January 2019 Build Guides

$750 - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZP6xdX

Capitalizing on multiple cores the Ryzen 5 2600 will provide you with plenty of flexibility.  The 3.9GHz boost will help making applications that require some oomph running, too.  The B450M Pro4 board doesn't have a bunch of bells and whistles, but is a solid board for entry level non-overclockers.  A small SSD with the OS and essential programs really goes a long way and while 5900RPM seems weird for a hard drive, the tech in hard drives has drastically improved and a drive desired for constant usage is infinitely more reliable than the standard drive.  The Versa case is relatively small and not very flashy, but it fits everything in this rig and won't break the bank. Spending a few more bucks could net you some faster RAM that might help out, but for an entry level gaming machine this will get it done at 1080p!

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor
Mobo: ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
RAM: G.Skill - FORTIS 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory 
SSD: Patriot - Burst 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  
HDD: Seagate - SkyHawk 3 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  
GPU: XFX - Radeon RX 580 8 GB GTS Black Core Edition Video Card  
Case: Thermaltake - Versa H15 MicroATX Mid Tower Case  
PSU: EVGA - BR 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply


$1250 - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c8Yq8Y

Another Ryzen build.  Crazy, right?  Still leaning on core count, with an even higher boost clock.  The 1070Ti is no slouch and can easily be overclocked to get performance equal to or greater than that of a 1080.  An m.2 takes the place of traditional SSD and storage is handled by the video recording monster from Seagate.  The Cougar case is nice and subdued with an interesting aesthetic.  Some quick upgrades like a large SSD drive and a water cooler for higher boosts or overclocking would instantly make this a more powerful machine, but alas, that isn't how budgets work.  Still a very good machine for the price.

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor  
Mobo: ASRock - Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 ATX AM4 Motherboard 
RAM: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  
SSD: Samsung - 970 Evo 250 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive 
HDD: Seagate - SkyHawk 3 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive 
GPU: Asus - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8 GB TURBO Video Card  
Case: Cougar - MX330-G ATX Mid Tower Case  
PSU: EVGA - BR 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  


$2500 - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TDjgyX

The mesh version of the H500P might be one of my favorite cases.  Not the prettiest and plenty of RGB rainbow vomit, but it sure breathes well.  Combine that with the RIING RGB fans on the Thermaltake Water 3.0 water cooler and you have unicorn rave right inside your PC!  32GB of low profile RAM on a Strix-series gaming motherboard means that your VRMs should be cool and your overclocks should be stable.  You will likely want to push the boundaries on the 9700K, too, they seem to get to 5GHz pretty easily.  I wish I could fit a 2080Ti in, but you'd need an extra 500 in the budget for it.  You could always drop HDD storage and save some cash there for that upgrade, but the true power of ray tracing still has not been revealed.

CPU: Intel - Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  
Cool: Thermaltake - Water 3.0 Riing RGB 240 40.6 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  
Mobo: Asus - ROG STRIX Z390-H GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  
RAM: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  
m.2: Samsung - 970 Evo 250 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  )
SSD: Samsung - 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  )
HDD: Seagate - SkyHawk 3 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  
GPU: Zotac - GeForce RTX 2080 8 GB GAMING AMP Video Card  
Case: Cooler Master - MasterCase H500P Mesh White ATX Mid Tower Case  
PSU: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply 

January 2017 Build Guides

$500 - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Pk2Zqk

Plenty of bang for your buck in the CPU and GPU category here.  Ultra settings at 1080p for 500 bucks seems pretty damn nice.

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor
MOBO: ASRock FM2A88M PRO3+ Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard
RAM: Klevv Neo 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
GFX: XFX Radeon RX 480 4GB RS Video Card
CASE: Zalman T2 Plus MicroATX Mini Tower Case
PSU: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply


$800 - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/j4rP7h

Ditching all of the AMD stuff as we move away from the cheapest build.  No need to move on from Skylake, especially when you're on a budget.  Still using that low profile cooler.

