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Don't get me wrong, I love the stuff that both of these companies produce (e.g. Fallout 3 and Crysis, respectively), but they both missed an amazing opportunity. These aforementioned games are great ways to let music sync up with the gaming world. How? Easy. Use Iron Maiden's "The Nomad" in either game. Would sync up great. Really? Really. *Spoiler Alert* Argument 1: Fallout 3. After being chased out of the vault, you spend your days roaming The Capital Wasteland alone. Just like a nomad. Argument 2: Crysis. Your character's call sign is "Nomad." You spend 95% of your time wondering an island alone. Just like a nomad. But did either company pick up on this? No. Perhaps they're just not Iron Maiden fans (perish the thought!) But I think they should be more open about songs used. Ok, sure, it's probably expensive, but the makers of Gears of War hired Megadeth to completely write a whole song for them. A whole song! Can you imagine how much that cost? Certainly not as much as using a song already out there. Sure, Megadeth built a whole album around it (United Abominations), but they still had to write it.
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I've been noticing lately a big increase in spam in one of my Gmail accounts. It's understandable since I use this address for things that would probably garner high volumes of spam (use your imagination). When I go to delete my junk email folder, I skim the emails in sight to see if a legit one got tossed there by accident (so far, none have. Go Gmail!). I see a lot of emails where the sender is "me;" I know I didn't send these, but what about other people? Many of these include subjects such as "re: order number [enter random number]" or something about jobs. I find it interesting that spam email is evolving and growing more intelligent. I guess in the scheme of things this is understandable, but I'm sick of it. Hackers, phishers, spammers, etc need to get a life. It's bull that they spend their time trying to steal people's money and identity instead of getting a real job. I can't stand people like that. And most of the victims are those who don't know any better because they're not very internet-savvy, and then they get taken advantage of. You might say "Well, it's their own dumb fault," but in many cases it isn't. To my knowledge, there aren't classes that educate people about this sort of thing, and some people don't have the common sense to not click on such emails. It's like the AIM/Facebook scams that come from a friend, trying to get you to click on a link. Well, not everyone will know that this is a virus and by clicking on it they're harming their computer. Because all of this is so new to most people, there needs to be more to protect the average internet user. I'm not talking about restricting or filtering the internet or anything like it. I'm talking education and awareness. I think most branded computers come with some sort of anti-virus software, and many ISPs provide AV software, but most of it is either a trial or of poor quality, and most people won't want to spend money on a product they don't think they need. Sure, there are people out there--like blackhats turned good (white? don't really like the whole color connotation)--who are working to help fix massive flaws in the internet. However, even more people are looking for and making ways to exploit flaws. I recently read an article on wired.com about a hacker who was helping companies protect their networks, and then turned around and exploited them: he actually created backdoors in the patch he was making. Afterwards, he took over carder sites (websites that sell ill-gotten identities and credit card numbers) to control this whole illegal segment of the internet. He never profitted from it, but it brings up the whole "awareness" them again. These sites are there because people are careless and are having their identity stolen. Again, you could say it's their own dumb fault, and sometimes it is, but not always. Many times this happens without the victim doing anything wrong; simply buying dinner at a restaurant can lead to stolen credit card numbers. It's not, however, the identity theft that concerns me; most banks offer some sort of protection against this, even for the lowest-level bank accounts. I'm more concerned about people having their computers taken over by hackers and having important information deleted: family photos, blogs, creative writing pieces. (But of course, identity information is also thrown into here.) I would imagine that more than 65% of people don't create backups of their data; not because they're too lazy, but because they don't think they need to or know they should. This all connects into how clevier phishers are getting. Email provers like Gmail do have good spam filters, but what about the ones that don't? And what happens if people click on these emails any way (again, their own dumb fault, perhaps, but that's besides the point)? I think something needs to be done about this. There needs to be more to educate the masses about internet safety, and there needs to be stricter cyberspace laws. Of course, the latter is close to irrelevency since most people don't get caught for minor phishing scams. If a person phyically steals something from someone, the police will investigate and attempt to imprison the robber (you can also view this with property damage and any number of other crimes). But if it happens online? Well, there's a tracability issue, and it's harder to track these people down to prosecute them. It appears as though the FBI is the primary law enforcement agency of the internet, but they also don't appear to care about smaller issues; they want the big crimes: millions of dollars stolen, all of Google's databases deleted (never happened, but you know what I'm getting at). Why is the internet any different from reality? Neighbor kills your dog, steals a hundred bucks from you, it gets reported, and police move to action. But a hacker breaks into your computer and completely wipes clean your hard drive and you've got no recourse. I just answered part of this problem. What happens if a hacker breaks into your computer and deletes all your files? Apart from (possibly) crying, what do you do? Call the police? Call the FBI? I don't know, and I'm very proficient with computers. There might be something out there, and I don't know about it. If it's there, it's not advertised at all, and I've never seen anything like that posted here on EggXpert. Though, I've also not seen anything about identity theft or someone's computer being hacked into (have seen virus, issues, though). That leads me to believe that there is nothing like that out there, no Cyber Police. It should be there, and it should be oublicly known about. Clearly, right now it'd be hard to form up something like this due to the econmy, but something needs to be done. These b******s need catching and punishing.
