peteer01

Wow. 2012 is off to a nice start! Thanks, Ethan! (And I know Portal 2's 50% off, but since I have the coupon, I'm thinking about playing my existing games (including L.A. Noire, who's sale I could not resist, and HL2:Ep1 and HL2:Ep2) until I feel like I want something else to play, and then using the coupon. Maybe silly, since I'm sure I'll buy it in the next month or so, I'll enjoy using one of my coupons. ) Edit: I'm impressed and easily swayed by today's "Encore Day!" sales. I went ahead and bought Portal 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. That means I'm much more open to sharing my Valve coupon, although I may want to use it to buy Half Life 2, as I have Ep1 and Ep2, but need HL2 to complete the trilogy, play the whole series properly and try out that Cinematic Mod. (In fact, if anyone out there wants to trade me any of my coupons for HL2, I will very gladly do that!)

peteer01 (still need a few more weeks to get on top of the graphics card, work and a few other things, but then my new PC should start seeing some good use. :-) )

Bought L.A. Noire because it was cheap ($12.49), even though I won't get my graphics card in my PC for another two weeks or so. (Barring some stupid cheap discount on a great graphics card, I'm waiting until January 9th to see what the 7970 costs and does to other cards' prices) Looking forward to playing it. :-)

Since I finally have a gaming PC, and I actually bought a legit license for Windows 7 Pro and the dozen or so games I have, I thought I'd come in here and wag my finger at all you evil pirates. No, seriously though, everything on my gaming PC is legit, including the OS, which is...well, I don't know if I want to say anything more incriminating about my gaming in the three decades before this one. Anyway, I am impressed with Steam. I am sure some people have had problems with it, but I've had a great experience so far, and can see how it won't just get me to buy the games I want legitimately, it's probably going to help me buy a lot of games I didn't even know I really wanted. (Fuchikoma: I read your post and sincerely hope I never have any similar issues) My real thoughts on this topic are back a few dozen pages or so...so please don't get offended at this humorous post.

Everything is put together and works! My friend came over yesterday with his 6970 and we plugged it in to make sure everything works. Another friend is sending me (it's in transit now) his old Radeon 8800 so I have a graphics card to use until I pull the trigger. As I mentoned in my post above (which was long when it was just replies to people) it looks like the 7950 may be delayed until February, so I'm likely going to order a graphics card after the 7970 is released, and see how pricing looks on everything that's available. I'd probably be happy with a ATX 570, but if some combination of mail-in-rebate, instant savings, NewEgg special and/or price drops can get a 580 near $400 (I'd say $419 and below is near, and $429's not), and the 7970's +$500 and the 7950's isn't out yet...I'll probably buy a 580. Anyway, new monitor is awesome. Only 23"...nothing crazy, but for what I spent, I'm thrilled with it. The memory doesn't quite fit without moving it forward just a few millimeters to fit the giant heatsink fan on the EVGA Supercooler, but it does fit and work fine...it's just making contact with the fan case at the top of the memory/bottom of the fan case. I'm not worried about it. The four case fans on the Thor are way quieter than I expected...and by that, I mean that the CPU fan and GPU fan will almost certainly make it impossible to tell the difference between high and low on the case fans. The motherboard has four ports for case fans, so I'm tempted to plug all four case fans directly into the motherboard and either run them at high or set behavior based on the internal temperature. (Still need to play around with all the BIOS options when I get a video card back in this thing.) We ran Windows Experience scores (or whatever they're called), and came up with 7.5, 7.8, 7.9, 7.9, 7.9...without overclocking anything, and I'm thinking that since CPU with 7.5 and RAM with 7.8 are the off scores, with some overclocking, I could possibly hit all 7.9s. To which, of course, my reaction would be: (Am I the only one who thinks of figure skating when looking at the Windows scores?) Anyway, the other thing I need to share is that the SSD makes a night and day difference. I absolutely could not believe what an impact it made, and I thought I had high expectations before it blew them away!

