HALP!?12

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Discuss.

Just go with a Dell and a decent extended warranty and save $1000-$2000.

Start here. This will give you a rundown on common components and what you'll want to look for based on your needs.

I agree with Tomasu pretty much. If you don't want to build your own, don't buy one of those specialty "gaming pcs".. they charge for the flashy looks not the quality of the hardware. Unless you care about the looks.. but you could build a nice looking and good quality pc for less still, and it's not hard at all.

So yours is really cheap

Dell?! Dell?!12 This is not the appropriate place for jokes.

That seems to be giving people some generic ideas for parts to buy and assemble yourself. I don't want to go this route. Odds are I will fuck it up or it will just take me a very long time to get done (and I will be in a hurry so I'll be that much more likely to do it wrong). I have absolutely no appreciation for hardware. I hate it, actually. I like what it does for me, obviously, but I hate actually dealing with it. Something as simple as cleaning out my heatsink puts me off... That might be different if I had the money to play and screw up and get my hands dirty, but I don't.

You're thinking of Alienware (AKA Dell ). Falcon Northwest offers that as expensive extras for anybody that wants it, but at least the Talon comes with a pretty normal looking case by default (read: Chassis: Talon - Standard Black).

AFAIK, Falcon Northwest focuses just on building great, reliable machines at a fair price. The price does seem pretty fair to me too. If I put a similar machine together from Dell AKA Alienware it's basically the same price, but with the hassle of dealing with ^Dell...

The base Talon model is around $1500, but it isn't as future-proof... You get a 2nd Gen. i5 2.8GHz, 4GB DDR3 1333 MHz, GeForce GTX 550 TI... Still a very fast computer, but how long before it can't handle games at reasonable settings anymore? It's also using a regular heatsink/fan combo so I'll need to worry more about dust build up and heat. I expect that the computer that I customized should be strong for a good 3 years with little or no maintenance and by then I can probably afford a second GTX 580 for SLI to extend it for another couple of years.

Clearly I don't know though...

* Goes to buy a lottery ticket.^[1]

Usually takes me 2 hours to assemble a desktop and costs around $1000 for a nice system. For the most part it is dead easy. At that rate you could screw up twice and still break even.

You can put together an excellent PC for $1500. Just sayin. Depends how much you want to spend. I put together my desktop about 3 years ago for less than that, though I upgraded a few parts since (case, video card, psu, cpu, added a bluray drive etc)... that's the nice thing with a "generic" home built computer, they're highly upgradeable. I didn't really need any of those upgrades, but you can upgrade any one piece of that machine and keep the rest pretty much... and it can handle any game out there that I've tried still.

I'm not joking. Just get some computer that works, and has a decent warranty. Thats about all you can hope for.

I think you could easily get 3-4 years out of the base model, let alone you're uber upgraded version. Remember, you don't need a super fast ass cpu to run games, you just need to add ram, disk space, and get a faster GPU occasionally to keep up with the most demanding games. and by the time you want more gpu power, a mid/high-end new gpu would probably get you better performance than two of your old ones in SLI

While you're at it you might want to get one of these to go with your new machine.

The question really is this: are you susceptible to buyer's remorse?

The value of a high end machine drops rapidly. Obviously you're not a hardware enthusiast, so what are you getting out of the wild price tag? It doesn't even have an SSD.

If price is a concern at all, I'd choose something a little less (and more) powerful. If you're too scared to build it yourself, a lot of other websites offer to build custom PCs.

I would never spend $3000 on a computer.

I last upgraded my computer about five years ago for $300.

spend 1500 on a fancy computer and another 1500 on a fancy trip!

bam, you shouldn't be afraid to build your own PC. It's kinda like legos.

Also, you shouldn't spend $3100 on a computer. The difference between buying a awesome cutting edge computer and the one just below it is about $2000. And the performance difference approaches zero.

But just to note, computers aren't depreciating as much as they used to, say, 10 years ago. Most of the cutting edge hardware development is going into cell phone tech.

There's just a expendable that has to be upgraded regularly: the graphics card. My 4 years old computer now has its third inside of it. One got burnt though, and the store bankrupted

We want to see the hardware details. And preconfigured PCes, especially those offer OC & charge for it are really looking like $ suckers.

Furthermore I can't imagine a PC for 3000, and ESPECIALLY not when it's lacking an SSD or two IMO it's quite vital part in todays cutting edge computer.

Dell makes decent computers. If it comes with a warranty to boot -- then they're fronting the bill if they screw up, nothing to lose.

I think the point is if you don't know enough to judge your purchase, you probably won't notice the difference between it and a Dell anyway. In any case, I agree with the others; there's nothing that computer's going to do that makes it worth 1K-2K more than a system you can build yourself. I like Goalie Ca's comment; even if you screw up twice you still break even. Learning experiences ftw; kgo.

The first computer I built was in 2001, cost me $700.00, and lasted me all the way to 2008.

At that point, I decided it was time to upgrade and only had to buy a new mobo, processor, and ram. I spent ~$500.00 on a 3.0G dual core, 4G RAM, and some accessories. I kept my two hard drives, which were 7200rpm both striped into raid-for-speed so I had no problems there.

In 2009 those old drives started to show signs of wearing (finally), so I ended up spending $150.00 on 2 really great Caviar Black drives.

So, 11 years, two computers, less than $1500 and this one shows no signs of failing anytime soon. Everything was bought just below cutting edge, and can be upgraded easily because... I built it myself.

I'm kinda feinding for a new graphics card... only cause Portal 2 is coming out. It's not like my GeForce GTS 8600 would have problems running it anyway... I'm just really looking forward to Portal 2 and (ridiculously) feel like my computer to be nice and shiny when it arrives

You can put together an excellent PC for much less than that. I just replaced my server a few months ago (replaced everything except for the case and the 9TB array) for around $500, and that was with 16GB of RAM and a hex-core CPU, both of which are probably overkill for your desktop.

Hell, adding in a video card, case, and hard drive on to what I bought would still keep it under $1000.

As far as 'future proof' - my desktop is 4 years old and still working fine for everything I need. It's a Q6600 with 8GB of ram, and I spent well under $1000 to build it (under $1000 in January 2007, only upgrades I've done since were to jump from 4 to 8GB of ram, and put a SSD in). It's still plenty fast enough, plays any games I want, etc.

