Shadowex3

You need anandtech, SVC, newegg, and resellerratings on there.

There are many technological differences. Functionally they'll perform about the same with ddr3 beating ddr2 in some situations.

It's overpriced, underdesigned, and relies on EVGA's brand name from their video card sales.

Tuniq towers are good, but they're also extremely oversized.

Case is your preference but cooler master is known for good ones, as is Antec. Your hard drive is good, WD and Seagate are both respected although many people prefer multiple smaller hard drives rather than one large one in case of drive failure. Your videocard is not bad but in general the "super mega hyper black overclocked" versions are WAY overpriced compared to the non-overclocked version of that exact same card. DVD drive looks good as long as it's SATA, they really are much faster. Power supply... Did you think we were kidding when we said this was the ONE FREAKING PART to just buy what we told you to and not argue and we'd explain later if you wanted? If you want an 850w one Corsair or PC power and cooling can do that for you for a good price and FAR more reliably. You can even get it modular if you want to pay a bit more.... (continuing) Like I said before I had to leave for class there's no reason to get an off-brand power supply when not only are Corsairs top of the line hardware but also have some of the best PRICES as well. Take their 850w model for example, $130. Seriously, just get that one if you absolutely positively MUST have a power supply that's a good 300 watts over what your computer will EVER use even at maximum power. I've got an overclocked quadcore, gtx 260, bungton of fans, and the damn thing has BLING and I still dont even strain my 620 watt psu. Your motherboard choice is also questionable. EVGA makes great graphics cards and has excellent service... but since you're still using x58 for your northbridge you don't have any reason not to go with the technologically better Asus boards like This P6t Deluxe. Asus and gigabyte are sort of the go-to companies for motherboards, probably because the competitive benchmarkers tend to use their stuff. You picked good ram though; Mushkin, Gskill, OCZ, Corsair, and Geil are all pretty good and Gskill is up there. And lastly good choice on the CPU. All you need now is to go to SVC.com and pick a heatsink, as always I recommend the chart-topping Noctua's or Thermalright 120 Ultra Extreme series.

^^^ like I said generic 120mms work for most people and situations. if your noise restricted yates or noctuas, and if you enjoy the sound of a leafblower in your ear from a fan that can chew up a pencil delta screamers.

Liquid cooling is a misnomer, there's really only two types of cooling: Active and Passive. All active cooling uses some method of getting your below room temperature. It also costs more than most parts and will tend to be unstable and require a lot of work to be safe (even those little self-contained thermal chips need you to waterproof a lot of stuff). Since you're not spending $4000 or more on your computer and doing world-championship benchmarking we won't worry about it, this stuff damages your shit getting it that cold anyway. Passive cooling is anything that uses a heatsink to keep a part at the most down to room temperature. Heatsink towers and water cooling both use heatsinks (water cooling calls them radiators) and they both cannot break the laws of physics, no matter what you WILL be limited to your ambient temperature at the very lowest. SInce computer hardware tends to run at 30deg CELCIUS at its lowest that's perfectly fine, they like that temperature range. Liquid cooling USED to be better because it could transfer more heat faster, now that heatpipe technology has been worked on for a while it's not worth it. A $70 heatsink that comes with two fans already on it (the noctuas for example) will perform just as good as a $250+ water cooling setup with a LOT less work and require virtually no maintenance beyond brushing the dust out periodically. Generally the Noctua Uh-12P (think i got that name wrong) and the Thermalright Ultra 120 series are considered the top of the line for heatsinks. Now. Fans. There's three kinds: Damn Near Silent, Quiet with good airflow, and Delta Screamers. We're talking about 120mm fans because nothing else is worth it, anything smaller is too loud and high pitched and bigger is... well its too big. Noctua fans are unhearable and move very little air, Yate Loons (they're neon orange if they're real) are kinda hard to find genuine ones but are widely considered the best for most people, and Delta makes high end "screamer" fans that move shittons of air but also are easily over 100 decibels and capable of truly physically harming you if you touch them while they're on. If you want to get some yate loons. Otherwise generic 120mm fans like cooler master 4packs from SVC.com are usually good enough. Noctua's heatsinks come with their own fans specially tuned for the heatsink.

That's why I named part classes rather than specific models. You should be able to get them yourself off of newegg.ca, Personally I've given up on taking the time to post completed rigs here because people tend to look at it and then completely ignore us on the most important things.

That's what I get for posting here without enough sleep.