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
COOL: Cooler Master Vortex Plus 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
MOBO: ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
RAM: Team Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
GFX: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB WINDFORCE OC 6G Video Card
CASE: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply


$1200 - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TBwHnn

Stepping up to an i7, but still no reason to move from Skylake.  Going with liquid cooling and tossing in an SSD.

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
COOL:  Antec KUHLER H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler
MOBO: ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
RAM: Team Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
SSD: PNY CS1311 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
GFX: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB SC GAMING ACX 3.0 Black Edition Video Card
CASE: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU: EVGA 700W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply


$2000 ($1725) - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9HwHnn

Not enough extra cash for another video card (not that I care for SLI anyway) and not a lot of performance to gain anywhere else.  If I had 2 grand, this is how I'd spend it.  Well, I might double the RAM...

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
COOL: Silverstone TD02-LITE 92.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
MOBO: MSI Z270 TOMAHAWK ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
SSD: Crucial MX300 1.1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
GFX: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB G1 Gaming Video Card
CASE: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case
PSU: SeaSonic G-750 750W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

Call of Duty Ghosts: DLC 2 - Devastation

With the impending release of the second Call of Duty: Ghosts DLC you are finally able to play maps from the first DLC in a rotation.  OH BOY!  We only had to way a month or so for this to become available.  Thanks, so much Activision!

The maps aren't bad.  They are the standard smallish CoD maps that you are used to.  Fog is an incredibly annoying "campsite" map.  There is a cave with a death fall and several building for the camping folk to hang out in.  You might get to hear some creepy Halloween music if you are lucky.  Containment is a decent map that gives you a large ditch full of excitement between two small parts of a town.  Lots of cover, but not a whole lot of areas for sniping, which keeps the games running pretty smoothly.  Bayview is a shopping center area with a cart that goes through the map.  The cart is somewhat of an annoyance, but not nearly as bad as the shops that walk in and greet you with a load DING.  Easily my least favorite of the new maps.  Ignition is pretty straight forward.  Some buildings to hide in and one well guarded camping area make it a camping paradise, but it isn't too bad.

The maps all resemble something you've played before in CoD or maybe another FPS on a smaller scale.  Nothing new or groundbreaking, but it adds a little flavor to the original maps.  The new DLC will hit the XBox first and will become available to other platforms later.  The new gun looks... interesting.  It is a hybrid weapon they are calling The Ripper.  You can switch between SMG and AR on the fly.  How useful this is remains to be seen, but it is kind of cool.  We won't be able to play any of these maps until closer to the next DLC most likely, so going over what is in store seems pointless.  The gun, however, will be available when the DLC comes out just like the Maverick was.

Call of Duty is incredibly generic, but the product is solid.  There are still some performance issues on the PC, but a lot of the problems have been addressed.  The way that they use their maps and game modes is incredibly dull, but it works.  People enjoy it and wish a solid product it is a lot easier to digest.  Their willingness to add co-op options into the games that are fun an interesting is also great.  The new Extinction story is actually really cool.  Sure, it seems like Left4Dead with aliens, but it isn't bad.

Obviously I will stick with this for a while.  I will update for the new maps... once they are available, that is.  I don't understand the rollout, but that isn't my job.  For now I'm going to attempt to kill people and at least be decent at it.  I really wish there were more active players and less cheaters, but nothing is perfect.  Since BF4 is a huge letdown, this is going to have to hold me over until another FPS comes along or the WoW expansion releases.

The Build Saga: Part Sixteen.

I am still waiting on pictures, sorry.

That being said, we are at completion.  We have moved past benchmarks and stability testing and are now giving it some mostly-daily abuse in real gaming.  I've been playing WoW, CoD and some D3 lately.  None of these games are really cutting edge, but it runs them like a dream.  It stands up to anything I put in its way.

The next step, now that we are all stable, is going to be overclocking.  I am going to be working out temps over the next week.  I live in a very hot and very humid state for a majority of the year.  It is the beginning of March and we hit 70 back in February, if that is any indication of how awful it is to live here.  Now that we are seeing consecutive 70+ degree days, it sucks.  The lows are dipping just barely into the 40s and it looks like it will just be getting warmer.  This means that we are going to be limited on the overlocks, due to our ambient temps.

