Technous285

Fair enough, but on the general line for (2-way) SLI Vs. non-SLI, it usually goes something like SLI'd 980's > Titan X > SLI'd 970's > 980 > 970 > 960. I haven't seen many comparisons where 960's in SLI sit, so haven't put them in the line up. And a pair of Titan X's in SLI will basically wreck the s**t of any other current card setups. I believe DX12 & Vulkan (OpenGL's counterpart to DX12, advancing over Mantle but working on both AMD & Nvidia) will help step things forward and make SLI/XFire configs a lot more reliable and usable than they currently are. I do hope that it'll also allow you to mix-n-match AMD & Nvidia cards properly once again, something Nvidia has gone out of their way to kill off in recent years with driver updates and such.

Some of us are already on top-end card like a GTX780 or GTX980 and don't want to have to toss them out, sell them on or put them in a weaker system just to upgrade to something like a Titan (Black, Z or X), so SLI is a better option for us.

I was building PC's when I was 8 back in the mid-90's, back in the days when Windows 95 was still new and you had to use glorified DOS commands to install the drivers for your mouse, let alone video card, sound card, optical drive (if you could afford one)... PC building nowadays is simplified so a 5 year old (such as JayzTwoCents' daughter) can build one as long as you remember one thing: RTFM - Read The Frelling Manual. With the SteamBox, sure it comes prebuilt with SteamOS (Debian-Linux based via Ubuntu-Linux), but getting a copy of Win7 or Win8.1 and installing it over SteamOS turns it into a regular Windows box as the hardware in a SteamBox is just regular desktop PC hardware in a fancy special case. Heck, I can take my BeastRig (specs in the PC Specs thread) and turn it into a SteamBox by simply installing SteamOS alongside Windows 7.

Is that a Cooler Master Hyper 212X/EVO I see in the second system and Cooler Master HAF-922 chassis for the second and third system? :3

MANY years back, I bought a cheap copy of a Power Rangers: Ninja Storm game for PC on eBay, it turned out to be a bootleg. Worked fine though, no hidden viruses, no hidden trojans, just a damn good rip-and-burn of the legit copy of the game. I actually still have it floating around somewhere along with a legit copy of the game too.

Oh Yahweh... The Year of Hell! o.o

@@nx9100, I only really included the Transphasics as an example of another Torpedo tech the Prommie (my petname for the Prometheus-class) could have, but admit at how broken they would be (hence the use of OP when I described them). Seriously, in the main timeline they just appear in 2378 after being brought back from an alternative 2404 by Admiral Janeway who cheated in getting Voyager home ASAP by going back in time 26 years with the Transphasic Torpedoes along with the Ablative Armour generator tech. Speaking of Voyager, they originally estimated it'll take them about 70 years to get home at max sustainable Warp (9.975. Warp 9.985 is possible on her engines but only for short periods), which means they'd be doing ~1000 lightyears of travel per-year (70,000 lightyears from last known coordinates in the Badlands), which means they would be trekking along at around 3 lightyears per-day or about 8 hours to travel 1 lightyear at Warp 9.975. Though in two episodes (Relativity & Scorpion Pt II), Warp 9.975 gave them 40 lightyears over 5 days (around 2922 times the speed of light) for 8 lightyears/day. On the other hand, Relativity & Friendship One gave Warp 9.975 a distance of 132 lightyears over the course of a month (1554-1721 times the speed of light) or an average of 4 lightyears/day (closer to the 70 years at 1000 lightyears/year and ~3 lightyears/day). And in The 37's, it was stated Warp 9.9 over 1 second would move them about 4 billions miles (21,473 times the speed of light), though I can hand-wave that crazy speed as to being exaggeration to impress the 1930's folks voyager had found. And those speeds & Warp Factors are on the re-balanced (Warp 1 = 1c, Warp 10 = infinite velocity) TNG scale. Also, we shall NOT talk about the episode-that-does-not-exist (Threshold).

And that's presuming the Prometheus (first launched in 2374) used here ONLY has the TNG-Era Photon Torpedoes (as spec'd in the TNG Tech Manual), not the Quantum Torpedoes (as specified in the DS9 Tech Manual) we saw on the Defiant-class (2371) or Sovereign-class (2373, Enterprise-E) ships, or even been retrofitted with the OP Borg-Busters known as Transphasic Torpedoes (and the only mention of how they work is in the TNG novel "Greater than the Sum" set in the 2380's) once Voyager was home.

