turn it off and on again

[Starry Windy]

I think it's pretty good, despite of the fact that you're using Vista as your PC's OS. Personally, I think using old OS (like Windows XP, in my case) may bring some enjoyment as well, even though I'm relying much on Windows 10 nowadays.

 

[Tsutarja]

Remember, Vista can be easily upgraded. ;)

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Remember, Vista can be easily upgraded. ;)

Is that like if you copy, there's one for each of us, or am I missing something here? I don't think it's eligible for 10 lol

 

[Tsutarja]

Is that like if you copy, there's one for each of us, or am I missing something here? I don't think it's eligible for 10 lol

I was thinking along the lines of Windows 7, guess I forgot to say that.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

I just decided to dump Windows (again) and clone my install of ^! from my VAIO. The thing is, only the VAIO supports hardware virtualization with its Sandy Bridge chip, so I won't be running a Windows VM on this Q8200 here, sadly. Shame it has the same amount of RAM and more physical cores, but what can you do, eh?

I may or may not consider dual-booting in the future. I dunno. I'm grossly accustomed to having Windows in tandem with Arch for only when I need it, you know what I mean?

 

[Legendary Silke]

It's funny how I've basically learned a heck of a lot of things about building a modern PC with modern PC sensibilities in the last month... I've, like, basically upgraded all my knowledge since the Core 2 days.

 

[Tsutarja]

I can still remember when I was scared of touching pieces of hardware already inside a tower to move them around/clean...I used to think they would zap me unless I was equipped with an antistatic band.

Needless to say, I am very careless and don't use one, but I do ensure that the towers are fully discharged by pressing the power button on them a few times while unplugged before I work on them.

 

[Legendary Silke]

I can still remember when I was scared of touching pieces of hardware already inside a tower to move them around/clean...I used to think they would zap me unless I was equipped with an antistatic band.

Needless to say, I am very careless and don't use one, but I do ensure that the towers are fully discharged by pressing the power button on them a few times while unplugged before I work on them.

And discharge yourself on some metal part! :P

 

[Tsutarja]

And discharge yourself on some metal part! :P

Well, I do work on a flat countertop with no metal around whenever I clean my towers out, but really I've never touched metallic objects either while messing with computer hardware.

Although the other week, I did slightly feel a jolt of current when moving coaxial cable around and onto a different splitter.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

RAM modules often discharge into my fingers, from what I can feel. And sometimes PCI cards, but that's it. Near as I can tell that electric feel I get from them doesn't harm them or anything since they all still work fine...

also, PC building on carpet in socks + sweater ftw

I have an anti-static wriststrap, and try to use it when I'm in delicate/dangerous environments. Most of the time I'm at my workbench though, so it doesn't matter.


Also, I am really shocked at how well this 7-year-old C2Q is rendering on Integrated graphics! Minecraft is totally maxed out and I get a stable 22 fps, often going above 30.

Spoiler:

This is on integrated graphics on an Intel chip from 2008. I don't even have Intel HD anything, either. I'm happy.

I'm going to be getting a Zotac GT 740 as soon as I can, and when I do maybe the shader pack Team Fail gave to me won't turn my blocks into mush xD

 

[Legendary Silke]

RAM modules often discharge into my fingers, from what I can feel. And sometimes PCI cards, but that's it. Near as I can tell that electric feel I get from them doesn't harm them or anything since they all still work fine...

also, PC building on carpet in socks + sweater ftw

I have an anti-static wriststrap, and try to use it when I'm in delicate/dangerous environments. Most of the time I'm at my workbench though, so it doesn't matter.


Also, I am really shocked at how well this 7-year-old C2Q is rendering on Integrated graphics! Minecraft is totally maxed out and I get a stable 22 fps, often going above 30.

Spoiler:

This is on integrated graphics on an Intel chip from 2008. I don't even have Intel HD anything, either. I'm happy.

I'm going to be getting a Zotac GT 740 as soon as I can, and when I do maybe the shader pack Team Fail gave to me won't turn my blocks into mush xD

Mmm hmm! Does it run fine when it rains? (You might want to consider reducing or eliminating particle effects.)

 

[Mewtwolover]

agree updating to Win10 wasn't a easy or fun process.. many bumps and quite slow.

I also had to use the make a media thing as the GWX app just vanished on my Dell Win7 machine. I ran it from the dl (it has a install [update] now selection as well as burn dvd/usb)

Overall it took about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to complete the update. then another 2 hours to get "activated"

Looks like M$ is behind Linux in that as well. E.g. updating Ubuntu to new version is a lot easier process, it takes only hour or two and then it's ready to use, you usually don't need to update drivers or reinstall software.