I'd say man up and build your own system. Everything will come with its own warranty anyway (unless you do something dumb like buy an OEM CPU). It's really not that hard to do.

Speaking of Portal 2, I'm grabbing the PS3 version. It comes with a free steam license anyhow, so you get two platforms for the price of one. And I'm fairly certain it will run just fine on my 4 year old 8800GT, at 2048x1152 at moderate/high settings. Just sayin'

As far as the specs you posted - no SSD and only 8GB of RAM? WTF. I'd take an SSD any day over a faster CPU. Also, a sound card is a waste of money - unless you're an audiophile, you'll never know the difference between that and onboard sound. I've never had an issue with onboard, unless it's a crappy motherboard that introduces whining or something. Also, liquid cooling is of questionable utility, given the cost for that as well.

Well, it is a Source Engine game, and Left 4 Dead 2 didn't need that much to look shiny. I know my 9800 GT will handle it just fine.

Hey, that's cool!

Agreed. Even if you're an audiophile, you still probably wouldn't notice the difference. Back in the day you had to get specific hardware for advanced audio gear. Now that's not so much the case. You can be a music producer and get by just fine with some decent on-board audio, unless you're recording and mixing a live orchestra or band, in that case you'd probably have a break-out mixer which would plug-in by firewire anyway. Most decent mobos have at least 5.1 surround, and 24bit/96kHz audio, which is more than 2x better than CD quality. It's all in the software now.

Even if you are an audiophile the X-Fi won't make a difference. it has an expensive DSP but otherwise non-spectacular parts. The DSP doesn't make a difference because most games can replicate its functionality in software (AFAIK) without a significant peformance hit on a fast SIMD processor.

Hey, jhuuskon, you'd probably know this... when am I gonna get a compressor/gate/eq type plugin where I can pencil in the arc/shape I want, instead of adjusting multiple gain/freq/bandwidth controls?

In that way, a compressor and expander would be the same device.

Let's see you do it. You can put together a pretty good PC for $1000, but I'm talking about one that will match that $3000 one he configured.

mmmnnnaaahh....

You can put together a really good PC for $1000, or you can blow it out for no practical reason and spend $3000.

[edit] That being said... I'd like to see BAF do it. I bet he could.

@ mr. Oates: If I'm not entire mistaken, FL's Maximus has something like that. FL has had a single band dynamics mangler like you described for years, but I'm not exactly sure if that functionality in multiband form was included in Maximus.

Yes, really good is fair. But if you buy all quality parts, it's going to cost more than a grand, especially here in Canada.

I'd say a pre-built computer would be OK as long as you buy a decent power supply to go into it. Power supplies aren't sexy enough to include in the four color ads, so they skimp on those badly. I like Antec, myself.

In graphics, you have the nice "curves" color correction adjustment where you can just plot out a bezier curve or pencil it in. I get used to that, then I have to turn around and mess with knee, gain, freq, band... I'm like "Dude, just let me draw it in. "

I hated legos. I always wanted to play with the things they pictured on the box. I had no interest in assembling them though. I can barely remember that period of my life, but I doubt I made anything more complicated than a big brick.

Yeah, I sort of know it's a bad idea to spend that much money (which is why I'm not announcing the purchase instead), but I just want something that does everything I could want it to with zero effort and zero issues.

Dell is a nightmare to deal with and they load the computers full of spam (fuck you, it is too spam).

Seconded (Thirded?).

Using this website,
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X58_Configurator/
I built a PC comparable to yours (12 MB memory, Intel Core I7-960 3.20 Ghz , 1TB 6.0G/s harddrive, same graphics card, liquid cooling, MB with Creative X-FI Extreme Fidelity Audio and 3-way SLI support, Win 7 Home Premium) for $2235 (no monitor, like yours).

So I think you're getting ripped off from wherever you were looking to buy your computer, as I saved $874 compared to you for pretty much the same PC.

Try shopping for the exact same components at http://www.tigerdirect.com and you'll probably save even more money.

Not a computer then :/

You can get 85% of the performance in that computer for 1/3 of the price. I'd go with that, and upgrade again in 2-3 years (whenever the games you are playing are starting to feel sluggish at the graphics levels you are comfortable with).

The Enjoyment/TCO ratio will be higher that way

It's almost never worth getting a cutting edge computer, since the prices drop rapidly just a few notches down.

Perhaps the problem is that I don't know how to find the hardware just a few notches down... I have no idea what it actually takes to, for example, run Portal 2 on full settings with zero issues. So I have no idea where to draw the line. The only way I can be sure it will run is to buy the most expensive parts...

It dependes at what resolution. A 8800GT (a 4 years old GPU) will have no problems runing Portal 2 at max setings at 720p. For 1080p you'll probably need something better, but a GTX 560 would be more than enought. For the CPU I don't think you'll need more than a Dual Core for it (few games nowadays are very dependant on CPU).

Take into account that most PC games are console ports, so the requirementes haven't really go up by much in the last years. Clear example: I can smoothly run Crysis 2 at high settings at 720p with my 8800GT and a E6750 @ 3.2 GHz.

PS3 borke? (ironic as hell I know someone who broke so many that he had to create a new PSN account because his old one is linked to too many already)

His $3000 configuration is a bit higher than "pretty good."

If you want to hit $1000, you'll need to make some compromises. You probably don't need a crazy i7 CPU, for example. i5, or a Phenom II will probably perform just as well at most of your every day tasks anyway. Same with video card. It also depends on what parts you can reuse.

If I were bambam, I'd come up with a realistic set of specs and a budget. Pick up a nice case and PSU, a midrange motherboard, CPU, and video card, and 8 or 12GB of ram (depending on if it's dual or triple channel memory - that $3000 configuration should be triple channel, so I'm not sure why it has 8GB...). If you're willing to splurge the extra, I'd toss a 120GB SSD in for system files and what not, and a 1-2TB drive for bulk storage. Sure you won't hit the performance of that $3000 machine for $1000, but you can build a nice machine for $1000-$1500.

Heck, I just haphazardly put together a configuration on newegg for $1450, with an i7 and SSD and all. Compromising on CPU/GPU/etc. and optimizing depending on what combos are available will only bring it down from there.

Yes. "Future proofing" a PC is a terrible decision. By the time you need the extra power, it would be cheaper to buy a new PC.

A reasonable, non-gaming desktop PC can easily be built for $300. All you need on top of that to play games is a fancy graphics card. Of course it doesn't match up to a $3000 (or even $1500) PC, but it doesn't need to.