$1200 is a top of the line world class gaming rig with everything up to and including a soundcard, you've got roughly twice the amount of money you need. Just get your parts from newegg, your heatsink and fans from SVC (watch the delta's, they're called "screamers" for a reason), and when everyone and their mother here tells you to stick with Corsair or PC Power and Cooling for your powersupply just fkin do it. Those two are EASILY the highest performing power supplies out there and a psu is the only part of your computer that can damage the others if it goes bad. As for the rest... Antec 900, asus motherboard in the range of $130-$150, Corsair Dominator or OCZ Reaper DDR3 (NOT the most expensive ones, it wont make a difference, honest), either an ATI or Nvidia graphics card whichever's performing best at the moment, this x-fi, whatever intel core i7 is on top but still in your price range, and one of these heatsinks preferrably either the Noctua or Thermalright models since they outperform everything else by MILES.

Full HD is 1920x1080, that's 200 lines below what computer monitors normally run at (1920x1200). You're quite enjoying your significantly lower resolution?

Command prompt DOS Win3.1 Win95 Win98 (SE) WinXP Vista/Ubuntu WinXP In that order. I remember being excited that we had a floppy drive that could hold OVER A MEGABYTE ZOMG.

How about an AFK slayer then? Stay AFK for too long and it starts doing damage to you. Would take a bit but would also solve the issue of AFK zombies.

Just to throw out: take into account heatsink design and warranty coverage.

Simple vocab super summary: X.1 surround sound means that many speakers and a subwoofer. With fullsized speakers set up around the room it works great, because they're physically far enough apart to work. now imagine putting 5 speakers and a subwoofer into something the size of a normal set of headphones. The drivers, the thingies that actually make the sound, would need to be the size of ipod headphones (earbuds) to pull it off. Think about how even the best set of earbuds sounds in comparison to some HD555's, which are cheaper and FAR better than what you're looking at. Plus, these 5 little earbud sized drivers are going to be less than an inch away from your ear. That's not going to be very good compared to a real pair of headphones running HRTF.

it's just another one on top of regular to show someone's been around for ages. There isn't even an official ingame tag for it, the only reason most people started using Sg.Hon ingame was simple logical progression and force of habit. That and around the time mem/reg got popular a lot of new guys wouldn't stop bothering the shit out of me about not being a mem or reg on the forums despite using a reg tag ingame, some people just don't LISTEN.

Why ever spend more than the bare minimum on a TN panel?

Is it me or did anyone else read that last post in a completely different way because of Crimson's avatar?

It's an onboard graphics "card" with about as much power as a cellphone processor. The answer is a resounding NO, a 6600gt from 4ish years ago would be literally 5 times as good. Using onboard graphics to play games is kinda like scotchtaping a hotwheels to your ass and trying to get down the interstate at full speed.

They're both true because they aren't contradictory. A big "open" area can be a very well done illusion that cuts off rendering to massive amounts of junk it doesnt need to and is easier on the system OR it can be a massive clusterfuck of all of source's pitfalls. It all depends on the mapper's skill. If you want to see what I'm talking about yourself start your own server and turn cheats on, there's a console command for wall transparency (wallhax!) though I don't recall it atm. If you do it on dust2 you'll see that huge portions of the map are just blank through the walls because they aren't being rendered.

Actually akaru's right, just because it's the same socket doesn't ensure compatibility. If you're lucky a bios upgrade might but sometimes it just doesn't work like that. I had an s775 mobo that just couldn't support a c2d or newer. The reason akaru's saying start over is because likely your power supply is off-brand which definitely means a replacement if you want a gaming graphics card (which is the 260, all the way, I have one and it's great) and your cpu is extremely low end. The E2180 is an allendale, my laptop could probably outdo it and source is HEAVILY multithreaded. Also soundcards are only worth it if you're getting a great deal on a $60 xtrememusic or somesuch from Creative Labs' x-fi line (be careful that it's a REAL x-fi with the hardware chip and not a rebranded audigy running software emulation, some of them are fakes like that). The reason being that creative has a pretty harsh monopoly on EAX and everything. That being said for $300 I think you can split between a $150 processor upgrade and a $150 graphics card upgrade and be better off overall than getting JUST a high-end one or the other. for $120 you can get a wolfdale E7500 and for another $100-$150 you can get a 9800gt on up to the still respectable 9800gtx. Imho, go for a lesser graphics card and a higher processor IF your motherboard is compatible with it (look it up, maybe a bios update will work). If not save up and start over with a new comp OR get just a graphics card because you'll mostly be throwing money into a fire otherwise.

I haven't opened the application forum yet but I bet it's an ocean of purple.