Ok, Here we go.

[Phoenix]

Eww ATI graphics. I've got them now, but haven't had a lot of luck with them, sadly. I'll probably do something with Kepler. I think I'll wait till Haswell on the intel side though

[Aether]

I've just finished most of my PC build.

Core i7 3930K
ASUS rampage IV extreme board
32GB Corsair Vengence RAM
ATI Radeon HD 7970
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD
Corsair AT GOLD 1200W PSU

It does alright. It had a small issue with heat which I've resolved now though.

[Lord DB]

That's still in your awesome Coolermaster Cosmos case, yes?

I don't have a problem with /AMD/ATI graphics. No idea what people mean about the "shoddy drivers", I've personally had no issues with them. I'm still a bit wary of Nvidia because of the way their high end graphics cards used to be; a power-hungry and over-heating PCB. They're a bit better now, but that "reputation" with me has always stuck.

[Aether]

No, the case has changed to a Silverstone Raven RV01 case. The board is moutned so the ports point up rather than out the back.



As it stands though, nVidia have always been the "buggy" cards. Now add to the fact that nVidia in the next 12 - 18 months is going to be moving away from performance cards and into more mainstream "this will let you run 4 screens" cards - not a good time to go to nVidia if you're a gamer.

[Mysterious Being]

Phoenix - you're in Austin? I always thought you were... in Phoenix.

I was in Austin last week - awesome city. A bit hot (but better than this time a year ago).

I'm currently drooling over the Retina Macbook Pro. Never really been a fan of Mac, but all those pixels.... My desktop is just over 3 years old now. I've already replaced heatsink and the PSU, I guess I should wait until some other part fails until I pull the trigger

[Tallulah]

Sod building my own computer! I get my parents to buy me a new one! Although a friend of mine did have a go at it; she just did a degree access course, so she knows what she's doing. I do believe that she got it up and running after a lot of frustration. Program languages is more her thing, though.

So... Last night I finally gave up the guts to call this guy who gave me his number, and a woman answered. Awkward. I claimed I had a wrong number and hung up promptly!

It doesn't take a Dr Sheldon Cooper to figure out what's going on there... O_o

Lol, apologies for the Big Bang Theory reference there; it's my new favourite thing.

EDIT: Ohai, Myst! *waves*

[Sioux]

At first I was thinking of just going with something off from iBuyPower.com's front page.

Gamer Mage D415 $799
‧ AMD FX-6100 CPU
‧ 4GB DDR3-1600 Memory
‧ AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB
‧ Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 MB
‧ 1TB SATA-III 7200rpm HDD
‧ 24X DVD+/-RW

It would cost around $1000.00 after I add on certain things to make it better and would do everything I would need it to especially for gaming.

My biggest problem is that I sort of have no idea what I am doing when it comes to making a computer. What parts/companies/brand are better than others? What are the best quality of parts for my money? Does the type of case impact anything? You can see my problem.

Though, a friend said I can get a relative level of power under $1000.00 these days. The bar in which I am measuring everything seems to be being able to play any of the current Blizzard games at their highest specs(They are probably going to be the only computer games I will play on the thing anyhow).

[Mysterious Being]

Erm.. so apparently drooling over the Macbook Pro has turned into my credit card hating me. Now I just hafta twiddle my thumbs until delivery.

Hi Tallulah

And Sioux - in general I think most of the brands are the same. For $1000 you'll be able to get a decent computer without troubles. Just do your research, compare a few models and see what the best price you can get. Case doesn't really impact a lot except looks (yay), and sometimes cooling and therefore noise. Try to get a decent quality power supply, as these are often the first components to go.

...that's all the advice I have

[Phoenix]

I did live in Phoenix (and am there currently) but I'm getting my MSe in Aerospace from the University of Texas. I'll be driving back next week, and it is a pretty awesome city. Where'd you go?

And I don't know what all the hate on Nvidia is. Kepler is (from what I have read) beating AMD left and right, with lower power usage to boot. I've no doubt the high end AMD cards work well, but I've had nothing but trouble with the Catalyst drivers on my laptop. To each their own though.

And I was similarly tempted by that screen Myst. Too much money for me to justify spending though.

[Mysterious Being]

I didn't go very far. I work for National Instruments, and we had our yearly conference there. So I spent 4.5 out of 5 days at the Convention Centre, half a day shopping at the Domain, a few hours most nights on Sixth St, and came back.

It is a fair bit to drop on a laptop, but I figure I may as well while I have disposable income, no kids, and no mortgage

[Phoenix]

Haha a good call on the MacBook.

I didn't know you work for NI. That's quite a ways for you to travel for a conference though, haha. I have some fond (read: terrible) memories of labview in my undergrad work. Useful tool, but frustrating to learn at times.

[Tallulah]

I recently found out that I actually have an Intel Core processor on my laptop rather than the advertised AMD Vision. Uhh... Win?

Dunno why, but I can't stop smiling of late.

EDIT: Well, good-bye, sleep... :/

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Tallulah

Dunno why, but I can't stop smiling of late.

EDIT: Well, good-bye, sleep... :/

Well that changed quickly

[Mysterious Being]

LabVIEW is a misunderstood beast A great tool if you know how to use it, but hardly anyone does.

Flights were 1 + 18 + 1 hours (did the Sydney->Dallas Fort Worth flight) with a bit of transit in between. Didn't sleep more than 4 hours the whole time I was there (stupid jetlag). But all in all a good trip.

... *twiddles thumbs while waiting for Macbook*

[Phoenix]

To be fair, we were using labview 2 or 3 on a windows 3.1 machine which could only transfer data via floppy for our wind tunnel...