Short version: change your desires.

Not necessarily. If you're a gamer the only part requiring a regular upgrade is going to be your video card, and upgrading it twice is sure better than buying three PCes suitable for gaming. Basically, even upgrading it once is likely to be worth it.

It's cheaper or similar in price to buy a midrange GPU now and upgrade to a midrange one later than it is to buy a high end one now. Not to mention the midrange one you buy later will likely beat today's high end one in performance.

Buying high end computer parts NEVER pays off. You only do it if you want the epeen, or need the performance for some reason. Bammy doesn't need that much performance, I can just about guarantee it.

Uhm, I think you miss my point entirely. Why buy a $500+ video card today when you can buy a video card that can play today's game at a reasonable* frame rate for $150? Even if you bought a new $150 video card every year, it would take over three years to make up the $500 cost. And a $150 video card in 3.5 years from now will be better than the $500 video card.

A video card is simple to replace, making it the worst candidate for future proofing.

* I define reasonable to be anything that you would be satisfied with if you didn't know there was something better available.

Of course. My statement is to buy a system for future profiting, while only replacing the video card. Which is cheaper than buy cheap PC over and over again. Buy a high end(but not bleeding edge) PC, with a middle-end video card & replace the card. Also add more RAM later on, as its cost typically drops. Same about HDDes.

Append:

You would be satisfied with WinXP @ P-4 2.4Ghz, if you wouldn't know of alternatives. It WOULD slowdown your work however. I won't be mentioning experience of a gamer. It's matter of balance.

The i7 2600K uses the LGA1155 socket, which only supports dual channel (not that there's any practical difference between dual and tripple channel anyway).

I would never spend 3000 on a computer, and probably not even 1500... all I'm sayin is you can get a PC with roughly the same parts for $1500. So that computer is not worth it, as everyone said, prices jump extremely quickly from very good to best. I wouldn't buy a dell either though. I don't think I'd buy an desktop PC except a home built one. That ncix build-your-custom-pc thing would probably be my choice if assembling a computer wasn't so easy or I had reservations about doing it. It is good knowledge to have though... I don't even play games except some simple 2d ones anyway, I have consoles for that... I think the coffee is ready, afk.

Building your own will free you from purchasing a Windows license as well. We all know how much bam hates Windows, so there's another couple hundred bucks in his pocket.

Windows 7 Home Premium is only $100, but of course bambam would buy the $250 version because it's more expensive.

thepiratebay.org says Windows is free

I saw Portal 2, so he has to get Windows if that's the reason he needs the new machine.

Portal 2 will run on the Mac version of Steam. Maybe he wants to build a $3000 hackintosh? A hackpro that costs more than a Mac Pro...

Portal 2 will run on an xbox 360 too right? I'll be playing it on my mac. Not with highest settings of course but i don't think i appreciate graphics that much anyways after the point of feeling immersed.

Yay Portal 2!!! OMG its almost here! ! !

Professional is the best deal on Windows 7. You get most of the good stuff, the longest support period (5 years longer than home or even ultimate) and it costs only about 30€ more than Home Premium.

@ Mr. Oates: Maximus is exactly the plugin you want.

You can fix both of those.

1. Get a 2-4 year extended warranty. It'll only add a couple hundred to the price.
2. Make sure you insist on getting it without crap-ware. Or even OS-less (or their ubuntu option if they still have it). crap-ware-less version will add $50 to the price or so (they subsidize the price of the computer by getting paid to install trial versions of software from many companies including Microsoft), but the OS-less version should actually cost about $50 less than stock (but a copy of W7 is about $100-160~ cad).

$189 dollas !? good lawd that's a lotta money!

Sho is nice. Only 3 bands, though. I would expect unlimited bands for that price. I wonder how hard it would be to program something like that.

I'd sure use it.

Where's the source code? <yawn> Oh, yeah, they gave it to the Russians! Maybe if you ask nice they'll torrent it.

Holy ******* ****!

You're kiddin', aren't you. And I won't be too surprised to download it in a couple of weeks.

How the **** though. It sounds like a joke.

Append:
>When you have a force with so little training that you can jam an AK-47

I believe that a force requires really decent training in order to jam an AK based assault rifle.

My monitor's native resolution (and desktop resolution) is 2048x1152 so I'll want to play at that as well.

No, my PS3 is fine, but it's not a PC and first-person shooters are best enjoyed on a PC. I hate playing first-person games on a console. Controllers are not meant for that kind of gameplay. Neither is Move, IMHO. I think I'll buy the PS3 version if it comes with the free Steam key for PC, but I'll prefer playing on PC.

I already have a retail copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (specifically for gaming). BAF is absolutely correct. I do not want to have to pay for a[nother] Windows license.

I'm beginning to consider buying the parts and assembling it myself. And when it doesn't work I'll blame all of you. $1000-1500 does sound a lot better... BUT, will that get me Portal 2 @ 2048x1152 and at least 60 FPS?

Sure. Just make sure to get a decent gpu. games are mostly gpu bound. The cpu doesn't matter so much.

And if you want load times to improve, get a fast disk. SSDs are the fastest and will make loading a game on it seem nearly instant compared to normal HDDs.

1280x720 is also 16:9 and would be plenty good enough. I don't know the price difference required to go from there to 1080p, but if it's significant, then just manage your expectations.

You're going to be broke your entire life with nothing to show for it except a bunch of used-to-be-nice, has-been electronics collecting dust in your closet.

You really have to ask yourself: "Will this actually make my penis bigger?"

... and the answer is no. It wont.

It will make his ePenis bigger. He'll be able to gloat about a slightly larger number in synthetic benchmarks.

Yes. Also, you'll be able to link your PSN account to your Steam account as well if you can't get a good computer up in time, play on the PS3 until you do, and when the computer is up, switch to the PC (Steam Cloud will handle the saves for you). (Oh, and you can play Co-op with PC users even though you're on a PS3)

[edit] Man, do you even follow any news for Portal 2?

I don't just game though. I also open 100s of tabs in Firefox, 10s of them YouTube and other Flash applications. In addition, I often compile source code regularly. I would like a reasonably fast processor as well, but I'm willing to give a bit on that to save some money... It would be nice to improve boot times with an SSD, but I'm not concerned about load times as much.

