Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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That is pretty much my take on building a PC too. There was a time when buying a pre-built machine was good, now is not that time. Plus they load them with bloatware and other wastes of power. Better with a clean OS install on a pretty good machine you built yourself.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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Buuuuuuuut I don't wanna build it!!!! ::stomping feet like 2 year old::
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Yarp
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
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It's never been easier to build a PC than it is today. There are plenty of sites devoted to laying out all the parts in like $50 price/performance increments while components are more plentiful than ever and occupy a much wider range of ticks.
But, I don't care to build a PC either personally because even though it's easy and all there can still be unforeseen problems and if you try and build something small, sleek and quiet (or cool running) then many of the builder advantages you might have start to diminish slightly while the effort ratchets up. To that end, something like the alpha makes sense just for being a sleek form factor alone. The compromise though? get a pre-built PC that you'll be able to throw a new GPU and CPU in 2 years from now and call it a day. Edit: for curiosities sake I quickly priced on newegg what an equivalent PC would cost to DIY to the $999 alienware X51(not the Alpha you linked) and came out to $821 without a case or power supply, so I dunno, the price comparison really might not be that far off. |
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I shot the sherrif.
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If they've also stopped doing that, I could see a gaming PC in my future. (I've been messing around with Steamplay with my tower booted into PC mode and my laptop still in Mac mode. The playing experience so far has been surprisingly solid.) But it would allow me to dump the tower some where out of sight/mind/hearing, and play PC games on my laptop. Google is your frenemy. Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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The dual problem I face is lack of available space and a low interest level in anything other than messing around in Minecraft. Spending a lot on a system is beyond reason for me at the moment.
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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*spending a lot on a TOWER is beyond reason.... yadda such and so on....
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Yarp
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
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But yeah, with pre-built stuff you certainly can't know for sure what they put in there or where they might have chosen to cut corners unless you really go the extra mile to look up every component and compare it with what's available OEM and whatever. But then on top of all of that, component manufacturers aren't always open and honest either about what they are selling. AMD and Nvidia are notoriously guilty of rebadging old silicon under new names to where something might be 7 series or 8 series or whatever in name but perform worse than certain 6 series chips, not to mention more direct manipulation of numbers and naming where maybe they'll issue a 7955 card for Dell and only Dell to use while the mainstream market gets 7960 and they are virtually identical but not really. Kind of makes you wonder if that stuff is going on with GPUs is it not also going on with RAM or Hard Drives or even PSUs and Mobos? But once you get into that point the DIY equation starts to get so much more involved that for many you might as well have just bought that pre-built PC, taken the warranty it comes with and not worried about it. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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How processor intensive is Minecraft when compared to games that are much more photo-realistic?
Do you NEED to have a massive video card to enjoy the great performance? Would one of these little pre-built PCs also be able to run an adequate video capture program? ... |
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I shot the sherrif.
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Ha, nice. There are so many ways to build a decent gaming machine these days. All the things I don't like about a tower can be handled if it's off in a corner somewhere.
Then I checked and found a refurb. MacPro for $2,400. They're so well built, I'm still tempted to spend the extra. (plus the thing is small, and basically dead silent, so it doesn't need to be off in a corner) Google is your frenemy. Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me |
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Dark Cat of the Sith
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My suggestion for building is to wait for the post-Christmas and New Year's sales. I built a low-to-midrange gaming PC right after Christmas 2010 and got what was $800 of components at the time for around $560. The machine is still holding up solidly today for what I want to play.
I'd suggest a.) putting together an approximate wish list, then b.) waiting for sales, and c.) if one of your preferred components isn't on sale replacing it with something from a sale list. (Thus, approximate wish-list). Minor differences in RAM or video card manufacturer won't matter as long as you're smart. "A blind, deaf, comatose, lobotomy patient could feel my anger!" - Darth Baras twitter ; amateur photographer ; fanfiction writer ; roleplayer and worldbuilder |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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Drew, have you considered just going Boot Camp with Windows 7? You have a fancy new machine already, why not just go the Windows route on that one? Minecraft probably does play better through Windows. Maybe. I don't have stats to back that up, but the game is known wide and far to be terribly coded from the very beginning, so I'm guessing the Mac port is likely more glitchy. Maybe?
