Tell me about your gaming computer?

The other things I needed a better computer for are these GPS pigeon trackers.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXyC-soYhv4

My field of study is in Time research, which involves flying these birds across obstacles like mountains and water.
I completed my tests that were needed done in the USA and am now in Thailand (half way around the world) to repeat the proses. Which I'm hoping to have the Thai Government permission to begin next year.
Just another computing need of mine.
~Time Lord~
XX

 

Nice systems - guess I'll have to upgrade soon, my system is quite dated (almost 3 years old), but used to be decent at its time:

Core i7-3930K CPU @ 4,4 Ghz
Asus P9x79 deluxe
16 GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 CL9 (4*4 Gb quad channel kit)
Win 7 Ultimate
2* Geforce GTX 680 (SLI)
1 240 GB Kingston HyperX 3k SSD
2*seagate 2GB 7200 RPM (raid 0 array)
Soundblaster Recon 3d
Corsair Obsidian 800 D
Enermax Revolution87+ 850 W
Cooling: CPU and GPUs watercooled (Aquacomputer), 4* 140 mm Noiseblocker Blacknoise silent pro
3* 24" BenQ XL2420T 120hz + Nvidia 3dvision 2

Spoiler

 

This hand-built rig is a very quiet, with ample grunt, located at desk-space that's designed to be a comfort zone.
The old timber desk-shelf is a good spot for the monitor and nicely hides the self-powered Bose speakers on the rear of the desk space. An old UO cloth map and lapel pin are on the noticeboard.
The Novia map is printed A2 and trimmed
I upgrade when there is an 'appropriate sweet spot' in terms of dollar value. If LG or Samsung released a nice 30 inch, I'd consider swapping. I don't like the wide format 34 inch screens.



OS: Windows 7, 64bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-4670 CPU @ 3.40GHz
RAM: 16GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Video Card Memory: 4 GB
Resolution: 1920x1080
Hard Disk: 500GB Samsung SSD
Audio: Bose & Denon
Monitor: LG 27
Case: Antec Sonata IV
Headset: Logitech

 

Phredicon Said;

I second all that Retro says, well done TL!! (is ALSO jealous of the ti after your 780 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks Phredicon,

I have to admit to everyone here, "I have no idea what you all are talking about" when you mention stuff in tech talk, but it sure makes a person feel good about their purchase or what they're hunting for when there are so many on this thread that do know what they're talking about. "So I'm going to have to go back and "like" everyone's posts on this thread because it's so useful for so many

Hey Jude and Crikey.... I have to say that after seeing both the caves you have both created for your set ups... "I gota' set up a much better "Man Cave" than I currently have because yours looks so much more function able....*makes a note to self, "set up man cave"*...
Anyway, "thank you and now after seeing Jude's system and having feed back from a person who's system reminds me of something from NASA, I'm going to also begin Googling to see what all I did buy

I do hope that the Developers of SotA will eventually get all the scripts for many different languages to be able to use in to our game, because the Thai Gamer that is helping me with my system truly looked extremely excited about SotA and asked if it would ever be written in any of the Asian languages... and I'm assuming he meant Thai. There are so many great people in the world that were born into the life that they live, yet when we can all enter into a world "where everyone can be whatever they want to be", that effects people around the world in so many positive ways true freedom.
Thus prompted my inclusion of the gratuitous video of a Thai, out doing his thing making bucks anyway he could...
Thanks again to you all for making it better, "Hey Jude"
~Time Lord~

 

I love this story, thanks for sharing...also no need to thank me, Thank Sir Stile, he basically parted out the best single GPU gaming computer you can get right now. You'll probably have the fastest gaming computer in Thailand...(for over a year)

What OS are you going with? I installed Win8.1 two days ago and hated it, but after reading a few guides and changing a few setting, I actually think I like it better than windows 7.

12 more days then we get to try out our new systems with SotA R8! can't wait...My SC testing is going great, went from 1680x1050, low quality, 18-25 fps to 1920x1200, very high quality 45-60+ fps

 

Time Lord< does that monster have a built in clock and show the moon's alignment. Nice rig you got there.

 

I was thinking Win 7, but only because Win 8 had some bad advertisement issues when I had a new computer that had Win 7 but kept asking me if I wanted to upgrade to Win 8 for free with no mention of the consequences when doing so. Microsoft can be a very unfriendly company. Of course it took me a long time to get rid of Win 8 because I'm not a tech savvy guy.
But, I think I will try Win 8.1 because it's coming with the system. "I know that I need to have time to get use to anything new", at 56 years old, I now know that I have been slowly becoming a resistor of the future's ways, so I'm trying to embrace them now, because a man can't blow in the wind and expect different results when everything is going the direction it should be, while I try clinging on to the past. "I must evolve!" No matter if I use Win 8.1 or not, I'll either have to gripe at my inability to cope with the future, or embrace what may last as long as I have left. "So Win 8.1 it is!"