I'm sort of left where I always am. AMD or Intel? Nvidia or ATI? I don't even know how AMD or ATI name / version their processors and cards so I have no idea what to even compare to Intel and Nvidia (not that I know much more about them)...

Samuel Henderson mentioned this on the weekend. I'm still not sure I believe it.

I haven't been gaming on PC in a while (due to my shitbox degrading and the Counter-Strike community shifting from respectable players to halo rejects...). So I haven't been running Steam (or even Windows) in months and therefore haven't heard anything really. I just realized that the release date was so near a short while ago. I think I became aware when a colleague mentioned last week something about Amnesia: The Dark Descent having some kind of connection to Aperture Science (I guess there are hidden login credentials in some indie games that unlock some bonus content on the Aperture Science Web site). After that he pointed out the teaser videos released so I watched them. That's about all I've seen so far.

There isn't that much difference between a super high end cpu and a medium/high end cpu. Except of course about $500.

And an SSD would also help with level loading. I'm sure you've been in a game and had to wait excessively long between levels...

If you don't know the differences between ATI/Nvidia etc., just wait until you do. It sounds to me like a bad case of money burning a hole in your pocket.

About the Potatoes, yea 13 indie games to be exact (12 were released before the madness, like Amnesia)

About the free PC version:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/ps3-portal-2-to-come-with-free-pcmac-version-cross-platform-play.ars

BAF, the suspense is killing me.

Append: It would help a lot if people would say what a reasonable price for each component is... My estimates are $2000+...

What is your budget? i.e., What can you realistically afford to spend given your current salary and expenses?

$1500 sounds like a pretty good maximum; lower is better. At least $1000 though...

NCIX is a good Canadian retailer, and you can see the pricing of each component in those custom PCs. You can adjust the parts individually to meet your needs.

Their pricing isn't terrible, but if you were to order the parts individually you could use a tool like PriceDX.ca and match the pricing.

NCIX is where I bought my current shitbox. It's not really their fault though. At the time I bought it to be a server. It was a custom box with a cheap case and stock fans. It ran fine text-only, but once I added a GPU to it and started using it as a desktop it began to overheat regularly. It survived for a while, but it's begun to kill itself when I leave it sitting idle... The heatsink is pretty badly clogged, but even clean it had trouble so I'm thinking of getting a whole new system to erase this blah feeling (and the uncertainty of not knowing if any parts are actually damaged/failing).

I will certainly check out that site once I get some sleep. Thanks.

I just checked newegg.com:

• Antec Mid Tower Case + Antec 550W power supply

• ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard

• Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz CPU

• G.SKILL 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

• SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM x2 (1TB)

• LITE-ON 24x CD/DVD Burner

That total is $735.00, which means you could spend $350 on a graphics card and still be around $1100.

I basically just picked the top rated products that were priced cheap enough to give plenty of money left over for a graphics card. I assume you would reuse your existing Windows license.

You could upgrade to an i7 in the future.

I have no idea what settings you need to run video games at 1080p on a PC, but quite frankly, I wouldn't worry about it. Spend a sane amount and be happy with what it gets you.

For hi-res gaming that is guaranteed to be smooth ... use a PS3.

Even though I can run at high-res, I prefer the aesthetic look of 800x600 with all settings on (esp motion blur... mmm yummy). Most of the detail available at 1080p just makes engine's anomalies more apparent. At lower resolutions it hides most of that stuff.

That also gives that retro-style effect if you're old enough to value it

I keep my resolution at 1680x1050 everywhere though.

Don't get a socket 1156 motherboard and CPU if you want to be able to upgrade later, since that socket is being phased out. Go with a socket 1155 cpu, for example an i5 2400 (similar price and significantly faster than the i5-760).

For GPU I'd recomment the GTX 570. If you plan to SLI later, a 800W PSU should be enought.

I wasn't recommending the exact specs... just pointing out that $3000 is ridiculous. I assumed 1156 was more modern since it was a bigger number.

Anyway, upgrading to the CPU you mentioned and swapping out a cheaper motherboard (but with good reviews) made the total $694.88 (pre-video card).

Spare $100 on an SSD.

Here's what I've thrown together. I'd really appreciate for the more experienced to look it over for oversights on my part.

• Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

• LITE-ON CD/DVD Burner(Slot-load) SATA Model DC-8A2SH - OEM

• Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

• ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

• ASUS EAH6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

• Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG-750 750W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE ...

• Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model KHX1333C7AD3K2/8G

• AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT90ZFBGRBOX

• OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

(I don't think I made any mistakes, but I had to manually copy the descriptions and links so if you notice mistakes point them out...)

The "Grand Total" (presumably before tax, shipping, and perhaps after rebates) is $1,149.92.

Append: The shipping estimate for my postal code brings the total to $1,333.07.

Append: Per TF's (and most other people's) advice:

• Arctic Silver AS5-3.5G

With the new addition, shipping, and tax, it comes to $1,340.97.

Append: Cooling was neglected so here is a heatsink/fan combo.

• ZALMAN CNPS9900ALED 120mm 2 Ball Low-noise Blue LED CPU Cooler

This pushes the total (including tax and shipping) to $1,411.57.

IIRC GTX 580 got about 2x better performance in all games tested than HD 6850 (and the price is relatively comparable). I might be wrong though.

Much more reasonable, and a very awesome rig. Good job.

Make sure your motherboard's Hybrid Graphics and the HD 6850 are compatible, otherwise I'd opt to go without onboard video.

Just to rehash what we were/I was saying on IRC:

• You can drop the AS5, that Zalman comes with good thermal compound already

• Might want to check combo deals, sometimes you can pair up mobos with cpus or video cards, sometimes there are power supply deals, etc. You likely have room to come down in price on the PSU (for example, this one saves you $75 between sale and rebate).

• Make sure you install that HSF right. I have the same one, and you'll want it either blowing upwards or to the rear of the case. I don't remember if blowing upwards was a valid configuration, IIRC it was, but it only fit my motherboard blowing to the rear anyway. IIRC, it blows towards the side with 2 heatpipes (away from the side with 1).

I don't know anything about ATi/AMD video cards anymore, I'm more partial to nVidia, so I can't help there. And you already know my opinion as far as getting the 120GB vertex 2 for $70 more.

I have submitted the order.

Wow, so many emotions over a new computer.

Yea bam, that's a lot better. You probably don't even need that much, but it's a lot better than $3100 so I won't complain.

