Caltrops - American McGee's Honda Civic





	[quote name="jeep"]I have built my last 5 (five!) computers using the <a href=http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3371605>recommendations in this thread</a>, where they have newegg links right in the part names. You don't have to be a member of the forums to use the thread. I built one back in July so I got the boxes in a crate right here. It's just mid-range because I build a new one every 2-3 years when it look slike a batch of good games are coming out. "Hmm, my box is a little slow running this new game, and fucking Skyrim and BF3 within a month of each other..." I note that the thread still basically recommends you build the same box I did (they changed the mobo) so: Monitor - The only thing they don't tell you is what kind of monitor to get, that's <a href=http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3372494>this thread</a>: 2 24" screens. Seriously why even fuck around, the monitor is the only investment worth a damn so keep the rest of the system under $1000 but don't go cheap on the screen. For no good reason beyond screen real estate I stick with 1920x1200 but most shit is 1920x1080 now who cares they all show blurays and whatever else. DON'T CHEAP OUT ON THE MONITOR EVER AND GET 2 OR PLAN TO ADD ONE TO YOUR CURRENT ONE. I didn't even need to buy a monitor because my old Acer P243W still owns and cost $200 when I bought it, even before I was on OMM forums I was buying a little over my budget for monitors and I never regret it because it's the part of the computer you use most and lasts longest. If you want a lot of games epeen and are planning SLI (I don't) you gotta go bigger than 1920x1200, I just noticed they make the cheap ones all 1080p now, and that's fine if you're looking cost/value and getting two anyway, but I'll stick with 1920x1200 and dream of more later. Display Card - Note that thread I linked is agnostic regarding ati/nvidia vid cards: I stuck with nvidia since the 90s and never had any of the fucking wonky problems ati cards get. I got the Nvidia GTX 560 Ti card for the box I built in July it's fine. Mine's from EVGA P/N: 01G-P3-1563-KR, but ASUS and Gigabyte are also good. Chip/Mobo - I switched from AMD to Intel like 4 computers ago and it's been pretty good. Motherboard's an ASUS P8P67-M, unless you have SLI in your future the micro boards are fine (thread says Asus P8Z68M Pro, listen to thread). Chip is Core i5-2500K 3.3Ghz 6MB cache. It's just mid-range, you can't future-proof boards or chips so I look for a price/perf sweet spot and that was the one that day. Memory - Get 8gb ram from that thread. decent ram, whatever, don't go crazy the fucking bus (and shitty software in general) caps you at 'good ram' anyway 'awesome ram' is just wasted Drive - I got an SSD this time and it's my first one: totally fucking worth it. Get the SSD and also get a bigger sata drive, because the OS, Apps and 5 games from the last 12 months will fill that shit, and you want it to run your swap too (that's critical). I got the Crucial M4 128GB SSD and the space would be a problem if I hadn't also got a WD Caviar thing (1.5 TB is fine but 3.0 TB is good with 64 bit windows, 32bit os gets screwy past 1.9TB). I've had good luck with WDs for years so I stick by them. I wish every day I had bought the Kingston 240Gb SSD but just look at the fucking price, $500 on newegg fuck that I'll revisit it with the next box. Extra Stuff - Case - my last box had aftermarket cooling for chip and CPU because I wanted it quiet as possible, and I put it in an antec sonata III case. Turns out the only required part was the case that shit is fucking quiet, if you hear a noise out of it it's because you ran a cable through the chip fan. So the new one has the retail coolers and another Sonata III case. Expensive but worth it if you live in a studio apartment and sleep 10' from your computer. I should point out newer cpus are cooler and need less fan stuff anyway, but video cards are still fucking hogs. All that heat is irrelevant compared to what these fucking monitors throw off though. Sonatas come with good power supplies. Disc - Get a bluray player. OS - get win7 64 bit. SIXTY FOUR BIT so you can drive your fucking 8GB RAM and 3TB second HD. Remember not to point the swap to the sata drive, in fact don't install the big drive until the rest is already up and running portal 2. Install Itunes and Office and all that shit on the bigger drive because speed is for games and swap. Upgrades - Up to this point you didn't even spend $1300(newegg)+monitor($470 for Dell U2410), see how good that thread is? But hey if you really meant "I'm going to spend thousands of dollars" here's where you go up from what I built: get the MSI Z68A-GD55 mobo (SLI support, extra USB jacks) get 2 of the cards I got for sli (with a bridge cable) and (counterintuitively) get these exact Dell monitors with 2560x1440: Dell U2711. Fuck it, as long as we're throwing money around, get two. Get a better power supply to drive the SLI cards. If you still have money left look at going up to the 240GB SSD, Kingstons are OK I think but ask around.[/quote]