor so weak that I really need to upgrade that, and upgrading the GPU wouldn't make much of a difference?

Lastly, I assume I have a really good amount of RAM? Is this true?

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[Outdoor Miner]

Can anyone who has purchased a HAF 912 case tell me how many fans it comes with out the box and where they are located?

 

[Mr Nightman]

Can anyone who has purchased a HAF 912 case tell me how many fans it comes with out the box and where they are located?

Mine actually shipped with front and rear 120mm fans installed, but some reviews on newegg say they didn't get a front, so seems to be hit and miss

 

[keeblerdrow]

Can anyone who has purchased a HAF 912 case tell me how many fans it comes with out the box and where they are located?

Two. 120mm fans, one mounted as an intake at the bottom front of the unit as an intake, one mounted on the back fan grill as an exhaust. There's room for one 200mm or two 120mm fans to mount on the top of the unit, room for one more 120mm as an intake across hard drives immediately above the pre-installed and room for another 120mm mounted on the chassis door.

 

[Veal]

Do dual GPU card have the microstuttering issue? It'd be a shame if the 6990 comes out and the play experience is sub-par due to microstuttering.

 

[rocK`]

Supposedly both ASUS and MSI are shipping them to retailers now. So expect them to have spotty availability starting mid-late this week. They are explicitly listed as "B3 stepping" on the boxes, and perhaps in the product code too. So they may be entirely new products on websites while the recalled boards may expire.

They may not be easily available until around March 15th, and "mass volume" until early April. But if you look, I'm sure we'll find one by Crysis 2's release.

There are only a few boards that I'm willing to buy due to PCIe/PCI layout, and Crossfire/SLI support.

I hope this is true. I'm really looking forward to getting my new build going.

 

[·feist·]

The AX850 is really nice, and sleeved cables look nice, but they're a bit of a pain to work with. I think a non-sleeved alternative might be preferable if I were to go with a mid tower case. Besides look, there doesn't really seem to be any benefit to sleeving...it just makes cable management harder. The stress the sleeves put on the connectors makes me uncomfortable as well (when I try to pull the cables back to make it look clean).

You might want to look into the NZXT HALE90 PSUs. They're well-built, have a five year warranty, have received the thumbs up from the usual sites, and I love the flat modular cables - cable management was tons easier in my mATX Vulcan than in my CM Storm Scout solely because of those cables. The 650W unit I used in the Vulcan only had the 24-pin ATX and CPU power cables hardwired, with everything else being optional.

NZXT's best PSUs are made by Super Flower, the same way that the vast majority of Corsair's best PSUs are made by SeaSonic. The HALE90s are really nice (better than NZXT's other OEMs) and are one of a handful of models that aren't SeaSonic-built that I would buy. Still, the AX850 has superb quality and performance to go along with a 7-year warranty that's hard to argue with. A mix of thick and flat cables, too.

I'm waiting to see if NZXT decides to sell that Super Flower 550w 80+ Platinum "Overclock Version" PSU, or anything else from SF's upcoming 80 Plus Platinum series. That would make: Kingwin, NZXT, possibly Akasa, and anyone else that signs up.


Speaking of which...

SeaSonic SS-1000XP 80 Plus Platinum

 

[MisterAnderson]

Is there any word as to when the 590 and/or 6990 is going to be released? I thought they both said late Feb?

 

[damn that's nice]

Could anyone help me in building a rig, or even better, build a rig for me that's under $300? I have one right now, but I'm not really sure how it will fare... And I'm not even sure if I have everything I need. Probably need better cooling too.

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811138073

320GB HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136812

RADEON HD 5670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125360

550W power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817170010

Kingston 2GB ram(probably gonna end up getting x2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812

Intel G31 MICRO ATX motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186203

Intel Celeron 2.5ghz dual-core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116264

$1 fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150007

 

[nib95]

Ok, so my copy of Vista is corrupt on my old 320GB HDD. I don't really care so much as I had bought a spare 500GB WD Black to put out a fresh version of Windows 7 on to anyway, but just never got around to it.

But here's my dilema. Should I just use the 500GB drive as another storage drive? I currently have 2x1TB 7200rpm drives as my main storage. And buy an SSD for the main drive? Am I going to be seeing much benefits?

