PC build thread

[ElkinFencer10]

I'm salivating over the 1000 series, but I'm going to wait until the 1080 Ti comes out to upgrade. My 980 is serving me fine for now; Steam's VR test app says that my computer is hella VR ready anyway, and I don't even have a PC VR headset yet.

[noiseredux]

I'm salivating over the 1000 series, but I'm going to wait until the 1080 Ti comes out to upgrade. My 980 is serving me fine for now; Steam's VR test app says that my computer is hella VR ready anyway, and I don't even have a PC VR headset yet.

you want a Razer OSVR HDK?

[ElkinFencer10]

I'm salivating over the 1000 series, but I'm going to wait until the 1080 Ti comes out to upgrade. My 980 is serving me fine for now; Steam's VR test app says that my computer is hella VR ready anyway, and I don't even have a PC VR headset yet.

you want a Razer OSVR HDK?

I want a HTC Vive!

[marurun]

I'm salivating over the 1000 series, but I'm going to wait until the 1080 Ti comes out to upgrade. My 980 is serving me fine for now; Steam's VR test app says that my computer is hella VR ready anyway, and I don't even have a PC VR headset yet.

Lemme know when you're getting ready to off the 980. I have a 960 and it's great, but I can ALWAYS use more discount power.

[Ziggy]

Just upgraded my (OS) hard drive, and it couldn't have been easier!

I upgraded to a 120GB SSD some years back, and did a clean install at that time. The size was always fine since I hadn't been gaming on PC. But about a year ago I started to game again on PC, and I've been shuffling game installs. I bought a Samsung EVO 850 250GB SSD when I pre-ordered No Man's Sky, I've just been too lazy to install it until now.

I mentioned on another forum that I wanted to upgrade my SSD but didn't feel like doing a clean install. Someone recommended the Samsung EVO to me because it comes with cloning software. I watched a few YouTube videos and was completely sold on it.

I just cloned about 100 gigs of data to my new drive and it only took about 30 minutes (SSD to SSD goes super fast). Best of all, it was dead simple. Install software that comes with the SSD, press a few buttons to start cloning, shut off PC after cloning finishes, swap HDDs, turn PC back on. The new SSD booted right to my desktop like nothing happened, and it couldn't have been easier!

Anyone wanting to upgrade to a SSD, or swap in a larger SSD, I definitely recommend Samsung EVO just because of how easy the cloning software makes it. The EVO drives themselves get pretty good reviews on tech sites, too.

[noiseredux]

Yeah Evos rule.

[Ziggy]

I got scared for a second when my hibernate option disappeared, but I found it in the advanced options of the Samsung Magician software.

edit: Huh, having the Samsung Magician software running in the system tray prevented games from going full screen. I was able to alt+enter a Windows game, but I couldn't get DOSbox to go full screen. I closed out the Magician software and magically my games go full screen again. Weird.

[noiseredux]

so I have some old PC's in my basement. The oldest (I believe) is a PII running Windows 98. I'm thinking about hooking it up and throwing a 5.25" disk drive in there as a means of playing/backing up old floppy games. Seems like that'd be an easier route than trying to get a 5.25" drive working on my Windows 10 machine - I don't believe that there's an easy/cheap way to use an IDE drive on a SATA mobo, anyway.

[Ziggy]

Earlier in the year I was thinking about starting a new thread for old PC talk, keeping this one for current PC stuff.

It wont help you with 5.25" drives, but if you need a solution for 3.5" on a modern PC then check out SuperDisk LS120 drives. They can be used with standard 3.5" 1.44 MB or 720 KB disks, as well as the 120MB SuperDisks. They can be had on eBay for not too much money. The reason I bring them up is because they don't use FDC, they use PATA/IDE. I was thinking about getting one because my X58 motherboard has a single PATA header. For more modern PCs that eliminated PATA, you can get a drop in card. Reading reviews and the Q&A, it seem like people have success with this method.



There's also the KryoFlux. It's reliable hardware that you can use to backup your floppies. You can create images that you can use in DOSbox or whatever. LGR did an overview on it.

Anyway, just wanted to mention some things I came across when looking for modern PC solutions. If you have a Win98 machine though, and the room to set it up, then my first vote would be to use that. That's what I like to do.

So what kind of computer is it?

[noiseredux]

Earlier in the year I was thinking about starting a new thread for old PC talk, keeping this one for current PC stuff.

that's actually a really good idea. I remember you building an old rig for Doom/etc a while back, but it's not easy to dig up some of those old posts as this thread has really grown. A dedicated Retro PC Build thread might be cool.

but if you need a solution for 3.5" on a modern PC

I actually just use a USB 3.5" drive. I have a couple of them, and they work great on Win10.

There's also the KryoFlux. It's reliable hardware that you can use to backup your floppies. You can create images that you can use in DOSbox or whatever. LGR did an overview on it.

I've looked into this (and CatWeasel) in the past, and would genuinely love to have something like this - problem is that they can be somewhat difficult to find and rather pricey. It looks like once shipping is factored in, the Kryo is in the $200 neighborhood. It gets hard to justify that price when I know I can find some old cheap hardware to effectively do the same job.

So what kind of computer is it?

I'm not sure - I've got at least two Win 98 era machines in the basement. I'll have to dig em out and open up and see what I've got to work with soon. If I recall one is a P2 and another is a Celeron.

I will also have to find a 5.25" floppy drive!