Hello all, I used to consider myself one of the hardware gurus on here, and could tell you absolutely anything about building a new computer. However, over the past year or so, many other things such as college and women have gotten in the way and I need a bit of a refresher in my knowledge. As far as video cards go, what are the newest series from ATi and Nvidia? Has AMD produced anything better than Intel recently? Any big hardware news that I would have missed since Crysis came out? That's about when I stopped paying attention to everything. -kodex
I haven't been to many concerts. A couple local metal shows (there's a lot of hardcore around here) and I saw Puddle of Mudd at Summerfest Milwaukee this year. I'll be at Mayhemfest in Chicago to see Slayer on Sunday! Wish I could have gotten a little Megadeth, Hammerfall, or COBHC action, but no American tours this summer. =(
Having paste on the underside of your processor isn't that big of a deal - it'll come off easily. Your real problem that you now have thermal paste in the lands of the CPU socket. You'll need to get all the crap you can out of it without breaking off pins. FYI, you don't need to get ALL of it, because silver paste isn't conductive. It is, however, capacitive, so you don't want a lot left behind.
How was UT3 difficult to play? i played it just fine, and its even better now with the last big patch.warmaster670
UT3 is a great game. It felt unique, ran well, and the controls weren't crap due to the existence of a console version. I just threw it in there because of the rule of threes and it was the first thing that popped into my head. I suppose the only thing bad about it were the menus that were pulled from the 360 version.
I don't remember the last time there was a game I still wanted to play after I found out it was multiplatform. PC has, in the past, always had a lot of great exclusives with console ports coming later. However, the last few multiplat titles I've bought were almost unplayable because they were basically cut-and-paste jobs from the 360 version. That just doesn't work. In the vast majority of these games the FOV feels claustrophobic, the mousing always has some stupid acceleration to it, menus aren't adapted to a keyboard and mouse, and controls aren't reworked. I'm willing to buy these games, but not if I can't play them without fighting the camera and the controls.
Apparently I had the wrong idea, but from many of the tech demos it had seemed like PC was the lead platform. While I understand that devs and publishers have fiscal reasons to gear their games towards consoles, I've been annoyed at the recent slew of PC games that have been difficult to play because of poor port jobs. Far Cry 2, Saints Row 2, and Unreal Tournament 3, anyone?
Good to know. I've been wanting to push my E2180 further than 2.85 GHz (the real problem is heat - using an intel quad-core heatsink), and could use something better than these Wintec AMPO sticks I have. I have an ASUS P5E X38, so I have some fantastic headroom that I'm not taking advantage of.
I realize that you're not really looking to assemble it yourself, but it's worth considering. You'll save some extra money, you get the experience in how a computer works, and you get the satisfaction of a job well done. It may seem intimidating, but the components are designed so that it takes zero skill to assemble a computer yourself. The parts in a computer may seem delicate, but they're not going to crumble in your hands. Everyone here who builds obviously started with almost no experience, so don't sweat it; we were all there at some point. So what do you think? Gonna take a shot at a rewarding experience?
If your PSU has enough gusto to run your new card, it should have at least one PCI-e (6-pin) connector already wired to it. If it doesn't, time to get a new power supply.
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