Official Post Your Gaming HQ Thread

Lol my reaction exactly. Well, as long as you're happy, congrats @Grey_Eyed_Elf

@lebanese_boy: @goldenelementxl

To be honest I just don't game much if at all really... It happens, the older I get the more I am drawn to going out with family and doing things with them so when I do game its usually a couch family game.

Like I said who knows, but as of right now my needs are met.

My PC set up

@kazumakiryu21: Nice! What are the specs?

Was primarily a PS 4 player last gen , Need to seriously upgrade PC this gen ( COVID situation affected me financially so holding on the upgrade):

1050 Ti 4 gb

i5 3.40 Ghz

8gb Ram

Went to my buddy's for a couple drinks today, so we went to grab beer and figured i'd go get Skyward Sword HD... Stood in EBGames and told my buddy i'm looking for a PS5, and one of the staff overheard me... Turns out someone didn't show up to pick up theirs yesterday, so I nabbed it on the spot.

My next-gen hunt is officially over.

@lundy86_4 said:

Went to my buddy's for a couple drinks today, so we went to grab beer and figured i'd go get Skyward Sword HD... Stood in EBGames and told my buddy i'm looking for a PS5, and one of the staff overheard me... Turns out someone didn't show up to pick up theirs yesterday, so I nabbed it on the spot.

My next-gen hunt is officially over.

Congrats Lundy! Hope you enjoy Demon Souls🤘

@davillain-: Thanks. Just beat Tower Knight earlier, but picked up a few more games today and jumped into R&C. Great game.

@lundy86_4: Congrats on the PS5! That’s a super random way of getting one too.

@goldenelementxl: Yeah, it was super lucky. Wasn't planning on spending $900 that day (tax as well as two games), but I won't complain.

@tribesjah: I would say the girlfriend let’s you spoil yourself plenty, lol. Great setups! Are you in an apartment? If not, I would highly recommend mounting the TV’s as well as the center channel, bookshelf speakers and atmos speakers. It’ll save you some room and improve the audio quality a little. You seem to have all the right stuff though. Which brand of speakers are your favorite? I only dabble in audio at the moment, and am looking for input. You seem to have a well rounded understanding of home audio.

And I’m jealous of the OLED. Someday…

@goldenelementxl: Thanks! Yeah she has been fairly flexible. Granted I have also been a little annoying at times, to the point where she would rather say yes than hear about it lol.

As for mounting, sadly can't because it's an apartment (too much of a hassle from that point) and would prefer not to spend $$ on mounting th TV (would probably mess it up if I did it myself). As for speakers, depends on which ones. The surround/base level fronts would actually sound worse if mounted onto a wall. You need to have some space between wall and speakers if the speakers are rear ported (which mine are), otherwise it will mess with the lower frequencies (bass) and could make things a bit muddy. As for atmos though yeah ideally would be mounted but since apartment (and due to gf) I have not.

As for your question. I think you have an amazing setup, actually literally the only comment/thought I had when I saw yours was related to your Sony Core speakers (more specifically the sub, the Sony cores speskers are pretty solid price for performance, at least the bookshelves, have not seen measurements for the center or tower, I am guessing the tower is pretty solid too but the center is probably not that great) in your theater. Upgrade those, or more specifically sub and center and man can't do much better than everything else you have there. I have not listened to a ton of different ones (I used to be super into audio/headphones so I do know a little bit about speakers, but avs or asr forums would be better for you to check). Anyway I have very much liked everything I have heard from Harman (Infinity, JBL), they believe in audio science and incorporate that into their designs. You could for example go for JBL Studio 580 towers or 530 bookshelves and have a great setup. They constantly go on sale too. Or like mine, the Infinity R162 (and the whole infinity reference line) also goes on sale often, hell only paid $160 for my bookshelves. The brands I would probably avoid though (since most likely you will get an inferior experience, is klipsch, Polk well some polls, their higher end stuff is solid but lower end stuff meh, and Bowers and wilkins where you will just pay for brand name in most cases). I would recommend though that you start with a sub upgrade if you are looking into it, and get something from either Rhytmik, HSU, Monoprice Monolith or SVS (svs will be a little more expensive/worse bang for buck but will still be good subs). Your theater looks quite large so a large 15 inch sub (or even 2) would be ideal.

As for OLED, they are great in a dark room/environment but in a bright living room not as much (bought it before I moved). Can be hard to see sometimes due to its lower brightness levels than comparably priced LEDs. But in a dark environment yeah its solid. I am sure if you wait till black Friday you could get an ezcellent price (unless you want something bigger than 65, damn are the largest oled crazy expensive, but even then could get a deal on 77 oleds if you buy last year's model just as the new ones are coming out)

@tribesjah: Yeah, I bought the Sony speakers as a “my first home theater audio setup” kind of thing. But the biggest reason I went with the tower speakers was to compensate for the smaller sub. But the bass does the job. For now anyway. Someday I will upgrade to a 7.2.4 setup. But I’d need to get a new receiver too. And a line conditioner etc etc etc.

