Messages

1

Gaming / Re: Warhammer 40,000

« on: April 22, 2019, 01:59:17 AM »

Just realized that I forgot to comment on your space bugs: I like em! I think all of the tyranid armies I've seen in person (which admittedly aren't that many) have had brown or otherwise darker chitin. The white look is pretty nifty.

2

Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: April 22, 2019, 01:54:58 AM »

Two games left, and so much time left in 2019...

Any idea what you're going to be playing after you get through those?

3

Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: April 22, 2019, 01:53:12 AM »

I guess you could say I've done speedrunning since the first time I saw Quake Done Quick, though I tend to do it somewhat casually. If a trick requires excessive grind to pull off (see: OoT any%) then I'm definitely not interested. Really, I'm more about self-improvement than world records, mostly since I don't have the attention span to grind a single game for that length of time.

That's the thing that I like about the marathons that my friends host: being small events they tend to be pretty casual by comparison. While finishing games swiftly is obviously encouraged, you're not really going to see many top 10 players there (aside from EnchantressOfNumbers, but she's a local and a friend).

I do get plenty of practice beforehand (and I'm taking the Hyrule Warriors thing a bit more seriously than most, as I actually do have a real shot at nailing a WR on Definitive Edition--the boards are pretty barren) and get a very solid idea of what my capabilities are before I start. Like, for their fall Extra Life 2018 event I ended up running Metroid: Zero Mission any% and just couldn't consistently nail the bomb jump timing for early Varia (2005 Ian would be so disappointed) so I changed strats and went for a slightly longer route. To be fair, I only knew that I was running that game like a week before the event, so I didn't have much time to actually get good at it again. Regardless, I still managed an acceptable time (IIRC, it was around 1:25:?? RTA and 1:15:?? in-game--my PB is ~0:43:?? in-game).

4

Gaming / Re: Modest Gaming Goals: 2019

« on: April 19, 2019, 07:17:49 AM »

2. Hyrule Warriors grinding. I'd like to get as many characters to at least level 100 as possible. Link is already there, with his closest runners (Zelda, Skull Kid, Impa, Linkle) sitting in the mid-70s to low-80s. I'd also like to clear the first four adventure maps (the first one is already done, so that leaves the Great Sea, as well as the Master Quest versions of the classic and Great Sea maps).

As of early this morning (I have a really screwy sleep schedule, okaaaaay?) the standard Great Sea map has been fully cleared (that is to say: all non-respawning items have been collected).

I'm also going to be speed running the main story (I'm working on doing a bunch of initial planning before I start committing time to practice runs--I'll probably update this thread with my progress on that) for a charity gaming marathon that some of my friends are hosting in October.

Speaking of charity marathons, if you want to see an absolute clusterfuck of a Doom II co-op UV/HMP playthrough that I was involved in, here you go: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/411472245?t=

5

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: April 17, 2019, 08:59:31 AM »

Just don't do what I did with my current build. I figured I'd build my rig in pieces, so I ordered the PSU and...well, it just sort of sat in my basement for about eight months.

6

Gaming / Re: 2019 games back-log

« on: April 13, 2019, 03:59:01 PM »

Gonna have to check that one out at some point. I didn't really know much about the game until somewhat recently and now I'm kicking myself for missing out on it.

7

Gaming / Re: Warhammer 40,000

« on: April 13, 2019, 03:56:42 PM »

I know of 40K and have played a couple of games (with my friend's army), but I can't say that I'm a huge tabletop gamer, sadly. I don't really have the attention span for it. :s

I love the character designs and lore, though.

8

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: April 13, 2019, 03:53:22 PM »

You really have to take negative component reviews with a grain of salt, because nine times out of ten it's someone who 1) straight up broke the thing, 2) refuses to RMA a board that's dead out of the box, 3) overclock the shit out of their components and wonder why they're running into stability issues, or 4) didn't read the manual. Also, consider the fact that people are generally more likely to leave a review if they run into issues. Seeing a 4.1/5.0 star review for a piece of hardware is actually really good. Plus, I know at least half a dozen people who have been running a variety of different ASUS boards for years with zero issues (myself included--my current system is using an ASRock board and I'm planning on replacing it with an ASUS ROG Strix board within a year due to some Linux-related issues I've experienced with the ASRock piece).