This isn't a bad thing.  Once I get all of the extra people (my sister-in-law has lived with me for about 3 months and my father-in-law for over a year) out of my house, which I expect to happy by the end of April at the very latest, I will be moving my setup to a cooler part of the house.  I look forward to this greatly.  I will be on the first floor, instead of the second, and I will be in a room with a door, instead of in a corner where my two year-old can yank everything off my desk.  Once this happens I will probably do some further work with overclocking, I'm not going to press it too hard just yet.

For the CPU I want to get it to 4 GHz.  Going beyond is fine, but 600MHz is a pretty good increase in power.  I do not plan to try and take it to 4.6 or 4.8GHz, I am not that kind of enthusiast.  For my GPU I am looking for a 10% boost in performance.  With the new cards and the way that they basically overclock themselves... I'm not sure how this will work or if it will ultimately be all that beneficial.  It is worth a shot and I want to get as much performance as I can out of this thing.  I spent a lot of money on this rig and expect it to perform well.

I promise that pictures are coming!

Pre-purchase for Warlords of Draenor begins today.

Today Blizzard announced that you can pre-purchase Warlords of Draenor and go ahead and get your free boost to level 90 for a character.  Please notice that this is not the official pre-order notice, you are still unable to pre-order the game from various retailers.  This is pre-purchase, only.  Which is good, because unless you pay for it RIGHT NOW, you don't get that free boost. You can still purchase a boost for $60, if you'd like.  I like to have the physical copy of the game, thankfully I've got everyone to 90 that I want so far and I've got about 6 months until I will need to have the other couple of characters leveled and ready for another expansion.

They have release a relatively cheesy, but very Blizzard-like, video about this breaking news.  This is good news for people who hate to level, but really must hit cap right now.  I am hoping that this helps bring some players back to the game and since the pre-purchase is required and the game is still so far off, this is great for business.  A person who has been gone for some time will decide to come back and check the game out prior to WoD and still be on the hook to come back and play WoD.  I know quite a few people who left during Cata or WotLK and would not feel like leveling through a couple of expansions just to play... and I don't blame them.  I am quite sick of leveling, myself.

While I am not entirely excited, because I'll be pre-ordering, this is still great news.  GREAT NEWS!  This means that Blizzard has a fire under their ass to get it finished and tested and out the door.  We should see lots of testing during the summer and another September to November release date for the game.  This will give us all something to do over the Christmas break.  I look forward to moving forward again in WoW and I really hope to be able to dedicate some time to raiding in the next expansion.  Probably something super serious, but a couple of days a week for a few hours to really work on content.  Just gotta hang in there for a few... more... months.

The disappointment of Titanfall.

On first glance Titanfall looks like an incredible game.  It has the fast run-and-gun aspects that people love about Call of Duty.  It has the insane acrobatics that we all adored from Unreal Tournament games.  It has densely packed urban maps that remind of CounterStrike.  It has huge player-controlled mechs that we can use to wage war in paying homage to Mech Warrior.  The game looks like a lot of fun... until it isn't.

I really hate to be a buzzkill, but this game is not a savior for PC gaming.  I have no doubt that it may be a fun alternative, but any of the other games would be more rewarding and, probably, more fun.  This game is aimed squarely at the XBox One to show off Microsoft's next generation.  This is how they hope to bolster their early sales and build a fanbase for their console.  I sure hope it works for them, but this won't fly in the world of PC gaming.

I only got to spend a limited time playing the game, but it was long enough to become bored of it and decide that it was not worth the initial investment of $60+, nor was it worth the addition $25+ for the "get all of the DLC before you even know what it is" bundle.  I'd much rather play a free-to-play game that has an entrenched playerbase or invest in a new-ish, or upcoming, game with some promise.  After spending just a little while with it I just completely shut off my interest in the
game.

