You generally need more frames for VR so you'll be running VR games at low settings.

I don't think my overclocked 970 is that good for VR (but haven't tried it) so I'd be cautious about a laptop.

Also, I stupidly put a bios password on my PC and have forgotten it. Any tips on how to clear it?

GooberTheHat wrote:

Also, I stupidly put a bios password on my PC and have forgotten it. Any tips on how to clear it?

Taking out the CMOS battery or using the CMOS jumper does it I think (note: any settings will be reset), which makes me wonder why they bother adding password protection in the first place.

Nice one, fella.

Cheeky link

Very stupid question but I assume I need an AMD card to take advantage of AMD Freesync? Does nothing for Nvidia?

GooberTheHat wrote:

Have graphics cards got cheaper yet following the crypto crash?

Still totally fucked. The midrange in particular is fucked beyond belief. A GTX 1060 is upwards of £250, mostly £300 and more for the 6GB one. They should be around £200. 1070? Fucked. All AMD cards? Fucked.

The GTX 1050 is only £10-£20 more than it should be @£120ish, so that's the best bet for value now sadly (unless you go used, which can be great but has it's own complications). The prices might improve over the next few weeks, if things get reasonable I'll be sure to let y'all know, looking for a switcheroo myself.

May as well get on the excellent PC Builder Simulator in the meantime and live vicariously.

It's only going to get worse. If it's not bitcoin it'll be one of the hundreds of others. Crypto currency is here to stay.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/016-price-change

Going up from $20 to $30 on 16th April, in preparation for leaving early access in a few months. They've said it will never go on sale, so now is probably a good time to buy if you are remotely interested.

Played it at launch for 10 hours and I will get back to it when it launches, although I said that about Subnautica and about a billion others.

"Dear all,

Version 0.16 has become stable, and this means that there is one last step for us to reach the 0.17 which will probably become 1.0 version. Then Factorio will finally step out of the Early Access zone. This will take some months but the roadmap is clear for us.

We feel that now is a good time to adjust the price of the game. The price of the game has been growing steadily together with the game becoming bigger, more stable and polished. After careful consideration, we have decided to set the new price of the game to 30 USD (or your regional equivalent). This change will become effective as of the 16th of April 2018. This is the final Factorio price update, unless something unforeseen happens, so it will also be the price for the game for 1.0 release.

As you probably know we have a strict no sale policy. The game will not go on sale on Steam or any other platform. This basically means that purchasing before the 16th of April 2018 is the only way to buy the game cheaper than the increased release price."

djchump wrote:

Yeah, I’ve been needing a new pc build for months and have settled on starting off with a low spec build.

On the very low end the new Ryzen APUs seem like a good shout for value (minus the horrible RAM prices). Keep in mind the new Ryzen 2xxx series CPUs will be out in a few weeks, the 2600/2600x and 2700/2700x. They look to be able to clock upwards of 4GHz this time which is nice, the previous gen is still excellent value though. Like the 1600 at @£148.79 which is a 6 core / 12 thread chip, crazy good value really. Might  possibly drop a little in price once the new gen is out, though it kinda seems like AMD has dropped much of the RRPs in anticipation anyway.

At least the CPU market is as healthy as it's ever been...

Yes, but what about Factorio?

Dinostar77 wrote:

spec'd this up for a friend at pc specialist website. For £890. he wants a gaming pc with dual monitor support. told him to buy ssd from amazon as its cheaper on there at mo. amd ryzen 5 1600 (six core) 16gb corsair vengeance 2100mhz ddr4 memory asus strix b350-f gaming motherboard 3gb gtx 1060 1tb 7200rpm hd dvd writer cpu cooler wireless card 450w power supply plus a case for the pc ive checked out Scan, Overcloockers, Novatech and Ebuyer and i cant get any better for the price. anywhere on Internet im missing uk wise for custom pc builds?

Is the DVD writer really needed? If so just get a Blu Ray sata drive, or a cheap usb external one probably. Let me know, I'm speccing out a little PCPartpicker list because I'm nice.

Hmm...

Heh. It can stay.

Whats best fps to test a pc out with. i know back in the day Crysis was the benchmark test. What is it now?

Hmm any disc drive seems entirely pointless then, as buying physical PC games is kinda dead. I recently did a case swap so I could fit a SATA Blu Ray drive, been great to rip cheap BDs to my hard drive, watch them whenever without fuss or shit quality issues.

Just looking to see how comparable a build I can spec out for similar monies, looking like not much difference really, I think the big OEM companies can afford some of these overpriced parts for less when they buy en masse, so probably not a bad deal just to go prebuilt perhaps. I would never as I much prefer to have some control over which parts for noise reasons and stuff, if he wouldn't give a crap about noise or top perf per pound then maybe just go for the PC Specialist thing I guess

2100MHz memory is crap though, Ryzen CPUs can benefit significantly with higher clocked DDR4, so when 3000MHz Ram is only ten or twenty quid more, I would strongly recommend stretching to that.