Azure Envy

I'm not sure I would really make that comparison. I feel like a better comparison would be to something like the Ys series, or Okami. Or maybe even Darksiders. Action-adventure with dungeons and some puzzles thrown into the mix. Definitely more fast paced with none of the stat counting such you'd get with Skyrim.

Nope. I own and have owned plenty of consoles as I enjoy playing the games on them. If I didn't, I wouldnt've bought them.

Not all planes are equipped with standard wall outlets, you'd need to check with the airline for specifics on the plane you're flying on. So long as the charger doesn't try to draw more power than the outlet can deliver, it'll be fine. That limits you to ultrabooks and other low powered laptops though, for the most part.

Heh, the reason I even know about this is because a friend of mine with a workstation laptop attempted the same thing. If you're able to find a sub-100W power supply for the laptop, like a 90W, you might be able to get away with using the laptop OR charging it slowly, but not both at the same time, it really depends on the laptop if it'll even let you run it with a low power adapter. Of course, if you can't find a sub-100 and try to plug it in anyway you'll probably trip the protection at the outlet. 15A@120V for 1800W or 20A@120V so 2400W. It depends, you can check at your house's circuit box. Per breaker, not outlet. I've never come anywhere near those limits with a computer though.

I think the person sitting next to you is probably going to take offense to you attempting to do that. Also, most plane outlets are in the neighborhood of 70-100W, which isn't even enough to power/charge a standard gaming laptop at the same time, so probably not. You could, but seeing as you're plugging your computer into it, it'd be worth the extra couple bucks to find a travel surge protector. Just look that up on Amazon or something and you'll get a ton of matches.

Oh, I thought you actually wanted to use it on the plane. Well that's fine, if you want something that can be packed up from place to place, what you're doing will work. Still think you should put that monitor money towards something like 144Hz gaming monitor and just deal with the extra power cord. There's also a question of how the computer is going to deal with a primary monitor being USB 3.0. I don't have any experience with them, so I can't be of much help there, I'm afraid.

Based on that review, the Gigabyte leads the pack along with the MSI -- but they're so close to each other, I'm not sure if it'd make all that big a difference. But if you want to push it to the limit, just something to consider.

Referring to the power delivery of the 960 board.

If you do end up doing that, I would consider boards with better power delivery to help in your overclocking pursuits. http://techreport.com/review/27806/five-geforce-gtx-960-cards-overclocked/2

1336 MHz is not bad at all for a 760. While you might not have the best overclocker, that's still nothing to sneeze at. If you do end up RMAing it, you run the risk of getting one that overclocks worse, so keep that in mind.

133 MHz is not much for the RAM, but 146 MHz is huge for core offset. I'm only stable up until about +130 MHz on my core (GTX 970 SC). This gives me a boost clock of around 1490 MHz during games. Since boost clocks vary between boards, have you checked what your boost clock is during gaming?

Possible that the crash may have destabilized the display driver. So that'd make sense. Just curious, but when you overclock, how far are you going (offset) before you start running games or benching?

Assuming it isn't something else bringing down the system, if it's not good at stock clocks -- you probably have a dud on your hands. I'd just RMA the thing. No way you should be crashing at its factory clocks. The USB monitor you linked is intended for people to hook into to their laptops so they can have access to a second monitor. You can definitely use it with a small desktop, but in my opinion you'd be better off getting a normal monitor and finding yourself a small surge protector so you can plug in your PC and monitor. As for using it on an airplane, you can forget about it unless you routinely fly first or business class. There's no way you're going to fit it -- and you'll probably have to deal with airport security more than you'd care to. If you're going to be bringing this around a lot, I'd really just get a laptop with a 970M, it's pretty damned good, imo and can be found in relatively affordable gaming laptops. I know this all sounds like heresy in this thread but if you actually want to be using this on a plane or in Starbucks, it's just going to be a ton of hassle, and not because you have two plugs you need to find outlets for.

So... let me get this straight, it doesn't overclock at all? Like, if you bumped it +10 MHz on the core, no go?

Is there any reason you do not wish to use a standard monitor? You are paying a fair premium for the USB connectivity. Yes, you can hook it up to a large UPS but these are very expensive (not to mention extremely bulky and heavy) and you will not realize meaningful runtime (~20-30 minutes). If you are looking for portability (not just toting a PC from one place to another), you are much better off just buying a laptop.

EVGA support is pretty great, they'll probably give you another card for the coil whine issue. Technically if the card is running at its factory clocks, it's not really defective -- but that's neither here nor there. Since the whine bothers you, give them a call and see what they'll do for you.

I have some pretty bad coil whine on my SC 970, but I usually game with headphones so it doesn't bother me much. I've read that if you burn it in overnight in an app like Heaven, it'll help with the whine. As for your OC, it's not stable at its factory clocks?

No updates to the CPU device driver that I'm aware of. Your lack of issue using other browsers seems to point to Chrome being the issue. Maybe try reinstalling it? Do you get this issue with other video streaming sites (that still use flash)?

Youtube should default to using HTML5 now, so your version of Flash should be of no consequence. Are your graphics drivers up to date (or installed?) The bulk of the video decode should be handled on your GPU, though to be honest unless your laptop is ancient the CPU should be handling it fine as well. Is there something in the background taking up a lot of CPU?

Same reason they make a 730M with 4 GB. Memory is cheap, but directly translates to a higher selling price because more is better. Without fail.

Avoid the reference cooler and you should be fine. Good coolers Sapphire Vapor-X and Tri-X, PowerColor PCS+, Gigabyte Windforce, MSI TwinFrozr, XFX Double Dissipation

I don't think you'll be disappointed especially if you're gaming at 1080p. This card is brutally fast and the fans are barely even running with the chip loading around the mid 70sC. Mine's currently boosting to about 1500 MHz and getting over 10,000 in 3DMark Fire Strike with a lightly overclocked 3570K.

Personally, I don't really see the 980 as being worth the premium over the 970 even with the whole VRAM issue going on. I've seen 295X2s going for around that price and probably would've jumped on one if it didn't mean I needed a new case and power supply to go with it. Also, nice avatar. Stumbled onto his channel on YT recently, good stuff.

Not seeing any 295x2 cards for $450-500 but a fantastic deal at that price. I like to stick to one powerful GPU and avoid dealing with the complications associated with multi-GPU, though. I'll give the R9 300 a good look for sure.

Why's it not a good idea? The whole 970 thing that doesn't apply to the 980?