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I've spent my whole life being around and using computers. I have my dad to thank for that. He's had a computer since the '70s when the personal computers started popping up. In fact, he was so hardcore about computers that he drilled holes into one of his old Mac desktops and installed pinball machine buttons (the flipper controllers) to give his pinball games a more realistic feel. The earliest computer I remember having is a MAC desktop that used the big 5" floppy disks--the ones that actually were floppy. Another one soon after that was DOS-based, around when Windows 3.1 came out. But that was still when DOS was the primary OS, and most of your programs were accessed through it. My dad wrote a program for that computer that made it easy to choose programs: push one number to go to either a games list or a non-games application list, then push another number to load the program of your choice. I even remember when dot-matrix printers where the sheets were all attached together were the only printers you could have! Well, for a lot of you, I'm sure that doesn't sound all to amazing, but you have to remember that I'm 22 now (10/28/08), and this was in the '90s when I was about 8 or 9. 1997 was the last time the family bought a desktop for everyone to share; after that it was just laptops. My dad did have an old Toshiba laptop, purchased around 1993, I think, through this time, but in '97 we bought a Dell PII and soon after a Dell laptop, which actually played Half-Life decently well. Perhaps a year or so after getting this computer, my brother succeeded in effing up the DVD encoder by putting a non-Dell-made graphics card into the computer, a Voodoo 2, which was a pretty boss card for the time. He later went on to build his own computer. Around age 15, which, if my math is correct, was 2001, I got a barebones computer for my birthday. It came with everything except for a hard drive and graphics card (which I guess is the definition of a barebones computer). I spent about $300 for a hard drive and a nVidia Geforce Titanium 200. I had that computer for quite a while, actually, and made little upgrades. I added a second hard drive, b0rking the original one in the process so I lost 95% of my data, including the first poem I ever wrote (still sad about that). It took a year and a half to figure out why the original hdd read as only 2gb when it was really 80gb (it somehow got formatted as FAT-16, which only lets you use 2gb of the hdd, or it did then). In 2004, I started college. My parents wanted to buy me a computer to go away with, and I was left with the choice of a laptop or a desktop. I went with a laptop so I could bring it home with me, but I couldn't get the Alienware one I wanted because my dad didn't like the reviews he read. So instead I got a Dell Inspiron 5150 (my college has an agreement with Dell so it was slightly discounted, like 5% or something). It ended up being a piece of ****, but I managed to muddle my way through Doom 3 on it; though, the game ran so slowly I had to use cheat codes to avoid dying every five seconds. A year later we moved. It wasn't a far move, but my parents were downsizing from a house house to a townhouse. That meant I had to downsize, too, which meant selling my old desktop. I can't remember how much it sold for, but I don't think it was much. Until the summer of 2006, I was left with just my laptop. My piece of **** Dell laptop that needed everything except for the monitor, battery, and case replaced within a year and a half of purchase. Yay. From February to June I was studying abroad in England, and when I came back I decided it was time to purchase a new computer (detailed in my first-ever blog post). I got it for about $900, which I was happy with, but it was out of date about a year later =(. But in the course of the year, I replaced the graphics card: started with a eVGA 7600GT (overclocked), and then went to an ATI Sapphire XT1950XT because the 7600 crapped out on me. eVGA overclocked it, but didn't bother upgrading the cooler So in 2007 I started work on my current system. It started out with just a new case, then escalated into a whole new computer. My primary hdd, an IDE 112gb, is the same one I've had since my first computer (the one I added in to give me more storage). But even still, I've upgraded it since original purchase. I