I'll keep it simple, where do I start and what do you recommend? (Yes, I've seen wikiHow, but thats not what I want to follow or I want more information...specifically with the motherboard and processor)
I want something I can make for about $1500-$2000, the gpu is something I made up my mind on (GTX 970) but thats about the only thing that is really set in stone for me.
EDIT: For what Im looking for, just to paint a picture, is something that can run BF4 at relatively high settings.
This is the best sight to see what you should be getting for your money. http://www.logicalincrements.com/ I wouldn't go for the anything higher than exceptional tier bacause after that you get very little improvemet in performance for your buck. The outstanding tier will run BF4 on ultra, easily 1080p 50-60 fps.
I've got that and it's rather good. It should be well within your price range for a good PC, too.
There could be cheaper alternatives, but the 970 is still solid.
The Logical Increments [http://www.logicalincrements.com/] is usually a good resource to check on for what to get for a good performance/money ratio in different categories and the 970 is placed in the "Outstanding" band. The suggested "outstanding" setup is estimated at being $1144 (you have alternatives for some the parts, so it may be slightly different, but not by much) which, I think is what you're after.
I'll try to go through the suggestions there for that band and offer advice:
CPU ($215 or maybe a bit less): get the i5 - the i7 is an unnecessary overkill. You can shave off few dollars if you go for a model that doesn't end with a "K" - so "4690" instead of "4690K". The "K" signifies that the processor is unlocked for overclocking - if you're not interested, the base version is exactly the same but can't be overclocked. It should be slightly cheaper, too - something like 15-20 dollars, probably, but still.
You can probably get an AMD CPU, as an alternative, but I haven't kept up to date with those.
HSF ($0): or "heat sink and fan", if the abbreviation confused you. If the de-abbreviation didn't help, it's additional cooling for your CPU. I don't actually think you need one - I've got an Intel CPU and the stock one is pretty good. Or was pretty good - it, erm, broke. But I think I should clarify - it's by no means due to anything software or hardware related - there was an unrelated accident, so I had to get different one.
At any rate, the stock cooling was good enough. You could buy a different one and it's probably going to be slightly quieter but noise wasn't a problem, really. I think you can safely skip it. It's not really expensive, but I seriously don't think even the few dollars are worth it. Perhaps if it was, like, 10$ or so.
Motherboard (around $180 or less): doesn't really matter - any of those listed would suffice. I've got the Gigabyte one, or at least some series, slightly different model, and I'm pleased with it. Remember that accident I had? Well, it also affected the motherboard, so I just bought the same again, since I had no actual issues with it. My housemate has the MSI one (well, I think same series, different model, again) as well as a friend of mine (same) and that works well enough, too. There shouldn't be much of a difference for you, but I believe the MSI is slightly better for overclocking. And since overclocking isn't actually complicated, I should explain that by "slightly better" I mean "the interface is a bit prettier". You can safely pick any based on looks.
You could also go with my Gigabyte motherboard with is the Z97X-UD3H in the "Excellent" section above, since it's cheaper. Actually, you should be able to pick any motherboard from the "Superb" or "Excellent" categories, if you want to reduce your expenses a bit.
RAM ($54): 8GB is good - I wouldn't recommend going with 4GB and 16GB is probably too much, so it's be a bit wasted. I suppose the minimum I'd recommend is 6GB (2 + 4) but that's probably going to be more expensive. If you need more at a later date, you can just buy it and stick it in - it would take not more than 10 minutes. If you really, really want to pad out the budget (instead of reducing it), then I guess, the RAM is a safe one to double up on, but again - I don't think it's needed.
HDD ($50): yeah, that's good enough. Can't really say much - hard drives are really cheap and offer a lot of storage. Any time I buy one, I just go for whatever has the best cost/storage ratio. It's pretty much always good enough.
