Parts and pieces.

I have recently talked about putting together a new PC. Well, I laid out the parts that I will have. This should be the final build and currently everything is here or has been ordered. I hope to have this beast all put together by the middle of August. I work 50+ hours a week and just don't have a ton of time that I wanna spend putting it together. I'd much rather be shooting faces.

Below I have included the components and the best links I could get for them. Several items simply aren't listed on their manufacturers website anymore.

Chassis:

CoolerMaster Elite 430 Black

Power Supply:

750 watt Antec TruePower TP-750 Blue

Motherboard:

ASUS M4A77D

CPU:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition (3.2GHzx4)

Heatsink & Fan:

CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus

Video Card:

Sapphire Radeon HD 6870

Sound Card:

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium

Memory:

8GB (4x2GB) A-DATA DDR2 800 (PC6400) AD2U800B2G5-DRH

Hard Drive(s):

1x Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64MB Cache

1x Western Digital 1TB Caviar Green SATA II 64MB Cache

DVD Drive(s):

2x LITE-ON 22X DVD±R DVD Burner iHAP322-08

Case Fan(s):

6x CoolerMaster SickleFlow 120mm 2000RPM Blue LED

Fan Controller:

NZXT Sentry Mesh

Keyboard:

Thermaltake e-sports MEKA G1

Mouse:

Logitech G500

And new parts arrive!

FRANKENSTEIN!!!! LIVE!

I got my new case and several (5) fans for it. I went with some CoolerMaster LED fans. They were on Amazon, they were on Prime and they were a decent price with a good rating. I can only get 4 of them in right now and I'm not sure that the 5th will fit. The last fan is going to be in the bottom near my PSU and I'm not sure a 120mm fan will fit in that spot, due to the size of the PSU. So.... I got quiet 80mm fan in hopes to decrease my noise level a little.

I have also ordered a fan controller. It controls 5 fans and looks pretty slick. It is made by NZXT and the reviews said that it matched the CoolerMaster mesh style almost exactly. Woot! I only plan to control the speeds of the LED fans. What that means is they probably won't be crazy bright, because I will be decreasing their voltage, but that isn't a bad thing.... 5 LED fans in a case with a PSU that has an LED could be on the bright side.

I won't be controlling my CPU fan on my new heatsink/fan, either. I got a new (strangely, enough) CoolerMaster heatsink. It seemed like one of the better HSFs in it's price/performance range. It comes with a PWM fan, so that should save me from having to control it's speed anyway.

A fan controller, heatsink/fan combo, new case and a bunch of fans... whew! I'm getting pretty close. I've decided to just put in a new PSU and call it quits. I've got a solid enough rig for now that I won't feel hurt if I have to spend 2 years or so waiting on a new PC. This small upgrade should put me in a position to play everything out there at reasonably high settings. If these new gen shooters don't work out, I'll probably fall back to an MMO anyway, which most of the time has slightly lower requirements so that it can bring in more people (unless you're Age of Conan and you don't want anyone to play your shitty, broken game).

There will be plenty of pics and updates in the near future.

BFBC2 is pretty unforgiving.

I just got a new CPU and I've been running it through the ringer. I was hoping to get a decent idea on how it may play in BF3, since that is the game that I am looking forward to the most. I got a pretty surprising answer the last few days. And that answer is "hopefully awesome". I stepped up from a dual to a quad and the speed was similar, but the power this chip pumps out makes it seem WAY faster. Perhaps BFBC2, like the recent CoD games, plays best on a quad core... I don't really know. What I do know is that it plays smooth as silk now. I was pleased to see my CPU score in Windows 7 shoot up to 7.3 as well. Now if only I could get my hard drives on board here.....

Anyway, I've been playing some BFBC2 lately. I am far from "good". Hell, I'm probably not even mediocre. I'm pretty bad. I've been finding my groove somewhat and had an excellent time when I can find a server that allow

s me to actually play. You see, the main issue in BFBC2 that I have is one of the same things that turned me off to it last time. The leveling system.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE the ranking system in this game. I think it is great. The point system is laid out very well and the way that the game utilizes these functions makes it feel pretty good. It really does a great job of helping to progress your game, especially based on what and how you play. I'm an awful Sniper and don't like playing solo and hiding out. I am a great team player and enjoy the SMG and assault rifle (the LMG is a little too unwieldy), so I prefer a certain class. Playing these classes that I enjoy will increase my benefits when I play them. No need to bang my head against a wall for results. There is plenty to do as either of the classes I enjoy, I don't have to be Recon.

The ranking system sets up the game at a decent pace as well. You can throttle your own leveling and it's nice to see yourself move up and forward quickly. It makes you feel like the time you have spent in the ga

me actually matters. As opposed to that other franchise that coughs up a new game every year.

