=VG= SemlerPDX

It might be good for a POS (point of sale) computer with no keyboard (or stored keyboard), too. There are some computers that are essentially a huge touchscreen, all in one in that form factor - so they have options such as this for potential scenarios we may never use as PC Gamers. I don't know so much about Linux, but after years of discussions with SolarFlame, I've learned that Windows is the way it is because it's designed to be ready for ANYTHING consumers may use it for or attach to it right out of the box, whereas an OS like Linux is more modular where the user may only install OS functions for the gear they will use and operations for tasks that they will make use of, resulting in a much smaller HDD footprint and less RAM usage overall at idle. I guarantee there is PLENTY in Windows you might run across that you will NEVER have a use for.

Welcome back!

No matter which route you go, trusting some so-called "professional" or buying the parts for yourself: Caveat Emptor = Buyer Beware In this case, the "professional" did not know about the CPU socket set mis-match, and that is NOT an acceptable mistake on the part of a PC professional. Also, Jersans did not take the time to educate himself, and therefore, it became the equivalent of Jersans trying to buy a used car to tow his camper caravan, the salesman said, "Sure - this one will tow it", only find out later that the used car has a unibody frame that cannot support a tow hitch attachment. Life is full of these kinds of choices, and it's the savvy educated consumer who always comes out on top. Barring that, patience to confer with a TRUSTED professional who can give sound advice every step of the way is the next best option - a close family member with knowledge of the industry (cars, PC's, property/houses, etc.) or perhaps friends who have spent years taking the time and effort to assemble correct knowledge. It's your money, it's your time, it's your own efforts. Spend them how you wish, and if used properly, all routes will arrive at the same end: A good, well thought out purchase with no surprises. As computers are so much more modular, lightweight and easy to assemble than, say, automobiles, it's far easier for a layman to dabble in the field of PC building. But due to the vast number of similarly named parts, (nVidia 970 vs. a proper use of the same chip on a "good" board like the EVGA AdvancedCoolingXtreme2+ nVidia GTX 970 SuperSuperClocked), not to mention form factor and socket set compatibility concepts, it can be a very confusing and very daunting task to anyone new to it. My $800 builds would ABSOLUTELY CRUSH most ANY $800 pre-assembled PC off some shelf - that is the power of being a savvy educated consumer. The only exceptions being items sold from a proper Gaming PC company with massively deep pockets (CyberPower, Xidax, etc.) that assemble proper PC's with proper parts (but then again, these are digital storefronts, and we're talking about computers off a shelf, like at an electronics store or JoeBlow's local PC Shoppe). Buying a cool car like a Mustang is awesome.... Buying a REAL Mustang that can actually perform is amazing. Sure, they both drive, and both are Mustangs, but not all Mustangs are equivalent as most car guys know, one being a Mustang essentially in name only, the other being the type that can lay down rubber at speed and drive circles around the other - same year, mostly the same look - but NOT the same Mustang. Caveat Emptor. Losing your primary PC and quickly trying to dive right on into this without double and triple checking with a proper "TRUSTED" professional before every move is a quick way to lose money, or time, or both. A good time to begin this is when you still have everything working and you can take your time over weeks or months to read and learn about the parts you may want in your next PC. What can you re-use from your last, what should be replace because it is nearing the end of it's life expectancy, and what new parts should be added (respecting bottlenecks to dictate where the money is invested). And I would advise NO ONE to buy anything without doing a little research on the item, beit a PC, or a car, etc. etc. Trust a professional to grab something off the shelf for you if you desire, so long as you understand what you are getting - but in the end, I agree that just grabbing something off a shelf with no pre-desired quality other than "it works" is not a good way to spend money, and is not going to provide you with a good product, either. Lemme explain "bad matching" as it was likely meant: So many boxed PC's sold off a shelf are poorly performing shadows of the "real thing" by which I mean their selling points, often described on a sticker attached to the front panel or side panel, are misleading brand and version names of the core parts inside. These are too many times the most basic version of that chip/card/drive that can still tote the name you recognize as the "next big thing" or it's basic compatibility i.e. "i5 or i7" or "GTX 1080" or "SSD" or "M.2SATA" or "4K Ready" or "VR Ready". These components, by comparison of some boxed $800 Medion computer system, would have poor cooling hardware making them unable to achieve what a "proper" GTX 1080 could do, or could be a terrible platform to use for, say, "VR" or "4K". I mean, stuttering 14 FPS with all graphics on LOW in every game IS technically VR and Vive/Oculus WOULD technically run on that system, chugging along while the consumer thinks, "wow! This is cool! I wonder how cool it would have looked if I bought the $2000 boxed PC next to this one on that same shelf? Maybe next time, that is what I will buy!" The savvy consumer always wins. The educated consumer always gets what he wants. But, the savvy, educated consumer with time to make moves slowly and evaluate and confer with actual professionals will get his cake, and will get to eat it, too. "There is no substitute for a goode education" -Benjamin Franklin