SSD ($100 or more): I got 3 SSDs! I like them so much. Well, I got two 250GB ones and before I installed the second one a 500GB SSD went on offer so I got that and installed it instead (the other one I gave to a friend as a gift). At any rate, I am fond of them. I'd suggest one of the 100$ ones but I could also recommend getting a 500GB one if you suspect you might need more space. For reference, on my 500GB SSD I've got Windows, all my software, as well as all my games
I've highlighted the partitions which belong to the SSD. The Games partition is a bit full for two reasons:
1. I am a bit lazy to clean up. I have some games there that I've finished but I'll launch again to try and finish something I've left off, or perhaps to listen to the audio recordings I've picked up but haven't heard yet. And similar stuff. Basically, I haven't gotten around to them yet.
2. I can afford it! Sure, I can also live with a 250GB hard drive, too but making sure having a 500GB one and it being full is actually fun.
Oh, and finally - you won't see my other 250GB SSD on there, since it has Linux on it and Windows can't see it.
It would be a while before I run out of space, as well, so it's future proofing, as well.
Power Supply ($170 or lower): Pick any. Shouldn't really matter - they are roughly the same price anyway. Well, normally, at least - the two are close but the $137 is much cheaper - you should probably go for it. You could got towards the lower-tier categories as well, for a cheaper PSU - as long as it's 750W one it should be fine. You may not even need that much power but it'd be future-proofing and since the difference in price between 500W and 750W isn't really that great, I think 750W is the better choice. Some PSUs come with 650W which should be fine as well.
The only real recommendation I can give you is to get a modular power supply - it means you can plug in it only the cables you need, so the rest you don't have to have in the box. The modular PSUs are more expensive than the normal ones but they are MUCH tidier. It's really a lot better not having Cabel-thulu leer at you when you open your case.
Case ($100 or less): Pick any. Pick what looks the best. The difference in price isn't that great and they serve the same function anyway. A small guide on terminology:
- "mid-tower" is pretty much "normal" - I recommend going for one of them as they are probably optimal in terms of size/price. The "Outstanding" category features full-towers only, so you should probably look in the lesser categories.
- there is "mini-tower" which, as the name suggests, is smaller than the previous one. It should fit everything you need, but it might be tight. I do recommend shelling the extra 10-20$ for a mid tower
- "full-tower" - it's bigger than a mid one but...that's it. Slightly more expensive, too but I don't usually see a reason to go for one. Unless you really want the space inside or want to put more cool stuff...like, flashy neon liquid cooling for a (more literal) example, it's not usually needed.
There are more than these but these are the main ones. Not that there is a real standard - annoyingly, the case categories/sizes tend to be made up just as the the manufacturers go along, but the above three are used widely enough to be recognised as the current standard. You can probably stay away from anything that's not any of them, since those cases tend to be more specialised.
If we tally up the recommendations it's comes up to $1199 (including the GTX 970) with the potential to go lower in a variety of categories and higher only really in one - the SSD. I've used the prices from the logical increments website, as I trust they have good enough prices - the actual prices may be slightly different depending on when and where you're buying them but it should be good enough as an estimate.
I've got that and it's rather good. It should be well within your price range for a good PC, too.
There could be cheaper alternatives, but the 970 is still solid.
The Logical Increments [http://www.logicalincrements.com/] is usually a good resource to check on for what to get for a good performance/money ratio in different categories and the 970 is placed in the "Outstanding" band. The suggested "outstanding" setup is estimated at being $1144 (you have alternatives for some the parts, so it may be slightly different, but not by much) which, I think is what you're after.
I'll try to go through the suggestions there for that band and offer advice:
CPU ($215 or maybe a bit less): get the i5 - the i7 is an unnecessary overkill. You can shave off few dollars if you go for a model that doesn't end with a "K" - so "4690" instead of "4690K". The "K" signifies that the processor is unlocked for overclocking - if you're not interested, the base version is exactly the same but can't be overclocked. It should be slightly cheaper, too - something like 15-20 dollars, probably, but still.
You can probably get an AMD CPU, as an alternative, but I haven't kept up to date with those.
HSF ($0): or "heat sink and fan", if the abbreviation confused you. If the de-abbreviation didn't help, it's additional cooling for your CPU. I don't actually think you need one - I've got an Intel CPU and the stock one is pretty good. Or was pretty good - it, erm, broke. But I think I should clarify - it's by no means due to anything software or hardware related - there was an unrelated accident, so I had to get different one.
