Shadowex3

Linksys is owned by cisco, get a gigabit/wireless-N UFO and if you need more ports use a switch.

I support this option for escape where I just yesterday saw Mountainpass followed by fear, spacestation and XPG escape.

If he drops his screen res any further he'll be at a pretty significant disadvantage when trying to fight people at range who use 1200 vertical lines or more. Also Akaru why not the full 16x AF? Even my 6600gt could handle 16xAF with virtually no perf hit.

because of the gfx card and vista probably not.

2 things: 1. Punctuation. Seriously, we aren't going to run you through word and grade your posts but if you can't be bothered to at least format them enough to be easily readable most people wont put the effort to decipher stuff. 2. There's a little button on your posts called "EDIT". Using that instead of doubleposting makes the people who are prolly going to yell at me for yelling at you about this yell at you less.

most well designed mobos tend to keep the cards spaced further apart than the first ones, hence the common PCIE-PCI-PCIE arrangement. Plus most peopel that can afford SLI can also afford to use alternating mounts with TR coolers or the Acceleros.

All my experience is anecdotal so don't take this tooseriously if you find an exact model you like but: HPs seem to be built quite nicely (mine trucks to school and back and isnt exactly coddled), toshibas have given us no end of trouble, and i don't know shit about anyone else except that macs are just PCs with low quality parts and OSX on it. What you really want to do is handle it in the store as much as possible, I got mine for like $700ish which is why i put up with it but i tell you the screen is ABYSMAL, i get the TN-panel brightness changes and shitty viewing angles literally dead center. Look for something with good viewing angles, non-glossy screens really are better especially if youll be using it at school and places with lots of lights to reflect of your screen, you should be able to pick a solid colored background and look at it from most common angles without the top/bottom getting brighter or darker on you. Consider how secure it is when closed and how well it protects it's screen and any protruding pieces (mine literally just flips closed and has no latch or anything). Flip it over and check it's underside, a good laptop will have lots of LABELLED places for you to service it by adding/removing ram, hard drives, and other parts. Check the power brick to make sure it says "replace with XXXX" or something to that effect, HP is really good for standardized parts than can be replaced easily. Peripheralwise make sure you've got enough USB ports. I consider 4 the absolute minimum since that gives you a mouse, a spot to charge your phone/ipod/whatever, and two more to run a powered USB hub off of. Check to see if you can turn it's wireless on/off easy (you want wireless "N" btw), that it's headphone ports are in good spots, and for PCMCIA or express card slots. Look for any other connectors you'll be using like for a dock or whatnot. Pay attention to where the power cable plugs in, mine plugs in on the right side and winds up jutting out right there which is actually pretty annoying sometimes. Ask about shock protection and so on, a really nice laptop will actually try to park the hdd heads if you drop it. Also look for an antitheft spot like a lock or hardpoint for a cable (really not that good but better than nothing). Other than that go for a good processor rather than a fancy graphics card or lots of ram, realise that you'll probably never get more than about 5 hours of real use out of this thing (i get about that with a double-size batter, using max screen brightness), and seriously I'm not joking about processor over ram or graphics cards. Oh and check it's screen resolution, don't believe anyone that ever tells you high resolutions are "tiny" or hard to read. That's bullshit, you can ALWYAS make everything from text to buttons and icons bigger, a higher resolution means a better quality screen and a higher quality picture being displayed. 1920x1200 is obviously the best but do not go below 1280x720 on a 15incher or smaller under any circumstances. 17inchers should be 1920x1200 or somewhere near that but better than 1280x720.

Vertical room will almost always be more of an issue than horizontal room unless you've got a tinyass little minitower or a really balls-up strangely designed midtower that obstructs an ATX mobo for some reason. Just make sure you don't block it's fan intake with other cards. That Is A Bad Thing™.

I don't indulge in contentless posts too often but I really think you should send your xbox in with this printed out and attached to it.