The lesson learned should be what we said from the start: Do your research, educate yourself - even included links to Tom's Hardware guides all about selecting parts and assembling a working PC. Patience is a virtue, and I feel if you had taken a little more time to read and research, you would have been able to notice the socket set marked on the MoBo box and that it did not match the socket set marked on the CPU box, same with the RAM, etc. When it comes to assembling parts that each cost several hundred dollars, it's best to know your limitations, or be ready for new challenges. Were you even wearing an anti-static wrist strap when working with these chips and boards? Did anyone mention that in this thread beyond a one-time discharging of static prior to touching something? I feel you could have done much better if you looked before you leapt.

(beg to differ!!) There is good reason to have more than 8GB on a Gaming PC, some modern games like more than 4GB of RAM (tossing GTA:V out again as a good example here), and when I personally made the jump from 8GB to 16GB, I had much more overhead when running my PC under full load (GTA:V on High settings while recording and streaming, and watching some Netflix in the background, with a few browsers open and other crap I was too lazy to shut down). Basically, it's all about how you use your computer: if you do very little multi-tasking, you may never take advantage of larger RAM capacities, but as it is one of the more affordable parts of a PC, and most PC's come with 4 DIMM slots, you want to decide what maximum RAM you would like to have, divide that by 4 and get sticks of that size (you want 32GB RAM, get 4x 8GB RAM sticks... buy 2 to start, buy another 2 down the road when you can afford it) There are also plenty applications for a PC Gamer to have more than 16GB RAM, particularly for performance, additional RAM can be used as part of a RAM Drive that can have anything from parts of the OS to an entire game running off the RAM (instead of HDD/SSD) resulting in much faster load times and minimizing times of "load from disk", etc. I know Double_13 uses a 32GB RAM system, and takes advantage of that extra RAM for use as a RAM Drive (the entire PR Game can easily fit and run from his RAM) for some performance gain.

So true, and you have many great points. Always best to do your benchmarks with the actual programs you are going to use... the benchmarking softwares seem to only be of use if you consistently test with and compare results from the exact same softwares in different configurations, but then there's no way to know how that applies to PC gaming, specifically with the games YOU own and want to play. Personally, I prefer to fire up games for my benchmarking, and to try some rendering in AE, Premiere, or even Sony Vegas. GTA V is modern enough to push a gaming PC to it's limits so it's in-game for that one, but if I was playing a lot of Arma, I'd use that for the benchmarking because even though it's not as optimized as other games, you will still be able to gauge the raw performance of a PC better when actually IN the environment you expect it to perform in. If I'm testing speed of an add-on SSD, I use a game like Civilization V where the time it takes loading a save game is based on the size of the game (so a late game save on a large/huge map = longer load times). I did some game boot speed tests recently to see if it was faster to load from my SSD Raid-0 volume or from the add-on SSD that runs most of my programs. I used Kerbal Space Program (with over 3000 plugins from 64 mods) -- only gained 12 seconds (on a 2 and a half minute boot normally) so I decided to keep it off the Raid-0 for space reasons (space space, not Space space ) . TLDNR; don't use benchmark software, just fire up your most intensive game or application and give it a run - note the FPS in high action (specifically the LOWEST value) and/or note the time to run an application or to load one depending on what you're testing.

