Shadowex3

DDR2 and DDR3 use different voltages which means if they were plug-compatible, which they are NOT (the notch...), Very Bad Things would happen.

Audio Technica AD700's and if you have a soundcard a non-USB mic so you can really boost the volume instead of being reliant on just windows+CSS like I am (hence me being so damn quiet all the time). They're on par with sennheiser HD555's and 595's but for some reason rigth now they're $100 less than either.

Yeah and I ran oblivion nearly lagless at maxed out settings, hacked the ini for better, and with Qarl v3 installed (google it). Like I said it's just coded terribly, runs good for some people and terrible for others. Crysis is the same way. UE3 games make better benchmarkers, as does Source.

Oblivion's coded about as poorly as crysis.

Shock trooper EVERYTHING electronic requires a certain amount of power to work properly.

Color banding has nothing to do with resolution, you're actually experiencing some kind of rendering error. What graphics card are you using?

Point, I've just always booted up with the format disc already in so suprisingly it's never been an issue for me... I'm wondering if this is a power issue. A monitor will, even without a computer to plug it into, display a message telling you something's up and be able to bring up it's OSD (the monitor's built-in settings/options menu). If that doesn't even work it means the problem's with the screen.

I wonder if that might cause some problems with a modern computer...

Dude newegg does canada now, you do know that right? "Best Buy Isn't", seriously, they're one of the WORST places you could possibly shop >.>

Your 21.6 inch "tv" that you'll be using for a computer monitor runs 1366x768. On a TWENTY ONE INCH SCREEN. My 17 inch screen runs about that. My old 21 inch screen did almost twice as many lines vertically. Your monitor's an absolute ripoff especially since for ~$20 more you can get a 24 inch 1920x1200 monitor...

Low end sennheisers ftw, cheap AND its from senn.

I think dualcore's pointless now that virtually everything is quad-enabled. Orange box engine games routinely use my other 3 cores, most applications and utilities use all 4 cores, other than crysis I haven't played a modern game that didn't use all 4 cores (UE3 games actually load them all evenly too), and even single-core tasks can be locked to a given core with affinity settings.

Unless you're using 3 monitors so one is centered in front of you it's pretty retarded to play a game with the bezel RIGHT THERE. Even in a cockpit they try to give pilots a window right in front of them rather than opaque frame. Also 3d makes no real sense to me, I've never been particularly impressed by the effect.

Do you have any idea how small dust actually is? If you've got an air quality problem your comp is going to wind up looking like mine (caked on every surface, f#@%ing chainsmokers) no matter how many filters you try to use, even if it gets in through your opening and closing the CD drive.

I just bent the sheet metal of the side outwards a bit to accomadate the height of the TRUE, it's not that hard to do so in such a way as to create a bulge that allows the heatsink to never be bonked/scraped by the case side but also does not affect the thumbscrews on the end or how the side fits on the chassis. It's still one of the best sub-$50 cases I've ever used though, like I said there's one sitting next to me right now and it's the second one I've owned. Personally I just set it on carpet and pressed down with my knee right where the heatsink was rubbing but I'm pretty sure with a towel and a hammer (or a rubber mallet or deadfall) would be more precise and possibly aesthetically more pleasing. If you've got a dremel and a steady hand you have an even easier solution >P

$55 Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119115&cm_re=cooler_master_elite-_-11-119-115-_-Product $126 PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012 $100 Nonmodular: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005 $259 CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041&cm_re=q9550-_-19-115-041-_-Product $90 Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128372 $48 Heatsink: http://www.svc.com/u120e-rt-775.html $215 GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130434&cm_re=gtx_260-_-14-130-434-_-Product $86 RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122 $56 HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073 $26 DVD burner: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106334 Total price: 960 Total price with nonmodular PSU: 934 If you can find a case locally that uses 120mm fans that will get you below $900, the Elite 330 is a $30 case but costs almost that much in shipping, it's a good case though and there's one next to my left leg right now. If you can tolerate using a non-modular PSU, which really isn't that bad, then you can get 750 watts but you'll save a respectable amount of money over a 650 watt modular. I went ahead and bumped you up to the gtx 260 core 216 because of how close the ending price is to your total budget ($35 >P) and since the 250's suck hard in comparison while the 275-280's arent THAT much better. The 260 just wins in price for performance comparisons. The heatsink is a TRUE with a fan that mounts a lot better than their wire clips, and the TRUE is easily one of the top 3 heatsinks. Watercooling is utterly pointless outside of competitive benchmarking (where it's usually refridgerated or something) because it's still using a radiator (read: heatsink and fan) to dissipate the heat, neither watercooling nor a regular heatsink will ever be able to get you below room temperature because of the laws of physics. So congrats on being my second tightest budgeted build ever that STILL got a top end graphics card and CPU. This computer is actually better than mine since I use a q9450 instead of a q9550. This is why I can tell people $60 an hour to build a computer in meatspace and they'll pay it >P

