The Video Game Thread

@MurphyAlter I agree with a lot of what @AdorableDurian said. $1250 and you are set for a really long time, But you can fairly easily cut $200+ with relatively small downgrades and potentially you could cut $400+ by going used or just saying fuck it and going fairly low end.

There are 4 videos I want anyone that wants to build a new PC and is considering used parts to watch.

Spoiler: Watch these

If you want to, I can select parts for you based on your budget (or a bunch of budgets) and what you want to do with it. Now these will all be for new parts but they can really be swapped out for any used part. I know it's going to be months out for you but it's still worth looking at now, just to get stuff straight.

Also I happen to know a guy who could give you a really good deal on a graphics card, and (maybe) a pretty good power supply

 

I don't think I'd be alright with used parts. I'd prefer to have something that I know for certain hasn't been fucked up before. I don't mind having to save up a few extra months if it means I'm going to get a few extra years out of it, so the $1250 budget is what I'm going to stick with. I'd love to see what you work up with that budget, and feel free to give me the long-form explanations for why you picked them. This is really helping me a lot already <3

 

Alright mid-end budget, all new stuff, AND long winded explanations?! HOW CAN I RESIST?!?!

I love bringing people over to the dark side custom PC world, and spreading as much knowledge as far as I can is just a great feeling.

 

Yay! I love learning, so don't hold back!

 

It starts with building your first PC, then it turns into a dark, dark hobby and you're building Watercooling loops.

I have problems.

Also, you don't need to be afraid of used, people part of tech forums and absolutely fantastic on listing if they've overclocked or not, and it's not surprising to find stuff with transferable warranties anymore. Hell, my used 780 overclocks better then the original I bought. But I understand the idea of preferring new stuff in case junk goes south.

Hell, I still have a PSU that a stranger on a tech forum gave me when my old one died on me, didn't even need to pay for shipping!

 

so me and 2 mates just beat Broly in dragon ball xenoverse with level 1 cybermen.
i feel sorry for him

 

Alright PC parts choosen! So much for my Friday night For now at least this is still a while out so things will change. I think this may also be my longest post to date.
ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ I always write way too much ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/QQthxr


And the explanation:
Holy inconsistent writing style, Batman!

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/QQthxr
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/QQthxr/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($241.98 @ Newegg)
This is pretty overkill tbh, but I have my reasons. For this CPU the i5 means it's a quad core CPU with no hyper-threading. Hyper-threading is a system that allows the CPU to theoretically have 8 cores even though it really only has 4, it's confusing but this one doesn't have it. The 4690 basically means it's the best i5 you can get, the next highest 4##0 would be a 47#0 which would make it an i7 which does have hyper-threading and is more expensive because of that. And the little K at the end means that you can Overclock this CPU. Overclocking basically means you can speed up the CPU past the stock speed, like modifying a car to have a higher max speed, it costs more (for some stupid reason) but it means you can get more performance for fairly little. Also another reason for this CPU over something else is because currently (this will likely change) there is a combo deal with the motherboard I have selected which will save you 50 bucks when bought together.

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9B SE2 37.9 CFM CPU Cooler ($47.99 @ Mwave)
This is actually an optional extra sorta. If you are planning on overclocking your CPU then you will need an after market heat sink. The one that comes with the CPU is ok for stock operation. And by definition overclocking isn't stock. You could drop down to a $30 heat sink and still be fine but this is just a higher end option, that will keep the CPU cooler and live longer as a result.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($151.98 @ Newegg)
I always have a hard time explaining the Mobo I choose, so I'll just list some of the good things about this board. There are 6 SATA3 connectors and SATA3 is really the lowest you should use nowadays, now don't get it confused with SATA 3gb/s because that's SATA2. SATA3 is 6gb/s. It's a bit confusing but it's pretty easy to get the hang of. This board has a fair amount of upgradeability as well, with RAM it has 4 slots and I've chosen 2 sticks so if you wanted you could add 2 more sticks. Or just download more RAM that works to This board also has the ability for SLI and Crossfire which means that you could add a second graphics card for way more power. The board also looks quite nice with a simple black PCB and orangey-gold highlights, quiet classy.

Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($54.99 @ Newegg)
RAM is pretty straight forward really. 8 GB so pretty easy. DDR3 is just a standard really and on it's own doesn't mean much. The 1600 though that is also equally unexciting, basically it's just the clock speed of the RAM in MHz. This RAM also has a CAS Latency of 9 which is how many clock cycles it takes for the memory controller to actually talk to the memory modules on the PCB, but all that you really need to know is that 8 is great, 9 is good, 10 is acceptable, and 11+ should probably be avoided.

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($75.73 @ Amazon)
Overkill strikes again. But much less this time. The idea of an SSD is to just be way fucking faster than a Hard Drive, and that's about it really. It is expensive for the amount of storage you're getting but when you install your OS and commonly used programs on here, everything will just FLY!
This SSD is one of the best that Samsung makes and Samsung makes really good SSDs. 850 is just the most recent line of them and EVO is the best of that line, with the 850 Pro and 850 being marginally not as good.

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($44.99 @ Amazon)
I just chose this because it was the cheapest 1TB drive I could find that I would trust. WD makes good shit. You could upgrade to a 2TB or 3TB for $30-$60 really easily, and you could even just go down to best buy and pick one up IRL.
I'm actually not quite sure of most of WD's color definitions. But I do know that Green is power efficient, Red is for NASs, and that's all I know. But blue is consumer grade so it's fine.

Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card ($249.99 @ Amazon)
The Video Card is always the hardest part of a build IMO. I chose the 280X because it's basically as good as a GTX 970 but it's 50 bucks cheaper. It should be easily overclockable too for a little extra boost.
And if you want me to explain the name I can't because AMD's naming scheme is shit. Basically it's the third best single GPU card of this generation they make, behind the 290 and 290X.

Case: OPTIONS HERE There is a little thing that says "From parametric selection(show)" click the show and it'll list all the options
I left this one open to your own choice here. I chose a bunch of cases that I really like both because they look nice and are really good cases. And for a few of them there are a lot of color options floating around as well. Normally with cases I say get the best Corsair case in your budget. So you should definitely go with the Corsair 450D The price difference between them is ~40 bucks from the cheapest to most expensive so you can really just choose the one that you like the most, and if you hate all of them I can make a new list.
So what makes a good case? Plenty of room for graphics cards, enough room for cable management in the back, as many 3.5 or 2.5 inch drive bays as you will need, and as mentioned aesthetics. Now for a couple of them I would recommend picking up 1 or 2 more fans to put in the case just to increase the airflow so nothing overheats too much.

Power Supply: Corsair CSM 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($72.99 @ Amazon)
Fairly simple one here. 550 Watt which is a little bit more than this PC should ever use which is ideal usually you want ~100 watts of headroom, and this is probably a bit more than that. The 80+ Gold is specifying how energy efficient the PSU is. Basically it's just how much of the energy that gets pulled out of the wall is wasted. So the more efficient the PSU the closer it's peak Wattage is to the actual wattage it pulls. It also means that generally the components are better and the PSU will last longer. Semi-Modular just means that you don't need to have every cable crammed somewhere in the case, you can leave the cables you don't need out.

Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.93 @ Amazon)
It's an optical drive. You'll use this thing twice, maybe.

Operating System: OPTIONS HERE
Basically it's down to windows 7 or 8.1. The difference in price is like 6 bucks and both should give you the option to upgrade to Windows 10 when that comes out. And like the hard drive, best buy also carries this stuff, so no real need to order online.

Monitor: LG 23MP55HQ-P 60Hz 23.0" Monitor ($137.98 @ NCIX US)
I think I already explained this earlier but I'll go again. It's a 23" 1080p 60Hz IPS Monitor. So it has great color, great viewing angles, an acceptable refresh rate and 1080p just looks nice at 23-27 inches.

Total: $1192.54 UNDER BUDGET a little WOOT!
So there can be a few upgrades here and there, but also remember the change in price between the case you choose. I would say that the best upgrade would probably be to an R9 290 or jumping up to some i7 CPU probably a 4770.
And the price is a bit wobbly based on where you buy each part from. Pretty much all the companies that PCPartPicker links to can be trusted.