Last thing I want to do is shit on opinions, I very much agree about the speed vs. cores on a budget as needed. But I will say that it's not groundless to state that Intel and AMD have flip-flopped on leading the industry with their hardware over the years, that much is a fact. It is the exact same with graphics cards, between nVidia and ATI, with certain rollouts, they have at times jumped ahead of the other by a year or so, dictating that gamers wishing to invest in that year's best would choose one company or the other. After that, anyone basing their purchase choice between AMD/Intel or ATI/nVidia on anything else is basically losing out, or at the very least, not putting their money out for the best return at the time. As it sits today, in the current market (and last years as well), Intel is leading the CPU market by a decent margin, pushing capabilities to the limit and the price point for performance models is such that any price savings by going with AMD is also a performance loss. nVidia is similarly leading the graphics card technology at this time as well, with the new 1080's markedly clocking in higher (as comparably as possible given the different tech) than the current leading ATI cards, and though another flip-flop may be coming in the near future, it's still the case that the best money for performance is currently on nVidia, where any savings by going with ATI would also be measurably less performance as we see it in modern games.

You say you're inept at all of this, so I'll give a great tip: You save money by teaching yourself and buying parts bit by bit (and it's rewarding!) -- If you cannot, you save money by buying a set or assembled setup by not breaking things or buying the wrong components. In the end, if you want to get into the whole thing, you have to have a passion to both save money and to learn how to put all these parts together without frying something. You have to be able to find answers where none exist, and be able to Google what you need for info or instructions. Most every Motherboard I've ever worked on had some original manual online in PDF form that I could find to get a complete map of the MoBo and every connection on it, as well as specs. Additionally, YouTube is a wealth of knowledge with the How To's but you gotta go for the more professional ones, or it's just a video of some jacktard taking apart his PC to some bad Techno music. You can do it, if you try, but you have to put in the effort to read and learn a few things. Here is THE place to go to start that, and it's worth it to take the time to educate yourself rather than rely on others to decide what YOU need, because we are not you: CPUs: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-cpus,3986.html GPUs: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html Motherboards: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-motherboards,3984.html The Roundup articles are a great place to find info about parts in a single specific category: http://www.tomshardware.com/articles/round-up/ *Forgot to add the very, very helpful "Build Your Own" sections, check it out for some variable price builds with top parts: http://www.tomshardware.com/t/build-your-own/feature/ In the end, you can basically swap out the highlighted word ("CPU") for anything you are looking to learn about because parts change every year and you gotta keep up with what's new: Great Tip #2: Save money by buying last years parts (or even the year before), sacrificing a little bit of future proofing to get higher end parts inside a tight budget.

If the RAM stickers are lacking in good info, look up the motherboard you have instead, find out what kind of RAM it takes, boom - you got your answer

Unless that cooler is some actual brand name add-on cooler bundled with that CPU (with a normal retail value $30+) you cannot use it. Almost all CPU's are sold with a shitty little CPU cooler, some tiny fan connected to the worlds smallest heatsink just so the chip could potentially operate if installed on a motherboard right out of the box. You always want to invest at least $30 on an after-market cooler with a decent sized fan and fair sized heatsink, and then apply a name brand thermal paste (like Arctic Silver) as opposed to any included paste that may come with the CPU or the Heatsink/Fan. This is a nul argument here. We do not need to worry about any of this, particularly with regards to PR. ANY modern Desktop CPU of the Intel persuasion, with multiple cores, will kick the ass of any old game like PR even though, admittedly it could not take advantage of the multi-core capabilities of the CPU. A single core off a modern multi-core PC can handle ANY game from 2004 (mods/updates irrelevant), unless it's the lowest end model of a CPU that is made (like some entry level mobility CPU). Get a modern Intel multi-core CPU, the most expensive you can afford. The GPU (graphics card) you buy should cost about the same. The MoBo may cost a little as a third to a half of the CPU/GPU. These factors dictate which level of performance you can afford with your budget. Drop your budget onto the CPU/GPU/MoBo minus the cost of RAM. So, you say $500 ... spend $200 on a CPU, spend $200 on a GPU, spend $100 on a MoBo... you'll need another $60+ for a set of RAM, 2x4GB is enough to get you started because: RAM is so nice, you can buy it over time... Start with the entry level you can afford, usually 60-100 for a pair of 4GB RAM for a total of 8GB, and later you could do that again when you can afford it (for a new total of 16GB, more than enough for modern multi-tasking such as streaming and also recording while gaming while watching some YouTube and also leaving 5 or 6 other programs minimized cuz you can't be arsed to close them) If I were you, I'd try to budget more like $700-$750, because around those price points, on that site you linked, it seems the good GPU's and CPU's are around $220-250 (converted) and even up to $300, meaning by our example, you'd spend ~$250 on CPU, ~$250 on GPU and ~$120 on a MoBo