I am using the Asus P6T Deluxe mobo with a i7 920 at 3.9ghz and a GTX 570 SSC. From what I can gather, this mobo doesn't have Sata 6GB/s, only 3G/s. So which SSD would you guys recommend? I have my eyes on the Crucial 256GB C300 which goes for around £340.

What do you guys think?

Quoting myself, no answer

 

[Hazaro]

For a $300 I'd just buy pre-built.

For SSD I'd wait a month and see how competition picks up with SF-2500 SSDs.

 

[MikeE21286]

Quoting myself, no answer

If you don't have SATA III 6gb/s ports on your mobo then don't get that drive.

 

[damn that's nice]

For a $300 I'd just buy pre-built.

For SSD I'd wait a month and see how competition picks up with SF-2500 SSDs.

From where? I can't seem to find anything even decent in that price range.

 

[Hazaro]

From where? I can't seem to find anything even decent in that price range.

Trade possible headache for a pre-built is all.

If its worth it to take some really budget parts to just a small dual core setup then that's up to you. What, performance wise, is going to be much different from a lower speed celeron without a $40 GPU? That's it.

 

[nib95]

For a $300 I'd just buy pre-built.

For SSD I'd wait a month and see how competition picks up with SF-2500 SSDs.

What is a SF-2500 lol and how will it change things? Also, won't SATA II use at least 300MB/s of the 350MB/s? That's still not bad. I plan to upgrade my mobo and PSU later in the year when the new architecture CPU's come out.

 

[vazel]

How is the e-IPS monitors for gaming? the NEC has a 14ms response time which is double a regular TN panel monitor.

There is blur in fast motion on the EA231WMi. The difference in fast motion clarity between my LCD and plasma is significant. IIRC some of the other e-IPS panels have implemented overdrive for faster response times.

 

[damn that's nice]

Trade possible headache for a pre-built is all.

If its worth it to take some really budget parts to just a small dual core setup then that's up to you. What, performance wise, is going to be much different from a lower speed celeron without a $40 GPU? That's it.

you're confusing me...

 

[Velion]

Could anyone help me in building a rig, or even better, build a rig for me that's under $300? I have one right now, but I'm not really sure how it will fare... And I'm not even sure if I have everything I need. Probably need better cooling too.

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811138073

320GB HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136812

RADEON HD 5670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125360

550W power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817170010

Kingston 2GB ram(probably gonna end up getting x2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812

Intel G31 MICRO ATX motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186203

Intel Celeron 2.5ghz dual-core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116264

$1 fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150007

Newegg has some "okay" DiY Combos but for under $300 don't expect much.

$273.99 w/o Shipping
$301.99 w/o Shipping

of course you're stuck with pretty crappy PSU's and integrated video.

 

[Mr Nightman]

Could anyone help me in building a rig, or even better, build a rig for me that's under $300? I have one right now, but I'm not really sure how it will fare... And I'm not even sure if I have everything I need. Probably need better cooling too.

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811138073

320GB HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136812

RADEON HD 5670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125360

550W power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817170010

Kingston 2GB ram(probably gonna end up getting x2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812

Intel G31 MICRO ATX motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186203

Intel Celeron 2.5ghz dual-core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116264

$1 fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150007

I would honestly wait if you can, at least until you can scrounge up another couple hundred bucks, and build one of the systems in the op post. You would definitely get a much better performer of a pc

 

[Lyte Edge]

I've been looking for a cheap PC as well. I've been using an HP Mini 311 netbook for the past year, and while it has suited my needs pretty well overall, I wanted something a bit more powerful. So I decided to upgrade to the HP Pavilion DM1Z, which is essentially the same size/casing as the Mini 311, but with an improved keyboard/touchpad, a better scren, and the new AMD FUSION E-350 dual core processor. It's been getting great reviews and can handle 1080P video flawlessly (the screen is 1366x768, but it has HDMI out). The Mini 311 was able to run games like CoD4 and Fallout 3 pretty decently on low settings, and while I'm not looking to much gaming, it's still pretty cool that a laptop this small (they're not even classifying this as a netbook) can even run 3D games like this.