 

[Legendary Silke]

Looks like M$ is behind Linux in that as well. E.g. updating Ubuntu to new version is a lot easier process, it takes only hour or two and then it's ready to use, you usually don't need to update drivers or reinstall software.

Normally, Windows upgrades to 8, 8.1, or 10 shouldn't take hours. Is download time taken into account?

Also, calling Microsoft as "M$" is a very good way to...well, don't do it.

I'm not sure if I want to take Ubuntu over Windows, given that it's not Windows.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

This is so sexy. Makes me glad I'm getting a (paying) job.

Looks like M$ is behind Linux in that as well. E.g. updating Ubuntu to new version is a lot easier process, it takes only hour or two and then it's ready to use, you usually don't need to update drivers or reinstall software.

Redundant Window$ is redudant. I do have to give them credit though, they sure have maintained backwards compatibility, if not at the price of becoming a little backwards in and of itself...

On my OS it's as simple as typing pacman -Syyu and hitting return. Often times my "upgrades" free disk space. Amazing, right?

 

[Legendary Silke]

This is so sexy. Makes me glad I'm getting a (paying) job.




Redundant Window$ is redudant. I do have to give them credit though, they sure have maintained backwards compatibility, if not at the price of becoming a little backwards in and of itself...

On my OS it's as simple as typing pacman -Syyu and hitting return. Often times my "upgrades" free disk space. Amazing, right?

Have you tried removing the Windows.old folder? That alone accounts for a bunch of space. Keep in mind that with identical setups and a fresh disk drive, Windows 10 should save a bit of space compared to either a normal Windows 8.1 installation or a WIMBoot-style installation (which isn't necessary anymore with Windows 10 on low-storage-space devices).

I suddenly want to get a Z170 motherboard and a Skylake-based i5, but I want to wait until the H170-based motherboards come out and a standard i5. Cheaper that way, and you get most of the benefits.

Then again, a H97 + i5 combo isn't too shabby, either. Close enough. And much cheaper, readily available.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Have you tried removing the Windows.old folder? That alone accounts for a bunch of space. Keep in mind that with identical setups and a fresh disk drive, Windows 10 should save a bit of space compared to either a normal Windows 8.1 installation or a WIMBoot-style installation (which isn't necessary anymore with Windows 10 on low-storage-space devices).

I'll report back with my before-and-after disk space sizes (right now I have 6.26GiB left).

I suddenly want to get a Z170 motherboard and a Skylake-based i5, but I want to wait until the H170-based motherboards come out and a standard i5. Cheaper that way, and you get most of the benefits.

Then again, a H97 + i5 combo isn't too shabby, either. Close enough. And much cheaper, readily available.

I've decided to just forget my H97 passive build for now, and go all out with an i7-6700K, an active air cooler, and possibly even a GTX 960 if I'm daring (or whatever newer merch Nvidia/AMD may have out before I buy). Since my uncle is buying the 6700K, it's up to him how long he wants to wait and have it drop before Christmas I guess. But I'll be messaging him this link soon anyway.

If I return to my passive build though, it'll probably be once we have a second iteration of Skylake Core i3s, and I'll be doing it in a Micro ATX case instead.

Honestly, I'm just kinda disappointed in Broadwell in the desktop market. Maybe it was Intel's intention to skip a beat to cut AMD some slack, eh? That makes sense to me. The big thing about Skylake, though, is rumours of more common 5GHz overclocks! I'm so excited over that :D "5GHz on air" won't be some elitist meme anymore


As far as GPUs go, I would love a neue-architecture AMD card! I just cannot stand the rebrands – if it was something like a Fury but not super-high end, I'd definitely buy. I've about had it with Nvidia's restrictiveness and like behaviours. :/

 

[Legendary Silke]

I'll report back with my before-and-after disk space sizes (right now I have 6.26GiB left).

OK, don't forget to tell!

I've decided to just forget my H97 passive build for now, and go all out with an i7-6700K, an active air cooler, and possibly even a GTX 960 if I'm daring (or whatever newer merch Nvidia/AMD may have out before I buy). Since my uncle is buying the 6700K, it's up to him how long he wants to wait and have it drop before Christmas I guess. But I'll be messaging him this link soon anyway.

If I return to my passive build though, it'll probably be once we have a second iteration of Skylake Core i3s, and I'll be doing it in a Micro ATX case instead.