At any rate, the stock cooling was good enough. You could buy a different one and it's probably going to be slightly quieter but noise wasn't a problem, really. I think you can safely skip it. It's not really expensive, but I seriously don't think even the few dollars are worth it. Perhaps if it was, like, 10$ or so.
Motherboard (around $180 or less): doesn't really matter - any of those listed would suffice. I've got the Gigabyte one, or at least some series, slightly different model, and I'm pleased with it. Remember that accident I had? Well, it also affected the motherboard, so I just bought the same again, since I had no actual issues with it. My housemate has the MSI one (well, I think same series, different model, again) as well as a friend of mine (same) and that works well enough, too. There shouldn't be much of a difference for you, but I believe the MSI is slightly better for overclocking. And since overclocking isn't actually complicated, I should explain that by "slightly better" I mean "the interface is a bit prettier". You can safely pick any based on looks.
You could also go with my Gigabyte motherboard with is the Z97X-UD3H in the "Excellent" section above, since it's cheaper. Actually, you should be able to pick any motherboard from the "Superb" or "Excellent" categories, if you want to reduce your expenses a bit.
RAM ($54): 8GB is good - I wouldn't recommend going with 4GB and 16GB is probably too much, so it's be a bit wasted. I suppose the minimum I'd recommend is 6GB (2 + 4) but that's probably going to be more expensive. If you need more at a later date, you can just buy it and stick it in - it would take not more than 10 minutes. If you really, really want to pad out the budget (instead of reducing it), then I guess, the RAM is a safe one to double up on, but again - I don't think it's needed.
HDD ($50): yeah, that's good enough. Can't really say much - hard drives are really cheap and offer a lot of storage. Any time I buy one, I just go for whatever has the best cost/storage ratio. It's pretty much always good enough.
SSD ($100 or more): I got 3 SSDs! I like them so much. Well, I got two 250GB ones and before I installed the second one a 500GB SSD went on offer so I got that and installed it instead (the other one I gave to a friend as a gift). At any rate, I am fond of them. I'd suggest one of the 100$ ones but I could also recommend getting a 500GB one if you suspect you might need more space. For reference, on my 500GB SSD I've got Windows, all my software, as well as all my games
I've highlighted the partitions which belong to the SSD. The Games partition is a bit full for two reasons:
1. I am a bit lazy to clean up. I have some games there that I've finished but I'll launch again to try and finish something I've left off, or perhaps to listen to the audio recordings I've picked up but haven't heard yet. And similar stuff. Basically, I haven't gotten around to them yet.
2. I can afford it! Sure, I can also live with a 250GB hard drive, too but making sure having a 500GB one and it being full is actually fun.
Oh, and finally - you won't see my other 250GB SSD on there, since it has Linux on it and Windows can't see it.
It would be a while before I run out of space, as well, so it's future proofing, as well.
Power Supply ($170 or lower): Pick any. Shouldn't really matter - they are roughly the same price anyway. Well, normally, at least - the two are close but the $137 is much cheaper - you should probably go for it. You could got towards the lower-tier categories as well, for a cheaper PSU - as long as it's 750W one it should be fine. You may not even need that much power but it'd be future-proofing and since the difference in price between 500W and 750W isn't really that great, I think 750W is the better choice. Some PSUs come with 650W which should be fine as well.
The only real recommendation I can give you is to get a modular power supply - it means you can plug in it only the cables you need, so the rest you don't have to have in the box. The modular PSUs are more expensive than the normal ones but they are MUCH tidier. It's really a lot better not having Cabel-thulu leer at you when you open your case.
Case ($100 or less): Pick any. Pick what looks the best. The difference in price isn't that great and they serve the same function anyway. A small guide on terminology:
- "mid-tower" is pretty much "normal" - I recommend going for one of them as they are probably optimal in terms of size/price. The "Outstanding" category features full-towers only, so you should probably look in the lesser categories.
