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Building A Computer

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  • Rym said:

    I'd always been in a house. I spent most of my life in large houses.

    Small apartment in big city is better in all the ways that matter. ;^)

    http://gothamist.com/2015/04/15/nyc_worth_it.php

    I agree after having lived in many large and small houses and then living in an inner city apartment, stuff is just easier to get and everything you need or want can be walked or biked to.
  • If you like cities, apartments make all kinds of sense. If you despise cities, not so much. Boston/NYC feel pretty claustrophobic to me after a day, let alone a weekend or longer. Too much humanity, too little grass.
  • edited April 2015
    All the parts are in save the case which arrives tomorrow. Tomorrow is effectively my Saturday so this "weekend" will be spent building the new machine! Hurray!

    Oh, I do plan on doing my out of the tower test boot today. Never done that before but it makes sense so I'm excited to see how that goes.
    Post edited by Dromaro on
  • Any softwares you'd recommend for the data migration? I removed the old drive, installed it into the enclosure, and the new system is seeing it as a RAW file system, and thus cannot read it.
  • I'm looking to get a new monitor for my PC, mostly because I found out yesterday that BluRays are special snowlflakes that only like HDMI or Display Port, and partly because I actually want a good monitor. Any suggestions?
  • The Dell ultrasharps aren't what they used to be.

    I actually need to do research before I upgrade any monitors...
  • Rym said:

    The Dell ultrasharps aren't what they used to be.

    I actually need to do research before I upgrade any monitors...

    Very interested in what you have to say/opine is a good monitor. Mine are fine right now, but eventually need to be upgraded.
  • What I want:

    1. 16:10 aspect ratio
    2. High resolution (above 1920x1200)
    3. Reasonable color correctness
  • Rym said:

    What I want:

    1. 16:10 aspect ratio
    2. High resolution (above 1920x1200)
    3. Reasonable color correctness

    Out of curiousity, why 16:10?
  • More pixels than 16:9. Or at least that's the way I've always understood it.
  • More vertical pixels. 16:9 is a little too short and too wide for meaningful work. 16:10 is solid for two good sized windows open side by side.

    Of course, a big part of the problem is that 1080p is just a bad, low resolution. It was worse than my old CRT from college...
  • Ah, most of my work is multimedia, so I live in 16:9 (though I prefer 2.39:1). Then again, I do have a 16:10 monitor as my primary...
  • Is there any appreciable difference between HDMI and Display Port? Same for IPS panels versus any other kind of panel.
  • Ah, most of my work is multimedia, so I live in 16:9 (though I prefer 2.39:1). Then again, I do have a 16:10 monitor as my primary...

    Yeah, so do I.

    I like to have a 16:9 video within my 16:10 space. I'm never watching video AT 16:9 full screen except once at the end when I'm reviewing the test renders.

  • edited May 2015
    Rym said:

    Ah, most of my work is multimedia, so I live in 16:9 (though I prefer 2.39:1). Then again, I do have a 16:10 monitor as my primary...

    Yeah, so do I.

    I like to have a 16:9 video within my 16:10 space. I'm never watching video AT 16:9 full screen except once at the end when I'm reviewing the test renders.
    Really?I keep the timeline and all the other actual editing stuff in my 16:10 monitor but keep the video preview and trimmer fullscreen in my 16:9. It CAN get bogged down when I've got several layers going on, but I just pre-render that bit if it starts bugging me.
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • If you have enough resolution, 1080p in 16:9 is just one panel in a big monitor.
  • Have you considered a 21:10 Ultrawide? The LG 34x series has native 3440x1440 resolution, and are pretty sweet.
  • malzraa said:

    Have you considered a 21:10 Ultrawide? The LG 34x series has native 3440x1440 resolution, and are pretty sweet.

    I have.

    The main problem is desk real estate. I often like to have my "secondary" monitor at an angle to the main one, so when I turn my head it's facing me straight on. Can't do that with a straight flat monitor.

    Still, those things are made of sex.

  • I was looking at the LGs but only the biggest of them is 1440 and it's not that much more screen for the considerable price increase. You get about 1.3 times the monitor space of 16:9 because the further you go from 1:1, the smaller the screen area is compared to the diagonal.

    Actually, is seems there is a 600$ 1080 34 inch and a 750$ 1440 34 inch.
  • RymRym
    edited May 2015
    1080 at 34" is horrible. That's basically a TV. I need more actual vertical pixels or the whole thing's moot.
    Post edited by Rym on
  • That's what I'm saying. It's advertised as a 34 inch screen but it's the same vertical height as a 27-29 inch, with an extra third of horizontal space. They're much less impressive in real life.
  • So these two monitors - Asus and Dell - are what I've come down to. Any reason to not flip a coin between the two, or try and find something different?
  • Oh, we use one of those in the shop on the design computer. It's pretty nice, yeah, but I can't say I've ever played games or watched a movie on it to see how it goes with that. But it's pretty nice for day-to-day use.
  • edited May 2015
    I've been sitting on my hands waiting for a good monitor while using a shitty TN panel.
    I bought my parents a 27" Dell Ultrasharp from the 2015 range and it is insanely good with colour reproduction, I had been using bad monitors for so long I forgot what the actual colours for icons should actually be and how great photos look. The monitor is almost without Bezel, these would be great in multi monitor setups.