Honestly, I'm just kinda disappointed in Broadwell in the desktop market. Maybe it was Intel's intention to skip a beat to cut AMD some slack, eh? That makes sense to me. The big thing about Skylake, though, is rumours of more common 5GHz overclocks! I'm so excited over that :D "5GHz on air" won't be some elitist meme anymore

I don't really need a passive build. Since I tend to have a table fan or the AC running anyway, I don't need a PC to be dead silent. So long as its own fans don't overpower the noise the room normally has, it's fine. Come to think of it, I normally can't hear my laptop's fan spinning unless I'm playing a modern video game, and even then, it doesn't sound like a jet engine.'

You can really tell that Broadwell is extremely mobile-focused, given that they're really late to the party, and all we have got are beefed-up, doubled-up not-quite-mobile parts with unusually good integrated graphics for Intel.

Me, I think I'm going with an i5-4460 or i5-4590, one stick of 8 GB DDR3 RAM since the benefits are relatively small, especially when not playing video games on integrated graphics, a GTX 960, and a 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD. 7200 RPM desktop HDDs seem to be pretty competent as far as Windows 7 boot times are concerned, and they are tolerable, compared to what you'd get with a 5400 RPM laptop drive. I'm actually considering just getting a WD Black 2TB as the only system drive, since SSDs suddenly felt very unnecessary. At least, for desktops.

I'd probably go with an Asus H97M-E and the Asus STRIX GTX 960. I like pairing $200 CPUs with a $200 graphics card, and keep the costs of the other components to a minimum while maintaining sufficient quality and functionality.

The RAM module I have in mind right now is a 8 GB Crucial DDR3-1600 stick. Barebones, but it works, and it's dense and cheap. Thinking of just using the integrated audio, too. A Corsair Carbide 100R is more than good enough for me - looks nice enough without looking gaudy or cheap, and the windowed version should be nice for looking into the system. The free 120mm intake fan couldn't hurt, too, or the fact that this case still has all the modern sensibilities - tool-less drive bays for 3.5" and 5.25" drives and bottom-mounted PSUs, anyone? Or not having to accidentally risk a blood sacrifice while building a PC? Places to hide cables? :)

As far as GPUs go, I would love a neue-architecture AMD card! I just cannot stand the rebrands – if it was something like a Fury but not super-high end, I'd definitely buy. I've about had it with Nvidia's restrictiveness and like behaviours. :/

The financial situation at AMD isn't helping anything. Or some very poor pricing decisions lately... you do not want to price your card the same level as a superior competitor and also undersupply.

Right now, I'm just on the fence about the power supply. Obviously, nobody wants to get a gutless wonder, or a horribly inefficient unit. The nicer PSUs with 5-year warranties, semi-modular cables, and 80+ Gold certifications are so much more expensive than their cheaper counterparts, though. I'm still iffy about the prospects of getting a Corsair VS550 or a CX600M as the power supply. They aren't exactly the best power supplies around, but they should at least last through the warranty period of three years. (I could get the Corsair CS550M...but it's not in stock.)

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

OK, don't forget to tell!

Also, I apparently freed 1.44GiB of disk space, after a restart of course. I'm just glad it fits on my 40GiB VHD is all.

I don't really need a passive build. Since I tend to have a table fan or the AC running anyway, I don't need a PC to be dead silent. So long as its own fans don't overpower the noise the room normally has, it's fine. Come to think of it, I normally can't hear my laptop's fan spinning unless I'm playing a modern video game, and even then, it doesn't sound like a jet engine.

Yeah, you're probably right about that. The whole passive goal is more of an enthusiast theme for me though, than a practical noise-saver. :P

You can really tell that Broadwell is extremely mobile-focused, given that they're really late to the party, and all we have got are beefed-up, doubled-up not-quite-mobile parts with unusually good integrated graphics for Intel.

Skylake's iGPUs are taking up arms with better performance too, though! And despite having leaps and bounds better graphics than Sandy Bridge they still have that 5-10% perf. increase over Haswell. So I'd say Intel worked pretty hard on their release this time around. It also means I can wait out getting a GPU until I feel like buying one for those super-cool shaders in Minecraft, lol.

Me, I think I'm going with an i5-4460 or i5-4590, one stick of 8 GB DDR3 RAM since the benefits are relatively small, especially when not playing video games on integrated graphics, a GTX 960, and a 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD. 7200 RPM desktop HDDs seem to be pretty competent as far as Windows 7 boot times are concerned, and they are tolerable, compared to what you'd get with a 5400 RPM laptop drive. I'm actually considering just getting a WD Black 2TB as the only system drive, since SSDs suddenly felt very unnecessary. At least, for desktops.