http://www.guru3d.com/news/amd-radeon-hd-7950-delayed-to-february-week-1/ Or...maybe not wait now? Not sure if that's legit or not...but I wouldn't be surprise. It'll be interesting to see what the 7970 (if there is no 7950 released along with it) does to 580 and 570 pricing... No. You can count me as well. That was my initial plan, but then I started reading some reviews and thinking, "If I'm going to spend the money on a decent CPU cooler, I should also get a decent case that will keep things cool! (That review had some persuasive bar graphs) I know it's not $100...but $109 is pretty close, and that's what the one day NewEgg e-mail price for it was. That's actually the component (that and the 2500K were both on sale on the same day) that I first added to my cart before deciding to just build the whole PC. The Thor is definitely not as abonoxious as it could be. I would have been happy with something minimalistic and functional...but for what I paid and how well it functions, I probably would have bought it if it was a lime green version of the case Johnny posted.

I just went ahead and bought L.A. Noire today, so I'm now completely okay with parting with my 50% Rockstar coupon. That means I'm completely open to trading: -50% Rockstar -25% Activision -50% HardReset I also have: 1 Coal Half-Life 2: Episode Two Holiday Sale 2011 Gift: Killing Floor (Includes 2 items: Killing Floor, Defence Alliance 2) -50% Valve (want to use for Portal 2) Do I want Killing Floor? I know nothing about it. I do think I want to get HL2, HL2:Ep1 and HL2:Ep2 for that Cinematic Mod, or whatever it's called. I definitely want to get Portal 2. In additional to Portal 2 and L.A. Noire, I'm also interested in Arkham Asylum and Skyrim, should anyone have any coupons that might help me purchase those. (and, to a lesser degree I'm also interested in Assassin's Creed Revelations, Rage and Saints Row 3 as well as, Super Street Fighter IV: AE, COD:MW3, Mass Effect 1 & Mass Effect 2, which I have on 360, but would rather have on PC .) Anyway, if anyone's interested, let me know. I'm not opposed to giving away the top coupons if they go to someone here who's going to use them, and I'm also not opposed to receiving free coupons or games from any kind souls out there either.

The motherboard does come with two SATA cables, but it didn't say if they were 6Gbps SATA III or not. When in doubt, monoprice. I picked up a nice surge protector strip, 3 6Gbps SATA III cables (two mid, one long) and 10' DVI to DVI cable. (I've already got DVI to HDMI, VGA to VGA and DVI to VGA, so with this, I should be ready for any screen/card.) I completely agree with you. The 7950 price/performance ratio and overall price will determine if it ends up in my box...but the space is basically the 7950's to lose. I'm hoping for retail of $400 or so, with performance inline with the paper specs. But even if the 7950 isn't the best fit, I'm hopeful that there'll be price drops for GTXs when the 7950 hits. Yeah, that's basically the idea. I loved gaming on my projector, but nice projectors are still expensive and LCD TVs have gotten cheap! So...while I currently live in an apartment, I can get a monitor whenever the right deal appears. Once we move to something a bit more permanent, I'm interested in seeing if there's some way to set up a big screen TV in a theater room that's connected, near or in the same room as the gaming PC, so that I can game on the monitor unless it is something I want to play on a big screen with a controller or watch some TV/Movies. That'll all depend on where we are months from now. No interest in gaming on my 720p 32" TV, and no interest in buying another small TV at the moment. (That said, I have a friend in Japan who's been using a 1080p 40" TV for his computer monitor for years, and seems very happy with that setup.)

That's a big download. I hope I don't have a download limit, I'm definitely in the dozens of gigs already... Sanctum was surprisingly fun.