The controls will be hard to master, but easy to pick up if you've played an acrobatic FPS game before.  I played quite a bit of Unreal Tournament, so I was able to jump in and display my acrobatic skills during the tutorial.  The tutorial, by the way, is a series of "aha!" moments where you realize you are just replicating what you have done in other games.  Well, that and aimbotting at someone's face.  The overall feel of the game seems heavy and sluggish.  I know that there are speed boosts and double-jumps, but I didn't feel "agile".  At least not compared to some of the action FPS games that I've played in the past.  Once you get into the mech the feeling actually smoothed out a bit, but you still felt a little sluggish.

Once you figure out the jumping puzzles and how to use the abilities of your huge mech, you are ready to take on the battlefield!  This game would be better if it actually allowed you to kill players.  As it stands the servers and filled with bots.  There may be other human players, but you will see bots a majority of the time.  They exist to make the server feel full and to provided fodder to help you generate your Titan more quickly.  This is miserable for me because I'm missing out on THE PEOPLE.  We are losing people and replacing them with AI, AI that sucks!  These technical limitations wouldn't be so bad if you could find servers that didn't run bots, but you can't.  You see, you don't get to host servers.  There will be dedicated servers for matchmaking, but none that you can rent or purchase and then run the game off of.  You don't get to set a customer config or map rotation and have a great time representing your team, clan or website.  You get whatever group of people they decide is best for you and they toss you into a cloud server and let you battle it out... with the bots.

After spending a few days blasting away I just could not be bothered to remain interested.  I would rather play another game.  PlanetSide did something on a much larger scale with even bigger mechs almost a decade ago.  That game is still running and allows you a free trial period before you have to invest anything into it.  I would rather play just about any of those original games that have small bits that contribute to the overall concept of Titanfall.  Considering that CoD is offering GHOSTS, CounterStrike is represented by CSGO and there is a new Unreal game on the way... You will be hard-pressed to find a lot of fan support for Titanfall on the PC.  If you REALLY want to be successful on the PC, you will need to look to PC games and see what it is that they truly want.  I can tell you right now, it currently isn't this game... at least not in the shape it is in right now.

CoolerMaster CM Storm QuickFire Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard review

I almost got exhausted typing the entire name.  Wow.

I don't really do "reviews", so I am not sure where to actually start.  I am going to break it down into a couple of parts that make sense to me when talking about the keyboard and go from there.  I'll do a scale of 10 to make it easy on me.

Layout and feel  (8/10)
The keyboard has a standard layout of most 104-key keyboards these days.  The Shift key is a little awkard to get to and the Windows key doesn't have a logo, instead it says "Win".  All gaming keyboards should have a key that says WIN, especially when it will potentially tab you out of a game...  OH WAIT!  There is actually a feature that stops that, but more on that later.  Everything seems to be in the right place and it didn't take very long to adjust to this keyboard.  It took me longer to adjust from the old cheap-o Logitech keyboard to my previous Thermaltake MEKA G1.  Maybe it is the practice.


Aside from being laid out well, it has a great feel.  The keys are well spaced and raised.  The Cherry MX Brown switches are awesome.  I am used to Blacks, but these things feel great.  They keys are a little easy to jar.  I've actually knocked a couple of them off without meaning to by bumping into it a little too hard.  The Browns have a great clickiness to them and really lets you know that it is mechanical.  They say that they are supposed to be quieter, but I don't really hear it so much.  They sound great and the keys have a great feel to them, it appears the letters are lasered, and yes, it makes all the difference in the world!

I would love to see an adjustable lift in the back and the inclusion of a wrist mount.  I feel like if I buy a "Pro" model, it should have some pretty nice features... right?  I could have stepped up to an Ultimate, but it doesn't seem to have these things either.  A lot of other keyboards include things like this, it would be a nice touch.  However, none of this really changes the fact that the keyboard feels great.  It would feel much better if my hands were going numb from this angle, though....


Features (8/10)
I have only ever had one other mechanical keyboard of this caliber, so it will be hard to compare to a wide variety of them.  The features on this board aren't really noteworthy, but they sure to assist in the quality of life aspect.  That, like SSDs, I can really appreciate.

