turn it off and on again

Status
Not open for further replies.
DDDchu said:
2 things I have to say.

1.) On topic stuff.
So I am going to try to get a job in November, and save up to build my own computer. Nothing too fancy, but enough to game much better than this Walmart crap I have. HERE is what I will be using as my guide. Now my friends said to not go with the primary and secondary storage they recommend, but to use THIS instead for storage.

Now my question is how well would I be able to game on that? My main goal is hopefully to be able to Play Skyrim, Saint's Row 3, and Sonic Generations, which are currently my most demanding games that I can hardly play without needing to lower things so much. Oh and Mass Effect, and Dead Space 2. I plan on getting some equal or almost equal games that require much better than what I have.
Click to expand...

Try this as your starting point. https://pcpartpicker.com/p/cgNpP6

I have made the CPU the bare minimum to get by, though. Don't underestimate today's Pentiums, since they pull punches well above their weight. The GTX 950 should run everything happily at medium settings while maintaining high frame rates and consistency at 1080p, and if your display resolution is lower, you can even go higher. (It's the replacement for the 750 Ti, which is even cheaper, but it's worse.)

Hopefully this is more than enough for your needs. What's your budget, and do you already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and optionally speakers?

If you prefer to roll your own, try not to get an AMD CPU unless you really can't afford a separate video card. You probably should also prefer going NVIDIA as their drivers are much more efficient when paired with weak CPUs.

Might also want to tell me what you have right now.

EDIT: This is also a viable build, if budget is a serious concern. Should be quite a bit cheaper, and won't have any games refusing to start, but the single-threaded performance and efficiency are a concern. Won't be as upgradeable, either. Also, no front panel USB3.

And finally, this would be what you'd be able to get for around $660 without OS ($746 with). This is based on the pricing info of the cheapest set the guide has listed as the budget target. You can opt for an i3, but there's not enough cash to upgrade to a 970 even after the downgrade.
 
Last edited:
2 TB, storage-focused HDDs seem like... well, not exactly looking at performance HDDs seeing as we're talking about HDDs that are for backup data only...

Makes me wonder who makes the best 2 TB storage HDDs (so no 7200 RPM drives unless there's no other choice).
 
So I'm really thinking of getting a Moto G real soon, and definitely probably before Christmas. Since I'm not one to change phones often (like others), I wonder how weird it'd feel transitioning from a Windows Phone to an Android phone.
 
I decided to do a speedtest because our WiFi has been pretty iffy recently. I couldn't even get the webpage to fully load.. its still selecting the best server for the past 2 minutes or so. Videos are to watch, especially at 720p, webpages are slow to load. BBCA released the Series 9 premiere of Doctor Who on Youtube, I heard there was some difference in speed/frames. The whole day I got 5 minutes through..
 
Team Fail said:
So some further research revealed that our ISP had some infrastructure upgrades, which meant that they became the Oprah of internet speeds - all their tiers got speed upgrades. Permanent ones. And the prices aren't changing. They now start as low as 50Mbps and go up to 400!
Click to expand...

Oh my!

If only they could do the same to us! I'm still stuck with a 4 Mbps connection...

On another related topic, I've added 1.5 TB of storage to my desktop, but that's via old HDDs that happen to still be working. I'd prefer to use two new 2TB drives...
 
*ponders about how much Western Digital, HGST, or Toshiba HDD he can get after selling two 1TB externals, a 1TB laptop drive, and a 500 GB 2010 Caviar Blue, in addition to an old 1080p CCFL-based LCD monitor*
 
Well I'm not too far from it but I guess it does pass through a semi-wall, and the fireplace (brick) too. Though its connected to the Wifi Extender and thats in the same room. Wifi in my room and the room across is good enough to watch netflix for the most part, youtube seems to take more internet and buffer, even closer to the extender.
 
Team Fail said:
I've been doing that a lot as of late ever since getting that HP monitor over the summer, and when I take my laptop to school and have to end up ditching the dual-monitor experience, it just feels so weird and foreign to me because everything is crammed into one screen instead of being able to jump between screens and have stuff on both of them.
Click to expand...
There's one computer in the open computer lab at my college with dual monitors connected, and I wish all of them were that way! It's definitely great having PC open on one monitor and Facebook on the other for sure :P
 
Team Fail said:
So the other day at work, I was talking with a friend of mine who was working on a project with another co-worker, and he asked me for advice. He's working on turning a ton of small parts that are really disorganized into a grid-based system with coordinates, and he was poking at a python dictionary-based application to find parts, in accordance with their SKUs, in this grid-based system. However, I took a peek and found that all that's installed is the .NET framework, and he asked me to see if I could write out a program to search by SKUs or give information about a product at a given set of coordinates.

I hope this goes well.
Click to expand...

So, basically, .NET Framework-only? Or am I misunderstanding things?

I wish I could afford to go liquid with CPU cooling. :P
 
I think I have an unhealthy obsession with computer cooling. Once I saw the Corsair H80i GT in action, I want one! Even though my computer does just fine right now, and nobody's overclocking the CPU anytime soon...
 
I have to deal with an ambient temperature of around 30C, so a lot of times I just wing it with around 40C-50C idle temps.

It might have something to do with how I'm cooler-obsessed, since the place I'm in tends to be quite hot.
 
Team Fail said:
An ambient temperature of 30C!? Dang that's warm. You'd definitely need cooling for that lol.

There's times that I've considered just running my iMac G3 all night to keep my room warm in the winter - running it for more than an hour starts to really make my room warm, and during the summer I need to keep the window open as to allow the air in my room to vent.
Click to expand...

Mmm hmm...

Thinking of adding more fans to the system, and two fan splitters so I don't have to get a fan controller or lose automatic control. (Going to use identical fans per row.)
 
Yeah I love my cooling pad. Was only $12 or so on Cyber Monday and it got great reviews, love this one. Only issue is my laptop can slide off of it sometimes but I find ways to keep it there one way or another. The laptop gets so much cooler when it's on that it almost surprises me. At times it feels ice cold and I dunno whether that's good or not..... :(
 
I personally think that laptop being cool may mean a good thing most of the time, because for some, they're able to do several tasks that demands many GPU and CPU activity (like gaming or rendering videos) without having the risk of it being overheating most of the time.

And speaking of which, usually my cooling pad works pretty good at reducing heat most of the time, even though sometimes it's not enough when it comes to rendering videos that I have to provide extra fan in the back.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top