[notbov]

the best stereo setup for a desktop is either headphones (you should have a nice pair anyways, always good for those late nights) or spend a bit and get a stereo receiver/amp and some nice bookshelf speakers or a pair of studio monitors

I personally would only go with computer speakers if space was a concern
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[Felix]

I use this thing: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-USB-Speaker-Z515/dp/B003VAHYXW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365700367&sr=8-1&keywords=z515

I have my desktop in the living room (the couch actually faces the back of my desk so I can look upon my loved ones, and my projector points directly over my head) and my wife [whom I agree with] took a stand against speaker wires, as they are by far the most profligate of the bunch.

Obviously a wireless speaker is not going to be audiophile quality, but it is at least on par with an ordinary mid-end pair of stereo speakers.

[spinach]

i have a pair of handbuilt bookshelf speakers given to me by a dude who almost doesn't exist anymore

and a couple of old receivers/phono players. i've no idea how to arrange these things for a pleasing aesthetic coupled with a computer but

headphones are nice but what's the point of being at home if you're gonna listen to headphones all day
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[notbov]

headphones and shooting people go hand and hand, like PB & J

it's fun being able to hear people coming around corners and be ready for their shit

I would say that, for maximum aesthetic niceness, you could do the wiring in the walls/ceiling and breakout to terminals where your speakers are going to be, but I have a skewed perspective as my dad and uncle are practitioners of the DIY arts. tearing up walls is fun, though
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[spinach]

i won't improve a rental ever no way no how
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[a pair of gators]

[Felix]

the i7 is really only worth it if you often do things that involve waiting on your computing to crunch lots of numbers (and most of those are GPU accelerated these days anyhow). that said, microcenter has 3770ks for like $220, and the $150 2500ks are gone now anyhow, so whatever.

if you get a k processor, make sure you get an overclock-friendly mobo chipset. z68/z77 are generally the best and the cost premium's not huge.

casewise, I have a silverstone sg-05 and love it... if you care about case design, consider mITX!

tenfour on nvidia. you might go for a 650 ti boost instead? the 660 is really cut down in some stupid ways, you have to go down a notch to a 650 ti boost or all the way up to a 670 to get nonstupid engineering from nvidia right now.

[bza]

as far as cases go, i've always had good luck with antec for sturdy low-key cases at decent prices
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[Felix]

and as future-proofing is concerned, keep in mind that intel has no major raw cpu enhancements planned between sandy bridge 2011 and broadwell 2014

[another god]

the haswell IGP is supposed to be 2X better than this HD4000 which is a very, very decent IGP already.
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interdimensional

[Felix]

that's the non-socketed haswell IGP -- special form factor devices only

[Broco]

Which raises the question of why not just never buy a desktop again after haswell comes out? Certainly many people will be doing that. I might go that route as well, unless there's some compelling PS4-generation game I want to play on PC.

[a pair of gators]

[Felix]

[Toptube]

So I clearly havent' been paying close attention to Intel.

If i7 doesn't offer triple channel memory anymore, then gamers shouldn't look any higher than an i5 right now. i7's extra cache and slight architectural efficiency improvements only show themselves in number crunching work like rendering video, compressing/decompressing, etc. Games are heavily dependant on GPU right now.

*I would also argue than anyone looking to build al computer for gaming, should be looking at overclocking. Its super easy and will net you huge performance gains for free. In the end, you are playing with processors that don't exist at retail. it does mean you need a more than minimum power supply and that you should spend $30 - $50 on a CPU heatsink, if you value a quiet computer.

Its possible that halfway into the next gen cycle, we will start seeing games addressing more than 4 threads in a more than superficial way. In that case, an i7 MIGHT give more longevity. But an i7 only has 4 physical cores. Its impossible to predict how well hyperthreading will be able to handle console ports/if it will make a difference VS. an i5

[Toptube]

[Felix]

< has been overclocking on stock cooling and built in psus for 15 years. I can definitely affirm it's not tough! ran a celeron 300a @450mhz, ran an athlon xp 2500+ at 2.4ghz (stock is like 1.83), ran a wolfdale pentium e6300 at 3.33ghz (stock is like 2.7), am now running a 2500k, in an mITX case, with stock cooling, at 4.1 (stock is 3.3), with the iGPU at 1.4 (stock is 1ghz). I always assumed all these people who buy all this extra hardware either are very paranoid or really bad at applying thermal paste or just plum enjoy doing so. then again, I also drive an M/T 1994 civic hatchback.

oh, and for the record, in my extremely unscientific tests, Linux benefits a lot less than Windows does from an SSD. if you're a) planning not to need Windows on this thing until a game that you want to play comes out (or won't work in wine), b) willing to open it back up and fuck with the bootloader if and when, and c) looking to spare your wallet a bit, you could totally put off buying the SSD and just install Linux to the HD for starters.