Ah, camaaahn.... you know the feeling.

Clearly, you need to add $3.93 worth of items.

Find a way to make this happen.

If you call $500 to $175 comparable then sure. .

It is way more powerful though.

I just spent $900 on a washer and dryer.

Don't tell bambam.

This didn't even occur to me. Sadly, I think it is too late. I could probably call them up to add to the order (though it wouldn't be easy), but I doubt that I'd be able to find exactly $3.93 worth of things... Maybe if I had the time (and patience) to hack together some Perl to automate it...

Oh, shit...

I'd spend a decent amount of money on a washing machine, since it pays off to get a good one especially if it's water and/or energy efficient.
I still can't think of a dryer as anything other than a great big waste of money though, both up front and in terms of use. After all, you can dry your cloths for free easily enough...

Try that in canada, in the winter.

Where'd you think I've been living for the past few years?
Works even better because the air is so dry.
You don't put it outside, obviously, but back home I wouldn't do that so much either because of rain (although you can work around that with a sheet of plastic, but in winter I usually hung it all in doors anyway).

CAD or USD?

Does it matter?

Any clothes I ever dried in the air here have gotten stiff and "crusty". Definitely wouldn't want to wear them.

If it's CAD it's almost 1.5k USD.. (1.47X I'd estimate)

Don't know about that, mine have always come out fine. It's true that towels come out of a dryer nice and fluffy though.

I had no idea the US dollar had gone down so much! Last time I checked they were about on par.
They're still close though.

That's debatable. I'm somebody that doesn't enjoy taking the time to do housework. I do it the bare minimum basically. I hated hanging clothes up to dry when I was living at home. Seriously, who has the time or energy to do it? I wash an average of 3 loads of laundry every week and even in the country with a rather large clothes line it could only fit about 2. It would also take between 2 hours and all day for the load to dry, depending on the weather. It's just far too much hassle, IMHO. I prefer to just dry them. I only wish they wouldn't shrink. Seriously, it's 2011, when is somebody going to discover affordable and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes for comfortable/attractive clothes that don't shrink when machine washed and dried?

PayPal says I was charged $1,412.02 CAD. I can't account for the minor difference, but maybe the actual shipping costs didn't exactly match the estimates or something... Or maybe the original was USD and I paid CAD. I'm not sure, but it's negligible either way... The Web site did mention a possibility for additional charges from local retailers if newegg.ca decides to go through them. It's possible (probable?) I'll be met with a few more charges upon delivery. I'll be sure to update this thread (or start a new one when the system arrives).

Indeed. I rather like CAD being nearly equivalent to USD, albeit I would have preferred we caught up to them instead of the opposite.

You have to shake them out a bit. I have to do that with items out of the drier anyway to get them to fold right.

We used to let clothes freeze on the clothesline in N.D. all the time, it took half a day to dry that way, in the summertime they'd dry in half an hour. I wonder if the expansion of the ice wasn't hard on the fibers though.

Look at the details, see if paypal was the one that did the currency conversion, if so, you just got screwed.

45 cents worth? In any case, there's no mention of any currency conversion from PayPal.

Yes, so what?
You do the laundry one day, then take the dried cloths down a day later, then do the ironing in two weeks time.

The rate I just saw gives 1 CAD as about 1.05 US.

Maybe if you have that luxury. When I was still living at home I had 2 pairs of jeans and a handful of shirts to wear. Basically, by the time the weekend came (when I'd do laundry) I had always been alternating between pairs of jeans all week and was out of shirts. The same is basically true where I live now. I have 2 extra pairs of pants, and almost two weeks worth of shirts, but it's a pain to try to manage it. I still alternate my pants all week and do laundry on the weekend. Occasionally I'll wait two weeks, but that means I need to do more loads of laundry to catch up, which is a pain. It also means I'm forced to wear much more dirty clothes.

i.e., I wash clothes on the weekend (usually Sunday night) and require them to be dry and ready in the morning.

When I transferred the Android money to my account, paypal charged me a $5+ premium over the going us->cad rate. Pain in the ass.

They gave me

1 U.S. Dollar = 0.940146 Canadian Dollars

when the rate at the time was actually

1 U.S. dollar = 0.956699768 Canadian dollars

Which means I got $312.46 CAD rather than $317.97. They shorted me $5.51

append: But since you bought from newegg.ca, it should have been in canadian funds, so no conversion should have been necessary.

That is what I would have expected, but I could have sworn that I read something on the site that made me think prices were still in USD. As if the site was more or less just a Canadian portal into the US company. Indeed, they don't appear to have much stake in Canada. It seems they have a returns facility and that's about it. Products shipped from within Canada are apparently from third party retailers... I'm not sure though. I'm happy to see there's a newegg.ca at all though. Competition is good. It seemed NCIX really didn't have any for a long time...

Maybe I am missing something, but why not simply have the maid to do the laundry for you?

Isn't the maid always busy?
That setup turned out quite nicely. Is it possible and/or desirable to unlock cores on that CPU? (Just for that little overkill )

Buy preshrunk clothes?

Picked up the case today. Looks pretty awesome. I'm glad I got such a big case because I'm even intimidated by managing all the components and cables in this one.

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(Focus on the case... )

The case alone is 40 lbs (~18 kg) so it's going to be interesting trying to carry the finished computer. Might need a second person. Fortunately, I don't intend to move it very often.

I also picked up the heatsink/CPU fan. Unfortunately, it looks like my DVD drive (slot-loading! ) is currently making its way from Seattle (started in Los Angeles) and the rest is somewhere between New York (started in New Jersey) and here... Probably won't see the rest until after the Easter weekend.

The slot loading DVD looked like a slim drive. Does it even fit?

I don't know.

There will be screws to hold it in place i'm sure. that stuff is generally very flexible. The front might have a bit of empty space though unless they gave half size pieces.

WTF!

What's that? a fan? be careful with that turbine man! you computer could get out of the room flying!

So I guess you aren't going to need the home heating anymore...

Nice man! can I go to your home to play?

What the hell is it made of? Lead?

This case comes with 6 fans. 3 in the front, 2 in the back (all of them 120 mm), and the ceiling fan (200 mm). There are also built-in physical controls that control the speed of them. It's also designed to take an extra (not included) two: one in the middle (back of the HDD bays) and one on the side with the window. Hey, my current computer is underclocking itself and crashing constantly because of heat issues. I wasn't playing that shit again.