started out with a single 8600GT, then bought my friend's when he upgraded to an 8800GT. I've also got three hdds, plus an external one in an enclosure, as well as a wireless NIC. I also have a different mouse from when I first bought the computer. I'm quite happy with my current system, but, of course, if I had the money I'd upgrade it again. The only thing I can say is wrong with it is the amount of dust it inhales, though the basement is rather dusty. It's good enough that I can play Crysis on "high" graphics and still get a decent framerate. But despite all this, it's quite agonizing being away from my own computer. The one I'm typing this on is my work computer, which is probably eight years old (the mouse still has ball, and my mouse at home uses a laser), but that's a result of the company having to have it's computer issued to it by our customer. This computer is slow, the mouse sucks, the screen sucks (it's a CRT), and the keyboard blows. I want my computer where I can blast through websites like a railgun through a piece of paper. Okay, so my computer isn't quite that fast, and the DSL my future in-laws have is rather slow, but it's tenfold better than this work computer. That's not the worst part, though. Since last Sunday, I've had to stay over at my fiance's sister's house. Her husband is away and she's too scared to stay by herself at night so instead of coming over to our house (which is really her parents'), we've instead had to stay with her (which is utter bu*****t). Sure, I could bring my laptop with me, but it wouldn't do me much good since she doesn't have any internet. So I'm limited to about twenty to thirty minutes on my own machine (a day) during the little time we're at my future in-laws. I haven't gamed in a week and a half, and it's driving me bonkers. My fiance definitely has it better in regards to computers. She really only uses hers for work and to check a few things on the internet. But she didn't grow up with them like I did. Even being in England for six months I had my own computer. Living and growing up with computers has definitely made me dependent on them, but even though I've got free reign on the internet on my work computer (within reason, obviously) I'm still not satisfied. I want my computer with the settings the way I like it and hardware that doesn't suck. I've also noticed that I've reached the pinnacle of my computer skills. The easy parts I've got down: I can build a computer in my sleep and can learn new software with relative ease. Now, though, I want to expand my skills. I want to learn to overclock, learn to use liquid cooling, and try my hand at building a custom case. But there are a few snags. It's difficult for me to learn a skill merely by reading it; I like having someone show me what to do and be there to help me in case of emergency. I've got a Q6600 processor, which I believe can be OC'ed rather easily, but I don't know how (or anyone who does) and if I eff it up, I risk ruining my whole system. If I had some money, I'd buy a separate setup just to learn how to OC to avoid damaging my current rig. Liquid cooling, while potentially easier to learn than OC'ing, is expensive; a good setup might run $300US or more, and that's money I don't have. And again, there is the inherent risk involved. I'm thinking now that maybe I shouldn't have sold my old computer and instead used that to learn these trade on, but I needed extra cash (damn failing economy). I'm hoping at some point to have the money and the time to be able to learn these things (the first and last more than the second). Perhaps one of you readers can provide some insight in to OCing that would convince me to try it on my current rig, thereby negating having to spend money beyond (possibly) a new cooler and more thermal paste (I can live with spending 20 or 30 bucks on that). So there you have it. A life of computers has tied me to them, in more ways than one, and has placed me in a sticky position of how to progress my skills: I need money (in some instances) to go on, but at the same time have to save money for my wedding next year. And the risk itself isn't that big a deal; I'm a poker player so I know all about risk. It's more the having to spend money I might not have in case I take a risk, and it shits on me. I guess it's just a matter of a flip of a coin (and getting a paycheck that's more than $276 >=( ).