- there is "mini-tower" which, as the name suggests, is smaller than the previous one. It should fit everything you need, but it might be tight. I do recommend shelling the extra 10-20$ for a mid tower
- "full-tower" - it's bigger than a mid one but...that's it. Slightly more expensive, too but I don't usually see a reason to go for one. Unless you really want the space inside or want to put more cool stuff...like, flashy neon liquid cooling for a (more literal) example, it's not usually needed.
There are more than these but these are the main ones. Not that there is a real standard - annoyingly, the case categories/sizes tend to be made up just as the the manufacturers go along, but the above three are used widely enough to be recognised as the current standard. You can probably stay away from anything that's not any of them, since those cases tend to be more specialised.
If we tally up the recommendations it's comes up to $1199 (including the GTX 970) with the potential to go lower in a variety of categories and higher only really in one - the SSD. I've used the prices from the logical increments website, as I trust they have good enough prices - the actual prices may be slightly different depending on when and where you're buying them but it should be good enough as an estimate.
SSDs make things load a lot faster as the access times are much better than regular hard drives. The drawback to SSDs is the price per gigabyte is much higher than a conventional hard drive, so they aren't great for mass storage unless you're willing to spend a lot of money. A lot of builds might throw in a smaller SSD eg. 120 - 240GB to put the OS and other software on and include a hard drive for mass storage, eg. music, videos, games. You can put games onto an SSD to improve your loading times, but with game sizes ballooning into the 60GB range, you're not going to be able to fit a lot of them onto an SSD unless you're willing to spend more than $250 for a 500+GB drive.
Yeah, what Supernova1138 said, but basically - they are really fast hard drives. But have lower storage.It's worth putting your OS on there at the very least as it makes booting take seconds. Games on there will have really fast loading times - seconds again.
Yeah, what Supernova1138 said, but basically - they are really fast hard drives. But have lower storage.It's worth putting your OS on there at the very least as it makes booting take seconds. Games on there will have really fast loading times - seconds again.
I can only see myself putting my OS (sticking with Windows 7, have a 1TB hdd and ima just transfer everything to hopefully 2tb) on an SSD, but this raises another question for me, how are SSD's with corruption? Would my OS be more vulnerable on one?
SSDs are pretty reliable, they have the advantage of having no moving parts so mechanical failure doesn't happen. Data corruption is only really possible if you get a drive with some bad flash memory chips, or there are problems with the controller, which was an issue on some of the earlier SSDs. These days, the teething problems with the controllers have pretty much been worked out, so you aren't likely to lose anything on an SSD unless you get really unlucky and get a bad drive.
Yeah, what Supernova1138 said, but basically - they are really fast hard drives. But have lower storage.It's worth putting your OS on there at the very least as it makes booting take seconds. Games on there will have really fast loading times - seconds again.
I can only see myself putting my OS (sticking with Windows 7, have a 1TB hdd and ima just transfer everything to hopefully 2tb) on an SSD, but this raises another question for me, how are SSD's with corruption? Would my OS be more vulnerable on one?
The simple answer is "no" but I'll go in a bit more detail.
There isn't much of a difference in the risk of data corruption. In the case of both an HDD and an SSD there is a chance but ther is always one. SSDs are safer, in a way, since they operate differently to HDDs - there are no moving parts is the biggest one, which means that SSDs aren't as likely to suffer a random failure. Because the chances of a random mechanical failure are zero.
Also, due to the no moving parts, you can forget about fragmentation. Well, it's still going to be there, but defragmentation isn't really needed to get good reading speed with an SSD. There is also another reason to not defragment an SSD - it will shorten its life.
Let me get onto the drawbacks of SSDs - first of all, an explanation:
Normal hard drives just get wear and tear as they go along and they will slowly die over the years. It's inevitable. It takes A LONG time, mind you, so it's not like few months pass and poof, it's gone - according to a statistic I just googled, 80% of HDDs last at least 4 years. The failure percentage for year 1, 2, and 3 seems to be in the single digits for each. This is small. And I've never seen an HDD completely dead in my life, aside from a couple which had external factors that impacted them[footnote]really heavy factors. And the impact wasn't light either.[/footnote]. Chances are, you'll replace a hard drive for a higher capacity one before you need to replace it due to failure. Still, even then, a failure is more graceful - it's not usually the case of switching on the PC and the hard drive not being there - it's more of a gradual process which can take a while, but the HDD would grow slower and start acting up in the mean time.