HP has a deal on their site for $100 off, plus I found a coupon code for another $30 off. Getting it with a 320GB 7200 RPM HD and 4GB of RAM for a little over $500; I could have saved another $40 but I wanted two-day shipping. Gonna sell the Mini 311 when I get it for at least another $100 off.

 

[damn that's nice]

I would honestly wait if you can, at least until you can scrounge up another couple hundred bucks, and build one of the systems in the op post. You would definitely get a much better performer of a pc

Well I ended up buying it, with some slight alterations. I heard good things about that graphics card, and despite being a Celeron... That processor has a lot of praise. When I get it I'm gonna overclock the processor and try out some games. I'm not gonna be running games at a resolution higher than 1280x768 because of my monitor, and with my last gaming rig I noticed that gave me a nice boost despite my hardware.

I have a quick tech question though that I can't find an answer to on google. Is it possible to install an OS onto an empty hard drive using an external?

 

[mug]

Could anyone help me in building a rig, or even better, build a rig for me that's under $300? I have one right now, but I'm not really sure how it will fare... And I'm not even sure if I have everything I need. Probably need better cooling too.

Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811138073

320GB HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136812

RADEON HD 5670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125360

550W power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817170010

Kingston 2GB ram(probably gonna end up getting x2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812

Intel G31 MICRO ATX motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186203

Intel Celeron 2.5ghz dual-core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116264

$1 fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150007

Terrible case - don't buy. You're also buying a motherboard that uses DDR2 memory and you've listed DDR3. In my honest opinion, if you're going Intel - save up and go for an i3 with a 1156 cpu socket. For AMD make sure it's AM3. Whichever way you decide to go - make sure they support DDR3. You also don't need that fan as everything you've listed is low power and should run quite cool.

 

[Johnny2Bags]

Well I ended up buying it, with some slight alterations. I heard good things about that graphics card, and despite being a Celeron... That processor has a lot of praise. When I get it I'm gonna overclock the processor and try out some games. I'm not gonna be running games at a resolution higher than 1280x768 because of my monitor, and with my last gaming rig I noticed that gave me a nice boost despite my hardware.

I have a quick tech question though that I can't find an answer to on google. Is it possible to install an OS onto an empty hard drive using an external?

I hope your noticed your ram conflict...

 

[Hulud]

Sorry if you guys get this question a lot but can someone recommend me a decent guide that will teach me the basics of overclocking my CPU? I have an i7 930 2.8 ghz which I hear are very OC-able. It idles at around 50c and gets up to about 60-65c when playing Crysis (idle temp seems a bit high to me, would it help to turn all my case fans from medium to high?). Do you guys think it would be unwise to overclock it before buying an aftermarket cooler?

Only thing I have OC'd on my rig is my GTX460 and that was super easy (although I'm too chicken-shit to start messing with voltages). So I at least know how to do that.

my full specs are:

1. SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
2. G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ
3. LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS-324-98B
4. MASSCOOL Fanner-420 Thermal Grease
5. Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601930
6. ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
7. Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
8. CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power ...
9. GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Also, I'll be looking into upgrading my GPU for The Witcher 2 (woo woo!) and I was wondering what y'all thought of the 580 for my setup. I'll be selling my 460 to cover some of the cost. Would the 580 be good or should I wait for a new round of cards? When I built this machine, I originally planned to just add another 460 and SLI them when it was upgrade time but now I've heard of some of the nastiness that comes with dual cards like micro-stutter so I'm on to plan B.

As both a new member of GAF and of the Master Race I gotta say it feels good...man.

Thanks.

 

[damn that's nice]

I hope your noticed your ram conflict...

That really sucks. I didn't even think about DDR3/2 ;_;

Precisely why I wanted someone here to look at my setup. I have a 1GB of DDR2 so I'll just use that for now and try to trade the DDR3 for DDR2 on craigslist or something.

@mug what's wrong with the case?

 

[Mr Nightman]

That really sucks. I didn't even think about DDR3/2 ;_;

Precisely why I wanted someone here to look at my setup. I have a 1GB of DDR2 so I'll just use that for now and try to trade the DDR3 for DDR2 on craigslist or something.