Those are some decent prices compared to what I saw on that site. This setup will give you a little future proofing, you'll be able to play current modern games at med-high (if not ultra-high) with that CPU/GFX card combo, and that is a very decent MoBo but it is a model designed for multiple graphics cards as opposed to other configurations that may have more options (but less GFX card slots) such as NVMe (which that board lacks). As it sits, this is a very affordable, very capable setup and good for the money. You'll have PR at max settings easily getting 100+ FPS, that much is for sure. Probably 40-60+ FPS in something like GTA:V depending on gfx settings in-game; same with Arma titles.

Ouch... that place is a bit expensive... My GFX card there (2 year old GTX 970) is more than $100 over what I paid 2 years ago!!! Yikes! Good luck to you and your wallet! Yes, definitely. *unless that cooler doesn't fit the form factor of the new CPU you might get, but many have adapter kits if you still have anything like that lying around from when you bought it.

When you say your keyboard is flashing, do you mean it flashes on boot, then lights are steady like normal? Or do you mean lights keep flashing on and off without end? That would be the route I'd try -- I would assume my GFX card died. To test, you turn off the computer and remove it from all power sources. Wait 15-30 seconds for the remaining electric charge to discharge. Then you can remove the cables from the GFX card on the back of your PC, and then open the PC, and remove the graphics card and place it somewhere safe (don't touch exposed metal parts on circuit boards!). Next, you plug the monitor cable into the matching port on the back of your PC, plug it all in, and try to turn it on. If nothing happens, turn it off, unplug the power, wait again for 15-30 seconds, then plug it all back in and power on one more time (a second boot attempt can rule out a finicky motherboard not recognizing a monitor switch-a-roo like we've just done) Try that, and report back

Don't call it dead yet... A lot of troubleshooting steps to see what can be saved. Since so much of a PC can be re-used throughout future builds, saving money for you to afford better CPU/GPU, you should keep a majority of your PC if you have interest in continuing the hobby. 1. Does the screen light up when you power up? Do you get visuals like POST or BOOT screens? Can you get to the BIOS? 2. Are all fans visibly turning when you power up the PC? Especially want to check the CPU cooler fans... 3. Have you tried disconnecting everything but the essential items plugged into the computer, then powering it on? (Only Mouse/Keyboard/Main Monitor) Hard to know which questions to ask without knowing the answers to a few first. Like, do you run your graphics / monitor off of the motherboard, or do you have a graphics card?

Great info!

*bump*

Awesome, man!! Great screenshots!

(was an April Fools Day joke by ammunition depot, for those who didn't click the link. Anti-Drone ammo is not real / not for sale)

Click image for store link:

VG Info Pages updated - all bandwidth notices changed to 1500

We run PR COOP Servers, not Deployment (PvP) servers. Plenty of us play competitive PvP games as well and the idea sounds cool, we are just not setup for that sort of thing and the majority at VG are focused on cooperative gameplay more than PvP.

You're not holding your mouth right

ETA for VG BMS Server update is Wednesday March 21st. I'm out of town and unavailable until then, just popped in to let you all know. Would be sooner, but not at my PC

Sorry for the late reply, I was out and about. Just got back to the PC, restarted the BMS Server, and it's good to go. Normally we catch these much quicker, I appreciate your patience!