And here we come to SSDs' life ticks away whenever data is written to them. So, it's not really easy to say when they are going to kick the bucket, since it depends on the usage unlike HDDs which spin all the time so they are in use all the time. Also, there is the fact that SSDs death doesn't tend to come with a grace period - one day it's just...well, dead. And that's about it.
Now, these are the bad disadvantages and it may sound slightly disheartening but it's less true now than, say, a couple of years ago. More modern SSDs have been growing much more resilient and are quite better at handling their mortality. They tend to be quite sturdy in terms of longevity - this article [http://betanews.com/2014/12/05/modern-ssds-can-last-a-lifetime/] suggests that an SSD would last you for about 10 years. Well, as long as you pretty much abuse it by writing 200 TB of data. For each of the 10 years. So yeah, I wouldn't be really worried. Also, in fact, modern ones would even prompt you with a message when their life nears an end. There are also a bunch of optimisations you can do in your OS to make them last even longer. It will depend on which OS you get but you can just google what to do. The more important parts are basically two:
- enable TRIM - that's a functionality a lot of SSDs' have, which is basically some self-maintenance. Your OS would need to periodically inform the SSD that it's free to go through with it, which is what sending the TRIM command is. The OS needs to know to do it, though, hence the enabling needed.
- disable superfluous stuff that use the disk - there is a few things that come under this banner. Coincidentally, these are all things that are used on HDDs to improve the speed. But this would be stuff like periodic defragmentation and file indexing.
I believe Windows 8.1 is actually more optimised to use SSDs, so it does some of these things by default - for example, it knows if a particular drive is an HDD or SSD and switches the behaviour of "periodic maintenance" to the appropriate one - HDDs get defragmented, SSDs get TRIMmed. At any rate, I'd suggest just looking up what to do based on the OS.
Yeah, what Supernova1138 said, but basically - they are really fast hard drives. But have lower storage.It's worth putting your OS on there at the very least as it makes booting take seconds. Games on there will have really fast loading times - seconds again.
I can only see myself putting my OS (sticking with Windows 7, have a 1TB hdd and ima just transfer everything to hopefully 2tb) on an SSD, but this raises another question for me, how are SSD's with corruption? Would my OS be more vulnerable on one?
The simple answer is "no" but I'll go in a bit more detail.
There isn't much of a difference in the risk of data corruption. In the case of both an HDD and an SSD there is a chance but ther is always one. SSDs are safer, in a way, since they operate differently to HDDs - there are no moving parts is the biggest one, which means that SSDs aren't as likely to suffer a random failure. Because the chances of a random mechanical failure are zero.
Also, due to the no moving parts, you can forget about fragmentation. Well, it's still going to be there, but defragmentation isn't really needed to get good reading speed with an SSD. There is also another reason to not defragment an SSD - it will shorten its life.
Let me get onto the drawbacks of SSDs - first of all, an explanation:
Normal hard drives just get wear and tear as they go along and they will slowly die over the years. It's inevitable. It takes A LONG time, mind you, so it's not like few months pass and poof, it's gone - according to a statistic I just googled, 80% of HDDs last at least 4 years. The failure percentage for year 1, 2, and 3 seems to be in the single digits for each. This is small. And I've never seen an HDD completely dead in my life, aside from a couple which had external factors that impacted them[footnote]really heavy factors. And the impact wasn't light either.[/footnote]. Chances are, you'll replace a hard drive for a higher capacity one before you need to replace it due to failure. Still, even then, a failure is more graceful - it's not usually the case of switching on the PC and the hard drive not being there - it's more of a gradual process which can take a while, but the HDD would grow slower and start acting up in the mean time.
And here we come to SSDs' life ticks away whenever data is written to them. So, it's not really easy to say when they are going to kick the bucket, since it depends on the usage unlike HDDs which spin all the time so they are in use all the time. Also, there is the fact that SSDs death doesn't tend to come with a grace period - one day it's just...well, dead. And that's about it.