@goldenelementxl: I know how that is. Honestly all the speakers I have now were bought in the previous 1. 5 years, before that for 4 years or so I was using Pioneer Andrew Jones towers (read they were good bang for buck). I prefer tower speakers myself (no need for stands, deeper bass extension, looks nicer imo, and most are at the right height, meaning tweeter at ear level for fronts).

Yeah now is not a good time to get a food receiver, due to the supply shortages they are super expensive now, plus the current ones all have issues with Hdmi 2.1 and 120hz 4k signals. Whenever you do though I would recommend one that has good room correction (Denon with Audyssey Xt32, like the denon, 3600/3700). I would have done that myself but just was too expensive and oos at time (and I had not fully understood the importance of room correction/eq). As for line/power conditioner, honestly think that would be a waste of $$ and would not benefit sound quality imo

@tribesjah: The setups are looking good. Your center channel placement is funny based on your setup, but your heart is in the right place. :)

With the nursery all set up, the new guest room/gaming room needed a TV so I went with the Sony 50" X85J. Full motion wall mount, just need to clean up some cords.

@Stevo_the_gamer: Looks great! I like those mounts a lot. You should look up “on wall cable conduits” to hide the cables. They are super cheap and easy to install. You can paint them to match the wall and they just stick on. I went this route in all my kids rooms instead of going through the wall.

Something like this

Definitely not a bad idea at all, and cheap too!

Wondering is anyone from her can give me a hand...

I've just ordered a 65" LG C1 OLED, and it should be coming next week for me. Can anyone recommend for me a solid quality soundbar to go with it? I know it doesn't beat a proper sound system, but space and money are factors for me. Looking for something worth the value around no more than $500.

Any suggestions?

As you can see, what I have is pretty bare bones. I have a 7 year old Vizio 48" LED, a Samsung soundboard that's about the same age, and a Series X & a Switch.

@hallenbeck77: At that price point, you should look at the Sonos Beam. ($399 Best Buy) If you could bump it up a couple hundred bucks, the Sonos Arc ($799 Best Buy) will get you better performance for movies and Atmos support. They bother have a small footprint and perform pretty well.

@goldenelementxl: Definitely a start. Probably going to have to make do with my old sound bar for another month, but at least I can look into this now, and plan accordingly. Appreciate it.

@hallenbeck77:

If space is not the biggest issue, another recommendation (not soundbar but I am biased against them lol) would be to get a 350-400 receiver from Costco (I'd recommend the Denon S750h for 400 since it's support earc, which future proofs you in some ways).

Then I would recommend you to either wait for the Infinity sale and get the Infinity R162 bookshelves for $160 (here is a technical review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/infinity-r162-bookshelf-speaker-review.12333/) or the Emotiva b1+ for 250 (review: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/emotiva-airmotiv-b1-review-bookshelf-speaker.22366/). Both of those are excellently performing bookshelves that are easy on the wallet.

I realize this is a little above your budget, but your experience imo would be far better, and gives you the opportunity to upgrade further (from 2.0 up to 5.1.2 or 7.1) over time by just adding speakers.

Otherwise, rtings (https://www.rtings.com/soundbar) is a good resource for soundbars so I would take a look at their reviews/top list.

@goldenelementxl: @tribesjah: Appreciate the feedback on both. It's probably going to be a bit before I can purchase any new sound system, and the one I have still works, but the both of you have given me food for thought. At any rate, I'm just waiting on Best Buy to deliver my TV, which should be here later this morning.

@hallenbeck77: Always nice to have options in my view (soundbar or full set). Audio nowadays is certainly much better than it was even a decade ago.

Hope you are enjoying the C1, OLED (especially in a dimmer environment) is a sight to behold. Hoping you messed around with the picture settings (the out of the box ones tend to be fairly inaccurate since they tend to be set to standard to eco, don't recall what setting/picture mode LG Oleds come out of the box though). May I suggest checking here and even using their setting (been using em for my TVs to great effect). Well the settings up to/before the white balance settings (as the white balance settings are TV/individual TV set specific): https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/g1-oled/settings

@tribesjah: Still tweaking the settings; their settings out the box are set to eco, so I'm still trying to adjust here and there. Didn't expect to have so many fine details to it, so it's a lot to process. Talking my time on learning it. Just watching some movies on Disney Plus and HBO Max is amazing. Cant wait to upgrade some of my older blu-rays to 4K versions.

Connected my Series X and played some Doom Eternal on it, and it was just INSANE. I never thought the visuals and gameplay would be that impressive and responsive. Bottom line: the wife and I are loving it--I don't think I can ever go back to LEDs after this. I'll post a picture shortly.

Pretty generic looking pc/office setup (3080oc,5600x,32gbram,8tb), but it's something

@tiklandian: That's super clean and color coordinating. I really like it. Folks need to take a cable management class from you. I'll be the first to sign up lol

@tiklandian: Looks great. That Steelcase Gesture chair is stealing the show. I was going to get one myself, but I was able to buy a mint condition used Leap V2 for cheap. So, I went with that instead.

