I have a 42" Visio Smart TV, and the apps suck. They take forever to load and frequently stop to re-buffer. I just bought a Fire TV to replace my first generation Roku, and never bother with the Smart TV apps.

 

But I digress from the topic. I have a dual core AMD 3.0 processor and an old GTX 550 TI graphics card, but I only play WoW. It runs at about 40 fps at good (not ultra) video settings during 15 - 25 person raids. Not great, and I'm sure it would bog down on more advanced games.

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If something can corrupt you, you're corrupted already.
- Bob Marley


 

Time for you all to go outside!

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I went outside once, couldnt figure out how to turn off that giant light bulb, seems like a waste of energy.

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I go outside two or three times a week for yardwork and fishing. I typically play late at night or kill thirty minutes before I hit the gym or if the baby momma is watching some stupid show on TV I cant withstand. Anyway. I think I found a build for about $700.00 I can set-up on that PCpartpicker website. I'll post the parts to it later for reviews/critiques.  

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"What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king."

Build:

 

CPU = Intel i5 4690K

Motherboard = Asrock Z97 Extreme 3

RAM = Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GM set

Hard drive = Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Graphics Card = EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SC

Case = Bitfenix Neos ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply = Corsair CX500 500W

 

I'll probably snag Windows 7.1 or 8.1 for the operating system.

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"What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king."

Time for you all to go outside!

 

Graphics are great, but the gameplay is terrible.

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Graphics are great, but the gameplay is terrible.

 

The hookers don't respawn either. 

 

Build:

 

CPU = Intel i5 4690K

Motherboard = Asrock Z97 Extreme 3

RAM = Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GM set

Hard drive = Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Graphics Card = EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SC

Case = Bitfenix Neos ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply = Corsair CX500 500W

 

I'll probably snag Windows 7.1 or 8.1 for the operating system.

 

The only thing I would suggest is tossing a little extra dough for an ssd, even if it's just to install windows on. 

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Build:

 

CPU = Intel i5 4690K

Motherboard = Asrock Z97 Extreme 3

RAM = Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GM set

Hard drive = Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Graphics Card = EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SC

Case = Bitfenix Neos ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply = Corsair CX500 500W

 

I'll probably snag Windows 7.1 or 8.1 for the operating system.

The SSD suggested above isn't a bad idea, but imo, I'd invest in a bigger power supply. Nothing you have there is so power-hungry that it'll overload the power supply you have, but I'm still a fan of 700w power supplies when an external graphics card is in play. Very few things are more annoying than getting poor performance, program crashes and blue screens of death because the system demands outdid the power supply's capacity.

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Build:


CPU = Intel i5 4690K

Motherboard = Asrock Z97 Extreme 3

RAM = Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GM set

Hard drive = Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Graphics Card = EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SC

Case = Bitfenix Neos ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply = Corsair CX500 500W


I'll probably snag Windows 7.1 or 8.1 for the operating system.

Like the other poster said add a ssd and install your OS on that


Be sure to get the 4gb version of the gtx 960. If you can find a similarly priced amd 280x or even 290, then that would be a better choice. 2gb graphics memory just doesn't cut it for the texture quality that games are coming out with. The evga brand is an excellent choice though

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I'm with TJBender. An SSD is nice but they are still very expensive compared to normal HDD's and the strange thing is, unless you've actually experienced an SSD you won't miss the extra performance. For now he'd be better off with an HDD, he can always upgrade to solid state later. Better to get a solid PSU to safe guard against frying his shiny new parts.

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The evga brand is an excellent choice though

 

You sure? Because by some strange coincidence I was actually eyeing the same GPU as Caldrac in order to replace my old GTX 660 and I wasn't to sure about EVGA since I'd never heard of the brand before. 

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It's maybe at 50 cents a gigabyte now, and 80-120 is more than enough for windows. 

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True, but that's nearly 10% of his budget and he'll be better off with a good PSU and not destroying his hardware. 

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Meh if he had a 280 I would have said something, but a 960 he'll still likely be under 300 watts, more than enough overhead with his psu. 

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You sure? Because by some strange coincidence I was actually eyeing the same GPU as Caldrac in order to replace my old GTX 660 and I wasn't to sure about EVGA since I'd never heard of the brand before.

Absolutely sure. Evga is the go to brand for nvidia gpus. Warranty and customer service stands by their cards and will take care of the customer. They use quality components and the cooler is excellent.

With all that said, they are usually a tad bit more expensive than other brands.

However, I would not hesitate getting an evga branded gpu if I am going with an nvidia card

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Absolutely sure. Evga is the go to brand for nvidia gpus. Warranty and customer service stands by their cards and will take care of the customer. They use quality components and the cooler is excellent.

With all that said, they are usually a tad bit more expensive than other brands.

However, I would not hesitate getting an evga branded gpu if I am going with an nvidia card

So which one would you pick out of these six?

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You sure? Because by some strange coincidence I was actually eyeing the same GPU as Caldrac in order to replace my old GTX 660 and I wasn't to sure about EVGA since I'd never heard of the brand before. 

The card in my TV rig downstairs is a 2GB EVGA. Runs cool, smooth graphics at even the highest image quality levels, runs Skyrim, CS:GO and a few other Steam games at 60fps at 1080p without batting an eye. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one. I'll run downstairs and see exactly which model it is. For some reason, I really think that it's either a 750 or 760. I've got 960 in my head, but it was too cheap for that.

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So which one would you pick out of these six?

This guy.

 

If given the choice between a card that comes out of the box overclocked and one that doesn't, I'll take the one that isn't overclocked. Not to say I won't overclock the card myself later on in its life cycle when it needs the extra juice and longevity isn't as much of an issue, but I've had a couple of bad experiences with overclocked cards that make me steer clear of them in general. Plus, imo, this is just a better card than the SuperClocked one, and it doesn't cost that much more.

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So which one would you pick out of <a class="bbc_url" href='http://www.informatique.nl/?m=usl&g=166&sort=pop&v=EVGA&item11=1&item09=2'>these six?</a>

This is where I'm going to have to take back a bit of my gushing for evga. Earlier this year a lot of complaints came in for the 970, specifically coil whine. If they have worked out the kinks I would get the 970 ftw. The ftw versions actually run cooler than the standard and sc versions. The price difference between the 960 and 970 is worth paying for the performance.

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Build:

 

CPU = Intel i5 4690K

Motherboard = Asrock Z97 Extreme 3

RAM = Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GM set

Hard drive = Seagate Barracuda 1TB

Graphics Card = EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SC

Case = Bitfenix Neos ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply = Corsair CX500 500W

 

I'll probably snag Windows 7.1 or 8.1 for the operating system.

Late to the party but this is basically my rig crammed into a micro ATX build with a 256gb SSD. I upgraded to a Gigabit 960 GC since it came with Arkham Knight and now I am sad. 

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