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Yes, this is something that most people would never wish, and right now if it happened I'd cry. However, I do sometimes wish it would happen. Why? I'll tell you. For starters, I love building computers. It's a ton of fun. Sure, it sucks having to install software from scratch, but I enjoy the rest. But I have nothing to build because my computer's in good shape and all together. Secondly, I have fun helping people pick out parts to build their own computer, and it makes me want to build a new computer. But, while I enjoy helping people with thier computers, it makes me want to buy stuff to make my own. Though, I'm currently unemployed so it'd be dumb for me to build another without having to. So that's why I sometimes wish my computer would die. And that's also why I keep an external hdd with my stuff backed up on it.
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A little while ago I read this article on Tom's Hardware about an employee's decision to go for Macs over PCs. It's a wonderfully written article, showing the pluses and minuses of both sides. Add to that the fact that he's not an average computer user (the home servers and homemade RAID setup kind of give that away) and you can see the article is legit and the arguments are solid. While I agree with what he says, I don't want to switch over to Macs (though, the article is not supposed to be persuasive; it just makes a simple statement) permanently.
I've never owned a Mac personally, though my father has had a computer since the first laptop came out in the '70s, which means he owned a couple old-school Mac desktops (including a G2 [I think] that he modified to have built-in pinball flipper buttons, bought from a pinball supply store). I can't really recall much about that Mac, but I do believe I broke the 5-inch floppy drive by pushing it off a table (I was like 4; throw me a bone). Although, I do have experience with more modern Macs. My high school had iMacs everywhere: every teacher had some sort of Mac, whether it be an early Macbook or iMac and every computer lab had one of those early colored iMacs that looked like a small TV, with the exception of the video editing labs that had early G5s. I hated them (the iMacs more than the G5s). The mouse was awkward to use, they were slow and ugly, and every time I was in chemistry class chatting up the teacher, I felt a strong urge to try to yank open the case by the pittifully pathetic plasitc handle. I never succeeded, though, mainly because I'd feel bad for breaking my favorite teacher's computer. For my own personal computer, I had a home made PC; not state-of-the-art, but pretty damn good.
Then college came around and with it better Mac technology. Macbooks went from the oddly-shaped paperweights with a handle that occasionally came colored in puke orange to the sleekly designed white notebook known around the world. iMacs changed, too, and now no longer have that stupid circular mouse; although, the lack of a second button still confuzzles me. But when I started out at college, I didn't use Macs much. I had the opportunity to get a discount on a Mac through my school, but that was still during the times when I hated Macs. So my parents bought me a Dell Inspiron 5150 (as a going-to-college gift), which then made me hate Dell with a passion (I still never recommend the company to anyone who wants anything more than an internet-browsing word processor for uber cheap).
It wasn't really until senior year (I just graduated in May) that I truly began to appreciate Macs. In the meantime, I built a new computer in June/July 2006, and then upgraded it to my current rig (minus a few parts) in October 2007. It's now a Q6600, 8600GT in SLI powered, surprisingly behemoth of a system that runs Crysis well at high settings. But back to Apple for a moment. I had two classes that required me to use Macs: a communications class called "Writing for New Media" that revolved around web design and writing for websites and an art class, "Computer Art," that focused on Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. Clearly, a Mac is the better choice for these classes, since Adobe's image programs and Dreamweaver were originally intended for Macs. I do, however, have the whole Adobe Master Collection CS3 on my PC and find that it works equally well, if not faster, than it did on the computers in the Mac labs, which I believe are some incarnation of the G5.
Another point focused on in the Tom's Hardware article is the operating system. The author compares Leopard to XP. I'm not sure which version of Apple's operating systems I was using, but I'm fairly certain it was OS X, just not Leopard. I found the Mac OS to be confusing at the least and monitor-smashing annoying at most. I must admit here that I'm not familiar with all of the features of the Apple OS, but am going to proceed based on what I do know. For starters, I find the Mac program launch bar to be unnecessary. I realize that it acts as both a launch feature and a way to switch between programs that are open, but, while cool, I think the animation aspect of it is of no use (clearly). I much prefer Windows' task bar because it's much easier to tell which program(s) is (are) open, especially with the addition of the system trays.