I wonder why? WD Blacks are really good drives, if you're looking for boot perf., definitely go with them. :)

I'd probably go with an Asus H97M-E and the Asus STRIX GTX 960. I like pairing $200 CPUs with a $200 graphics card, and keep the costs of the other components to a minimum while maintaining sufficient quality and functionality.

That's a pretty smart baseline rule, IMO. I just can't help but geek out at some of the higher-end stuff, which is why I'm buying them! It's just too cool.

The RAM module I have in mind right now is a 8 GB Crucial DDR3-1600 stick. Barebones, but it works, and it's dense and cheap.

Go with Kingston, they're cool too you know. ;)

Thinking of just using the integrated audio, too.

Any reason why you wouldn't? :o

A Corsair Carbide 100R is more than good enough for me - looks nice enough without looking gaudy or cheap, and the windowed version should be nice for looking into the system. The free 120mm intake fan couldn't hurt, too, or the fact that this case still has all the modern sensibilities - tool-less drive bays for 3.5" and 5.25" drives and bottom-mounted PSUs, anyone? Or not having to accidentally risk a blood sacrifice while building a PC? Places to hide cables? :)

I was happy my Cougar Solution has good cable management too, despite being only $50. Things tucked so nicely in there, if I sleeved the cables it would be 100%. :D

Right now, I'm just on the fence about the power supply. Obviously, nobody wants to get a gutless wonder, or a horribly inefficient unit. The nicer PSUs with 5-year warranties, semi-modular cables, and 80+ Gold certifications are so much more expensive than their cheaper counterparts, though. I'm still iffy about the prospects of getting a Corsair VS550 or a CX600M as the power supply. They aren't exactly the best power supplies around, but they should at least last through the warranty period of three years. (I could get the Corsair CS550M...but it's not in stock.)

If I were you I'd get a fully-modular SeaSonic PSU. Those should be high enough quality for your needs, and... you don't wanna mess with something that'd break in 3 years anyway.

One of my subscribers to my Pwenet build has this extreme real-deal passive build he's making, and it helped me decide to just drop this build for now, get the good stuff I want, and when I pick it back up do it right. Paid employment means I can finance custom metal cuts, among other things, which may possibly entail a totally custom case – something that would be really awesome to do. I'm going to have to study on how heat flows, though, so I don't make some nonsensical case that just looks alright. xD

I'm kinda bummed out that I largely missed Haswell for desktops. I mean, yeah, I could buy for a little while here, but it's going to be last gen so soon from now, you know? The only Haswell chip I worked with was a mobile Celeron, which, needless to say... got the hammer. :P I'm just disappointed in the design of my H97 board, but for $90 what did I expect really... I want a Z-series board regardless of whether I'm overclocking or not. Though I'll probably want to do those things still, so maybe I do need it, eh? RAM overclocking is really a thing for me.

I'm certainly not set on DDR4 RAM and what module/style I wanna go with, but as far as DDR3 goes... HyperX Savage all the way. It covers 1600MHz at a nice CAS 9 latency, and 2400MHz at CL11. I dunno what I'd buy for 3GHz DDR3 honestly, but I really like Kingston :P (I'm really bothered by RAM frequencies not sitting on a zero or two.) Though as far as storage goes, I am set on setting up a NAS before I go dumping HDDs into towers or anything. I'm a lot more comfortable having all of my terminals run off of SSDs, and having shared storage over the network... which I've found the need for as of recently. My little external drive that I have to constantly switch back and forth between PCs isn't cutting it anymore.

Cases are always a big heat-of-the-moment hunt for me. I have to get one that looks just like I want it to. So far I'm happy with a couple Cougar case models, and though I have looked at a lot of the "mainstream" cases I often feel like the case defines the personality of the PC, so I want it to be original, at least somewhat, you know?

For GPUs, a 750 Ti is likely enough for me, buuut... I want a 4GiB GTX 960, so I can SLI when it's old and rusty. xD That's ample performance for my light needs for a long time when you think about it. Doing Minecraft on Linux and taking advantage of dem open-source Nvidia drivers like a boss. As far as a PSU goes, I'll probably pick something mainstream, and SeaSonic too. For my passive build I was going to get a pricy-af 400W 80+ Platinum fanless PSU, but thankfully that can wait, haha.


Say, should I go Micro ATX with my Skylake PC?