Go to newegg, read the card dimensions, measure your case.

the quotes are important when binding things like that, and say_team will use teamspeak for whatever you want to say. That's important for things like stealth zteles in napalm.

http://www.newegg.ca/ Yep. That's right. Newegg does canada now. Pick a budget, that's more important than anything else in terms of picking a graphics card.

I keep posting links to Jonnyguru for a reason. He actually tests these things. We're talking full empirical testing of all aspects of a power supply even down to how much ripple it's got on it. You don't need to read the whole thing if you don't want to, just skip to the last page and read his summaries or even just look for the "JG recommended" graphic.

PCusa.com has no reselleratings, tigerdirect has a 7.30 lifetime rating and no awards. Newegg, on the other hand, has a 9.77 lifetime rating and has NEVER been rated below 8.0 for long enough to disqualify them from holding an Elite award. And that's with nearly 30,000 reviews over their lifetime. http://www.resellerratings.com

Newegg for parts. SVC for accessories, fans, and heatsinks. Jonnyguru for PSU reviews if you're going to do the extremely unwise thing and pick a powersupply not made by Corsair, Seasonic, or PC Power and Cooling. Anandtech for reviews of everything else.

GPU coolers, if you get a 2-slot card, are by and large unnecessary as long as your keep your stuff clean. 1slot cards that are really beefy like an 8800gt might need one IF your ambient is really high AND your case has poor ventilation AND you don't keep the fan and heatsink fins on it clean. My 8800gt never topped 80C except when I was running rthdribl fullscreen with massive antialiasing. The real question I've got is why are you using that overhyped "wind tunnel" CPU cooler? Please tell me it either came with your comp or you didn't pay more than ~$20 for it, it would SUCK if you payed anywhere near what a real cooler costs for that thing. p.s. what kind of fan do you have on that thing? Sleeve bearing fans REALLY don't like being mounted horizontally because of the way they're built. Ball bearing fans are best for GPU/CPU work since they can run much quieter at their max speed than the others, can be mounted horizontally without damaging them, and they tend to be higher quality overall.

Elements is basically a really stripped down version of the CS series. As a student you should have some way of getting either for a LOT less than the rest of us.

Yeah, by palm the mouse I mean my hand ENGULFS this thing and my fingers don't do any of the gripping, it's my palm and the base of my hand that does most of that.

Then you haven't been reading Jonnyguru and Anandtech's PSU reviews like you should. There are two schools of thought in power supplies, multiple 12v rails and single 12v rails. PCP&C does massive single rail power supplies and are pretty much unrivalled in that field. Corsair does a mix of the two, as does Seasonic. I think, but i'm not sure on this, that PCP&C does like seasonic and occasionally OEMs for some of the noname brands like how Seasonic made a few of antec's lines for a while (which is what got them their largely undeserved reputation). It's pretty important to keep track of stuff like this because it works in reverse too. You might be getting a best-named OEM or you might be getting a Deer exploding special.

Corsair TX lines are cheaper and have more amps on the 12v rail, HX lines are modular and somewhat more expensive with slightly less amps. Also that link isn't JUST corsair, that link goes to a customised newegg search of Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, and Seasonic power supplies that are ~1000 watts or higher.

Ever heard of the phrase "palm a basketball"? Same fucking thing.

Any of THESE will be acceptable. You're basically trying to run and power quad-SLI, that's going to be a massive power draw on your 12v rail.

This is the complicated way, there's two much simpler ways to share things inside of your home network if you're using XP. Every computer on a network is seperated into "workgroups" which you can change in windows' network setup wizard (easiest way), as long as you're in the same workgroup you can just do the rightclick->share thing and set permissions OR stick a file in the folder called "Shared documents" in explorer.

honestly it comes down to which you find more comfortable. Logitech mice are traditionally more comfortable for people who palm the mouse like I do and razer mice tend to be much better suited to people who use their fingers more.

Mechanical failure?