I don't really need it now. I live in an apartment and my neighbors use so much heat that I kept my heat off all [Canadian] winter long and was comfortable (even sweating in bed!). And I don't pay for electricity.

If you're ever in the area let me know and we'll work something out.

Steel, actually.

I wanted to say that as a joke

Aren't most cases made out of steel (with some plastic bits)?

Yup. The only other common(ish) kind are the Aluminium cases, but those are somewhat more expensive.

I hooked up my washing machine and dryer tonight.

PS. Dear Evert, I also have a clothes line in my basement.

I would if I could. As it is I have to go up and down an elevator all day long trying to fight for 4 washing machines and 4 driers (in a building of ~70 apartments). To make matters worse, some people decide to throw their shit in at 11am and go back to their apartment until they finally go back to get their shit at 3pm.

We have about 10 for 200 units, which I guess comes to roughly the same ratio. There's usually one or two that don't work, but despite that, most of the machines are typically free.

Doesn't happen a lot here, but I have seen people gather up enough laundry to keep all the machines busy at once. I guess it saves time in a sense by doing all of your laundry in parallel twice a year, but it's very annoying for other people.
I always set a timer so I get a reminder when the laundry is ready for me to pick up. I don't like leaving it in too long (it's also bad to leave wet laundry sitting in the washing machine).
On one occasion I got seriously angry to find that people had taken it upon themselves to take my laundry out of the machine when they wanted to use it. It couldn't have been done five minutes.

There are a couple of families in the building that do that weekly. They occupy the whole room for hours. I do my laundry in parallel too, but usually only 3 or 4 loads / week. I am a single bachelor though.

Same. I'm usually back downstairs before the machines stop because I don't want anybody else to touch my shit. I also just want to be done so I can relax and drink. Of course, I also do it out of courtesy for my neighbors.

That is explicitly allowed here, but I'm not comfortable with it in either direction.

How do you get up to that much laundry in a week? I used to do alternate weeks of light/dark fabrics because I didn't gather up enough of either in one week. Bedsheets are an extra load, obviously.

I have no idea what the rules are with respect to that here, as far as I know it's unspecified. I just consider it just as "not done" to take someone else's laundry out of the machine because you want to use it right now as it is to keep the machine occupied because you can't be arsed to take your stuff out.

I bet annoying people are annoying on purpose, just to piss you off.

As long as you don't expect them to return the favor, that's fine.

Pro Tip: If you place your super computer in an old, ugly, tan ATX case it won't get stolen over the "Fast and Furious" Rigs that people deck out with LEDs and Strobes...

I got the majority of parts today (albeit, missed a day of work waiting for the delivery... ). The slot-loading DVD drive is still MIA, but I have the rest.

The PSU is installed to the case.

I was wondering when we were going to get an update.

I fully expect a "Nothing works, I just wasted $1500" post in the near future.

Well, there's a chance we'll get that update.

CPU is in the motherboard.

It went surprisingly easy. No fuss whatsoever. Couldn't have gone smoother. Now I'm at a crossroads. Do I install the mobo into the case now or wait until after I install the heatsink/fan assembly?

I'd install everything I could onto the motherboard before installing in the case, but the last heatsink I put on took a huge amount of pressure to get it to snap on, so it needed support underneath, not possible when in the case.

The first thing I do is put the motherboard in the case. Then I put the CPU in with the heatsink. The last thing I do is put the power supply in.

But since you've got a huge case, it probably doesn't really matter much.

The motherboard is secured (8/9) to the case.

The think I stripped the first standoff and was unable to get the good 8 screws out to replace it so I'm just leaving it as is. It seems secure... I had to apply some pressure to the motherboard to push it towards the back (i.e., towards the IO panel) to get it to line up with the holes.

I assume you install the heatsink onto the cpu while the pins are secured in the motherboard, then remove the cpu again to install the mobo?

I don't think it works that way.

I typically install the motherboard into the case, then put the cpu in the socket, then put the heatsink on the cpu+motherboard. Since the heatsink physically/mechanically attaches to the motherboard you have to install the cpu into the motherboard first.

Though you can install the cpu and heatsink before installing the motherboard, but I don't like doing that, you have to find a nice flat clean surface that you don't mind marking up with tiny dots from the rear of the board.

My memories are from 2006 or so.

Installed the CPU cooler (heatsink/fan).
Installed the RAM.

The RAM slots of this board are a bit interesting. Only one side has clips that work.

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(Confirmed by this site; picture theirs)

I was pushing really hard on the one side nearly cutting my fingers, and even started pushing with a screwdriver (at Kazmirr's advice ) before I decided to consult the mobo manual (and then the Web to find a picture to show IRC). I somewhat damaged the non-functional left-clip of the first port (from the bottom), but I don't think I hurt anything (since it isn't even functional). Sigh...

Append:

I think I have all of the power connections done (except for PCI-E as I haven't installed the GPU yet).

Powered it up to test and everything seems happy. No beeps^[1] or angry signs. All the fans are working, including the CPU cooler. It is, however, a mess of cables in there right now. I'm not really sure how to manage them (this is probably the one thing that scares me most about building your own PC). I might have to remove all of the cables and do it over again to make them fit nicely so they're tucked out of the way of the CPU heatsink and all the fans and such. I don't look forward to that. I'm too tired to continue (if I do there's an even greater chance that I'll fuck something up) so I've tucked the loose cables back into the case and put the side cover back on it (and unplugged the power cable AKA ground AKA my anti-static strap... ).

It looks like you're making a huge deal about this...

Building a computer is extremely simple and shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes.

It's fine to take more time, read the manual and anxiously double check everything, when you're inexperienced. Though, you should try to finish as soon as possible.
As for the wiring, you might find that when redoing it, it will go easier. Of course, you'll want to leave the mobo power cable in place. If you're getting confused as to how to prevent a cable mess, 'roll up' all the cables and only look at the connectors. When ready you could also go for a tie-wrap or something to hold some cables together/shorten them.

According to that site you mentioned, it does work. It just doesn't move :p

Note that this does not mean to use metal twist ties.

Maybe that makes me simple.. But it generally takes me a good 30-60 minutes to assemble a machine from scratch. More (two hours, ish) if I have to take it apart and clean it before (re)building it.