Thats why you should allow more time for people to catch those kinds of things, but oh well not the end of the world

PS: You can probably still cancel the order for the ram since it hasn't shipped yet, and swap in a 2gb stick of ddr2

 

[damn that's nice]

Oh man I am so dumb.

The ram and the case are two fatal errors. I was double checking things, and looked at the reviews for everything but the case. Looking at them now... Just sigh. I'll just try to make the best out of the situation until the 10th.

Thats why you should allow more time for people to catch those kinds of things, but oh well not the end of the world

PS: You can probably still cancel the order for the ram since it hasn't shipped yet, and swap in a 2gb stick of ddr2

Well it's already been charged. I put in a cancellation, but it said I will be notified if it can be cancelled or not.

 

[ZZMitch]

I have kind of an interesting question...

I know a lot of gaffers here are college students and I will be heading off to college as a freshman in the fall. This seems kind of early to ask, but I don't exactly have a lot of money to spend so if I am going to end up spending some money I will want to start saving now.

Anyway, I am heading off to college and I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should bring my gaming PC with me or not. The college I will be going to will most likely be a ways off from home so I am concerned about transporting the monitor and tower etc without them getting damaged. I was thinking I could put the money I make this summer towards a video card upgrade and an SSD.

On the otherhand, I could save up more and buy a new lap top since mt 2007 Dell Inspiron is aging and the CR-48 I have, while awesome, probably wouldn't be good by itself for all my needs. I was thinking I could get some money together and buy a pretty powerful laptop that could play all the valve games, civ, Minecraft and other less demanding games while at college. I know I will end up missing my gaming PC and the freedom to play any game I want at high-ish settings though!

So, College-GAF, I was hoping you guys could give me some advice based on your experiences... should I buy a new more expensive laptop and bring that by itself, or keep my current laptop/buy a cheap one and bring both that and my gaming PC to college with me?

In a nutshell - would it be a good idea to bring my gaming PC to college?

 

[Mr Nightman]

Oh man I am so dumb.

The ram and the case are two fatal errors. I was double checking things, and looked at the reviews for everything but the case. Looking at them now... Just sigh. I'll just try to make the best out of the situation until the 10th.


Well it's already been charged. I put in a cancellation, but it said I will be notified if it can be cancelled or not.

ok, well just let us know if you can cancel, we can hook you up with a pc thats a better bang for your buck, hazaro can probably work some kind of magic

 

[damn that's nice]

It went through

The order is now void, and I'll be a little more patient this time... It's just the OP shot me down right from the start so I lost all hope.

 

[·feist·]

You should be happy. There were some awful components in there.

It would be nice if you can put some more money aside to get yourself something a bit more worthwhile. In addition, you may want to consider an mITX build along with any mATX options.

 

[T-Matt]

Are there any companies I'm overlooking that make a brushed aluminum case other than lian li? How is the quality?

 

[Ultrabum]

So I was playing two worlds II today (which causes my 6850 graphics card to operate at 100%) and three times, about 5 or 10 min apart the computer stopped outputting to the monitor. All the fans remained on, but the monitor went blank and said "no input", I just reset the computer each time.

So after the third reset I took off the side panel and used a can of compressed air and cleaned dust off of everything. There was a lot of dust on the top of the graphics card, and it blew up in a huge cloud.

I guess my question is: how can I tell if the dust was the problem, what can I do to prevent dust buildup (do I just hit it with the air can once every week or so?) and last how to tell if I did any permanent damage to anything.

 

[Mr Nightman]

It went through

The order is now void, and I'll be a little more patient this time... It's just the OP shot me down right from the start so I lost all hope.

I put together a rig for you to consider if you are able to cancel and get a refund. Specs are:

Case- Antec VSK-2000 Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Of course you can swap for another one lol

Processor- AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core

Motherboard- ASRock N68C-S UCC AM3/AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Ram- CORSAIR 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Figured keep ddr2 since you already have a stick as well

Hard Drive- Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Video card- GIGABYTE GV-R567D3-1GI Radeon HD 5670 1GB 128-bit DDR3

Power Supply- COOLER MASTER Elite 460 RS-460-PSAR-J3 460W ATX12V V2.31

And just a cheap sata data cable for the hard drive since it doesnt come with one. This should give you some really great performance for the price with a quad instead of a dual core, price is about 350 bucks so a little more, but it really is worth the little extra price

 

[Aruarian Reflection]

I have kind of an interesting question...

