Let's make a gaming PC - The Bear and Badger

[Deleted User]

Subbax wrote:

When you say a lengthy wait, are you talking a few weeks to get stuff? I'm very impatient!

They quote 3 -5 days, but expect a week on most things. My motherboard was two weeks late and I cancelled. I then phoned the next day to check it was cancelled, only to find it wasn't, so I cancelled it again in a rather loud voice. I then bought one from Amazon which came the next day. It actually arrived at the same time as the one I'd definitely cancelled twice. It took a month to get the money back.

Like I said, they're cheap and useless.

[Deleted User]

Kazuo wrote:

Ability is officially nil, but I might be able to source a more savvy pal to throw it together for me.

If you can use a screwdriver you can build a pc. It's piss easy but you'll shit yourself regardless. I saved a lot of money by building my own.

Kazuo

Elmlea wrote:

If it's for productivity stuff, and/or to replace a Mac, buy another Mac! You'll be able to pick up a very nice Mac Mini for that much. It'll be upgradeable to an extent, but more importantly, a £400 Mac won't require as much upgrading as a £400 PC just to keep it running nicely over a couple of years. I just found a nice 2011 Mini with an i5, 4Gb RAM and 500Gb HD for £419 on eBay. I'd go for something like that 100 times over before a £400 Windows machine, unless gaming was a massive priority.

I'd certainly consider something like this, but was hoping for some informed opinions on the whole thing. I wouldn't call gaming a priority as such, but it'd certainly be nice to have the option.

Mod74

What are your options for Mac gaming via 2 year old Intel onboard graphics? Myst?

Elmlea

Mod74 wrote:

What are your options for Mac gaming via 2 year old Intel onboard graphics? Myst?

Any 3-4 year old game, plus lots of low-power ones now. I think you'd manage Civ V, Hotline Miami, FTL, Monaco, Starcraft 2, etc etc.

Kazuo

Actually it occurs that, given my game reviewing gig on the side, having the ability to play more modern games might be handy going forward. Hmm.

[Deleted User]

So despite being in an openreach area I can't get fibre. Apparently there's not enough room at the exchange, they'll be sorry when I grow up to be internet jesus.

What is the best/cheapest/none too complex way of building/buying a media server?

Mod74

Raspberry Pi?

[Deleted User]

Hadn't thought of that actually.

A mate just recommended this...

HP Microserver. I have seen his and it is pretty snazzy and does the job.
The unit itself is £179 after cashback then I will need to get another 1tb drive for parity.

Plus some other bits.
Gonna be at least £250.

Mod74

Plus an OS?

Last I read MS were more or less abandoning WHS.

[Deleted User]

Going to use unRAID, it will purely be a download and stream type device.

mrsmr2

Mac?

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

[Deleted User]

Lol
I did consider picking up a cheap, old mac mini but the storage would have been too small and didnt want to go down an external hdd route.

[Deleted User]

Plus anything like graphics and soubd cards is just money down the drain.

Woodimari

My HDD is on its last legs so I just spunked £90 on a new 3TB one, while I was at it I bought 16gb of ram to throw in there too. That's £190 gone already and I've just got paid

Subbax

Yeah, I've stuffed £260 under the mattress as the first deposit for the PC at the end of June. I'd completely forgotten about the damn OS so thrown in an extra £60 this time.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to score £200 for my birthday that's in between pay-days so I'll have £660 to blow.

Woodimari

My mate reckons I should just keep my old dying hard drive in the rig and install the new one and run the OS from that, use the old one for storage. He also reckons I should whack the 16gb ram in with my current 8gb. I got told ages ago not to mix ram but he says it is fine, should I be worried?

Mod74

You don't have to worry about pairing RAM any more.

I wouldn't trust that HDD for anything unless you were RAID1 ing it.

Woodimari

I'll probably just end up ditching the old one anyway, I can't see me needing more than 3TB, got 380gb left on my current 1TB and I've had that almost a year.

Tempy

Well I'm not just picking the top most topic and posting in it cos I'm drunk no sir no

Woodimari

So got the HDD installed today but the ram was a whole mess of ball bags. Spent forever trying to figure out why I couldn't get video with the new ram installed and found out my mobo doesn't support the ram I bought. I bought 2x8gb sticks and i need 2x4gb at most.

At least it will cost less.

Also running Windows 8 and it aint bad at all is it.

Subbax

I meant to ask that question. Is there anything majorly wrong with Win8? I thought it was really for touchscreens.

I was going to get 7, just in case but if 8 seems to work fine then I may as well get that.

Kow

I had a quick go on Windows 8 the other day and I found the interface to be really annoying. I suppose that's just a question of time and familiarity, but it does look like it's designed with touch in mind.

Woodimari

I'd probably agree with that although it seems a lot faster than 7 for me now. The interface does take a bit of getting used to. The speed could very well be due to the fresh install but my mate has been using 8 for a while and says its still pretty speedy. Looks lush on my TV too.

Subbax

So I've just recieved my first delivery of parts. Excitement is over 9000!

Total build is:
Intel Core i5 4670k
Gigabyte Z87-HD3
Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB
MSI GeForce GTX 650Ti Boost 2GB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2
Seagate Barracuda 1TB
Corsair CX 500w
Corsair Carbide 200R
Windows 8 OEM

All for £700.25 delivered.

hunk

PC BSOD woes.
Thing of the past you say?
XP era relics of computers past?
Nooooooooo......

I purchased an asus win7 notebook running a core i7/gt555m soc last year and overall gaming performance is top notch. Great portable form factor with a bit of gaming on the side.

Everything was dandy until I recently updated to the latest nVidia drivers that is. Somehow the Optimus powered SoC is overheating because of driver issues. And apparently I am not alone. Linky
100+ fucking pages and shit still is not resolved nVidia? It's been 3 months, what are your programmers doing?

Just installed the latest beta. Hope this resolves the Blue Screen problem as I am concerned it will fucking fry the internals in due time! Might downgrade to older driver if needed.

Not worth frying the internals for just a performance boost.

I knew I shoud've gone for AMD.....

Subbax

What's the best way to tidy up your cables? May pop into Maplin and see if they've got some of those fancy dragons den things.

Subbax

Right, got the case, PSU and fan, now just the CPU and mobo to arrive.

Tempy

That looks like a really nice spec for the price. No doubt you coulda skimped on brands here and there for less, but that'll likely see you through a lot of the next gen i'd argue.

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