I'm just looking over this because I built a similar machine for only $600, though I haven't gotten a video card yet:
2500k: $150 (got from microcenter)
z68 mITX mobo: $90 (got it refurb)
16gb ddr3 1600: $70 (komputerbay)
2TB HD: $110
SG-05 + 450w PSU: $110
slim BD-RW: $60

[bza]

if you care about noise it'd be worth getting something nicer than stock, I ended up with a big heatsink + fan because the stock was extremely loud when I started messing with overclocking

running an i5-2500K at 4.8gHz and getting the performance of a CPU that costs over twice as much is no joke, especially when it runs almost silently
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[Felix]

yeah, I guess, but silverstone cases have really good ventilation to begin with, and seeing as you already have the stock HSF for free (which usually allows for a ~25% OC, generation to generation), buying more redundant equipment to eek out another 10% seems like a waste.

I say 10% because this thing could totally go up to 4.4 without a fuss if I weren't clocking up the iGPU too (I tested it), and as far as noise is concerned, I actually like a little bit of white noise in the house. most modern CPUs are so much more powerful than actually necessary that they spend 90% of their time running at half speed anyhow.

oh, and as far as assembling SFF cases is concerned -- the only part that's ever difficult is getting the damn mobo in there, where you feel like you're scraping all the silicon against the bottom and the huge-ass ATX wire has to be held as far off to one side as it'll possibly go &c. &c. once it's actually in there, tucking sata cables off to the side and stuff isn't so bad at all.

[Toptube]

[internisus]

I've built two micro-ATX computers, one in an X-Qpack and the other in a Silverstone TJ08B-E. Both were a pain in the ass, not because of installing the motherboard but because of cables. It's hard both to connect them within the small space and to make them reach, especially for SATA power and various motherboard hookups. You'd think that cable reach would be less of a problem in a smaller case, but that hasn't been my experience. The Silverstone project did not have a discrete graphics card to work around, so that could have been a lot worse. That was last year, and I did the X-Qpack back in 2007, so the design of the latter may have changed; but at the time it was excruciating. I am not a fan of X-Qpacks even though I'm still using that machine (with included PSU, no less, and nothing has ever failed). There are some really nice small form-factor cases today, and I say spend some extra money to get a case you can love. That way you'll actually want to open it up for upgrades or troubleshooting rather than dread the possibility that you might need to take something apart. (To be fair, I thought that the Silverstone was a very pleasing case for its price despite the difficulties I had with cables.) And again I want to recommend a modular PSU.

[Felix]

yeah, I've never understood the fuss over Qpacks. I liked the old Antec Aria much better, but these days, mATX shuttles don't really seem to save that much space vs. plain jane mATX towers. gotta go mITX if you really want something small.

[internisus]

If you want to see photos of the insides of both my X-QPack and Silverstone builds and you're at least a friend of a friend of mine on Facebook, click here. (Feel free to friend me, of course!)

The problem with the X-QPack, as I think you can tell, is that you basically can't get to the goddamned motherboard. It's got a layer of stuff (HDD, PSU, DVD) on top of it plus part of the frame, and you can barely see the motherboard headers well enough to do any work, let alone get your hand in there. The tray slides out, but you'd have to disconnect a ton of shit to do so, which of course also means that you have to have to tray fully slid in underneath all the aforementioned obstructions to connect said shit in the first place, so that's no help regardless of whether you're upgrading or building for the first time.

I'm not sure that the Silverstone photos do a good job of showing the trouble I had there, though. You can see that there really aren't any cable routing options, so a bunch of motherboard connections need to cross the full span of the board; with a discrete video card, this might be a more significant problem than it was to me, but I basically just had to use ties to keep that stuff away from the wind corridor. To my recollection, the biggest difficulty was connecting the SATA power cables to the SSD and HDD, and I don't think you can see that here; just the corners that they had to go around to get there made them really, really tight, and they actually popped out on the drive end as I continued to work. (Nothing has gone wrong with the machine since closing it up, though.)