One of my friends also reported smooth sailing with their MSI board, so they seem to be another decent choice. I don't really have a huge sample set to pull from, though.

9

Creation Station / Re: 3D Printers

« on: March 30, 2019, 11:07:53 PM »

N-n-n-n-necro!

I ended up buying an X56 HOTAS (mostly for Elite: Dangerous) and decided to create and print a flight stick mount for my recliner.

So I designed and printed a recliner mount for my X56 HOTAS so that I can actually twist the stick. Can’t wait to start binge playing Elite: Dangerous again. :D

Printed on my Lulzbot TAZ 6 using ColorFabb nGen. pic.twitter.com/FIucIPgaiR

— Ian Burgmyer (@Spectere) March 31, 2019

10

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: March 30, 2019, 10:32:43 PM »

Yeah, but discs didn't just suddenly go away as a result of that. I still use them a fair amount (recently installed Diablo 1 from CD--why rebuy it if I don't have to?), though I've switched to just using a single USB optical drive for convenience sake.

Besides, you have to be able to feed Daemon Tools (or Windows 8/8.1/10, for that matter--its ISO reader seems to work pretty well for basic stuff) with an image, and nowadays it's far safer to just rip your own disc rather than torrenting it. Last time I torrented an old game to save myself the trouble of ripping it I ended up getting a nastygram in the mail from my ISP…sigh.

I've also been trying to image and back up my old DOS games, since I don't want to be the victim of disc rot (I have a retro PC, so I can still play DOS/Win9X titles natively).

Also: Tool doesn't do digital distribution and their fifth album is due to come out this year. How else am I going to rip that?

11

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: March 27, 2019, 11:15:07 AM »

Gonna hack away at your post and leave the links of the parts I recommend.

Figure I'll update this thing. Set on a living room desktop setup, going to figure out logistics later, but brainstorming parts atm.

Video card
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MC23VS4/?coliid=I2UD30X4JTV8H&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

This is a bit of a tentative recommendation, as I'm really not too familiar with AMD's GPU line. About all I do know about it is that my laptop has an AMD dedicated GPU and somehow their drivers are somehow even more awful than they used to be. The real kicker is that my laptop has a FirePro (their workstation line) and the drivers for those are supposed to be more stable. Yeah, not so much. It's not a bad performer for what it is (dunno about the ones you linked) but the Catalyst Control Center is such an awful piece of software that I wouldn't even consider purchasing hardware from them until they ditch it altogether.

I would definitely say that the 2060 would be a better prospect than the 1050 Ti. There was a pretty good performance bump between this generation and the last, so that would buy you a bit more time until your next GPU upgrade.

If you can find a used 1080 Ti at a reasonable price, that would be a very good option. A lot of those were dumped on eBay when the 2080 Ti came out, courtesy of people who decided to upgrade before third-party benchmarks were even released. Some of them were obviously pulled from cryptocoin mining rigs, but you can generally tell the gaming and mining focused cards apart based on the lot size.

HDD
SSD

This one's kinda tricky. Depending on what you want to do, 1TB isn't going to get you very far. For games that need a lot of storage (like FFXV) the load times would get pretty outrageous on a hard drive, too.

What I would do is go with a 1TB NVMe SSD and, when that starts to fill up, pick another one (or two) up. It'll be a bit more money up front for less storage, but I guarantee you'll be a lot happier with it.

When I built my current system I ended up putting three 500GB 960 EVOs in it and ended up running out of space surprisingly quickly. The problem was that because I didn't have any available slots my only upgrade option was to do an expensive replacement. In my case I was able to upgrade my laptop with one of the old 500GB sticks, but you're not going to have the option to do something like that.

I would only recommend an HDD nowadays if you have a lot of data and you don't need to access it very quickly. Even a relatively cheap SATA SSD (I upgraded the 1TB HDD in my laptop to a 1TB 870 EVO for ~$130) is generally going to be a better option.