    I want to try one of the G-Sync or Free Sync monitors but colour reproduction and higher refresh rates are important (I want everything lol) but my use case is primary coding, secondary gaming and media, tertiary photo / image work. Basically I want a gaming monitor which has IPS levels of colour reproduction and minimal blur.

    I uses this site for monitor picking as the people do some insane in depth checks and have the hardware to check almost every specification against what the manufacturer claims. They don't seem to keep the pickers or guides up to date but reviews are up to date.
    Banta said:

    So these two monitors - Asus and Dell - are what I've come down to. Any reason to not flip a coin between the two, or try and find something different?

    The Dell destroys the Asus.
    Better colour accuracy for the Dell, comes almost perfectly calibrated, the Asus requires a lot of messing around with to get colour not good as the Dell.
    Asus has 2ms less lag and slightly better white point uniformity.

    Biggest killer is that the Asus uses PWM meaning it is going to be flickering unless running at 100% brightness.
    Rym said:

    What I want:

    1. 16:10 aspect ratio
    2. High resolution (above 1920x1200)
    3. Reasonable color correctness

    I would still look at the Dell U2415.

    Edit - Dell also have a 25" Ultrasharp that runs at 2560x1440 but I don't know too much about it.
    Post edited by sK0pe on
  • So if I'm planning on spending about $1000 on a gaming desktop (including monitor and keyboard but not bulk storage drive) what should I budget to monitor and keyboard? Also, will I be able to build a computer that will last several years at this budget or will an extra $100-$200 make a huge difference?

    Independently, what exactly are the benefits of a better motherboard other than more slots?
  • An extra 1-200 will make a decent difference since you need a monitor and keyboard. Better mobos can have better bios features for over clocking. Not sure about what else on that front.

    It kind of depends what your willing to settle for as far as monitor goes and what you want in a keyboard. I would think min. 60 for keyboard and 200ish for monitor.
  • Ikatono said:

    So if I'm planning on spending about $1000 on a gaming desktop (including monitor and keyboard but not bulk storage drive) what should I budget to monitor and keyboard? Also, will I be able to build a computer that will last several years at this budget or will an extra $100-$200 make a huge difference?

    I'm trying to work out how you would include quality peripherals with a base build for a gaming PC, it should be fine if you get a cheaper Samsung 1920x1080 monitor and go quite cheap on the peripherals. Even so I think you would end up with a system that you would need to upgrade the video card earlier rather than later.
    I would probably go -
    CPU: i5-4690 (K if you want, no difference in price)
    Mobo: MSI Z97-Gaming 7 Mobo or Gigabyte GA Z97x UD3H (the latter is not a mobo I would buy though)
    Graphics Card: XFX Double D R9 285
    8gb RAM
    Disk: Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD
    PSU: Corsair CX500 (however could probably do better I'm not too sure about this range at this wattage, some of the Silverstones work well or just grab a Seasonic 500 W).
    Only leaves you with about $200 for case, keyboard, mouse but I can't see a build that would go too much cheaper than this without going to the past generation of AMD CPUs and GPUs.
    Mouse and keyboard are super personal things, I'd be fine with spending about $250 on a keyboard and mouse if I knew it was going to last "forever" i.e. a decade or more. Where as most people would baulk at those prices (however my parents are using my old mouse which is now about 10 years old and I'm using an 8 year old keyboard).

    I would personally recommend getting a good monitor and peripeherals that you can keep for multiple builds into the future so that you only ever have to upgrade components.
    Ikatono said:

    Independently, what exactly are the benefits of a better motherboard other than more slots?

    "Better" motherboards in this case, I assume you are looking at one line of chipset and wondering why there are multiple skews?
    If so then it is simply the form factor that you want and then start adding money for features outside of the base requirements such as on board Blu-Tooth, Wifi, better audio, shielded headphone and microphone inputs etc. However if you are looking between companies then it is is simply a case of getting what you pay for in terms of how long a component will last. If chosen correctly your motherboard shouldn't really die before your CPU gets too old. I've had 2 motherboards over 8 years and the upgrade was just to get an upgraded CPU.
  • This Acer 1440p monitor looks pretty good. Am I missing any glaring flaws?
  • Replaced my laptop drive with an SSD. Awesome. Why didn't I do this sooner?
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