Nope. I've done all the "free" achievements so far, so I've downloaded quite a few F2P games. Thank God for unlimited bandwidth. It was kind of a mixed bag. CrimeCraft was absolute and utter shit, Spiral Knights was just not for me and Rusty Hearts was... okay, I guess. Not good enough for me to keep playing, but it was decent. Rise of Immortals, on the other hand, was actually good enough to get me interested in moba games, a genre I had zero interest in before. Probably won't get into it until Dota 2 comes out, though. ... It was fun to do the achievs and craft coal in a gambling kinda way, maybe win a game. But now it's starting to feel like a waste of time. I still think this is the best "event" Valve have done so far. It's just the coupons that weren't that great of an idea. Sounds like it's definitely not just me. And yes, the gambling feel to smelting coal or simply getting a new gift from an achievement is part of the addiction. What I thought was interesting is that my feeling on the games was totally different from yours. I couldn't stand Rise of Immortals (I wasted time on PvE thinking it might be worth learning the game), I enjoyed CrimeCraft's non-snowball standard FPS gameplay, and even the snowball match was somewhat enjoyable after mapping the snowball to my mouse. Spiral Knights was pretty fun for what it was (but then I gave away all my Spiral Knights money to someone who probably has no need for it. ) and I actually enjoyed Rusty Hearts, despite despising the DMC games. I'll probably continue to play the free games, but you're right, it's starting to feel like significantly diminishing returns. But maybe I'll get a coupon or free game I really want, who knows? EDIT: New challenges are up. Looks like I'm playing Team Fortress 2 for the first time ever tonight.

I'm not either... As long as there's good positional audio so I can hear where a noise is coming from instead of just hearing left and right stereo, I'll be fine with it. I figure the 30-something dollar Dolby Headphone sound cards will be just fine for me if the motherboard isn't living up to my expectations. TIM cleaner? Is 97% isopropyl alcohol not sufficient? Will the i5 2500K come with the thermal pad preaffixed? I'm shocked (pun not intended) at how much static discharge goes on with the combination of carpet and cold dry air up here. Static straps are definitely a good idea, and I ordered one from Amazon.com yesterday, so I'm good to go on that. As for onboard graphics, what I mean is that there's no graphics port on the motherboard. Not even a VGA port. I'm not concerned about it, because once I have a GPU, I'll be good to go, but it does mean having to borrow a graphics card from someone if I'm going to put an OS and other stuff on it before getting my graphics card. For cables, what are the chances that this or this come with a cable? For better or for worse, the motherboard is ordered, and it does not have the USB 3.0 front ports plug, but otherwise, I don't think there's any functionality I'll really miss, and I don't regret keeping that price reasonable, I think the board is a good match for my budget and needs. Already on top of networked drives and USB drives. I have reasonable storage, although most of the 3.5TB I can either plug in through USB or access through the home network is filled up...but that's why I got the additional 1TB drive for the PC. The idea is to have the 240GB for system and games/programs where the speed difference and frequency of use is worth having, 1TB for stuff I want in the PC, but not the SSD, and USB/Network for media files that I'm not that worried about. So, there's no problem making the SSD into C: and HDD into D:? I've never been a fan of multiple partitions on a single disk, even when it makes sense...so if it's reasonable to go with single partitions per drive, that's what I'd like to do. Also, look what showed up already! I ordered this thing less than 24 hours ago, and used free shipping! (The rest of the parts are coming from California and will take a lot longer to show up.) It is big.

Bought the indie bundle that included three separate Steam games, wrote a review and played the free games and paid games for: Coal, coal, coal, coal annnd....coal. So...with one paid indie bundle game left to play, I figure I actually want coal now. 50% off Hard Reset coupon http://steamcommunit...eer01/inventory I'll probably want the coal, I figure I'll get two more and see what they give me. Does anyone have any interest in the above coupon or 25% off Activision? I don't expect I'll have any use for either. Skyrim, Arkham City or Deus Ex coupons (or the coupons good those publishers) and coal are what I'd be most interested in. (Also, am I the only one pretty much willing to download and play anything free for these challenges? Not sure why it's so addictive.)