With MagicLauncher and OptiFine I'm still pretty happy on the Mac side, but I would be curious to see what you find if you decide to go the Boot Camp route. So it goes. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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Waiting to buy is a good idea, but as I've never spec'd a PC I would not know the "obvious" items to upgrade and the "obvious" items to go with stock.
Grey I had the same thought earlier today (about running it in emulation) but am convinced that doing it on a solid state modern Mac lappy is just a bad idea for the long term. Thinking of Minecraft as a ported afterthought actually made me grin, since that's been our experience for so long. Building a space-hogging PC is one option. Buying an iMac is another consideration. It's just such a puzzle! The one thing that I'm left with is the question: is the MacBook Pro REALLY still a pro machine? ... |
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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If you choose to DIY (always the right answer in PC land)
Two component/price guides: http://choosemypc.net http://logicalincrements.com One site to help you gather the best prices: http://pcpartpicker.com |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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This is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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Yeah, those guides are pretty safe, but I do have a few personal preferences.
Asus motherboards, Seasonic or Super Flower OEM-based PSUs... Last edited by Eugene : 2014-11-22 at 00:27. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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And here you go with all the acronyms I don't know!!
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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Aha!
PSU means "Power Supply Unit". What a very strange thing with which to have a preferred vendor! How did you learn that those two vendors were your faves? ... |
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Sneaky Punk
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PSU preferences come down to a few things, reliability, efficiency, connectivity and sound (fan noise). Seasonic makes rock solid PSU's, which many other suppliers use for the base of their products, but I've never heard of Super Flower.
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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http://www.orionpsudb.com/
Basically there's three or four OEMs that make very high-quality PSUs right down to their perfect machine soldering. We're talking voltage regulation within 1%, voltage ripple within ~15mV...stuff like that. Seasonic: Seasonic, Corsair AX Series, XFX XT* Series Flextronics: Corsair AXi Series Delta: Antec HCP Platinum Series Super Flower: EVGA G2 Series |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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What do you think about "mini cases"?
Specifically this one. Edit: This is one that I put together using Eugene's PCPartsPicker site and it's still coming in around $1200, but it DOES include a (small) monitor. It uses a smaller tower, so the video card will block a few bays. Whoops, I left off hard drives, but I have a few extras that I could use. Edit #50: Would I be able to run video through this to my Sony television via HDMI? Would the video suck? I assume so. ... Last edited by drewprops : 2014-11-24 at 00:31. |
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Sneaky Punk
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If you don't have a lot of experience building PC's putting together a system like that in a mini-case might be hard for you, due to the limited space. Not saying you shouldn't go for it, just be prepared for a the nightmare that will happen when you go to wire everything up. The modular PSU should help in that regard though.
Seems like a decent system, overall, but I'm not up on the latest parts out there right now. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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Any other comments?
Eugene thanks for the link to these sites, this is fascinating ... |
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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My gaming PC is housed in a Bitfenix Shinobil XL, one of their largest cases.
I like the Prodigy, but it's not that small of a case. You linked the "mITX" version, which only accepts the smallest motherboards and has a difficult internal layout to work with. The "mATX" M version has the same external dimensions, but a more traditional layout. It also can mount mITX boards, so there's really no reason for anyone to buy the "mITX" specific version other than the marked down pricing. Yes, HDMI out should work fine and the video quality is completely dependent on your TV. |
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Space Pirate
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
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What would YOU recommend as a smaller, nice case?
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Custom User Title
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: At home
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Dave Mustaine :"God created whammy bars for people who don't know how to solo." |
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