Then get the cheapest macintrash that runs the latest *Nix based OS on their intel processors with PC ram you can find?

First off even Crysis doesn't use 1gb of video memory yet as far as I know and to compound that for every megabyte of memory your videocard has you'll lose a megabyte of system memory. If you get a 1gb videocard you lose 1gb of RAM, a 2gb card and 2gb of your ram becomes invisible. Unless you go total 64bit and only use 64bit programs you just fucked yourself out of 2gb of ram. And FYI that problem's a LOT older than windows so for once it's not microsoft's fault. Yes it can and yes it can. Even SLI computers top out at 5-600w of drawn power, they only need absurd power supplies to handle the amp requirements of two videocards. The average power draw of a computer has held pretty much steady at needing a ~600w power supply since half-life2 came out 6 years ago and the whole dx9 gaming thing started. The only reason people think of needing bigger and badder power supplies is because videocards have started using multiple plugs due to the ATX standards getting revised over the last half-decade to account for the power draw of a videocard. That and marketting from the PSU companies, the same ones that tend to be known for Blowing Up.

Video artifacts like this are the videocard equivalent of your hard drive making the click of death.

And that 1000 watt PSU will only ever draw about 400 watts under max load lol.

It's not that I don't care so much as cases are extremely personal, like keyboards and mice. All I can really say is make sure the cases dimensions will fit the heatsink, be wary of cheap toolless mounting systems, and go for something that both uses and preferrably comes with 120mm fans. Steel is your friend but is heavy and expensive, aluminum is okay and lighter but less strong. More fans are not necessarily better ventilation, the antec 900 and my cooler master stacker 830 EVO are exempt by the sheer massive amount of air they can shove through a computer overwhelming the negative effects of poor airflow. Those two are really the benchmark to which all other cases are held, with cooler master holding the expensive and cheap markets and antec holding the middle. There is a third brand that makes trustworthy cases, Lian Li, but they don't list their prices for the obvious reason.

Every time a bot is created a little memory is used for it and locked away for that bot. Every time a bot dies... that memory is not released. Multiply that by the HUNDREDS of bots that zombie hell will kill and create repeatedly over just an hour or two.

^^^ Trakaill gets many internets for finding that power supply, I didn't even know there was a 750w modular from corsair, I thought they topped out with the 620hx. It's SO much easier to deal with modular power supplies, you only plug in the cords you need. As for thermalpaste I prefer MX-2 now since it's nonconductive AND noncapacitive, and get it from SVC since they're cheaper for all things cooling related. Didn't know about it. Good find mate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150443&cm_re=5870-_-14-150-443-_-Product

If you get into the Sennheiser/Audio Technica levels of quality you can give them to your kids if you don't break them. Mine are at least 3 years old now and still sound perfect.

It's according to Jonnyguru, who straps them to a bench and actually tests them 5 times for everything from the waveform of the juice they deliver to vdroop when under stress. That said Regionals is the closest to a decent build so far. Nvidia's chipsets are crap, nobody elses motherboards hold a candle to gigabyte and asus nowadays (hence why they lead competitive benchmarking), and intels processors are still kicking ass and taking names. Core i7 920 $280 Corsair 750TX $115 Asus P6T Deluxe V2 $280 (x16-x16-x1 or X16-x8-x8) Regionals' Gskill ram suggestion $145 EVGA Gtx 285 $390 Noctua NH-U12P SE $61 Seagate 1tb 7200rpm hdd $100 Whatever case he wants, Assume $150 Total of about $1500 Tell him to save the rest to pay for upgrading his graphics card over the next 3-4 years. I really need to find a way to start making money off of doing this >/