Yeah, I actually really liked it when I saw it came in white, and asked my wife about which version of the case she preferred about a week before it went on sale. Current thoughts on the GPU are to get a 7950 when it comes out, assuming price and performance line up, and that the card actually comes out on January 9th (or sooner). I'd love a 7950 bundled with one (or more) of the few games I really want, but I have no idea whether or not any bundles will exist at launch. I have two different 20"(ish) Dell monitors I brought with me from Japan. One is being used for the desktop I'm typing this from, and the other was used with my laptop for work in my old office, but it's not being used at the moment. My plan is to basically use that Dell monitor until I see a NewEgg deal (or similar sale elsewhere) on a decent 23"+ monitor. I'm hoping I see some great deal on a 26" or 28" monitor, and that solves my monitor issue. Sound wise, my Astros A40s, coupled with the inability to crank up my surround sound system in Japan, made me very comfortable with gaming on a headset with my 360. I'm not sure how well they'll work with the onboard audio, or if I should just leave the MixAmp for the 360 and use the headset alone, but that's what I'll start with. I'm open to either getting a Dolby Headphone sound card, or maybe even a Dolby Digital Live, but I'll pretty much be using this only with headphones for the next few months. (We're temporarily in an apartment, as that made the most sense for first moving over here, but have just started looking at houses, and once we get to that point, I'm thinking about getting this set up in the same room as a big screen TV with surround sound, and finding some way to go back and forth between a 1080P TV and the computer monitor and headphones, depending on the situation.) Anyway, the short answer version is: Graphics card will be bought within a few weeks. (7950, good/bad? I like that DirectX 11.1 compatibility might give the card longer legs) Monitor will be bought with in a few months. (Any reason the 16x9 23" ASUS that I saw on NewEgg for as cheap as $119.99 would be a bad idea?) Sound card will be bought when/if it seems worthwhile enough. (Anyone want to convince me I should buy it or don't need it?)

I hope they're all compatible! That's a bit of a concern since I haven't built anything in over a decade, but I think I got things right. The case does come with four fans, from what I understand: -Front 1 x 230mm Red LED Fan (pre-installed) -Rear 1 x 140mm Fan (pre-installed) -Top 1 x 230mm Fan (pre-installed) or 2 x 120 / 140mm Fan (option) -Side 1 x 230mm Fan (pre-installed) or 4 x 120mm Fan (option) -Bottom 1 x 120 / 140mm Fan (option) Since I don't trust myself not to do something dumb like have every fan blow inwards, I'd eyed that case for my shortlist before it went on sale. When I saw that and the 2500K were both on sale at the same time, that's what started the whole order process. :-) I think the cooler, CPU and motherboard are all compatible, and that the case should give plenty of room for making things fit...but yeah, the main concern I have with that list above is that it's hiding some incompatibility I'm unaware of!

As I mentioned in this thread, I got permission to order a gaming PC, and while I was going to hold off on ordering until I passed my Cisco exam, today I got an e-mail from NewEgg with many of the components I've been looking at on sale...so I ordered those. Then I realized I had pretty much everything but the motherboard and graphics card, so I ordered a motherboard. (The idea is to have it up and running by the time I take my test, and order the graphics card so that I won't be tempted to game on it before taking the test.) I ordered the following from NewEgg: 1 x CPU INTEL|CORE I5 2500K 3.3G 6M R 2 x MEM 4Gx2|GSKILL F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL 1 x MB ASROCK|P67 PRO3 (B3) P67 LGA1155 1 x SSD 240G|KST SH100S3/240G RT 1 x CASE ROSEWILL|THOR V2-W RT 1 x PSU ANTEC|EARTHWATTS EA-750 GREEN R 1 x CPU COOLER EVGA| M020-00-000234 R 1 x HD 1T|ST SATA6.0 32M ST31000524AS % - OEM I ordered the following from Amazon: Asus 24xDVD±RW Drive DVD-RAM/±R/±RW 24x8x16x(DVD) 48x32x48x(CD) Serial ATA Internal OEM DRW-24B1ST (Black)Belkin Anti-Static Wrist Band with Adjustable Grounding Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5g Now...I know I don't have the graphics card, but I've got a copy of Win 7 Ultimate (64-bit), CPU, mobo, 16GB RAM, SSD, HDD, Case, PSU, CPU cooler, DVD drive and thermal paste...is there any problem with that combination? Anything besides the graphics card missing? And yeah, it kinds stinks, but the motherboard doesn't have an integrated graphics card. I'm trying to see if someone at work can loan me an old one so I can try to get the PC up and running before the graphics card shows up...but baring that piece of the puzzle, am I good to go? Thanks for any helpful advice you guys might have!