Navigating through files and folders on OS X was also difficult. The way everything cascades across the window (how you see every previous folder at the same time) gets confusing; at times I found it hard to figuer out just where I was, exactly. Not only that, just trying to save something to my network drive took way too many steps. I'll take XP of OS X any day. I know what you're saying; I realize that I can buy a Mac with a Windows operating system on it. But that brings me to my next point.
Macs are too damn expensive. It's true what is stated in the article: Apple needs to lower the prices of their computers in order to attract new customers. To get a computer equivalent to my current desktop, I would've had to have shelled out an extra $2000 if not more! At this point from my perspective, it's up in the air whether or not their laptops are overpriced; I could say that they are, but I don't know enough about laptops to solidly say one way or the other.
Another thing I like about having a PC is the ability to completely customize it. Since I build my own computers now, I can go to any of a number of stores and buy pretty much whatever I want and throw it into the computer. Hell, I could even go so far as to hand-craft my own case, if I so chose (which I'm thinking about). Try doing that with a Mac (I'm sure you can, but you'd have to first buy a Mac, and then would you really want to mess with it?)
For these reasons, I'm definitely not going to make my primary computer a Macintosh. To me, it's just not worth it. I might in the future, however, purchase a Mac laptop, but for now I can't afford it and don't need one thanks to my amazing desktop. Maybe some day down the road when Mac drops their prices and makes it possibly to build one at home I'll switch over, but for now I'm sticking to PCs, especially when I can get a 1 tb hard drive for $180.
Apple, if you want to steal my business from the PC world, you'd better start cracking on dropping those prices.
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How much less? I think I spent probably less than $800 upgrading my system. Previously, I had an Athalon X2 (32bit) CPU, with 2x1gb DDR RAM, and a Sapphire X1950XT 256 mb graphics card. It was decent, but was out of date in a year, no joke. I upgraded it in pieces, buying a new case, then eventually stepping up the game to a better processor and graphics card(s). Now I've got a quad core processor and SLI graphics set up. I can run Crysis at medium to high settings, depending on how much dust is in the system (meaning, if the cards are running too hot, they don't like Crysis), with nary a hiccup. HL2 runs at ubermax (not sure where AA is at) with no trouble at all, even EP2 with it's slightly modified graphics. C&C3 also runs at ubermax, with everything topped out, and it's as smooth as a fine glass of aged congnac. But how, you ask, did I do it? I'll tell you.
Price hunting. I spent the time to search a wide variety of computer parts websites to find the best deals. So as not to anger the NewEgg people, I won't mention any other websites, but I can say I did buy some parts from the Egg. So here's what I've got and what I spent (approximately) when I bought it all last fall.
Mobo: MSI P7N Platinum SLI, approximatele $90 from NewEgg after MIR, free shipping
CPU: Intel Q6600, approximately $274 from Unnammed Site 1, free shipping
GFX: eVGA 8600GT new, approximately $100 from Unnamed (Auction) Site 2, shipping included in the $100; XFX 8600GT slightly used, approximately $25 from my best friend
RAM: OZC 2x1gb DDR2-800 PC6400 gold plated, approximately $35 from NewEgg after MIR, free shipping
PSU: PC Power and Cooling 750 Silencer (750 watts), approximately $165 from I can't remember where, free shipping
Case: NZXT Zero, approximately $125 from NewEgg, free shipping
Total: approximately $789.
All other parts, such as HDDs, optical drives, and monitor, I already had. Nowadays, though, prices have come down tremendously. I've seen the Q6600 at around $230 and the 8600GTs around $50. The problem, though, is that my motherboard isn't PCIe 2.0 compatible so I'd have to buy a new mobo to get a new GFX card, but an equivalent is probably around the same or less. RAM has also dropped because of DDR3, and the PSU is a bit of overkill so a small one could be substituted for less money. Combine that with a cheap HDD and optical drive, and you've got a sub-$1000 system that probably beats out anything Tom's Hardware ever tried building.