@goldenelementxl: It's incredible ! A lot of work to get there, I think
GG

@tiklandian:

Amazing, such a clean and color coordinated setup. Wish I was that good at color coordinating and, as someone else said, cable managing. My PC setup has tons of visible cables sadly. Anyway, excellent setup, even the speakers are good (kanto yu 6 from what I can tell). I find speakers are one area most people tend to skimp on and either use built in or some blah stuff from razer/logotech/creative

That's a nice, clean setup. I also really like the wooden desktop.

Updated my gaming rig just the Motherboard and CPU I got on Black Friday aka Ryzen 9 5900X and the Asrock Steel Legend cause I'm pretty much done with MSI boards for my liking.

• Motherboard: Asrock Steel Legend RGB
• Case: Thermaltake V200 TG
• PSU: EVGA 750 Gold
• Storage: 2 1TB NVME M.2 Samsung & 2 SSD 500
• 16GB 3200 RAM
• CPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer 50
• CPU: Ryzen 9: 5900X
• GPU: RTX 2070
• Monitor: 27inch 1440p/165hz G-sync Predator
• Xbox Elite Controller

Update to post 136 from a year ago.

Moved my portrait-oriented monitor to the other side of the desk, where it no longer blocks my window while I'm sitting and forces me to place the right speaker on its side.

Moved my computer to the right, where I can access the insides without pulling the desk and case out. I used an 4K HDMI repeater that I already had from an old living room idea to extend the signal from the now more distant position of the PC to the AV receiver. I was also able to remove a whole power strip with better cable management.

Put in an ugly rug that my brother found somewhere and cut in two. The other half of the rug is in his room.

Switch is inside the TV cabinet now so that the roomba doesn't knock it around.

Pushed the subwoofer farther back. Don't know why I had it so far out.

Placed the laundry basket outside my bedroom door.

Removed the headphones case because I learned that getting rid of the dust that cakes onto the foam cups isn't that complicated. You wash and squeeze the cups with soapy water and let them dry in the sun.

Removed the wired G403 because the middle clicker breaks down much more easily than the G703's. So now I just use the same wireless mouse for both pads.

The light on the 4K player is off because I unplugged it. I never use it anymore. Ripping my own discs is just more convenient.

The old computer case is no longer under my left surround speaker because it became my NAS, in which I keep a lot of my movies, TV shows, concerts and music videos. That's in the living room, accessed through our network. No point making my small bedroom even smaller.

The PS4 that was under the left side of my TV in post 136 is gone because I lent it to my brother. He has only used it once for about thirty minutes so far.

I found the white of my wall slightly distracting. So I put a black bedsheet behind the TV. It works! The black bars almost fade into the sheet.

@warm_gun: I am digging the black sheet. Good for hiding the wires behind it too. :)

Would work even better if I had your LG C9. My HDR10 TV has local dimming, so the black bars still are somewhat bright a lot of the time. Something else to look forward to when I eventually upgrade. But that won't be for a while. Still waiting for the MPC-HC/madVR community to figure out Dolby Vision.

@warm_gun: Nice! Might be time to paint the wall black and buy some cable conduits and paint those black too. You’re definitely on to something

Paint would be ideal, but it's an apartment and we already made a few other alterations that we may have to change back ourselves when we eventually move out. My only regret is getting a queen size bed sheet and not a king. But it might have been awkward with that in wall closet you see on the left (whose doors are standing by the wall right outside my door). I've definitely noticed a difference in my gaming and movies.

A few days ago, I broke off the piece of particle board that once held the top of TV stand doors. It bothered me for the longest time. That unblocked the top of the center speaker and allowed me to raise it by 1 1/2 inches. It sits on top of a chess board now. I guess I didn't expect to get speakers when I bought the TV and TV stand; else I wouldn't have gotten a stand with doors.

I reshot and reuploaded the three photos above with the change.

one of my setups

3090

pS5

77”

C1

@rdnav2: That large screen seems like it would be more ideal than those 3 smaller monitor setups people usually use for those sim setups. Looks great!

@rdnav2: Looking good. Awaiting other setups.... :)

Moved into a new house. Bought a bunch of new stuff.

77" LG G1 display

Steelcase Gesture full leather chair with headrest

Avari height adjustable desk

Full Klipsch Reference Premier Speakers with Martin Logan Subs

• Denon AVR-X3500H receiver
• 2x RP-8000F front
• 2X RP-6000F rear
• 2X RP-500SA Atmos
• 1X RP-504C center
• 2X Dynamo 800X subs

Current System Specs:

• Intel Core i9 12900K
• Gigabyte Aorus Z690 Master
• 32GB G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB DDR5 6000
• MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio
• 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0 NVMe SSD
• Two 8TB Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe SSDs in 16TB RAID-0
• Corsair Crystal 465X case
• NZXT Kraken X73 cooler
• Corsair ML & QL fans
• Corsair AX1600i power supply
• EVGA NU Audio sound card
• Razer Blackwidow V3 Pro keyboard
• Logitech G Pro Wireless mouse
• Astro A50 gen4 headset

@AdamK47 said:

That is the money shot right there. You see that and you say... "This guy doesn't fuk around". hehe :)

Thanks for the update. Setup looks great as always.