Whoops! Yes. (It's been a while. )

You are absolutely right. That would have been the smart purchase.

My first steam purchase ever was yesterday: And Yet It Moves I have the feeling this could be the start of a very slippery slope.

Never played it, but definitely interested. Own it for the 360, but only halfway through, and definitely interested in playing that on the PC instead. I have nothing but coal and a 25% off an Activision game coupon for trade at the moment.. (I have a 50% off Valve coupon that I'll almost certainly use to pick up Portal 2 next month, and having bought 6 COD games and Transformers: The War Withinfor the 360, I think I'm good on Activision games.) That said, I may (or may not) get something more trade worthy as we near January 2nd if either of you are still interested in trading. :-) (Edit: I got my 8th coal today, I'd traded one to Mr. GOH!, so that gave me the 7 I needed to craft. I got a 50% off a Rockstar game coupon, which I'm pleased with, since L.A. Noire is one of the few games that I really want to get. L.A. Noire (50% off), Portal 2 (50% off), Skyrim, Arkham City and Deus Ex are the short list for games I'm most interested in getting for my new PC. For now, at least, no more coal, but I'm sure I'll pick up a few more items in the coming days, should people have interest in trading. :-) )

Edit: Ordered the parts. That thread is here. Hey everyone. Long story short, I'm going to build a gaming PC next month. I've been using the idea as a motivator to study for my next Cisco exam, but today I got the official WAF. My wife gave me a card that reads: "Thank you for your hardwork everyday for the family. Please buy a gaming PC. I love you!" No asterisk, no budget, no terms and conditions. Unqualified permission to buy (build) a gaming PC. (Optional learn about peteer01 info below: Skip below for PC build thoughts and request for input if you're not interested) Now, the last time I built a gaming PC, it was 2000, and Deus Ex had just come out. I played a decent amount of PC games from Deja Vu when we got our first computer (Macintosh) in 1985 until I moved to Japan for work in 2003. (At which point I basically didn't game outside of periodically playing at game centers and playing Tetris on my monochrome cell phone. Two years later I got the the PSX and then the 360 at launch. The social mix of real life friends in Japan, other native English speakers and some cool Japanese guys was the reason I never considered building a PC again once I was pretty seriously and regularly gaming again with the 360.) Those of you who actually remember me will remember that I was in Japan when the earthquake happened. Aftershocks and radiation weren't a combination I was comfortable subjecting my two young children to, and through a highly unlikely confluence of events, my family and I are now living outside of Albany, NY, where I've started a new job. My 360 friends list, with the exception of family, now sleeps when I'm awake and games while I'm at work...so while I still keep in touch with a lot of them, when they started telling me about how good Skyrim is (including two who have chosen to play it on the PC for reasons that are probably self-explanatory for you PC gamers), I thought, "Now that's a game worth buildilng a PC for." (Aren't you glad you know more about me now? Here comes the PC build thoughts and request for input) I've been reading up on parts, and playing with the idea of building a PC for several weeks now, so I'm beginning to hone in on a parts list. I'm giving my next Cisco exam my first try on January 3rd. That's a very aggressive test date, as I still have six chapters to read for the first time, but I'm basically planning to give it my best shot so I can identify what I need to focus on (if I fail), study those topics and give the test another try (or two) later in January. When I pass, I'll place my order. (Unless I pass on the 3rd, at which point, I'll want to see how the 7950 is going to affect my graphic card options.) I'm looking at possibly getting a i7-2600K if prices drop in the next month...but probably getting an i5-2500K based on budget and bang for the buck. I've got to build everything from scratch, so the opportunities for scope creep to screw up my budget surprisingly large. 