So I bought this new computer

[Square King]

from ibuypower. Had a medium-range budget (just shy of $1200) and OH MY SWEET SASSY LORD everything is glorious. I'm coming from a 2005 Dell laptop that struggled with Source-engine games to this beastly mother who eats maxed-out-Crysis (demo) for brunch. Highlights:

Intel Core i5 760 (4x 2.80GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
8 GB Corsair DDR3 1600
ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB
Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 mobo
640 GB hdd - 64M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s
BLU-RAY Reader, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive
Win7
ASUS 22" LCD 1920x1080

Right now I'm heavily addicted to Team Fortress 2 and the cheese that is Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light. Also loving Stalker, Amnesia and The Void. Anyway, I just needed a place to e-jaculate over this stuff. I'm gonna go through the Steam usernames thread and add you silly people. I'm squareking.

[mortified_penguin]

Nice! I'm usually not a fan of pre-builts but it was a rough year financially so I also purchased an ibuypower rig. Surprisingly good quality for the price. Watch out for TF2, once you start getting item drops it's really really hard to quit.

[mesh control]

I bought a laptop from ibuypower this year too. I should have got a faster processor, but all is well. Haven't tried to run anything too crazy aside from stalker and F1 2010.

[Square King]

This is my first real machine and I'm having a blast learning about how things work/attach to the motherboard. I'm in the market for a decent PCI wifi card -- the usb deal I bought is kinda hokey.

[SniperElite]

Awesome upgrade brother! Congrats! Any pics?

[oli_lar]

I was surprised when I got Crysis earlier this week and it ran on medium settings on my 4 year old computer. Only things i've added to it are a gig of ram and a new graphics card that were £15 each. The PC was only £300 in the first place too! I haven't played anything with graphics that good before. Already finished Crysis, pity about the ending!

You should be set for quite a while with your PC

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Sweet system and I must say a better deal then what I paid for my £800 - £900 HP 6320uk i5 650 PC 6 months ago. In atleast another 5-6 years from when I have to fully replace my PC im gonna go back to building my own as It should be allot better for value for money. Especially as both high street PCs ive bought (the other was a meridian intel 640 64bit pc) always tend to have underpowered GPU cards

BTW your i5 750 is much better then my i5 650 with its waste of space onchip GPU, although I hear my i5 650 is a good chip for simple overclocking, I wonder if your 750 is aswell. In the future when my CPU gets a bit long in the tooth ill probably do some rudimentry overclocking with a simple fan upgrade or something but no putting water cooling in my PC thats just crazy imo

[Square King]

Those freakin' TF2 drops. I'm 5 minutes away from logging in to TF2. I'm definitely satisfied with this setup;; should be rock-solid for quite a while.

TrevHead: This system came with a free water cooling upgrade and I really dig it. Played Crysis et al for hours and the temp's been very low. I'd look into it.

Here's a quick phone shot, will update with the whole rig soon:

[drauch]

Stalker rules! Welcome to the club. I want to play Amnesia sooo bad. Can it play Crysis?

[mesh control]

That tower looks slick.

[mortified_penguin]

Ha, I have the same case. Had to tape off the blue light in the middle since the blinking in sleep mode keeps me up at night. Little bastard is bright.

[Square King]

Stalker rules! Welcome to the club. I want to play Amnesia sooo bad. Can it play Crysis?

Yes, yes and yes! You just missed the 50% off sale on Amnesia via Steam, though. I had to stop playing after I passed out in a dark room with no tinderboxes and hardly any oil left. It is soo good.

That tower looks slick.

I thought so too. Just wanted something basic. Some of the cases they offer are gross.

Ha, I have the same case. Had to tape off the blue light in the middle since the blinking in sleep mode keeps me up at night. Little bastard is bright.

No kidding. I've been tossing t-shirts over that main light.

I haven't been this excited about hardware since the SNES.

[KBZ]

nice purchase. join the STG ground in steam and you'll find a bunch of us in there.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/shmups

[gct]

Next year I'll be rebuilding on a similar spec, but for the time being I moved my current components into a Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced case. Sweet case with some nice features and IMO looks cleaner than the NZXT case which I think you have.

