twhalen

I don't want to believe it's already been seven years. But indeed, 9+7=16, so yes. I created my account here around the same time (January of '09), so quite the anniversary for me. Watching any of this endurance run takes me back to the early days of this site... I'd love to watch it all over again and play P4 again.

As a Panthers fan from when I lived in Charlotte in the late '90s, I am excited. On paper, the Panthers win it. Nothing's guaranteed with that Denver defense, though. And I have to say, thank you Denver for beating New England; no way the Panthers would have beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl (though it would have been close).

I'm not just excited for my team, but also for Cam. I have been following him since he won the National Championship with Auburn. I loved seeing him help to revitalize the Panthers, but hated that things never clicked all the way for him. During 2011-2014, Panthers and Cam would look good, and made the playoffs the past couple years, but were inconsistent. I'm glad they finally turned the corner this season.

I'm a Peyton Manning fan too, and if it had been the Cardinals, I would have rooted for him. But sorry, it's my Panthers! So I have to root against him in what could be his last NFL game.

This season has also been special for me as I went to a couple Panthers games (I had never been to a live NFL game before this season). I saw them play the Saints at home when I went on a trip to Charlotte last fall, and saw them play the Cowboys in Dallas (where I live now). I just hope they can go all the way.

So go Panthers!

The Witcher 3 and The Elder Scrolls Online are enough for me, but add to it all those other games and yes, I say that next year is going to be fantastic for games. I'd also include Wolfenstein: The New Order; I played it at Quakecon and it was pretty good.

Over the past few Quakecons I've walked past John Carmack, Todd Howard, Tim Willits, Harvey Smith, and Adam Sessler. I didn't stop any of them-I'm too shy. But it was cool enough just to see them in real life.

So in other words, it can be cool, but I'd guess striking up something / asking for an autograph would be too awkward to be worth it. At least that's how I feel, otherwise I'd have some autographs.

I'm at once joyful and skeptical. As a diehard fan of the originals and lurker at ttlg since forever ago, I will probably be pissed off by this game. But at the same time, knowing a new Thief game is coming, wondering how they'll bring back all the Thief elements in terms of both gameplay and fiction... this is awesome! If I accept that this is not being made just for longtime Thief fans but also for mass audience, maybe I won't be let down.

I've done some rethinking with my build: I've cut down to 8 GB of RAM, a 750 W power supply, and an i5 3570K. I've also gone up to a 120GB SSD. I'm still stumped on the GPU, though. From what I've read, at the price range of ~300 the AMD 7950 would be more bang for the buck (and I'd get Bioshock Infinite and Crysis 3 free). But I came into this dead set on getting an Nvidia card, and the 660 ti still sounds like a good card. Then there's the AMD 7870, which is cheaper and seems comparable to the 660 ti (and comes with two free games I plan on buying anyway). As for cards like the Nvidia 670, at around 360 or more those are too much for my 300-or-less plan for the GPU. I'll keep looking up stuff online, but it always comes back to me wanting Nvidia or being tempted by AMD's free game offers. I know that game offers probably shouldn't affect my decision, but darn it.

@Devildoll:

Thanks for pointing that out about the Seagate drive, I'll bookmark your link.

Thanks for all the responses! A lot of good points raised.

-I chose the 660 ti early on before building the rest of it. I guess that’s why it seems a bit too low compared to the rest of the system—I should go back and rethink the GPU. As for the suggestions to choose an AMD card: up until now I have used (then) ATI cards, and it seemed like every time I had a problem with a game and looked it up online, it was something specific to ATI cards. So a couple years ago I resolved that when I got my next gaming PC I would go with Nvidia. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t used Nvidia that I’m not aware of those cards’ problems; regardless, I feel leery of getting an AMD card, just because of past frustrations. But reading SamStrife’s and Dauthi693’s posts, maybe I need to get updated on the current quality of AMD cards. I’m especially tempted by these mentions of Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider offers, as those are actually two of my most wanted games this year! I’ll check out AMD’s website, as I didn’t even go there initially, already having decided on Nvidia.