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-13 23:59 EDT-0400

Overall this is a REALLY solid build with a fair amount of room for upgrading. You will easily be able to use that CPU for 5 years with careful overclocking. The GPU should be good for 3-4 years but that's if you want to run everything at Ultra/High, and again you can overclock to gain a little bit more for fairly little work or you could just throw a second one in there. RAM can be doubled rather easily, all storage can be upgraded with RAID arrays or just more drives very easily. Now the PSU is a bit of an issue because it's only a 550W DO NOT try to run 2 graphics cards without swapping it out for a 700-750W, now what you could do is get a 700W+ PSU now for probably 40-60 bucks more, if you felt that you would for sure get a second card.

 

Well, I just got really curious about Allods again quite suddenly. I miss my Arisen Psionist. I also don't have access to my old account since gpotato no longer exists! XD Either way, I decided to download it again and just start with a new account to see how things are.

 

Spoiler: Amazing Suggestions

Ok WOW. THANK YOU SO MUCH <3 That's a lot of information, and a super-handy list! First of all, I'm still a noob at all this stuff, so I probably won't be doing any overclocking. It seems like most of this stuff is fairly simple to replace if you know how it all goes together, so that makes me happy, since I'll hopefully achieve moderate levels of hardware nerddom before anything needs replacing. I'm wondering, is it best to shop for monitors in person, to be sure you're getting one with a good feel to it, or is it really not worth the extra cost (if there is that)? Also, what sort of things do you suggest installing on the SSD, vs. the normal Hard Drive?

 

Good god, that's a OP laptop. :0
mine is just a a baby i7 with nothing special, but its a start
*bows*

 

But of course :3

That's perfectly fine if you don't want to overclock, but I'm still going to leave the more expensive overclockable CPU on the list for now for a weird reason. The 4690K is a whopping 15 bucks more than the non-overclockable 4690... and because of the deal with the mobo and CPU, dropping the K would actually end up costing 35 bucks more. Which shouldn't work, but hey.

Learning about PC components is I want to say fairly easy, it's mostly just memorization of what the naming schemes mean, where that one product falls in relation to other stuff from the same company, what benchmarks will show about its price to preformance. A lot of crap tbh

Yeah you can definitely shop for monitors in person if you want to. If you do want to do that though I would definitely recommend just going to the store finding a monitor you like then going online and find the same monitor and price check.

The SSD is mainly for your OS and very commonly used programs or favorite games.
The HDD is for pretty much everything else, movies, tv shows, less important programs, porn, you know that stuff.

My setup is a bit weird... I've got 1 120GB SSD for my OS, 1 250GB SSD which is really only for my steam library, and a 3rd 64GB SSD that was my OS drive for a while and is now doing nothing but will eventually get turned into a cache drive for my main HDD. And my HDD is just raw video stuff, programs that don't matter, etc.

 

@flapper72 @MurphyAlter

A couple other choices and comments if interested;

CPU; Good choice, does well in tests, if you maybe look at a different motherboard you could drop the -k version to save a few bucks, but probably only worth it if you're looking at a motherboard around the $100 price point.

CPU Cooler; Cut this. You don't need this at all. I sort of feel bad about being so frank about it, but you're not overclocking, and the standard is fine for everyday use, hell, it'll do fine with Intel's Auto-tune running (which is basically Intel's Auto-Overclocking software that will clock it higher when running heavy software).

Motherboard; Another good choice. Their is a lot of good options at the price point of $100-150, and what you need to understand is that they mostly all run the same, very small differences in layout and color scheme for the most part. Other good choices would be the ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ($139.99) and the MSI Z97-GAMING ($129.99), with damn near no difference between the three.

Personally I think the ASRock is a better buy, but really, just about anything you buy at this price point will do fine.

Memory; Nothing to really add here, it's a good budget memory.

Storage; I'm going to blob this all into one category. SSD's are slice of life purchases. Anything you install on it will boot up faster, so getting into Windows faster, starting games faster, etc. But they are low capacity, so if you're like me, even with a 250GB drive dedicated to gaming I only keep a few games installed at one time.

The other issue, with SSD's is you sort of need to take a couple steps to make sure the drive doesn't start killing itself. Disable de-fragging, make sure you're downloading loose files (like pictures, music, videos, etc.) to the other drive. They have limited writes to them, so if you keep throwing stuff at it, you'll kill the drive faster.

But they are damn nice to have, and you don't really know why you want one till you use it.