Now, these are the bad disadvantages and it may sound slightly disheartening but it's less true now than, say, a couple of years ago. More modern SSDs have been growing much more resilient and are quite better at handling their mortality. They tend to be quite sturdy in terms of longevity - this article [http://betanews.com/2014/12/05/modern-ssds-can-last-a-lifetime/] suggests that an SSD would last you for about 10 years. Well, as long as you pretty much abuse it by writing 200 TB of data. For each of the 10 years. So yeah, I wouldn't be really worried. Also, in fact, modern ones would even prompt you with a message when their life nears an end. There are also a bunch of optimisations you can do in your OS to make them last even longer. It will depend on which OS you get but you can just google what to do. The more important parts are basically two:
- enable TRIM - that's a functionality a lot of SSDs' have, which is basically some self-maintenance. Your OS would need to periodically inform the SSD that it's free to go through with it, which is what sending the TRIM command is. The OS needs to know to do it, though, hence the enabling needed.
- disable superfluous stuff that use the disk - there is a few things that come under this banner. Coincidentally, these are all things that are used on HDDs to improve the speed. But this would be stuff like periodic defragmentation and file indexing.
I believe Windows 8.1 is actually more optimised to use SSDs, so it does some of these things by default - for example, it knows if a particular drive is an HDD or SSD and switches the behaviour of "periodic maintenance" to the appropriate one - HDDs get defragmented, SSDs get TRIMmed. At any rate, I'd suggest just looking up what to do based on the OS.
Ithink I'll hold of on those for the first few months, and a new HDD as well, I can make do with the 1TB 3.5'' Im currently using at the moment, at least until the end of the year
Ithink I'll hold of on those for the first few months, and a new HDD as well, I can make do with the 1TB 3.5'' Im currently using at the moment, at least until the end of the year
That's also an option. Moving on to an SSD at a later point is usually really simple - mine (a Samsung 840 EVO) came with a cloning utility - I had to put the SSD in, install the software and pretty much just go "Yeah, copy my C:/ on there" and let it run - when it was finished, I could boot from the SSD from now on.
Ithink I'll hold of on those for the first few months, and a new HDD as well, I can make do with the 1TB 3.5'' Im currently using at the moment, at least until the end of the year
That's also an option. Moving on to an SSD at a later point is usually really simple - mine (a Samsung 840 EVO) came with a cloning utility - I had to put the SSD in, install the software and pretty much just go "Yeah, copy my C:/ on there" and let it run - when it was finished, I could boot from the SSD from now on.
I think I found what Im going with so far.
Intel i5 4690K (actually, I am interested in overclocking)
MSi GTX 970 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127832&cm_re=gtx_970-_-14-127-832-_-Product
EVGA SuperNOVA power supply
ASUS Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132510
-This was probably the most important decision for me, I've had my ASUS gaming laptop for 4 years now and it hasnt quit, it also has a GTX (460M), and an intel i7 which influenced my other decisions, it has been very good to me
as for the case, I decided to go with the Antec based on its reviews http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021
Im also gonna have to give a little more for a decent wireless adapter because theres no LAN plug-in anywhere near where my setup is gonna be, I'll definitely take recommendations for this one.
Im also gonna have to give a little more for a decent wireless adapter because theres no LAN plug-in anywhere near where my setup is gonna be, I'll definitely take recommendations for this one.
and it works well. The only real issue seems that the laws of physics changed and suddenly I'm unable to get wireless in my room. And no - I don't believe it is the adaptor's fault - for some reason the wireless signal completely disappears closer to the ground. Which is where my PC is. It's really weird - you can get 3/5 bars if it's more than a meter above the ground but dip lower and you get nothing. And it used to work fine for, like, several months.
I went and got a pair of powerline adaptors and they seem to be doing a really good job. These, in particular:
Do you mind listing some thermal paste brands you've grown to prefer (specifics would be great), in addition to some helpful pointers you've personally tried?
Do you mind listing some thermal paste brands you've grown to prefer (specifics would be great), in addition to some helpful pointers you've personally tried?
