Post by scorcherofthorns on Apr 2, 2014 13:02:09 GMT -5
I have been working way beyond my limits lately, basically I'm part of the USA's new healthcare system and nobody, not even the government guys, could predict the cheer masses that would hurl themselves towards us subcontractors during this season, and to give you an idea of the volume of work take into consideration this last Sunday (my Bday!)I worked from 7:30AM to 11:00PM and the next day (the season's last official day before the extension) I worked from 6:00AM to midnight. For me is a personal record, my weekly hours are averaging in excesses of 88 hours and some had even more than that. Even my boss got scared because I dropped over 15 pounds in just 1 month, my skin got very pale, I got two black eyes due to the lack of sleep that make me look like if I had a boxing match with Mike Tyson, and I completely lost my voice because of having to talk for so many hours to so many people, so the consensus was that I needed two days off, today being the last of them. The days off have been spent between sleeping, putting my cold into control, and doing something I wanted to do for a very long time now; building a new system! Well to be exact buying the parts since I haven't started building yet, but instead of going on an online shopping frenzy I went on to my local hardware store and just purchased what I wanted there.
So despite being super tired and sick I went on to buy me a new computer (and yes I needed to do that LOL), basically a gaming computer that could put a PS4 to shame! I'm thrilled at it, but I need to find the energy to put it together since and I'm still so tired I can barely type this post.
So the thing at the moment is an array of boxes containing the individual parts and when assembled it will look like this:
Processor: AMD FX 8350, this is an 8 core processor that runs at 4 GHZ in its factory settings, it is designed to be VERY fast and good for overcloaking, it is arguably the most powerful processor you can get for under $200.
Edit: Thinking of overclocking this baby, anyone here knows what are good settings for it?
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100 Liquid Cool. This is an awesome cooler, though I had to mount in a different position than intended by its factory reqs due to the layout of my case
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-DS3P, this is a solid and reliable motherboard with support for dual channel memory and it has dual bios and good overall quality for a motherboard that's below $100 ($90 to be exact)
Edit: There are two things that I hate about this motherboard; 1st the 2nd PCIe x16 slots runs at X4 (WTF!), and secondly the SATA connectors are facing upward (old fashioned way) instead of being stacked in groups of two right next to each other to avoid conflicting with the VGAs. The sound is actually quite nice, and it did come with some nice softwares to overcloak your processor and backup your stuff, and in fact, it even included Norton Security, but some of the programs where not compatible with Windows 8.1
RAM: Two 8GB sticks of 1600 DDR3 dual channel but they are Kingston's HyperX KHX1600C10D3B1/8G sticks and these are very popular among gamers because they are good for overcloacking. They cost me $80 each.
Edit: These are good sticks, I'm considering buying another set to reach the 32gb cap because I want to use AMD Ramdisk on this machine, but the 170 bucks that upgrade would cost me keeps deterring me from buying them.
Graphics card: XFX AMD Radeon R9 280X. It cost me $400 and I have seen it at around $350 in some sites like Newegg so I'm a bit mad at my local computer store because of that, but still this is supposed to be an excellent card, and people online are saying you get a free Battlefield 4 Download game when you install it but I can't find that written anywhere in the box.
Edit: The card has gone down to $300 in Neweeg so we are speaking of some record breaking devaluation here (awesome job XFX, not really!) And mine could be malfunctioning since it freezes into a color screen with some color stripes from time to time, this doesn't happen often, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with if the card is under stress or not, since it happens when the card is idle just the same. It's worth mentioning I'm not really sure of what's exactly going on and even if it's the card that's causing the problem but one thing is sure, the problem doesn't happen with my other R9 280x which is from a different brand.
Graphics Card 2: MSI R9-280x, an awesome looking card that seems to perform just about as awesome as it looks. It runs every game I have thrown at it in ultra settings at AVG FPS that are way beyond my monitor's refresh rate (meaning I can't even perceive the amount of FPS bursts this card produces) at 1080P res. Of course if I were to have a 1440p monitor (which I plan to buy) I wouldn't be getting those super high FPS but then that's why I have two VGAs.
