Shadowex3

Never listen to the wattage, always check the amps. The GTX 260 requires about 27a on the 12v rail. The reason wattage requirements are so overblown is because almost all of the power supplies out there not from a very select few brands are literally just last year's psu with a higher number sticker pasted over the old one.

Fine, TLDR version: Real hacks are capable of making shots land in the same spot even if the screen shows normal recoil and spraying, something no human can do since CS:S uses randomized conefire. Anything else and chances are almost certain it's not an aimbot.

So much misinformation I want to cry... Credentials: Worked at and with Counter-Hack from the time that aimbots used neon red and green and a seperate program to detect those colors and wallhacks were glitched Asus drivers all the way through XQZ2 revolutionising hacking with Hooks and "smart" aimbots with OGC, Myg0t, MPC, and Source Industries picking up the slack. Right. Now. 99% of what you think is aimbotting or wallhacking isn't. The sooner you admit that the happier you'll be. I don't care if you suck and play without mouselook or if you're Cal-I and regularly go 2-3:1 even on your off days. If someone is hacking and they're good you'll never know because they won't ever track, they'll "act" surprised by someone coming around a wall, their shots won't land in patterns, and if they have an aimbot they will only ever toggle it after MANUALLY getting onto the player's body and firing the first shot so any jerking looks like it's just recoil. Trust me on this, during Counter-Mole me and a bunch of other people were given generic names and the best of the admin world from United Admins to CAL's guys were invited to try and figure out who was hacking. Despite using a wallhack, an aimbot, and being able to see red/blue lines showing where other players were aiming I was never detected. Neither was Joolz. If they suck on the other hand, there won't be ANY doubt because the screen doesn't do anything but the BULLETS do. The old shaky screen being a guarantee is kinda a myth, lift your mouse ~1cm off the pad and watch it jitter to see why, but there are still extremely obvious giveaways on the newbs. The most obvious being multiple shots in a row or defined patterns (every 5th shot hits the head) landing on his opponent's body. In normal CSS the random conefire makes that happen one time out of FIFTY at anything other than point blank range. To a spectator an aimbot will look like the guy aiming normally, you may not even see him doing anything, but you'll see a zombie for example being hit by 10+ shots in a row and FLYING away. Being upside-down isn't even a hack, you can do that with clientside scripts. It's been around since half-life1 where it was used to tilt your hitboxes at a 45deg angle so that TFC's sentryguns couldn't hit you. And ANY time ANY subsequent shots from a non-scoped rifle lands in the same exact spot while spraying it's BS since the random conefire is literally impossible for a human to predict. [edit] And one last warning: Spectator view is NOT truly accurate. Aside from the increased lag and often lower amount of data being sent to you to conserve server resources (you're dead anyway) it doesn't show a lot of first person stuff accurately. Someone may be able to see over something and on your screen you can't, in Insurgency for example spectating doesn't show leaning or where the free-aim is pointing.

I meant a lian li.

I'd consider it IF it could top the build quality and utility of my current stacker. This whole thing is made largely of 1-2+cm thick steel and aluminum with very little plastic and all rolled edges.

Firefox because I have genuine constant use for various extensions.

Just for the record the GTS 250 is just a new-silicon 9800gtx, the entire 9000 series was made basically before nvidia was ready to make them hence their enormous size compared even to the new ones. It's got the G92 core and everything.

mmm I'd say spend ~$150-$180 and get a gtx 260 or gtx 275 from EVGA @ newegg and save up for a get set of sennheisers. 2gb of ram is basically the most you'll ever use gaming since most games aren't 64bit or large address aware AND all ram your graphics card has will be subtracted from your system ram so even if you have 4gb you'll only ever top out at 3gb, and the 2gb->3gb difference is negligible even to Crysis. That's a fault MUCH older than even windows itself btw, stems from ancient computers of our forefathers. As for headphones... save up and get a set of sennheisers sometime.

Lian li's are sexy as hell but they're also priced such that if you need to ask how much one costs you already know you can't afford it.

As in you can take out the entire motherboard tray, mobo attached, flip it upsidedown so that the RIGHT side of the case is the side the mobo tray faces out to, and install the entire thing upsidedown.

CM Stacker's may be somewhat light on bling but they make up for it in features. The ENTIRE side of the case is a swinging bracket for 4x120mm fans, the motherboard tray is both removeable AND reversable, and their hdd holder has built in noise reduction. I'd say between a CM stacker and an Antec 900 it's roughly even for airflow.