I know a lot of gaffers here are college students and I will be heading off to college as a freshman in the fall. This seems kind of early to ask, but I don't exactly have a lot of money to spend so if I am going to end up spending some money I will want to start saving now.

Anyway, I am heading off to college and I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should bring my gaming PC with me or not. The college I will be going to will most likely be a ways off from home so I am concerned about transporting the monitor and tower etc without them getting damaged. I was thinking I could put the money I make this summer towards a video card upgrade and an SSD.

On the otherhand, I could save up more and buy a new lap top since mt 2007 Dell Inspiron is aging and the CR-48 I have, while awesome, probably wouldn't be good by itself for all my needs. I was thinking I could get some money together and buy a pretty powerful laptop that could play all the valve games, civ, Minecraft and other less demanding games while at college. I know I will end up missing my gaming PC and the freedom to play any game I want at high-ish settings though!

So, College-GAF, I was hoping you guys could give me some advice based on your experiences... should I buy a new more expensive laptop and bring that by itself, or keep my current laptop/buy a cheap one and bring both that and my gaming PC to college with me?

In a nutshell - would it be a good idea to bring my gaming PC to college?

For my college years, I went the powerhouse expensive 17" gaming laptop route. It was pretty remarkable at first, considering it was way more powerful than the cheap desktop I had been using during high school. But it ran hot and it was heavy so I almost never brought it outside my dorm. After graduation, I went the gaming desktop and cheap laptop route and was much happier. If I had to do it over again, I would definitely bring a gaming PC to college, though maybe gaming laptops these days don't have the disadvantages they used to.

 

[·feist·]

Are there any companies I'm overlooking that make a brushed aluminum case other than lian li? How is the quality?

SilverStone, Origen, Zalman, Cooler Master, Lan Gear, Abee, Moneual, others. Generally good depending on price point. Are you looking for anything specific?

OCZ Vertex 3 Preview: Faster and Cheaper than the Vertex 3 Pro

Link

A few more OCZ Vertex 3 previews.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=1084
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/OCZ-Vertex-3-SandForce-SF2000-Based-SSD-Preview/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1552/1/
http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_3_review_240gb

 

[Negator]

A few more OCZ Vertex 3 previews.

Damn, that thing looks amazing. I just might have to hold off until these come out. If P67 motherboards aren't available by then I'm going to be very sad person.

 

[Hazaro]

It went through

The order is now void, and I'll be a little more patient this time... It's just the OP shot me down right from the start so I lost all hope.

You just post a list for a random $300 dual core with grabbed parts. I have no idea what you want to be able to do with it.

I just looked at CPU / mobo choice and wondered what you wanted (since I had to click each item for its name). If you just want a word processing machine with some light gaming I'd just buy a $300 DELL and drop in a cheapo PCI-E card. You'll get decent components and not have to worry about anything.

Otherwise Nightman's is a good starting point. A 4830 is a bit faster for pure gaming but will use more power. That's about it.

Filling out the list in the OP would help.


If you want help with a build fill this out AND try making one of your own from the resources in the OP

Basic Desktop Questions
Your Current Specs: CPU / RAM (DDR2/DDR3) / Motherboard / GPU
Budget: Price Range + Country
Main Use: Light Gaming, Gaming, Emulation (PS2/Wii), Video Editing, 3D work, general usage (Word, Web, 1080p playback)
Monitor Resolution: What resolution will you be playing your games at? Are you going to upgrade later?
List SPECIFIC games that you MUST be able to play: Self Explanatory
Are reusing any parts?: List make and model (e.g. Corsair 520HX 520W)
When will you build?: When do you want your computer, do you need it in a week, can you wait a month or two?
Will you be overclocking?: Yes, No, Maybe(This means yes)

 

[mr stroke]

Is there any word as to when the 590 and/or 6990 is going to be released? I thought they both said late Feb?