PSU
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N18J52E/?coliid=I33M37YKNG08RA&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Looks good to me! I'm running a Corsair semi-modular PSU in my current rig, actually.

Case

Obviously this is largely personal preference. I will say that mid-towers nowadays are a lot easier to fiddle with than the ones from 10 years ago, but they're never going to be as versatile as a full tower.

I notice that the ones you linked have tempered glass sides. Those are wonderful and handle case lighting very nicely (my current tower is basically a metal shell with tempered glass on all sides) but bear in mind that they do add quite a bit of weight. Totally worth it, IMO.

MOBO
CPU

Sticking with the $220 budget, I'd either go with the Ryzen 5 2600X ($190; fewer cores, better performance per-core) or the Ryzen 7 2700 ($220; more cores, slightly worse performance per-core). Get the former if you mostly plan to game, get the latter if you plan to stream.

If you don't mind spending a bit more money up-front, the Ryzen 7 2700X costs $290 and will beat both of those in anything you throw at it.

As far as the motherboard is concerned, the ASUS ROG Strix B450-F looks like a solid choice. I've been hearing not-so-good thing sabout Gigabyte's QC process lately, and I can't say that I'm really blown away by my ASRock (it sure surprised me, but not exactly in a particularly good way), so ASUS it is!

RAM
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075TQS5QP/?coliid=I3TAYAC9PP2FRV&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006EWUO22/?coliid=I3LT2ZDEQUS97W&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Cheaper than I remember, but not too picky, I just need 16gb of something decent.

Both of those look solid, but I'd go with the latter simply because the order would actually be fulfilled by Amazon. My experience with third-party sellers hasn't been the greatest (read: I'm spoiled by Prime).

I wanna say that's everything? Making this post to consolidate everything and fine tune my parts to hopefully get something built in a month.

The only additional thing you may want to consider is some sort of optical drive, but those are becoming increasingly irrelevant nowadays.

12

Random Chat / Re: BEER

« on: March 27, 2019, 09:21:02 AM »

Woo, nice! Happy birthday!

13

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: March 06, 2019, 10:49:12 AM »

"No upgradable RAM" as in they solder the RAM onto the board, or because they don't have any easily accessible slots available? My mom's laptop doesn't have any "user-replaceable" parts, but I was able to just unscrew the bottom of it and replace the slow HDD in favor of an SSD, and it also has exposed RAM slots.

If they solder the RAM on a standard size laptop like that, they're mad. I understand soldering to a certain extent with ultrathins and tablets in order to reduce the weight and footprint, but sheesh.

Re: desktops. I'm currently using a desktop PC hooked up to my TV and it's been pretty nice. If you go with a wireless keyboard/mouse (Logitech has some nice gaming grade ones) you won't have to worry about running wires. If you end up going wired, bundling your keyboard and mouse cords together with velcro or zip ties every six inches or so should keep everything together nicely. If you get a Bluetooth transceiver (some motherboards include a laptop-style wi-fi/Bluetooth module onboard nowadays, or at least have a mini PCI-e slot for one) you can even pair up wireless controllers with little to no additional setup.

14

Computing / Re: Getting something to compute with

« on: February 28, 2019, 08:47:32 AM »

Looks like a decent little machine to me. Not sure how the GPU performance is on the mobile Ryzen chips, but considering the dinky Skylake Intel HD GPU in my Dell can handle WoW at 1080p/medium with no problem I think you'll be fine.

I generally recommend at least 16GB of RAM, but 8 should be alright. It looks like you can bump that laptop up to 16 if you need to down the road (some assembly required, I'd wager) so I wouldn't consider that a deal breaker.

15

Random Chat / Re: I sometimes stream osu!mania.

« on: February 17, 2019, 12:16:42 AM »

Yeah, odds are you're not going to get any useful information if the heap gets corrupted, especially when you only have a minidump available and zero source code.

If it does it again I'd try either swapping drivers or changing to software encoding (you might even get better encoding quality with software encoding).