And a word about the case: It has seven 120mm fans and is nearly silent; I have to be sitting next to it to hear the minutest hum, and I'm pretty sure that the fans aren't making that noise. I sleep with my computer on in my room; only the blue lights bother me (they're kinda bright), but it's not unbearable.
So there's no need to go spending big bucks on a stellar rig when (as the cliche goes) you can do more with less. And if you've already got a rig, but want to increase your power, you can easily save old parts. One of my two hard drives is a Maxtor IDE that's about six years old and still runs fine; in fact, it's my primary HDD.
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In my last post I gave you guidelines for building your own custom computer; now I'm going to give some advice on purchasing parts for your computer. The first and most important thing to do is set a budget; unless you're a multimillionaire, you'll want to do this so you don't go broke buying parts. After you've decided what you want out of your computer, research the right parts for it. Then you'll have to research places to buy; the cheaper the better. Many times, "generic" brands are just as good as name brands, but below you'll find a list of reputable companies to buy certain parts from. Case: NZXT, CoolerMaster PSU: SeaSonic, Corsair, PC Power & Cooling RAM: Corsair, OCZ, Patriot, G.Skill (usually the cheapest) GPU: nVidia- eVGA (best there is), XFX (great warranty), BFG; ATI- Sapphire Disk Drive: Western Digital, SeaGate, Maxtor, Samsung (some people will argue Maxtor, but I love them) After you've determed everything you need, from the parts to the manufacturers, you'll need to decide where to buy from. Now, I'm not going to give other websites to buy from because I don't want NewEgg to hate me. I'm not saying NewEgg isn't amazing, because it is, but sometimes other sites have better deals. Search around. If you have questions about the reputability of a site, send me a PM. **Cautionary note: Be extremely careful when purchasing from eBay. Do extensive research on the seller, paying particular attention to feedback. I would advise against buying from someone with zero feedback unless you're really daring. Remember: the higher the positive feedback, the better the seller, and the more likely it is you'll get what you're paying for. Avoid bidding on or purchasing overclocked items that are not new in a sealed box. Lastly, read the description carefully; if there isn't much of one, I'd avoid buying it. The longer and more in-depth the description, the more reliable the seller.
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I realize that lots of people have threads and blogs about buying computers, but I've noticed that some of them are rather flawed. The most recent one I read tells the reader not to spend all his/her money buying the best computer parts out there since it's a waste of money. This is the farthest thing from the truth. If you have the money, buy all means buy the best that's out there: it'll last you a loooong time. The key here is to buy the best that is within your budget, but with some exceptions. Before shopping for the best CPU and graphics card, you want to spend your money on the core parts of your computer that won't change very often or very much. This would be your PSU (spend as much money as humanly possible on this), the hard drive(s), optical drive (e.g. DVD-RW drive), and the case. First I'll start with the PSU. The top brands are PC Power & Cooling, SeaSonic, and Corsair. Estimate the system you want, then use a PSU calculator to determine the wattage you'll need. Try this one http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp. It works great and is very precise. The PSU is essentially the heart of your computer: it powers everything and if it blows out because it's inferior, it could take the rest of your system with you. Also, these don't change very often, except for increasing in wattage. So if you get one that's, say, 100W over what you need, you'll be set for a long time. DO NOT SKIMP ON THIS! Next are your hard drive(s). Using my human body comparison, this is long-term memory of the brain (don't confuse this with computer memory; they're entirely different). Many people have one hard drive because that's all they'll need. You can deal with that, but I'd suggest getting at least 250gb. Those drives are very cheap now. People