Brands to trust are PC Power and Cooling, Seasonic (who USED to OEM the antecs you likely once trusted), Powerstone, and Corsair is the one almost everyone buys because frankly they're quite simply the best thing on the market because of their amazing toughness and price. Wrathek's mostly right on the power requirements too. The trick to powersupplies (aside from reading jonnyguru's reviews) is not the wattage but how many amps you get on the 12v rail. For crossfired 4870's I'd suggest not worrying about the amps on the 12v rails since any corsair (modular) from the $130 before rebate 520hx on up should be able to give you plenty considering that they usually have 3+ 12v rails at 18a each. Also for cases it's all up to what size you want. If you can take the massive e-penis boosting size and almost equally massive price of a fulltower I'd say go for the Cooler Master Stacker series. It's basically the last case you'll ever buy since you'll just want to swap your primary computer into it every time you upgrade. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000007&Description=stacker&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

Sega genesis.

The overwhelming majority of people run XP or Xp64 for gaming and vista for checking to see if dx10 has done anything different yet.

That's partially because they keep renaming their old cards and selling them as the new cards. The GTS 250 is basically 9800 with a new heatsink.

9800GTX: $130 GTX 260: $180 Pay the extra $50 and get something that will last longer. Wait 3 months, trade up to a GTX 275 when the price drops down to ^^^. Or don't. Either way it's a $50 difference.

Directx10 looks the same as Directx9 EXCEPT for geometry shaders, I could show you every Dx10-Dx9 comparison pic out there you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. ALchemy is a cheap hack.

Oh yeha I forgot to mention that. HD555-595's are AROUND the ear headphones, I've got huge ears and they don't get pressed on or squeezed at ALL. They use a sort of fuzzy/felt type padding that breathes pretty well and doesn't trap sweat much or anything. As for X-fi's you're best off getting a full-height Xtrememusic if you can find one instead of the xtremegamer or ANY of the cards that's half-height. The xtremeaudio is also not a real x-fi, it doesn't have the x-fi hardware on it. Wikipedia's X-fi article is a good starting place tbh. If you do go the x-fi/headphones route your best bet for positional audio requires a little work. Source engine games naturally are a little wonky so what you need to do is desync the x-fi and windows control panels then set the x-fi to headphones and turn on CMSS and set windows to 5.1 surround speakers. Then ingame you set to 5.1 surround AND in pre-orangebox engine games (CS:S, some mods) you turn on snd_digital_Surround.

Xp is still by far the best gaming OS. Esp since it doesnt look like Win7 will have hardware sound either.

No highs, no lows, it must be a bose! Sound is a complicated subject, it suffers more than anything else in the computing industry from bullshit and woo-woo. If half of what Bose or most similar companies (monster...) claimed was true then James Randi would owe them a check for $1,000,000 for breaking the laws of physics. Lets get this out of the way early: "Surround sound" headphones are bullshit. Not only is it physically a ludicrous proposition but if the guys really were stupid/crazy enough to put several tiny earbud sized drivers in fullsized headphones it's probably going to sound like ass compared to REAL headphones. Following that is most things with "gaming" slapped on them. Just about any "gaming" set of headphones is going to be inferior to a normal set. Gimmicky surround or gaming headphones also tend to "color" the sound, usually through having a poor frequency response. You get a lot of impressive sounding hot air at first but it fatigues your ear after a while and just doesn't hold up to something that can faithfully reproduce what you throw at it. Empirical science is where it's at and legitimate measurable facts put Sennheiser HD555's and equivalent Audio Technica AD700 headphones are good quality phones that will last you a LONG time if you don't break them. I've got the 555's bigger brother the 595's and they're good too but also at the top end of your budget. The frequency response is excellent, their THD is extremely low, they don't need specialized hardware but they will benefit from amps and the like if you want, and since they aren't USB you can use your soundcard with them. TL;DR: $100 AD700, $90 HD555, and the big daddy $195 HD595. [edit] For the people who bought the hype and market-image of bose: A few reasons why bose sucks. There is a reason why bose sued consumer reports, and refuses to publish empirical data on their stuff. Look up the tests people have done on boses to see why they don't. Variations of +-10db aren't unheard of for boses stuff, try comparing that even to $60 sennheisers and you won't even be able to fit the bose speaker's response on the same chart. I don't even want to know what their total harmonic distortion is.

Dude it's $150-$170 for a GTX 260 core 216 and if he gets one from EVGA* he can wait 3 months and step up to the 275 for $0 when the price inevitably drops. *EVGA, BFG-tech, XFX. Lifetime warranties, 24/7 live tech support. Don't ever buy nvidia cards from anyone but them, it's worth the extra $10.

Embarq. Their own speed tests give 178-200+ ping times on a 3mbit connection that is supposedly rated up to 10mbits.

What Wrathek said. EVGA GTX 260 core 216's are right about $170-180 before rebate nowadays and that sonofabitch is basically the second most powerful graphics card out there right now, it'll run crysis very high at 1600x1200 with ~35fps or just about any source game with up to 16xAA for no real performance hit. If you really must squeeze more frames out of your current setup though anti-aliasing, shadows, and reflections will be your biggest performance hurters along with overall screen resolution. You can lower model detail for free since it doesnt really look any different, and as long as you keep Anisotropic Filtering at 8-16x you can get away with medium textures most of the time too. Also HDR will rape your framerate.