PC build thread

[Jmustang1968]

yeah smallest one.

Sweet. I'm tinkering with the idea of going 970 SLI. The base Zotac is nice because it doesn't occupy a triple slot. Decisions.

I grabbed a Zotac as well, should be here tues or wed. It is apparently the Sapphire for Nvidia.

[noiseredux]

I grabbed a Zotac as well, should be here tues or wed. It is apparently the Sapphire for Nvidia.

yeah I had never heard of Zotac, but after comparing reviews of the various 970's, the Zotac seemed to get the best across the board reviews and the price was great. Very happy with my purchase.

[MrPopo]

Well, my laptop ended up having a busted hinge and now there's some crap on there that I don't even know how it got on considering I never use the thing. So I went ahead and pulled the trigger on a Surface 3 Pro, the i7 model with the 256 GB HDD. I wanted to go with the 512 GB but it wasn't worth the extra $400; I'll just have to be judicious in what I install and what I don't. It'll get to my house in time for my trip to Chicago for the holidays, which will be nice.

[noiseredux]

some of you might remember that I had a Win8 PC I hated hooked up to my TV for Steam streaming, etc. It had a POS mobo that kept causing me headaches. Well, I gutted it and decided to start fresh. Decided to build an actual SteamOS box. I got a nice HTPC case from teh dood TSTR, and ordered a fresh mobo.

So my night started like this:





Then I fucked up some front panel jumpers and freaked out. Then I got that sorted and shit powered on and off immediately. Remembered that it's best to plug in *all* the power cables to the mobo.

Then my night looked like this:



#THANKYOUBIOSGOD

Then was time to install SteamOS:





And then, as even a surprise to me, the shit worked:



So I put the final touch on:

[mjmjr25]

Awesome, boo.

Now go play Dimahoo, please.

[TSTR]

and thusly the heavens opened, shining beams of almighty light upon the earth

[wclem]

Well the ole video board died, just outside of warranty. Oh well, but it looks like I will have to replace. The fan stopped working and I think it just overheated and died. Tried messing with it and cannot get it to start.

So, what are the suggestions for a good card keeping it under 150. No dual video or insane frame per second required. If it will run Skyrim all out it should keep me happy for awhile. I want to go back and replay games like Max Payne 3 and such so you know where I need to be.

[noiseredux]

Upgrade Talk:

Every few months I get that urge to upgrade *something.* Now that I've got a GPU I'm really happy with, I think my next goal is to finally up the ol' i3. Now let's be fair, I've gotten plenty of good use from this bad boy. But quad-core is a good idea already.

Having said all that, it's easy to just pick the newest/priciest thing and assume it's the best for your needs. But I don't really think I can justify buying an i7 at this point. I think an i5-4690k will be what I am for. It's quad-core of course, 3.5GHz, and sits in the same tier as the i7 range as far as Tom's Harware's hierarchy chart goes for gaming performance. That "K" also means that it can be easily over-clocked if I decide to go that route. Which is a nice option to have. So I feel like that's a lot of performance bang for $100 less bucks than the cheapest i7. And considering the whole 'physical core' thing - again, I'm just not convinced that I need an i7 if gaming is the goal.

To make matters more complicated, pretty much all i5's are 1150 socket now. My current mobo is an 1155. Sure you can hunt down i5's in the 1155 flavor, but they're pricier as they're just not as common. And really, if I'm gonna upgrade the CPU I'd rather go with a socket that's gonna give me better mobo options: like the slew of Z97's out there now. So that's the thing... if I get a new CPU, I'm also forced to get a new mobo.

Assuming I can keep my same Win7 license after swapping in a new mobo, that would be nice. But if not then I'll need a new license. And if I need a new install, I might as well get a bigger SSD. Though, honestly I'm keeping my eyes peeled for the Win10 reveal at the end of the month. I wonder how soon we'll see it hit retail, and how much we're expecting it to cost?

Anyway, this post is part of why I enjoy this hobby so much. I'm sure we can all make lists all day of potential upgrades. I mean I hadn't even mentioned how I should probably get a new modular PSU if I'm gonna go through the trouble of installing a new mobo. Or how I'd love to throw in another 8GB's of RAM, just because...

[TSTR]

You should be able to keep your Win 7 license. When I redid my PC in the living room with a whole new mobo+CPU, it didn't even make me go through re-activation.

[Stark]

You should be able to keep your Win 7 license. When I redid my PC in the living room with a whole new mobo+CPU, it didn't even make me go through re-activation.

If you do have to call them they don't even care, if you put through the effort to call them they just do it. I've done it many times with rebuilds.