The FN-Lock key is a life saver.  This is the key that makes your WIN button not lose.  This is how you will adjust settings on the keyboard.  Everything from polling to backlight brightness, to what keys even get lit up.  The FN-Lock key really gets it done.  This key doesn't make up for the lack of macros, though.  Not that I need macros, because I don't, but they are pretty standard in the gaming keyboard world.  I stepped up from an older mechanical keyboard that didn't have them, so I haven't spoiled myself, but others may be disappointed.  How would they integrate it?  Don't ask me.  I'm not a design engineer.

The backlight leaves something to be desired.  I understood when getting it that the entire keyboard would not light up.  I was okay with that.  It highlights my most important keys... now, really.  The backlight does not show fully on all keys that it supports.  There is a logo that isn't full lit up and there are several keys that just don't full illuminate.  Then, there are keys that look perfect.  The ESC key and the arrow keys look excellent.  The FN-Lock and the Spacebar look far less attractive.


Price and availability (9/10)
This thing is a steal.  For about $80 you can get your hands on one of these and be very happy with the quality and design of the unit.  That being said, for a few bucks more you can get more out of your keyboard.  What this keyboard does, it does well for the price.

It wasn't hard to find.  I could pick it up just about anywhere.  Newegg, Amazon, Superbiiz, NCIX, even at MechanicalKeyboards.com.  There are even multiple versions of the keyboard.  You can find one with just the switches you want in it, if you look hard enough.  Thankfully I wanted to try out the Browns, which was part of the reason why I picked this one.

Great price, multiple options, available all over the place.  This is a place where this keyboard shines!


Typing and Gaming (7/10)
Time for some of the wicked honesty.  The keyboard is great, but only because it was cheap.  I wanted to give another set of caps a try and I wanted to see what this thing was all about.  Sure, I'm gonna stick with it, but I know that there are better options.  I feel it is a step up from the keyboard I had previously, even know I lose out on the headphone/mic jacks and the additional USB.

The keys feel great, but they also feel kind of small.  This isn't such a bad thing.  Like I said, I easily made the adjustment in just a few hours.  There are features on the board that almost don't make sense, especially when leaving others out.  The lack of macro keys means that this is a very limited keyboard from a gaming standpoint.  The NKRO feature seems kind of strange as a key feature of this keyboard, since it is lacking those macros.  The main feature of it is kind of defeated, but okay....  However, macros are not a big deal to me, but I have to consider the person that would be buying this.

Typing here is kind of complicated with the smallish keys.  I made the adjustment, but one of the features of that NKRO is that it will now register all of those accidents as you are missing keys.  This can be infuriating if you use a lot of different keyboards or if you are used to a larger one.  I work in front of a computer all day and then play in front of one all night.  I have been doing this for more than two decades, I might have a leg up on the average Joe.  My work keyboard is a dome that wants so bad to be a mechanical. it has a similar layout, so it makes it a little easier.

This isn't a typists dream or a gamers go-to board.  This is a keyboard that can exist in both worlds.  It does fine in gaming and feels good to type on.


Conclusion (32/40 = 8/10)
I'm glad I got it.  I am glad that I took this jump.  I may find that 8 months from now that I am in love, but my initial reaction is of happiness... and a little disappointment.  This thing matched my computer "theme" of black, red and white.  It fits in way better than an obnoxious green Razer would.  That doesn't mean that it is a better product, though.

The product is fine, don't get me wrong, but it could be better.  I would be willing to pay more for something with a few more features.  Make the keys larger, add macros, included a wrist rest and give us some adjustable heights and this thing is worth $150 to me.  The weird lighting is fine, as long as it works and feels good, but if you wanted to illuminate them ALL and just give me red highlights for the "gaming" keys, that would look amazing.  Pay attention CoolerMaster, I'm a big fan and I'm trying to get you millions. =P

Overall, I'd recommend the keyboard.  I would be sure to mention some of the limitations, though.  It's a nice keyboard and I look forward to making other folks smash their own keyboards into bits with it.