I am a Weak, Weak Man

[Rand{CLR}]

Just pulled the trigger on a new pc via Cyberpower (reasons: I don't have time to build; they can build and give me warranty for almost pennies more than Newegg parts alone; Bank of America has put a buying hold on Newegg forcing me to verify everything I buy from them; RMA experience on Asus router this week makes me skittish about possible returns and ground shipping).

I blame you guys first, with all your talk of upgrades wearing down my willpower. I blame BF 3 as a very close second, being utterly unplayable to me even at 800x600 and everything to low. My 4.5 year old system no longer cuts the gravy.

I cut back on some costs by going with just a single, SSD drive and leaving out a sound card. I managed to cut $150 out of the pricing over the weekend playing with acceptable sacrifice vs. longevity potential.

I will pop in my current Creative card and my current 1TB drive to become the application drive until I go RAID on that puppy in the future. I'm also going to stable-overclock the chip ASAP, multiplier only.

Here's what I got:

Corsair Obsidian Series 650D Mid-Tower Gaming Case
Intel® Core™ i5-2500K 3.30 GHz 6M Intel Smart Cache LGA1155 (All Venom OC Certified)
GigaByte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 Intel Z68 Chipset DDR3 ATX MB
8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Module (Kingston HyperX)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2GB 16X PCIe Video Card (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Single Enermax Enlobal Silent High Performance 120MM Fan)
120 GB Intel 320 2.5 inch SATA Gaming MLC Solid State Disk (Single Hard Drive)
850 Watts - Corsair CMPSU-850TXV2 80 Plus Power Supply - Quad SLI Ready
(2) Sony 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)

FREE Game - Dungeon Siege 3 [+0]
STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Xtreme Gear (Black Color) Multimedia/Internet USB Keyboard
XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO

5% Discount » $-78.25; FREE SHIPPING UPS GROUND
Grand Total: $1,486.75

I'm hoping I also get the free game coupons for Arkham City and Just Cause 2. It would only let me select one free game, but all three should apply. I'll have Arkham City on PS3 and already beat Just Cause 2, so if I get them you guys get first dibs.

Couldn't select no keyboard and mouse, so those are backups. I have a brand-spanking new, less than 1 week old G500 mouse, and my old G15 until I can upgrade to the G19 or some similar board. Asus 24" monitor will remain. Free upgrades through today on the 2500k, the 850 watt power supply, and cheaper RAM; Mail-in-Rebate on the case and maybe 1-2 other things.

You guys suck.

-Rand

[Duke{CLR}]

Lol. Congrats on the new rig Rand your old one certainly gave you your moneys worth. At the price you got it will certainly deliver hours of entertainment for less than a penny an hour.

[Apache Warrior]

Your Welcome.
Apache

[Skud]

Nice rig, Rand! Hope to see you ingame with it.

[Caddys83]

[bobytt]

Rand, from what i am reading over different forums GTX56* have some issues with not enough memory for BF3, video card very good for other games is not enough for ULTRA settings at 1080p in BF3. have bunch of complains over nvidia forums.

[Rand{CLR}]

Rand, from what i am reading over different forums GTX56* have some issues with not enough memory for BF3, video card very good for other games is not enough for ULTRA settings at 1080p in BF3. have bunch of complains over nvidia forums.

Well, considering that I got the 2gb model and I'm on an ATI 4870 now, I think it will work for me. If it really is a problem, Nvidia is probably working on new drivers too.

Anyway, since this thing is just god-awful horrendous for me now at 800x600 and everything low, anything that runs would be good--I don't need ultra.

-Rand

[bobytt]

On high there is no problems as far as i know. When you push for ultra they have problems so u should be happy from 800x600 and everything low to 1920x1080 on high

[The_Needle]

I bought my last 5 PC's from Cyberpower. Often they come with minor issues but since I didn't have to build it myself it was worth tightening a card or a memory stick after shipping. Their warranty service is OK, nothing spectacular but its worked for me over the years.

[Rand{CLR}]

Yeah, the first thing I'm going to do is crack the case and check all connections. That's the biggest single issue I've seen with Cyberpower in months of research of builders--something not fully seated or jarred loose in shipping.

May just go ahead and install the hard drive and/or sound card at that time. Either that, or I'll boot it up first and then shutdown for the additions before I start with the software and major configuration. Haven't decided yet, and since it'll take most of 2 days to get everything going the way I want I'm sure there's going to be a lot of opportunity to install things.

-Rand

[drunken_chef]

a lot of blame in that first post. be more positive. you deserve a new PC!

[juneau]

I really am going to be the last person left on a crappy dual core aren't i?

[Donziboy2]

Gratz

SSD will make a good OS drive, maybe 1-5 games on it then its full. Ive found that a raptor is good for games. Its fast and they come in decent storage sizes.

Onboard sound is pretty good nowadays. I haven't bought a sound card since i bought a $300 sound blaster live audigy........... And hated it. Addin cards just cut down on electronic noise, and reduce cpu overhead which isnt much nowadays anyway.

Im not a fan of raid. If one drive goes you can loose everything.

Overall nice build.
Im stuck on the bench atm. Running a 2500k and a GTX 285 and im ready for a new GPU. But no money, and no work atm.



UPS Ground
They better triple box that baby in air bags.

[K PhaNTOM]

Hells yeah for the build.

A tiny boo for having them build it for you. How long does it really take to build a computer? You can't spare 2-3 hours? Madness. I'm gonna send you a coupon good for a free session with a time management coach.

[Rand{CLR}]

I've had 2 other pcs coming UPS ground (Dell, Velocity Micro) and they've been fine. Cyberpower had a $19 packaging upgrade but I wasn't up for that. I figure they really can't get far away from large styrofoam cutouts and that should be enough for pc cushioning.

I'm more worried about a bad part that screws up a whole build and having to RMA everything than the time to build. That happened to me before I bought my current Velocity Micro machine. Something went wrong, I couldn't diagnose it properly because literally every part of the system aside from the sound card and video card were new technology, and I had to RMA everything and eat the cost of Windows. I've already got an active RMA on an Asus router that cuts my connection speed in half, and I don't have the money and time for shipping and calls back and forth.

I ain't doing that again, and I don't have time to mess with the RMA process if I want a machine ready for BF3.

-Rand

P.S. Donzi, it would be RAID 1. I've lost too many HDs to feel comfortable without a RAID, and RAID 0 is as useless as no RAID when a failure happens. My current backup array was RAID 1, and I lost 1 drive almost a year ago. Everything is still accessible and I'm still using the drive as my backup because the other one is fine.