will tell you all sorts of things about different brands, but my suggested ones are Maxtor, Samsung, Segate, Western Digital, and Hitatchi. I currently have a Maxtor IDE drive and a WD SATA drive. I have two because I do a lot with digital photography. If you're asking if you should buy a Raptor or SCSI ("scuzzy") drive, ask yourself this: am I an uber hardcore gamer, spending six to ten hours gaming a day? If you answer "no" to any part of that sentence, then don't buy a Raptor or SCSI. They have read time differences of about four seconds, which isn't really a big improvement. Plus, you could get a drive twice the size, or bigger, of a Raptor for the same price. There are two reasons you'll have to replace a hard drive: 1. it dies (which is rare), 2. it gets corrupted (which is rare unless you're dumb and carelessly download things). Next is the optical drive. Right now, optical drives are changing formats to new technology, but with these things that doesn't happen often. I would suggest getting the fastest all-in-one* drive you can get. *By "all-in-one" I mean, DVD-RW/CD-RW, etc, etc (meaning +/- R, W, RW, and so forth). That's really all you'll need. And when HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray drop in price and are more wide-spread, then you can buy one of those drives. But chances are, you'll have your old fashioned drive for quite a while. Last is the case. There are a few things you want to look at here. First are size and weight. Your best bet is an all aluminum case because it perfectly combines light weight and good strength; for size, get either a mid-tower or full tower, depending on your wants (I'll get to that in a moment). You could also go with an acryllic case, but those are more for people who want to turn their computer into a light show that rivals Disney's Epcot Laser Light Show. The size of the case is really a personal thing. I've had a midtower for a long time and got sick of it because everything was cramped tighter than the Hulk in a leotard. So I moved up to a full tower. But if that's not even enough space for you, you could get a server tower (not sure you'd need this unless you're running a server or need numerous hard drives). The next consideration when buying a case, which is also the most important, is cooling. Check out my other blog post on the "Ultimate Cooling Case" for more info (I'd link to it, but I don't know how). This is key because you want your computer as cool as possible, especially if it's hot year round where you live or the summers get swealtering. Now, if you plan on liquid cooling, the case's cooling features are less important, if not at all. Once you've budgeted for these things, then shop for the CPU and graphics card (RAM and mobo are least important, though they have to be compatible). These two technologies are changing faster than Stephen King writes novels. It's as though the Flash is creating all of these products. If you don't plan on upgrading or want to upgrade for a while, buy the best you can with your money. I would recommend Intel only because AMD has been flailing horribly since Intel's Core 2 came out. The question here may be, "Should I go Duo or Quad?" I recently asked myself the same thing. I decided on quad for two reasons: 1. it's super fast, 2. I won't have to upgrade for a while. This computer could potentially serve me well in most games for three years; I may just need to upgrade my graphics card. But if you don't have the money for a quad or don't see the need for one, then a higher-end Duo will do just fine. As for graphics card, I would definitely recommend nVidia. ATI/Radeon failed horribly with the R600; it didn't live up to the hype at all, and from what I've heard/read, it's not that good. Any of the nVidia cards from 8600 and up are a good buy. Now, allow me to add a little caviat here. Up until this past May, I had an eVGA 7600GT in my rig. I was horribly disappointed with it. It came factory overclocked and didn't work right from day one. I couldn't return it, however, because I bought from a computer show and didn't save my receipt (bad idea). So that turned me off from nVidia. As a result, I bought a Sapphire x1950xt, which runs amazingly. However, whenever I upgrade my card, I'm definitely going to go nVidia unless ATI can redeem itself for the 2900-series, which I doubt. So there you go. It's a little long, but it will take you a long way.