Video Card; While it's a good choice, I refuse to buy AMD anymore, they offer good performance for the cost, but I've had so many problems with driver issues I'm just not willing to fight with it anymore. And because of that, I'm willing to pay extra just to not deal with that junk. I'm not alone with these issues, but their is a lot of people who have never had issues.

Otherwise not much to say about the rest.

 

Ah interesting information. And I thought of something you didn't mention! Internet connection! I don't have the ability to get a wired connection in my room, so I'd like to get built-in wireless. My wireless connection is already REALLY good (enough that when my laptop was new, it could handle 1080p streaming video on youtube) so I don't think that getting wireless would be a bottleneck, but feel free to correct me on that.

 

@AdorableDurian I completely agree, with pretty much everything you said.
For the CPU and mobo like I said before I chose them mainly because they are good and there is that $50 discount when bought together, which I thought would be a good combo because to match that price you would need to drop the cpu and/or mobo performance a little.

CPU Cooler: Yeah I agree like I said earlier if you're not overclocking the stock heatsink is fine.

Motherboard: Yeah there's like 3 tiers of mobos and differentiating 2 boards in the same tier is kind hard.
$40-80 HTPC grade, not heavy duty, not too good, not too bad.
$100-150 Good PC boards with plenty of options and variety. Generally what I recommend.
$250+ HOLY BALLS look at all the GPUs and RAM I can mush in here! Super high end and have really nice features.

SSD: Yeah I've got a 250GB SSD for games and stuff and it's pretty much nearly full, but for SSD's imo the minimum anyone should buy is 120GB. 64GB is too little for an OS, and I can say that because I've tried, and it's shit.

Video card: Yeah I've had issues with Nvidia drivers too. So neither company has 100% reliability. And another reason I went with AMD that I didn't mention is that this card can be put in crossfire with pretty much ANY other AMD card (or cpu/apu). So it should be really easy to find a compatible part in the future.

@MurphyAlter Not a problem! Although I have no idea what makes a good wireless card so I'm just going off reviews.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-wireless-network-card-gcwb867di
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/tp-link-wireless-network-card-tlwdn4800
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-wireless-network-card-pcen15

Any of those should be fine. And they're all about the same price, so it's a lot like the optical drive. If it works, it works, and that's all you need.

 

As someone who is planning a PC upgrade in the near future: Thank you for those recommendations as well. I've done okay building my last two PCs, but it's nice seeing how others go about the building process.

 

Getting off the glorious subject of PC parts.

I'VE DONE IT AGAIN!!! I'VE BROKEN TF2 AGAIN!!!

Alright so a little bit of preface, In tf2 rocket jumping there are 2 main ways to go vertically in the air: rocket jump (duh) and ctap (or crouch tap). A rocket jump is very simple jump, crouch, fire. That's it. But a ctap is a weird movement where you are able to effectively move your characters hitbox into the ground some amount, and because of this when you fire you will be closer to it and will go higher, much higher.
A regular rocket jump should send a person around 570 hammer units or 35.625 Feet into the air.
A good ctap will send a person around 640 units or 40 feet.
A perfcet ctap will send you 691 units or 43.1875 feet. And you can not go higher than that without water or a second rocket.

Now as you would expect a ctap is WAY harder than a regular jump. A regular ctap is:
crouch - wait a little - uncrouch - fire - wait 1 tick - jump, overall they last 5-8 ticks

But I've just found a way to reach 690 units (43.125 feet) with only 2 ticks of input.
tick 1: crouch & fire
tick 2: uncrouch & jump
That is it. I can't say if this is any easier but it sure is easier to cheat with.



And to make it even better you can get 689 units if you crouch 1 or 2 ticks early.

I LOVE THIS GAME!!!
BOW BEFORE MY SLOW MOTION ABILITIES MORTALS!!!

 

I enjoy it, and spend far too much money into it as a hobby. Hell, I bought a Caselabs S8 for my current build, it alone set me back $400, but god damn is it not the nicest case I've ever worked in. So much room, amazingly well made, and so many freaking options. When you buy a Caselabs you, no joke, select options on what you want. Windows, meshes, roof size, HDD space, etc. etc.

 

Holy shit, the new Unreal Tournament game, HNNG <3

 

No trigger discipline. Bad borg dude, bad!

 

It pleases me when people catch these. =u=