The very first thing I did was to take the LED front fan and cut all the LED wires. THEN I realised that on top of the case there is a switch to turn the fan LEDs on and off. Oh well, I like it because now the only light coming from the case are two tiny red LEDs for power and drive activity, doesn't bother me at all at night.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Hmm a stg steam club, it might give me an excuse for getting into that whole steam community thing BTW that reminds me i need to get onto steam about there been an demand for rockin android games. http://www.siliconera.com/2010/11/26/ro ... me-genres/

As for having a water cooled system in my PC ive allways been a bit of a ludditte about it. As I tend to keep my rigs for a long time ild be worried of it springing a leak years from now. If your wanting a crysis like game that will make used of your rigs horse power then Metro 2032 is a good pick, its a fallout 3 / Stalker mongrel. If you like RTS games the total war games are fun especially if you have a good system and set the unit size to max. I really need to get the newer games as I loved doing that in Rome TW

@ square king, is your pc overclocked aswell? it might be something you could look into. Although tbh its been along time since ive done any myself and the method is different nowadays so I dont know if its a simple thing to do (or safe)

[Ed Oscuro]

You should be able to find a PCI-Express wifi card, which may or may not be a better choice than PCI.

I've also seen how one of the USB wifi connections works, yep, it's pretty bad and causes the users tons of headaches.

You should send along your framerates in various titles through MAME!

[mesh control]

Man, Stalker just crashed my laptop.

[drauch]

Yeah man, STALKER is one buggy as hell game. The first sequel, Clear Sky, is so buggy it can be almost unplayable for some.

[KBZ]

Next year I'll be rebuilding on a similar spec, but for the time being I moved my current components into a Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced case. Sweet case with some nice features and IMO looks cleaner than the NZXT case which I think you have.

The very first thing I did was to take the LED front fan and cut all the LED wires. THEN I realised that on top of the case there is a switch to turn the fan LEDs on and off. Oh well, I like it because now the only light coming from the case are two tiny red LEDs for power and drive activity, doesn't bother me at all at night.

you clearly have good tastes because I bought the same case! It's beast alright. I never noticed that switch, I guess I need to hook it up.

[Ed Oscuro]

nice purchase. join the STG ground in steam and you'll find a bunch of us in there.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/shmups

Team Fortress 2
208.9 hrs
Counter-Strike: Source
200.3 hrs
Killing Floor
70.7 hrs

epic

btw thanks for inviting me earlier, ya buncha divs

[gct]

you clearly have good tastes because I bought the same case! It's beast alright. I never noticed that switch, I guess I need to hook it up.

Beastly in terms of features and size. If NCIX classifies this as a mid-tower, I am afraid of how huge a full-tower will be. I also worked with building in the Coolermaster HAF 912 which is about the same size, and read some reviews complaining about difficult cable management due to the small space. WTF, it was super easy for me, since I migrated my components from a Silverstone Sugo SG-01F.

The front fan LED switch should already be hooked up right out of the box. It's to the left of the front panel eSATA. Try it!

[KBZ]

you clearly have good tastes because I bought the same case! It's beast alright. I never noticed that switch, I guess I need to hook it up.

Beastly in terms of features and size. If NCIX classifies this as a mid-tower, I am afraid of how huge a full-tower will be. I also worked with building in the Coolermaster HAF 912 which is about the same size, and read some reviews complaining about difficult cable management due to the small space. WTF, it was super easy for me, since I migrated my components from a Silverstone Sugo SG-01F.

The front fan LED switch should already be hooked up right out of the box. It's to the left of the front panel eSATA. Try it!

no more sugo!? I thought that thing was the pinnacle of small mATX cases. I miss living right by NCIX =/

[gct]

no more sugo!? I thought that thing was the pinnacle of small mATX cases. I miss living right by NCIX =/

Cube cases are cute, but having used it for a while I think mini-towers are better. The Sugo wasn't really all that small, but with only 2x3.5" and 2x5.25" you are really limited with storage and expansion options. It is also so cramped that you have nearly zero options for aftermarket CPU cooling if you still want to be able to exhaust all the hot air that builds up.

Mini-towers which are about the same volume-wise still give you plenty of room to install multiple drives as well as some CPU heatsinks while at the same time still allowing for proper intake and exhausts. Some of these also take full-size ATX power supplies which is the main thing I was looking for when I bought the Sugo. Even within cube cases I think there are better choices out there.

Anyway, CM 690 II Advanced, I love it. It's so convenient! I even installed fan filters this time so I should be able to just vacuum all the intakes from the outside.