One thing I have noticed while living here in Thailand, is the lack of Xbox's and Play Stations here, that are so prevalent in the USA. In the USA, I went into many stores I would commonly go to for my gaming needs, yet saw in those stores a very dwindling selection of many gaming computing options. Yet, here in Thailand, there isn't too many homes in the city, that do not have a desk computer in them. But it would also seem, that they are just discovering the Lap Top, because I haven't met a modern Thai yet, that doesn't avidly use FaceBook as much as 1-2 hours a day. Through these observations, I now believe that computer games and gaming have been such a long term market here in Asia, because most here did not have such things as Xbox and PlayStation destroy their computer gaming market. Internet Cafe's are everywhere here and jam packed with customers, all using the computers to play games. So, when I moved here, it was like moving back in time, to the time where the computer game was King, yet with a much more hungry market for computer gaming as if it were on steroids.

Both of these observations of both " old age stuck in my ways", ways, and the Asian Computer Gaming Revolution, I feel point to a great market shift, where they may be just discovering computer games in mass here in Asia and we of the modern west are stuck in our ways, of always wanting the newest thing (xbox), which shifts our attention span, not to that which is expansively useful, but to the "new fads" that feed or western markets.

While I was there in that little Thai computer store, I saw a guy come in that looked like he had maybe 2-4 sets of cloths he owned. He didn't look like anyone in the west walking through Walmart, "he looked poor". Yet that little man came in and was purchasing the exact same i7 board that I was. the salesman was dressed in Walmart style, yet both spoke as if they both knew exactly what they were talking about. The salesman motioned to me during their conversation and that poor looking man looked over at me with a big smile, wiggled his eye brows and was purchasing it because that's what he was there for. It would seem that both the rich and poor here are highly educated and very computer savvy. There I was "the rich American", standing beside the poor Thai and knowing that in our cyber world, we are both now capable of becoming Kings in our own online worlds. it didn't matter to him, whether or not he had to eat 3 bowels of rice and a few vegetables mixed with pork in the real world, as long as his labors went to allowing him a place where everyone can have their true freedom... "even if that freedom is only a fantasy".
"That turned out to be a truly strange and informative shopping trip, I must say!"...
~Time Lord~

 

OS X 10.10 Yosemite

When you're poor and you can only afford one thing, a nice fast computer is basically the first worthwhile thing you can get

 

Then you will like my first gaming PC way back from 1979 (when I bought it):

Atari 400

8-bit 6502 1.79 MHz CPU
16 KB of ram (upgraded to 64KB with an soldered daughter card)
Cassette Player
5 1/4" Floppy Drive
Graphics: 256 Colors
Full sound (Ultima III plays music all over that game)
Hooked to Tube color TV using RF Modulator switch
Membrane keyboard - made it easy to type by sliding my 1 finger all over that place in the grooves from key to key.
Price $495

Supports games by cartridges (Star Raiders), cassette tape (States and Capitals represent!), and Floppy Disk (Ultima II and Ultima III)

 

"How I fell in Love With Computers" by the ~Time Lord~

Duke Gréagóir, Though I am not tech savvy in the ways of computer's languages, I first fell in love with computers in 1971 at the age of 12-13. My Uncle had been a computer guy with NASA that worked in the trajectory department there on the Mercury Mission and years later opened his own computing company. My Mother had gone to work for him and I was 12. So, after school each day I'd spend the afternoon sitting in between some UNIVAC Tape Machines where the air con would blow. San Antonio Texas can get very hot and there were many young mini skirt keypunch operators there, who would let me eat donuts while sitting on the floor while waiting on my Mother to get off from work. And so, I have been around computers for a very long time, but I blame the mini skirt, for me having not paid too much attention to them to how "they worked"
~Time Lord~
X

 

* 286 CPU
* 2 megs or ram (Parallel)
* 20 meg HD
* 1200 baud modem
* SVG video card

 

When I finish this post, I'm shutting mine down to go upgrade it...

I don't do bleeding edge. Don't feel the performance gain from being right out on the edge is worth the money.
...said the guy that's put thousands of dollars into an unpublished computer game.

ASUS "Maximum VII Hero" motherboard... I've used ASUS motherboards for decades.
Intel Core i5 3.2GHz LGA1150
16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM (I also don't overclock)
EVGA GeForce GTX760
Samsung 256 MB SSD for a boot drive
WD Black 1TB Data Drive
2x24inch ASUS Monitors in Portrait flanking a 40inch main monitor.

...and I picked up a stack of WD Green drives for really cheap so I'm going to slam in a 1.5GB Raid 5 array, because I can.

 

Off topic but I would love to see a Pigeon\Raven message\small parcel delivery service in SotA.