Power Source: LSP 750 Watts box and I'm not yet clear if that's going to be enough power for such computer. This cost me around $60
Edit: Replaced it for an Ultra X2 1050W PSU simply because I needed the extra power so that I can plug in the second card, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the 750W PSU.
Hard Drive: Edit: Following the good advice given by the bellow responses I got the Samsung 840 EVO 500Gb SSD. An awesome drive that nonetheless have grown small on me due to the amount of stuff I have to install.
Other than those parts I purchased a Cooler Masters HAF 912 towercase with many fans, A Samsung internal DVD writer, a 1TB internal hard drive and a pair of external 3TB drives for storage, and of course I got a 24 inch Dell monitor with a good aspect ratio (7000000 to 1) and 1080 support so that I can see what the graphics power of this machine could do.
Software wise I purchased Windows 8.1, Microsoft Office 2013 Student Edition, and several windows enhancing programs and image manipulation programs from companies like Autodesk and Corel, and no expensive Adobe programs yet but I'm planning to get them in the future.
I'm not done buying all the parts yet, I still need to buy an external Bluray drive, and 1 more external drive (maybe 4TB) and several programs I need to purchase.
Still debating on what game should I buy to test it, Titanfall, Battlefield 4, or the new Call of Duty.
Edit: I purchased BF4 and CoD Ghost and installed them both, however I can't get Titanfall because I don't have the space on my SSD
Planned future upgrades: Aside from the Adobe classics (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Flash, and Reader)I'm Planning to replace the 1600 RAM sticks for faster 1866 memory, another XFX Radeon R9 280X for a crossfire set up, and this would mean I would have to get another powersource of no less than 1000watts, a powerful soundcard so that I can use sound editing programs like Protools, and maybe another monitor for a dual display set up.
Edit: Of this planned upgrades, the pro sound card is the only one I'm still need to do since I already got the PSU, and the 2nd card (not from XFX,) and as of the planned RAM memory change from 1600 to 1866, that is not going to happen, since I gathered there is virtually no performance difference between these two and 1600 is beloved for its stability. So if anything I'll be getting more 1600 dual channel sticks.
The Online games I'm going to be getting into now that I got the hardware will very likely be Guildwars 1&2, Diablo 3 and its XP, Champions Online (I may buy the freeform slot), DC-Universe, SWTOR, and I'm also waiting for that Mechwarrior MMO that was announced a while ago.
Edit: Guildwars 2 looks and plays beautifully with this set up, I wonder how SWTOR and Mechwarrior would look.
Most of you are real gamers so to you this is totally a noob set up but if you see the ancient computer it replaces you will see why I'm so excited about it. I wonder what you guys think about this set up and if you have recommendations.
Thanks for reading this.
Scorcher
So despite being super tired and sick I went on to buy me a new computer (and yes I needed to do that LOL), basically a gaming computer that could put a PS4 to shame! I'm thrilled at it, but I need to find the energy to put it together since and I'm still so tired I can barely type this post.
So the thing at the moment is an array of boxes containing the individual parts and when assembled it will look like this:
Processor: AMD FX 8350, this is an 8 core processor that runs at 4 GHZ in its factory settings, it is designed to be VERY fast and good for overcloaking, it is arguably the most powerful processor you can get for under $200.
Edit: Thinking of overclocking this baby, anyone here knows what are good settings for it?
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100 Liquid Cool. This is an awesome cooler, though I had to mount in a different position than intended by its factory reqs due to the layout of my case
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-DS3P, this is a solid and reliable motherboard with support for dual channel memory and it has dual bios and good overall quality for a motherboard that's below $100 ($90 to be exact)
Edit: There are two things that I hate about this motherboard; 1st the 2nd PCIe x16 slots runs at X4 (WTF!), and secondly the SATA connectors are facing upward (old fashioned way) instead of being stacked in groups of two right next to each other to avoid conflicting with the VGAs. The sound is actually quite nice, and it did come with some nice softwares to overcloak your processor and backup your stuff, and in fact, it even included Norton Security, but some of the programs where not compatible with Windows 8.1
RAM: Two 8GB sticks of 1600 DDR3 dual channel but they are Kingston's HyperX KHX1600C10D3B1/8G sticks and these are very popular among gamers because they are good for overcloacking. They cost me $80 each.