6990 preview
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/02/26/amd_radeon_hd_6990_antilles_sneek_peek


release-next month?(I hope)

 

[Wag]

Whoa that mobo supports DDR2 and 3 (separately of course). 2 slots of each. Fucking cool. But that means he couldn't do 3 x 1GB of DDR2. But it's future proof.

No it's not. Nvidia stopped supporting their nForce motherboard chipsets about a year ago (stopped production, etc). No more drivers, no nothing. I'd advise against buying anything "nforce" at this point.

 

[T-Matt]

SilverStone, Origen, Zalman, Cooler Master, Lan Gear, Abee, Moneual, others. Generally good depending on price point. Are you looking for anything specific?

Just looking for something that is a smaller form factor and preferably under 200$ So far the lian li q11 is appealing to me.
I had not heard of some of those manufactures so that is a big help alone.

 

[Schlep]

It went through

The order is now void, and I'll be a little more patient this time... It's just the OP shot me down right from the start so I lost all hope.

This is what I put together for $300 if I were buying. If it were me, I'd go with onboard video to max out the base system and then add a decent video card when I came by a little bit more cash. This system isn't a world beater, but no $300 system will be.

 

[ZZMitch]

For my college years, I went the powerhouse expensive 17" gaming laptop route. It was pretty remarkable at first, considering it was way more powerful than the cheap desktop I had been using during high school. But it ran hot and it was heavy so I almost never brought it outside my dorm. After graduation, I went the gaming desktop and cheap laptop route and was much happier. If I had to do it over again, I would definitely bring a gaming PC to college, though maybe gaming laptops these days don't have the disadvantages they used to.

Thanks for the response. I am leaning that way as well, I guess just bringing it back and forth each year kind of scares me a bit though.

 

[Wazzim]

Can someone with a 2500k tell me how much the difference in FPS (games) is between stock and overclocked speeds? Is it really worth it?

 

[knitoe]

Can someone with a 2500k tell me how much the difference in FPS (games) is between stock and overclocked speeds? Is it really worth it?

CPU Limited: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/01/03/intel_sandy_bridge_2600k_2500k_processors_review/4

GPU Limited: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/Intel_i7_2600K_i5_2500K/9.html

 

[mkenyon]

Notice that those benches are with graphics super low on low resoultions so the graphics card would not bottleneck the performance at all. At normal resolutions, the gain isn't as apparent.

 

[The Elite]

Can someone with a 2500k tell me how much the difference in FPS (games) is between stock and overclocked speeds? Is it really worth it?

Also, according to this, it is fucking easy to do:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/01/03/intel_sandy_bridge_2600k_2500k_processors_review/6

I should be getting my 2500k rig by the end of the week. Can't wait!

 

[Deadstar]

Nobody is really talking about mice in here. I'm building a new pc and right now I have an intellimouse explorer 2.0. I don't think this is a "gaming" mouse but it's gotten gross and crusty so I'm looking for a new mouse.

What do people recommend these days? I have small hands and would prefer that it be wireless. I can't seem to find any type of consensus as to what the best mouse is to get. I'm right handed so I'd prefer to get one like that. Are "gaming mice" really that much better than a normal mouse? I'm not a pro gamer and this mouse has not given me any problems. My budget is about $30-$60. I don't understand why anyone could use a wired mouse. I used one 10 years ago and it was nothing but an annoyance.

 

[mkenyon]

Used a G9, G9X, MX518, Mamba, Deathadder, RAT7, and Imperator. I'm big into Warsow (Q3 arena + second jump/dash), so the mouse is one of if not the most important piece of hardware on my whole system.

The best of the best, is the Steelseries Xai. I've converted about 6 of my buddies, they all agree. Completely customizable, perfectly designed, and a total beast when it comes to raw tracking numbers. It seriously doubled my K in Warsow, and took me to new heights in CoD.

 

[Javaman]

Quick question... What's a good non voltage modified overclock to shoot for with a 460GTX?

I know it varies a lot based on the card but I stepped up to 850 core, 1700 shader, 1800 memory clock, maxing out at 66c during regular game play. I could keep stepping it up over and over but that's so time consuming. If I had a target to shoot for it would go much faster.