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I've recently updated my computer from an Athalon X2 3800+ Socket 939 to an Intel Q6600. With it, I changed my case from a CoolerMaster Centurion 5 to an NZXT Zero. This has given me major boosts in cooling, with what I'm dubbing the "ultimate fan cooling case." The old case had a rear mounted 120mm fan and a forward 90mm; the front of the case was also bezeled, meaning that there were a bunch of holes drilled in it like a screen to allow "neutral" airflow (ie, no fans provided airflow). My new case has eight 120mm fans--two front, two rear, four side, and a top mounted 80mm fan. The 80mm is not connected because my power supply is about three milimeters two big; I squished the fan in place, but it makes an annoying noise. Using my motherboard's utilities, I've noticed that the CPU averages at 30 degrees C and the system at 35 degrees C. Now, that may not seem like much, but because of the power optimization features included in much of the new hardware, the majority of my fans aren't running since they're not needed. On top of that, there have been a few occasions where the CPU cooling fan has shut off because the processor is cool enough (it came with three installed heat pads, plus I added Arctic Cooling thermal paste). The stock heatsink probably has at least 1.5 times the surface area as my old one with the X2, allowing for greater cooling*. (*The reasoning for this is a law of thermal dynamics that roughly states that heat moves from high concentrations to low concentrations.) While this does cause me some anxiety, I am confident that my computer can handle any temperatures and can easily cool the entire system without breaking a sweat. Though I have no immediate plans, in the future I may possibly overclock this rig, and I feel that I could do so using everything that is factory-stock, both for the CPU and the case. Add to this the fact that fan is silent; I only hear noise coming from my case when a fan revvs up or when the ROM drive does the same. I highly recommend this case if you are in the market for a new one or if you are worried about your computer being cool enough.
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Last year I built a new computer to replace the outdated one I sold before we moved to a new home. After I determined what I wanted to put in it, I had to decide whether to shop at a computer show or at newegg.com. In the past, I've had awesome luck with computer shows so I decided that to be the best choice (bad idea). Anyway, like I said, previously I had great luck on getting good deals at computer shows. When MarketPro (one of the most widely known on the east coast, at least near Philly) came to a town near where I lived in Jersey, I found WinDVD4 (originally $80 online at the time) for $10. All I sacrificed was a box and manual. No big deal. So I figured I could find similar deals at this show for my new computer. A friend of mine and I drove about an hour and a half to this show. After much browsing and bargaining, I found most of what I wanted, but didn't have enough money for a new hard drive. And to top it off, I figured only $600 cash would be enough so I ended up having to borrow money from the guy with me (which I paid back when we returned). Even then, I had to use my debit card to pay for half of my graphics card. So after a few hours, it cost about $950 for my system: Athalon X2 3800+ 2gb Corsair XMS DDR400 (PC3200) RAM eVGA nVidia Geforce 7600GT 256mb, clocked to 600mHz core and 1560mHz memory Gigabyte Pro-SLI mobo CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case DVD-R\W Combo drive Antec 500W modular PSU Luckily, I still had my old IDE 112gb hard drive because I didn't have any more money to buy a new one. A little later I did some checking and found out that I could've bought that rig, plus a 320gb SATA drive, for the same price. So there's strike one against me. Then because I bought those things at a computer show, I didn't have any warranties. My graphics card didn't work right from day one, and I couldn't go back to try to return it, nor did I even think of trying to RMA it to eVGA. But I stuck with it for about nine months until it go so bad that I went and bought an X1950XT from newegg for $180. I did, however, try to RMA the card, only to find out I needed my original receipt, which I didn't have. Strike two. Around this same time (about the beginning of May), I noticed that the external fan on my PSU wasn't spinning (it has two, one inside and one outside). After posting on another site I frequent, I found that was really bad. And it wasn't a matter of just cleaning all the crud out; that didn't work. So I had to spend another $130 on a new PSU. Strike three. So for the above reasons, I wouldn't recommend buying a whole system at a computer show. Sure, they have great deals sometimes, but if you're being really specific and are buying a lot, newegg is definitely the way to go. Besides that, you don't have to get off your butt to buy anything. Just point, click, type in your info, and three to four days later your stuff arrives. And to those of you who are relatively new at buying things on Newegg, when they say "3 day business shipping" they do mean it. About 95% of the time, my order is verified and processed the same day I buy it, even when I buy it at like 9:00 at night, and is shipped either the next day or the day after. If it says on the site "shipped within 24-48 hours," they're serious. If you're far from the warehouse, expect your box three days later. But if you're closer, you could get it in less time. I think I ordered my card on a Thursday and got it by Saturday, though the warehouse was about 2.5 hours from my college. Newegg is definitely the best choice for computer parts: they're reliable, honest, and quick. Plus, they're good with RMAing things. Though, there is a small charge for returned items, but they take things back with virtually no questions asked.
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