If you did go with a small form-factor and had a problem like this, you could for most cable types just get an extension. For my current project, because it's my first normal-sized PC and the last thing I want is to sit down excitedly with all my expensive toys and find that something just doesn't reach, I bought power extensions by NZXT for SATA, Molex, and 8-pin connectors in addition to my fan splitters, which will extend their cable length.

[Felix]

I've never really had cable management issues. I tuck them to the side (and in between the ram sticks and what have you) when I can, other times I just leave them all bunched up in the middle obstructing airflow and DGAF

you really shouldn't have that much incentive to open up your computer after you put it together, anyhow

[Toptube]

[Felix]

that still looks basically like my antec aria from 2003

and my mITX silverstone sg-05 would totally fit a 670 if I'd spend the money on one

so shruggggg

[Toptube]

the Antec Aria is basically a Q-pack variant.

That Silverstone looks cool. Looks like they eventually figured out to make the cases slightly wider. Just a few years before, you'd have had to dremel a "window" for your gaming card in a case of that class.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

so what is the next gen PC USB stick of huge size, fast speed, cheap price, great reliability, minimal amount of bits that will break off or bend

ideally also backwards compatible with USB 0.5 or whatever an XP laptop from ~2005 would have (not a necessity but a nicety)

[Felix]

I have one of these and I like it a lot: http://www.amazon.com/HP-32-Flash-Drive-P-FD32GHP165-GE/dp/B0052WT1OC/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1366043048&sr=8-5&keywords=32gb+usb

it's not USB3 but there's still a fair price premium for those. I've put this thing through the wash three or four times and it's come out just fine. I have noticed that pre-Win7 machines don't like it (it's FAT32 formatted which I thought was back-compatible?), but I don't really know what the deal is there. presumably if you format it in one of those the first time around it'll be fine.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Flash-Drive-SDCZ33-032G-B35/dp/B00812F7O8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366043048&sr=8-1&keywords=32gb+usb seems competitive too.

[another god]

The best next gen PC USB stick is dropbox.
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interdimensional

[spinach]

what's up with raytracing though
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[Teflon]

[spinach]

i put linux on my big cousin's computer and she is excited about it
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[RobotRocker]

Welp the saga of my card has ended. Turned out that the card was busted all along. Just got the apology from the distributor in Germany and a refund through Amazon today.

So, not really sure what to do now really. Upgrading was a complete shitshow (Fuck OEM's) but looking at the release schedule, all I want PC wise is Project CARS (Unless that gets shut down for fraud) and vultureing the steam sales. So any ideas. I don't want godly range. I just want something that would run High/60FPS and isn't too hard on the wallet since PC is nowhere near going to be my main gaming platform and this experience has pushed me to having one of the consoles as my main platform next gen. Worth going for a 650Ti or 7850 instead?
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[Felix]

yeah, I generally feel like the 650Ti Boost and the 7850 are the lowest-end cards worth buying (mind you, for me, they are also pretty close to the highest-end cards worth buying). 2GB versions of each should be gettable for about $160.

though from the sound of things, you'd probably be pretty happy with higher-end onboard graphics, if you have a newish CPU...

[spinach]

[RobotRocker]

[RobotRocker]

Turns out the refund was an error (And I didn't get any money back. Rats) but they sent me a new card. And whaddya know. Works like a charm so far. No crashes at all even though I did a pretty lengthy RR: Unbounded session on it. Though turns out the main reason I got a card, Project CARS, just got an official delay in 2014 meaning it's inevitably going to be on the next X-Box and PS4

Guess this will do for now though. Hi-Ho PC gaming, away!
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[Toptube]

cool!

[Teflon]

[Iacus]

Ok, so the time has come to start The Gathering of the Parts.

This is, broadly, the kind of setup I want to build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/W528
I may have to tweak a few components ie. is the power supply enough? (Not sure if I should believe the "estimated wattage" I get from this page.)

But now, my main question is: Would I be able to fit all of this in a micro-atx chassis with not too much difficulty or should I just go for a mid tower ATX with plenty of room for cables and upgrades? this will be the first PC I'll build myself, and I'm a bit worried I may screw something up by working in a space that's too cramped.
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Guayaba 2600