I basically keep using one which I know works, since I am lazy like that. I'm now on Arctic Silver 5 - works well enough - there is little else I can say about it. It's also cheap - it should be ~10$ for 3.5g (I got it for £6) which normally lasts quite a while. But then again, I am not really a heavy user. At any rate, I can recommend Arctic - they are a well known name when it comes to thermal paste and related stuff.
As for pointers - instead of spreading the paste around, I prefer to put basically a large ball of it in the middle of the plate, then press the radiator on top, so, in essence, sandwiching it in between. Here is a helpful ASCII graph of what it'd look like:
HEAT SINK
--------- ....*
--------- ...CPU
The dashes represent the radiator and CPU contact plates, the star is the ball of thermal paste applied to one of them (doesn't hugely matter but CPU is probably easier). When you press the two together then, the thermal paste tends to be evenly spread - otherwise, you may have put a thicker layer in one part of the plate than another. It's just for a bit of convenience, really.
Thank you for the reminder. I had seen that method before but completely forgot about it. In retrospect, years ago somebody here posted a video using clear panels to show that the "pea" method, when applied with even downward pressure, evenly distributed the thermal paste, more so than spreading it out with something like a credit card.
OP, I think you'll find this video hepful:
ASUS thermal compound demonstration Off topic, I'm kind of disappointed to hear the demonstrator pronounce ASUS as "A-SOOS". It's almost as disappointing as when I heard how 'Wacom' was pronounced ("Whack-um"). Always sounded cooler in my mind when I thought it was "Way-com".
Thank you for the reminder. I had seen that method before but completely forgot about it. In retrospect, years ago somebody here posted a video using clear panels to show that the "pea" method, when applied with even downward pressure, evenly distributed the thermal paste, more so than spreading it out with something like a credit card.
OP, I think you'll find this video hepful:
ASUS thermal compound demonstration Off topic, I'm kind of disappointed to hear the demonstrator pronounce ASUS as "A-SOOS". It's almost as disappointing as when I heard how 'Wacom' was pronounced ("Whack-um"). Always sounded cooler in my mind when I thought it was "Way-com".
Im also gonna have to give a little more for a decent wireless adapter because theres no LAN plug-in anywhere near where my setup is gonna be, I'll definitely take recommendations for this one.
and it works well. The only real issue seems that the laws of physics changed and suddenly I'm unable to get wireless in my room. And no - I don't believe it is the adaptor's fault - for some reason the wireless signal completely disappears closer to the ground. Which is where my PC is. It's really weird - you can get 3/5 bars if it's more than a meter above the ground but dip lower and you get nothing. And it used to work fine for, like, several months.
I went and got a pair of powerline adaptors and they seem to be doing a really good job. These, in particular:
Ithink I'll hold of on those for the first few months, and a new HDD as well, I can make do with the 1TB 3.5'' Im currently using at the moment, at least until the end of the year
That's also an option. Moving on to an SSD at a later point is usually really simple - mine (a Samsung 840 EVO) came with a cloning utility - I had to put the SSD in, install the software and pretty much just go "Yeah, copy my C:/ on there" and let it run - when it was finished, I could boot from the SSD from now on.
Ithink I'll hold of on those for the first few months, and a new HDD as well, I can make do with the 1TB 3.5'' Im currently using at the moment, at least until the end of the year
That's also an option. Moving on to an SSD at a later point is usually really simple - mine (a Samsung 840 EVO) came with a cloning utility - I had to put the SSD in, install the software and pretty much just go "Yeah, copy my C:/ on there" and let it run - when it was finished, I could boot from the SSD from now on.
You might need to reinstall Windows. Sometimes odd stuff may happen, since you're basically changing the entire hardware around it. Sometimes it works, though. So...yeah - I guess you could just try and and see for yourself - if it boots, it's usually a good sign - just see if stuff is still working. If not - either doesn't boot or stuff is not working, then most likely it'd need to be reinstalled.
There used to be an "upgrade" option when installing back in the Windows XP days - it was way faster and easier than a full reinstallation - it would just re-copy the Windows files and leave everything else. I don't know if newer Windows-es still have it - I've not installed them that many times, so I can't remember if there was that option or not.
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It should be well within your price range for a good PC, too.