I assumed I was simple. Maybe we should have a vote: either we are simple, or Jesse is a pro
Also instead of applying the brute force mobo placement, I prefer to slowly tighten the screws while moving the mobo; using a clockwise, anti-clockwise or skipping^[1] pattern while tightening the screws for that extra level of care and artistry.^[2]

I can build a computer, disassemble it, and put it back together in less than thirty seconds.

I tend to start putting all the screws in in random order, then tighten them all similar to how you do it. Start with a random corner, then jump to the opposite corner, then do either a side screw, or another corner depending on how I feel

It usually takes me an hour. Then again, I'm really anal about wires being neat, static charge, dropping things, scratching things, etc.

From the sounds of it, things are going relatively smoothly for a n00b who never read the instructions. Probably saved a lot of money and I guess learned a lot too.

Most stores in Israel offer free assembly if you buy a whole computer from them. The cheaper ones charge ~10-15$. (Since they are cheaper they make up the cost in assembly fees)
And last time I assembled a PC, it was impossible to do without any instructions because some of the MB connectors are unlabeled (Mainly the stuff you hook up to the case: POWER/RESET/USB/AUDIO...), I think there's also some ambiguity on how to hook up memory pairs. (are they paired 1/3 2/4 or 1/2 3/4?)

I did read most of the instructions. I got bored eventually though and started skimming for what I needed right away. Did I miss anything?

Most people at a repair shop can disassemble and reassemble PC's in 15 minutes or less, depending on the style of case and other things.

When I was troubleshooting my laptop I could tear it down, apply thermal paste and rebuild everything in about 10 minutes (the first time probably took me more like 30)

SSD installed.
HDD installed.
GPU installed.

All that's left now is for my (MIA) DVD drive to be installed and I should hopefully be able to put my current PC out of service (or make a second Linux box or something). I've run the system now with video and all seems well (both before the GPU was installed and after, using the GPU's video ports). So I'm confident that it will run. I've done a poor man's job of tucking cables in for now that I think will suffice. Nothing is (or was) touching the CPU cooler anyway. It would probably benefit from a more organized approach, but I'm not really sure how to accomplish it. The case did come with a number of ties though for just such occasion.

I discovered that the MB supports "Express Gate" AKA Splashtop, which is basically a minimalist OS provided by the motherboard for basic Web browsing and file access and such. However, it apparently requires you to run an installation CD from Windows to use it. WTF?! Ugh. Anyway, I'll see what is involved. If I can install it purely to the motherboard then I might try it just to see (might come in handy for recovery or something). Otherwise, it seems like a complete waste of money (I'm not going to bother installing it to the hard drive if it comes to that).

Append: I should note that I had some trouble screwing the SSD into the drive bay. It's a 2 1/2" SSD that comes with a 3 1/2" adapter. Very few instructions come with it so I had to wing it (how hard can it be?). I initially screwed the SSD into the adapter backwards, which I discovered when the holes didn't line up in the case's drive bay. Once I fixed that, I couldn't get the screws through the adapter. Turns out the holes are just too tight and won't take them. I managed to get one front screw firmly in and the other front screw "in" (it still turns and doesn't tighten up so it's either stripped or just ... I don't know, it doesn't quite make sense). In any case, it shouldn't go anywhere, and with no moving parts a loose fit shouldn't hurt any... I was semi-tempted to drill (and tap?) out the holes, but the difference has to be so microscopic that I'm unlikely to guess the correct bit without knowing exactly what the inside diameter should be...

You don't need a DVD drive to install Windows. There are instructions all over for installing from USB, and it's a bit faster too.

Did you use the right screws for the SSD?

It's certainly possible, but I don't think it's supported by Microsoft. Moreso, IIRC from the last time I installed Windows 7, Windows 7's disk partitioner sucks ass so I'll probably be using a Linux LiveCD to partition my drives before installing so there's space for Linux.

My case has all 5 1/2" drive bays with 3 1/2" adapter bays. It includes custom screws about 1" long (approximate) to accommodate this. My 500 GB HDD fit these screws beautifully. The SSD's 3 1/2" adapter did not. I can't use the screws that came with the SSD because they aren't nearly long enough to actually reach the SSD adapter.

Microsoft released a utility to create the USB key. You also need nothing beyond what comes on the Win 7 disc to do it. It might not be officially supported, but it works, and you don't need any third party items to do so.

I never had any major issues with the partitioner either. Create the size partition you want for Windows and... *gasp*... it leaves empty space for Linux.

You never were good at Lego, right?

Although I have no idea what all this looks like (1" screws ?!?), this sounds to me as the first way wasn't backwards, but you used the wrong set of holes in the case.

There was only 4 holes that lined up with the case bays on the 3 1/2" SSD adapter. So either it was designed to only use two holes (on the front) or I had it backwards and it actually uses 4 screws (one in each corner; how it is now, except the case screws don't happily agree with the holes).

Install an OS on it already! Jeesh.

USB isn't working. I created a USB drive with a Fedora LiveCD and the Windows 7 DVD, but neither will boot. I've never booted from USB before so maybe I'm missing something, but I think the motherboard is set up to do it... If I just let it go then there's no mention and it just fails to find an OS. If I explicitly select my USB key then it fails with:

Invalid system disk
Replace the d☺

I'm guessing that the MBR (or equivalent) isn't set up properly, but I don't know. I used Fedora's livecd-iso-to-disk tool for both... Anybody know how to do it manually?

@BAF: Windows instructions aren't helpful because my old computer is overheating right now. I can barely keep it running at runlevel 3. In other words, I need to do this from a Linux terminal.

Just temporarily use your current DVD drive in your new computer...

You think it is?
Either you set it to boot from a USB disk or you didn't :S
Look for a BIOS setting that enables booting from USB if you have one, and also change the boot priority so the USB disk goes first.

And don't forget to change it afterwards because one day you'd end up accidentally booting from a random USB disk and waste a couple of minutes of your life rebooting and going "guh?"

No, but there are several programs online that do the same thing, maybe you should try them?
I know Ubuntu has a "USB start up disk creator" usb-creator-gtk || usb-creator-kde.

There's also the matter of what disk you are using, when I tried it myself I found hazy information that some disks you can boot from while you can't from others.

You also want to make sure the "Legacy USB Disk support" or "Boot from USB" support is enabled in your bios. It isn't always by default. If its not, the bios won't see the USB device at all.