Edit: These are good sticks, I'm considering buying another set to reach the 32gb cap because I want to use AMD Ramdisk on this machine, but the 170 bucks that upgrade would cost me keeps deterring me from buying them.
Graphics card: XFX AMD Radeon R9 280X. It cost me $400 and I have seen it at around $350 in some sites like Newegg so I'm a bit mad at my local computer store because of that, but still this is supposed to be an excellent card, and people online are saying you get a free Battlefield 4 Download game when you install it but I can't find that written anywhere in the box.
Edit: The card has gone down to $300 in Neweeg so we are speaking of some record breaking devaluation here (awesome job XFX, not really!) And mine could be malfunctioning since it freezes into a color screen with some color stripes from time to time, this doesn't happen often, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with if the card is under stress or not, since it happens when the card is idle just the same. It's worth mentioning I'm not really sure of what's exactly going on and even if it's the card that's causing the problem but one thing is sure, the problem doesn't happen with my other R9 280x which is from a different brand.
Graphics Card 2: MSI R9-280x, an awesome looking card that seems to perform just about as awesome as it looks. It runs every game I have thrown at it in ultra settings at AVG FPS that are way beyond my monitor's refresh rate (meaning I can't even perceive the amount of FPS bursts this card produces) at 1080P res. Of course if I were to have a 1440p monitor (which I plan to buy) I wouldn't be getting those super high FPS but then that's why I have two VGAs.
Power Source: LSP 750 Watts box and I'm not yet clear if that's going to be enough power for such computer. This cost me around $60
Edit: Replaced it for an Ultra X2 1050W PSU simply because I needed the extra power so that I can plug in the second card, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the 750W PSU.
Hard Drive: Edit: Following the good advice given by the bellow responses I got the Samsung 840 EVO 500Gb SSD. An awesome drive that nonetheless have grown small on me due to the amount of stuff I have to install.
Other than those parts I purchased a Cooler Masters HAF 912 towercase with many fans, A Samsung internal DVD writer, a 1TB internal hard drive and a pair of external 3TB drives for storage, and of course I got a 24 inch Dell monitor with a good aspect ratio (7000000 to 1) and 1080 support so that I can see what the graphics power of this machine could do.
Software wise I purchased Windows 8.1, Microsoft Office 2013 Student Edition, and several windows enhancing programs and image manipulation programs from companies like Autodesk and Corel, and no expensive Adobe programs yet but I'm planning to get them in the future.
I'm not done buying all the parts yet, I still need to buy an external Bluray drive, and 1 more external drive (maybe 4TB) and several programs I need to purchase.
Still debating on what game should I buy to test it, Titanfall, Battlefield 4, or the new Call of Duty.
Edit: I purchased BF4 and CoD Ghost and installed them both, however I can't get Titanfall because I don't have the space on my SSD
Planned future upgrades: Aside from the Adobe classics (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Flash, and Reader)I'm Planning to replace the 1600 RAM sticks for faster 1866 memory, another XFX Radeon R9 280X for a crossfire set up, and this would mean I would have to get another powersource of no less than 1000watts, a powerful soundcard so that I can use sound editing programs like Protools, and maybe another monitor for a dual display set up.
Edit: Of this planned upgrades, the pro sound card is the only one I'm still need to do since I already got the PSU, and the 2nd card (not from XFX,) and as of the planned RAM memory change from 1600 to 1866, that is not going to happen, since I gathered there is virtually no performance difference between these two and 1600 is beloved for its stability. So if anything I'll be getting more 1600 dual channel sticks.
The Online games I'm going to be getting into now that I got the hardware will very likely be Guildwars 1&2, Diablo 3 and its XP, Champions Online (I may buy the freeform slot), DC-Universe, SWTOR, and I'm also waiting for that Mechwarrior MMO that was announced a while ago.
Edit: Guildwars 2 looks and plays beautifully with this set up, I wonder how SWTOR and Mechwarrior would look.
Most of you are real gamers so to you this is totally a noob set up but if you see the ancient computer it replaces you will see why I'm so excited about it. I wonder what you guys think about this set up and if you have recommendations.
Thanks for reading this.
Scorcher