 

[Legendary Silke]

Also, I apparently freed 1.44GiB of disk space, after a restart of course. I'm just glad it fits on my 40GiB VHD is all.


Yeah, you're probably right about that. The whole passive goal is more of an enthusiast theme for me though, than a practical noise-saver. :P


Skylake's iGPUs are taking up arms with better performance too, though! And despite having leaps and bounds better graphics than Sandy Bridge they still have that 5-10% perf. increase over Haswell. So I'd say Intel worked pretty hard on their release this time around. It also means I can wait out getting a GPU until I feel like buying one for those super-cool shaders in Minecraft, lol.


I wonder why? WD Blacks are really good drives, if you're looking for boot perf., definitely go with them. :)


That's a pretty smart baseline rule, IMO. I just can't help but geek out at some of the higher-end stuff, which is why I'm buying them! It's just too cool.


Go with Kingston, they're cool too you know. ;)


Any reason why you wouldn't? :o


I was happy my Cougar Solution has good cable management too, despite being only $50. Things tucked so nicely in there, if I sleeved the cables it would be 100%. :D


If I were you I'd get a fully-modular SeaSonic PSU. Those should be high enough quality for your needs, and... you don't wanna mess with something that'd break in 3 years anyway.

One of my subscribers to my Pwenet build has this extreme real-deal passive build he's making, and it helped me decide to just drop this build for now, get the good stuff I want, and when I pick it back up do it right. Paid employment means I can finance custom metal cuts, among other things, which may possibly entail a totally custom case – something that would be really awesome to do. I'm going to have to study on how heat flows, though, so I don't make some nonsensical case that just looks alright. xD

I'm kinda bummed out that I largely missed Haswell for desktops. I mean, yeah, I could buy for a little while here, but it's going to be last gen so soon from now, you know? The only Haswell chip I worked with was a mobile Celeron, which, needless to say... got the hammer. :P I'm just disappointed in the design of my H97 board, but for $90 what did I expect really... I want a Z-series board regardless of whether I'm overclocking or not. Though I'll probably want to do those things still, so maybe I do need it, eh? RAM overclocking is really a thing for me.

I'm certainly not set on DDR4 RAM and what module/style I wanna go with, but as far as DDR3 goes... HyperX Savage all the way. It covers 1600MHz at a nice CAS 9 latency, and 2400MHz at CL11. I dunno what I'd buy for 3GHz DDR3 honestly, but I really like Kingston :P (I'm really bothered by RAM frequencies not sitting on a zero or two.) Though as far as storage goes, I am set on setting up a NAS before I go dumping HDDs into towers or anything. I'm a lot more comfortable having all of my terminals run off of SSDs, and having shared storage over the network... which I've found the need for as of recently. My little external drive that I have to constantly switch back and forth between PCs isn't cutting it anymore.

Cases are always a big heat-of-the-moment hunt for me. I have to get one that looks just like I want it to. So far I'm happy with a couple Cougar case models, and though I have looked at a lot of the "mainstream" cases I often feel like the case defines the personality of the PC, so I want it to be original, at least somewhat, you know?

For GPUs, a 750 Ti is likely enough for me, buuut... I want a 4GiB GTX 960, so I can SLI when it's old and rusty. xD That's ample performance for my light needs for a long time when you think about it. Doing Minecraft on Linux and taking advantage of dem open-source Nvidia drivers like a boss. As far as a PSU goes, I'll probably pick something mainstream, and SeaSonic too. For my passive build I was going to get a pricy-af 400W 80+ Platinum fanless PSU, but thankfully that can wait, haha.


Say, should I go Micro ATX with my Skylake PC?

The 750 Ti is too expensive for what it is compared to the GTX 960 as far as I am concerned. Well, that, and the way they're priced here.

Just stick with a standard ATX case. So long as you're not scraping the bottom of the barrel, you will be fine, and you'll be glad that you got a nice case.

Probably would just use a Micro-ATX motherboard in an ATX case.

I'm more of a performance/cost person, so I tend to skip anything unnecessary.

I would not even consider Linux for anything since, well, what respectable gaming rig is going to get stuck with just Linux? In addition to having the widest PC game compatibility, I also get the access to, well, almost everything if I stick to Windows. Going to stick Windows 8.1 in there.

 

[Tsutarja]

*sigh*

I think my laptop's hdd may be failing. Ever since I upgraded it to Windows 10, it's been crawling slowly. If it is indeed failing, then I'm going to most definitely invest in an SSD.