-As for all the comments on getting a bigger SSD; yeah, this was one area where I was at a crossroads. Originally I was just going to get a big hard drive around 3-4 TB, but then decided to downsize it to 2 TB so I could also get a small SSD. I should clarify that though I’m not going for a budget build, the sky isn’t the limit… what I have is around $1700 (or somewhat less) and I don’t want to go (much) higher. I’ll do some more price comparisons-I think I may cut elsewhere and get a 128GB SSD as some have suggested. As for cutting elsewhere…

-Yeah, I knew the power supply was kind of overkill. I guess I got too paranoid about ‘future-proofing’, for if I ever did get another GPU. Based on the advice given, and what I kind of was thinking myself, I might select one with less wattage.

-I do see the wisdom in going down to an Intel i5, now that I think I want to get a 128GB SSD and thus want to cut elsewhere. I think I’ll go with Andorski’s suggestions and go with an i5-3570k. And yes, this build is primarily for gaming. Although I assume if I were to record gameplay sessions, I might keep it at an i7? Not something I plan on, just asking.

-For now I think I’ll also go to 8GB of RAM, and just plan to upgrade when the time is right.

-As for the Thermal Paste, I’ll look into that.

The only thing I’m really afraid to change is to switch from Nvidia to AMD. As I noted, this is just from prior frustrations. Any reason to be afraid of AMD?

I’ll post my revised build when I’ve got it sorted out.

Time for a new gaming PC! Up to now I’ve just purchased Dells or Alienwares (going back to before Dell acquired Alienware, just to clarify). My current gaming PC is an Alienware laptop circa spring 2009. I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time, and I’m disappointed in myself that I haven’t built one yet. This time, I’m finally going to.

I’m not an expert when it comes to PC parts, though I am familiar with them from having upgraded video cards before, looked over my Alienware specs, read posts in forums like this, etc.

Please give me any advice on this build. Does it look good/compatible? (It checks out on PC Part Picker.)

And this isn’t intended to be budget!

-CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz LGA 1155

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116502

-GPU: ASUS GTX660 TI-DC2O-2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121656

-RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance LP 16GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233280

-Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148910

-SSD: Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW060A3K5 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167092

-Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V PRO LGA 1155 Intel Z77

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131819&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

-PSU: Corsair HX series HX1050

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139034

-Optical drive: Sony Optiarc drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118073

-CPU Coolant: XIGMATEK Dark Knight II SD1283 Night Hawk Edition CPU Cooler

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029

-Case: NZXT Phantom Black Steel

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146068

-Monitor: Acer S220HQLAbd Black 21.5" 5ms LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009316

-OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

The main thing I’m worried about is cooling. Anything else coolant-wise I should get besides the CPU coolant?

Here's a screen capture of the build on PC part picker:

From the 90s through about 2004 I used the arrow keys, with right ctrl to jump, etc. Then I changed, but as someone who uses my left-hand for the mouse, not to WASD but to PL:". I basically set up a mirror of what's on the other side. The only problem is in old games that don't recognize the mouse wheel and use the brackets to change items, and that also have a "lean right" option (i.e., original Thief). Going back to those I set left bracket to lean right... but then what about previous item? I make that right bracket and then forward slash next item, which feels kind of weird.

I'm actually right-handed, but my left-handed dad and brother always had the mouse on the left-side of the keyboard so I just grew up with that. I guess what's weird is that I've never swapped the mouse keys, so in FPS games I use my middle finger on the left mouse button for primary fire. I've sometimes wondered if this has held back my ability at times... Quake III is a game I've played a lot of for a long time, but whenever I've taken it online, or in the past few years did Quake Live, I always get destroyed. Maybe I'd do better switching the mouse.

But every time I try to switch to right-hand mouse it feels too weird. But I'm right-handed! Oh well. It's hard to change something when it's what you've done your entire life.

I know that no game could really be called perfect, but a few of my personal favorites immediately came to mind: System Shock, Diablo, and Quake III. Each of them has such focus on exactly what kind of game it wants to be, and I really can't find any glaring problems in them. Especially Quake III, which was/is the perfect deathmatch experience and probably id at their best.