...64-bit Windows 7 is 20 GB by itself. I split my SSD in half (~28 GB each) so Windows could use half and Linux could use half to boot faster... Windows is STILL slow to boot (Fedora can boot faster from a disk drive) and it has taken up the entire half for just the OS. I can't install Steam games because there isn't room on the drive. What do I do? Append: I had to uninstall Steam and reinstall it to my HDD so games would be installed there... I guess I'll also have to remember to install everything there instead. I just created "D:\Program Files" and "D:\Program Files (x86)" for consistency...

.... your hard drive is only 60GB?

Uh, if the SSD is slow, you're doing something horribly wrong.

A system should absolutely boot much faster with an ssd. Did you let the windows 7 installer partition the drive for you? it tries to make the first partitioned aligned such that it isn't causing RMW (read+modify+write) cycles when accessing filesystem blocks (makes sure the first filesystem block starts at an erase block boundary).

My desktop starts in about 10s on its Vertex 1 SSD. On a hdd it was up near 20-30 seconds.

His SSD is.

append:

Personally I'd just give the SSD to which ever OS you use the most. And leave the other on the HDD.

Also, my DVD drive came in today. Except, I have no idea how to mount it. I'm beginning to think it is for notebooks. There are no screw holes on it at all (and it came with zero hardware). Anybody know what I'm looking at here?

My SSD is, yes. I have a 500 GB HDD for primary storage. I just didn't expect to need it so soon... A complete Linux install is probably less than 5 GB (an optimized one can probably be less than 1 GB easy)... Append: That is, a fresh install. Even with all of your applications installed (minus games, which really don't exist in Linux anyway) you're still probably under 10 GB...

If its super thin, its a slim line drive, used in laptops and some mini-itx cases.

If it didn't come with an adapter of any kind (either for the rear data/power connections or mounting hw), you probably want to send it back and order a dekstop DVDRW. Or try and find some mounting hardware for it, and the necessary electrical/data converters as well.

http://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/607040/914104#target

Eagerly waiting more bambam remorse.

I figured out why Windows is taking up so much space... 8 GB pagefile.sys and 6 GB hyberfil.sys (even though as far as I can tell hybernation is disabled). Brillant! I was able to relocate the paging file to my HDD, but I can't seem to figure out how to do the same with the hybernation file...

That sucks. I really want a slot loading DVD drive.

Disable hibernation and the page file altogether. Neither are needed.

I would not want a slot loading drive.

They exist in desktop form. I have one.

Some games will NOT run without some form of swap file.

Never had such a problem. I've ran Windows without a swap file for many years now.

But as bambam has discovered, you can easily move it to the hard drive. The hibernation file cannot be moved (as far as I know); but you can disable it which will delete the file. Sleep mode is all you need for something that is plugged in.

Edit:

Be sure to do the same on Linux.

Also, setting up a RAM drive and using it for your temporary files is a good idea. No need burning out that SSD.

*cough* Should have listened to me when I told you to buy the 120GB SSD. *cough*

I remember bringing up exactly this point. Spending hours trying to fit onto the 60GB drive, and not having room left over for the games anyway. The 120GB drive was cheaper per GB as well. Meh.

Except that AFAICT hibernation is already disabled... The power settings say hibernate: never.

How do you do that in Windows? I'm guessing it isn't easy..

I was never buying the SSD for games. It was purely for start up times. Windows in particular takes a ridiculous amount of time to boot and since I run Linux for everything other than games that matters to me.

I get away with a 30GB ssd for my linux installs.

My htpc currently shows:

/dev/sda1 30G 18G 11G 63% /

That's not including /home which lives on a 320GB HDD.

My desktop is similar. Both put linux's / on the SSD by itself, and /home and swap on a HDD.

I don't know if it still applies, but you used to do it like

set TMP=c:\tmp
set TEMP=c:\tmp

or something like that.

My $400 US box from Best Buy doesn't seem to take too long to boot Win 7, but yesterday (booting windows for the first time in a week) it took me about 40 minutes to get past all the updates, rebooting about 5 times with more updates visible each time. I thought Ubuntu was bad!

Real men never turn off their desktops unless it's for an update.

Also, SSDs for games yield huge performance boosts with realtime loading (and, obviously, any loading in general).

Only for kernel upgrades, son!

Wimpy men, such as myself, have multi-boot setups that limit uptimes.

[EDIT]

Well occasionally Firefox won't let me click on flash objects, so I'll press cntl-alt-backspace followed by uparrow and Enter, then I have to click the browser shortcut again. I'm back in tty1 there for a second.

I've been told this works:

powercfg -h off

Run it from a command prompt as administrator (i.e., right click, run as admin).

You can adjust the TEMP/TMP environment variables. You could just point them to the hard drive.

No, there is a separate area to disable it. "Hibernate: never" just means you've disabled automatic hibernation after a set amount of time.

Well, you were complaining about not fitting games. And I told you that it's worthwhile to put the games on it as well, it makes them nice and quick too.

I'm not sure how fast Linux can boot off an SSD, but I can be to my desktop in well under 30 seconds with Windows 7 on my SSD. I don't think that's ridiculous.

A fresh debian stable, with no X installed will boot in 8 (or fewer) seconds (on two of my machines at least).

Add in kdm or something starting up as well, it goes up to about 10s, then KDE or Gnome starting up take another 10-20s (to get to fully ready, no spinny cursor, apps finished starting, and I have a bunch that preload, so its pretty decent).

Quoted for truth.

I guess I'm not a real man anymore

I needed to cut back on costs, so I started by having my desktop auto suspend (str), then I just stopped using it, so it sits off most of the time.

Now my laptop is a different story. its almost always on.

My machine suspends when not in use as well. I used to leave it up for IM, but between Trillian's continuous client features, my tablet/phone, and the server running an IRC bouncer, there's no reason to have the desktop running 24/7.

I save power by virtue of that, plus the reduced heat load on the A/C all summer.

I turn mine off when I go to work in the summer, lest sudden thunderstorms come along.

Today I woke up to find all of the LEDs off on my case. I thought for sure that it had died too and began to wonder if the crashing before was from an unstable power source or something. Turns out the computer was just sleeping.

/me usually disables sleeping to prevent crashes and stuff.

Maybe you have to disable sleeping on Linux, but over here on Windows, it works fine.

Linux doesn't sleep by default. I have definitely had problems with Windows on past computers.

Append: This.