Cool field of study\hobby you have their, my Italian friends father races and tracks his own pigeons...

 

I thought the rule of thumb was when you're poor you don't buy a Mac

Out of all the computers I've owned or had extended access to over the years, I have never had access to or owned any Apple based computer products until I bought a IPad 4 (I think, the first one with retina display), myself and the entire family love it...

If Steve had embraced gaming and games in general I think the entire computer landscape would be completely different today. Still hope to own an actual Apple computer one day...(but I'm not sure why..., maybe just for completeness)

List of computers that I've owned or had extended access to over the years...(not in perfect order, can't remember, too long ago)

Sinclair ZX81
Coleco Vision Adam
Commodore PET
Commodore Vic20
Commodore 64
Texas Instruments Ti-99 (with the voice box)
Unisys Icon
Atari 800
Atari 800XL
Atari ST 1040STE
Amiga 500
Amiga 1000
Amiga 1200
Amiga 2000

The x86 machines I remember more by graphics capability...
Monochrome (prob 186)
CGA 286? 4 colours
EGA 386? 16 colours
VGA 486
Voodoo1
Voodoo2
Voodoo Banshee
Gefore256, ATI Rage something and Matrox after that

Had one of those Intel celeron 300a
and hand full of pentium's...hand built all the x86 machines, from EGA forward.

Did I mention that I love computers...

 

Wow nice.

Yeah, I don't know why Steve Jobs was the way he was either. Now that he's gone you can see Apple is more responsive to consumers instead of dictating to them.

They do design beautiful machines tho. They are niche products, I know, that are overpriced.

It's like a fine watch, like an Omega or Vacheron Constantin or Rolex. Are the materials it's made from worth the price ? No. Can you get something to do a comparable job for less ? Sure. But there are intangibles and there is a reason rich people buy those watches... for status, to appreciate really fine craftsmanship.

I used to build PCs and I can understand why people balk at the prices knowing they gouge you on memory and drives. But they do use the very best components and

if you have problems they usually take very good care of you. And they're a dream to use. Well most of the time They're computers after all.

As for your amazing list :

The sinclair I hold dear to my heart, The Commodore 64, the Atari ST and the Amigas... really nice.

Amiga were about the best you could do back in the day for graphics, amazing. Ahead of their time.

Have no real love for graphics cards since they're constantly outdated and it still goes on today 15 years later, no love for companies that intentionally make products for market segmentation that are not up to the job, and a public that is more than okay with replacing them every 2 years.... what a racket.

The Celeron 300a on the other hand ----amazing... Too bad Intel didn't repeat that mistake...

I'll add the AMD Thunderbird because it was the first time (and soon to be last time) AMD had a better chip and it was a dream to OC

 

You get what you pay for... My MBP is still kicking 6 years later and my Mac Pro 7 years Both run SotA good. Quality.

 

This may be my favorite build in the entire thread, why? because it shows what a talented builder can do... Jude's 3 year old computer, is fricken clocked higher, than both Time Lord's and my own brand spanking new hot off the foundry i7 4790k, and our CPU's only match his in 'turbo' mode. (the shame )

Impressive Jude, impressive...

Do you play SC Jude? If yes what settings do you play at and what kind of FPS do you get?
I cannot see your system needing much in the way of upgrade besides *maybe* a new video card if you have money to burn...

Your entire setup looks 'sweet-sauce' BTW, have you been able to span SotA over those 3 displays?

 

I am going to be building a new computer in the next few days, I will update with photos.

 

Awesome thread, some really cool systems in here.
Here is my current system(Built Dec 2013):

OS: Windows 8.1 64-bit
Monitor: 2x Asus 24" 1920x1080 (previous monitor was a single 47" westinghouse 1920x1080 it was just too big, 36" is a good size for a single monitor)
CPU: AMD-FX 9730@4.4Ghz (not overclocked... yet...)
MOBO: Asus M5A99FX Pro 2.0
SDD: 500GB Samsung 840 Evo, 120GB Vertex 4
HDD: 2x 1TB western digital caviar black
GPU: AMD R9 270x (I will be getting an R9 290x soonish, I'll either cross-fire them or sell off the 270x)
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1866 AMD ram (Might get 8 more, but I don't do much that is memory intensive)
Mouse/keyboard: Razer Deathadder, cheap logitech keyboard
Speakers: Logitech z-5500
Headset: cheap logitech
Case: Antec Ninehundred
PSU: Antec 1000watt
Optical drive: none
CPU Cooler: I can't remember the name of it, so here is a picture.



That CPU Cooler rocks! (Reviews for it showed it cooled better than any water cooling solution they tested) The one on the left is a stock amd heatsink/fan.

 

You already have a sweet rig, who gets this one? Can't wait to see the new rig...congrats!