2500K is probably fine, right? I'm planning on 16GB of DDR3, a 240/256GB SSD, and one slow (traditional HDD) 2GB or 3GB drive. I'm looking at Motherboards that are comparatively cheap because they only accommodate 1 graphics cards, something around $100 is what I was thinking for motherboard. (I'm not opposed to upgrading the motherboard when/if I buy a second graphics way down the road, but I probably won't bother with SLI in the near future.) I have an Astro A40+MixAmp I got for my 360, and I'm torn between trying to use onboard sound, a sound card with Dolby Surround (pricey) or a sound card with Dolby Headphone... (What's the best way to make use of the A40 and/or MixAmp?) As for graphic card, I'm pretty impressed with the 7970 that just (paper) released. I'm very hopeful that 7950s will hit the market at a compelling price in January. I think that's (7950) what I'd like to go with, assuming I can find a way to get it for a reasonable price. $350 for the graphics card is what I have in mind from a budget standpoint, but none of the budget numbers are set in stone. So...how's that sound? Reasonable enough? As for cooler, I was thinking something like Evga’s SuperClock CPU Cooler. Cheaper than water cooling, and if I can get a reasonable case, I'm hoping air cooling + headphones isn't too bad from either a cooling standpoint or noise standpoint. I played with a launch 360 RIGHT NEXT TO ME when I had my projector room in Japan, and headphones made that acceptable enough. :-) Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? (Below is just some exposition on how effective Steam's recent marketing has been.) I've been signing up for all kinds of contests/giveaways at computer hardware sites like Tom's and HardOCP, and stumbled upon Steam's giveaway, which had me put 10 games (pretty much the 10 most expensive games I'd want, as opposed to the 10 games I'd want most. ) on my wishlist. Then the coal/present thing started, and even thought my most competent gaming PC is a laptop with integrated graphics, I've now got HL2:Ep 2 (I have the Orange Box for 360, but I'm kind of interested in getting HL2, ep1 and ep2 for PC just so that I can give the game a second chance with Fake Factory's Cinematic Mod, since I never actually finished even HL2 on the 360, but talking about mods, that mod and HL2 is a whole 'nother thread.), 6 chunks of coal (what happens when you have 7!?), played E.Y.E. (Thank you, Mr. GOH!), bought and played "And Yet It Moves", which wasn't just my first Steam purchase, but had me register my credit card to Steam, which will undoubtedly lead to more impulse buys down the road. Anyway, the whole point of this long rant is that Steam's promotional giveaways have been highly effective. (On me anyway. Nearly bought Skyrim yesterday, despite not even ordering a PC for at least another two weeks.) (Also, if you remember who I am, and are remotely interested in friending me on steam, by all means, please do so. :-) )

My initial gift was HL2:Ep 2. I have that and three coal. I started doing the different challenges because I'm putting together a real gaming PC (for the first time in over a decade) next month, and would definitely be very, very interested any thing people don't need. I'll probably be buying a decent amount next month, including Portal 2, so if anyone has any Valve % off coupons or other things they don't need and won't use, I'd be very grateful for them. That said, at this point, I'm just looking for someone to give a piece of coal to to complete today's challenge. As I'm not yet really gaming on a PC (and won't be until next month), I'd definitely like to add a few of you on my Steam friend list. :-) peteer01, if any of you want to add me. :-)