The issue with the system is all of the bonuses that you get with it. The different between 1 and 10 is light years. A rank 50 player is easily 100 times better than a rank 20 player and not always because of skill. There are lots of things that are earned or have to be attained through LOOOOTS of playing. This wouldn't be so bad if there was better matchmaking, but there isn't. =(

I have spent the last couple days getting fucking ripped apart by people who are far and away better than me AND they have in-game bonuses that make them even better. If the leveling or point gain were a little faster. it might not be so bad, but late at night... it's pretty awful. Hopefully in the months leading up to BF3's release I can get back into my groove and tighten it up enough and be ready for some slangin'. I also hope it runs as well, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

Mmmmm. Silky.

I got my new CPU and I am pretty pleased with how it performs. I haven't run any hard core tests, but this thing really flies.

When I was stepping up to a quad core 3.2GHz from a dual core 3.1GHz I really wasn't sure what to expect. In most applications I assumed that the addition boost would come from maybe spreading the work throughout cores, this however, has been fairly shocking. The speed at which this runs is kind of insane. I've long recommended the 940+ chips in this line to people (my brother got one) and I am glad to have one myself. While it's no Sandy Bridge, this thing is no slouch.

My sound card has also been fairly impressive. I can tell an immediate difference not only offloading the stress of my onboard from the CPU, but just in some of the clarity of the sound. It's very nice.

The one thing I have yet to really use is the new hard drive. I tossed all my stuff in and did a little Windows updating and voila! I was ready to go. I will install Windows on the new drive soon, I just haven't got around to it quite yet. I was more concerned about playing with my new toys!

New parts arriving soon

So, I took the first step and started ordering parts of my new rig. As I discussed earlier I am going to have to give up my dream rig and go for something that is more a marginal upgrade. I'm not disappointed or upset, I would gladly give up a PC for the things I will need to make my new born child comfortable. The fact still remains, if I didn't have a child on the way... I'd be a lot more selfish. =P

I ordered:

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE (3.2 GHz quad core, 6MB L3 cache)

HDD - WD Cavia Black 1 TB SATA3 (6GB/sec) 7200 RPM 64MB cache

Sound - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium

Picked those up for $275 or so. I am pretty pleased. This should get me set up for gaming immediately as I work on fleshing out the rest of the system. I'm gonna make another post and detail a budget rig. I figure I might as well keep the info on hand, just in case.

Stupid, responsibility....

So, my wife is pregnant. Yes, I know, it's an amazing thing and I am blessed and all that. I've been getting high-fives and fist pumps all day. However, this puts a decided kink into my plan to upgrade my PC like a fucking madman come February. Sad fucking panda.

I did let my wife know that over the next several months that I would be dumping cash into some new shit. While she didn't quite understand, she did know that I was going to need "toys", too.

I already have a decent mother board (ASUS M4A77D) and enough RAM (8 gigs) that I should be okay for the immediate future. I have decided on a AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE (4x3.2GHz), a WD 1 TB 7200RPM 64Mb cache SATA3 hard drive, and a PCI-Express Creative X-Fi Titanium. That chip should give me enough power that I can get through a bit of time without feeling the pressure to upgrade. While it won't be as smoking as the new Sandy Bridge, it will be enough to keep me happy for now. The hard drive isn't an SSD, but it will serve as something a bit faster than what I am running now and will allow faster reads and writes for gaming. The sound card should take some of the pressure off of my CPU and allow my games to sound sexy and clear again.

I was really going to get something very nice and very expensive, but it seems like that timing may not line up and when I was going to be dropping dimes on that fancy new PC... there will instead be a crying poop-machine. Hooray! Let's be honest, though. As long as this new rig runs BF3, I don't really give a shit.

TF2 is F2P

Yep. I said it.

One of the best games that I have ever seen is now free to play. While the game hasn't been the same to me since they tried to monetize it with the MannCo store, I still think it is a top tier game. Rarely are there games that are able to last 5 years, let alone still provide so much fun and still have UPDATES! Not just updates, but regular updates that are FREEEEEEEE! It's kind of amazing, really.

However, like I said before, I haven't bothered to play since the MannCo update. I was actually kind of upset that Valve put that in there. Some of us had worked hard for hats or weapons or the likes just to have a system come along and basically dash all of that work to little bits, eat those bits and then shit them all over us. Even still, the quality of the game is probably far beyond what a lot of other games are, maybe even some franchises who have released 4 games just during the time that TF2 has been out..... you know who you are.

It remains to be seen what kind of impact this will have on the community of TF2, but I can only imagine that it will be rather negative at first. If you haven't ever played TF2, I suggest you give it a try. Now is the best time to do it, it seems.