Star Wars = Space Opera. it's always BEEN a Space opera, and the only "science" in it was really introduced with the Prequel Trilogy. Star Trek = Science Fiction. It has always been rooted in some form with real-world science at-time-of-production and extrapolated towards future advancements. Cell/Mobile phones? Star Trek: TOS-Era Communicators. Tablet Computers (iPad, Nexus 7, Galaxy Note, etc, etc...)? Star Trek: PADDs (Personal Access Display Device), existed in TOS-Era, prominent in TNG/DS9/VOY-Era, shown in ENT-Era. Warp Drive? We're currently working on a way to actually build something to move us upto and possibly past the speed of light, but some of the major hurdles are making sure we don't permanently turn into energy, get killed by radiation of various types at those speeds, or wipe out a solar system of life when we manage to stop the damn ship. Until the Prequel Trilogy, nobody gave a damn about how Lightsabers worked. "Swords of some kind of energy? cool!" was the general train of thought about them. Now we're trying to figure out how they could work as beams of plasma contained in an electromagnetic field so they only extend to the length one sets in the emitter unit and not become a infinitely-long beam of death that lasts as long as the power source does... "Thanks a bunch, Lucas!" </snark>

3.4Ghz means 3.4 Billion cycles-per-second (Giga = Billion. Hertz/Hz = Cycle(s)-per-second), and each core will work at upto that speed depending on the tasks the OS assigns at any point. AMD = Cheaper but runs HOT (hence the addition of the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo). Intel = Expensive the more tech crammed in but runs cooler for most folks. Both GPU's I picked as they're decent low-budget cards, though the AMD build has a possible advantage as it should be able to use the R7 260X in conjunction with the GPU side of the APU (APU is CPU+GPU in space of a typical CPU, decent for low-end systems but the bigger the budget the more you should be focused on dedicated GPU) with some of AMD's funky tech designs. As for the "regular" gaming/high workload Pc comparison - there's no standards for what folks consider to be a "regular" gaming PC. Some swear that an Intel Core i5 with something like a GTX970 is the sweet spot for nearly all games out there to run at minimum of 60FPS on at least medium settings. Others would go for a Core i7 and a GTX980 for extra grunt. My personal main system is OVERKILL for everything short of system-crusher games like Shadows of Mordor or Metro: Last Light Redux at High/Ultra settings and 1440P or higher. ~~~~~ As for shaving costs by going with used hardware/setups, you COULD do that, and know the parts typically work well enough, but you'll be buying parts with a pre-shortened lifespan and might have hidden glitches and flaws that wouldn't occur with new parts/systems.

Well, the $1000 figure was both for ease of maths and an actual figure for a budget. The 10%-each minimum for CPU, GPU & RAM still counts at almost every level you could imagine. For $750 USD (presuming US here), I'd probably pick something like one of these two loadouts: AMD - http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ZTgppg ($700.37 before discounts) Intel - http://pcpartpicker.com/p/LKTNjX ($738.42 before discounts) Yes, I know with the Intel build I kinda broke my 10% min on the CPU (the Pentium G3258), however that's because it's a little beast for its price and can be overclocked (though wouldn't recommend on stock heatsink) to compare against higher-priced CPUs. The optical drive (CD/DVD/Blu-ray recorder) is something I'd recommend for both systems though you can shave some cash by not getting one and putting that cash elsewhere. Seagate Barracuda 2TB is a decent drive and I trust the brand more than WD or Hitachi, to last me upto a decade of use and abuse. I didn't add an OS or things like monitor or keyboard, as I was focused on getting the core of the system (chassis and guts) spec'd (that and I'd recommend 64-bit Win7 Pro over Win8/8.1, anyway. With more than 4GB of RAM you can't use a 32-bit version of Windows if you want full access to all the memory anyway).

The time wasted waiting for a system to boot up from a cold start and the potential to fry parts as they get a sudden jolt of power from the cold start alone isn't worth the cent-or-two-per-day worth of electricity a system would be sipping when idle, let along the time wasted waiting for the system to get to a point where you can DO something in the OS. As for the legality of mining bitcoins (I was being sarcastic about them, they're getting to be almost not worth the time for the average user to try and mine), that's something you should look up for yourself in your area.

Janeway does try to be diplomatic when she can, but when someone threatens her ship or her crew, she goes full Mama Bear and don't take no *yay* from nobody!

Those are technically PADS and the actual pins are in the Land Grid Array CPU socket on the motherboard. Intel Marketing is just *bleep*ing lazy and haven't changed their terminology from the Pentium 4 days with the changeover from Socket 478 (pins on chip, holes in ZIF socket) to LGA 775 (pads on chip, pins in socket).

"Tuvok, fire the Transphasic Torpedoes!" </Capt. Janeway>

Thermal compound is the stuff (usually paste-like grey goo if you use an aftermarket CPU/GPU cooler, or the white/grey pads on the underside of stock heatsinks) that helps move heat from a chip (say CPU) to the heat dispersal device (heatsink or waterblocks and radiator if watercooling) to keep the system parts cool. Considering you've got an XP-era box and a cheap Win7 laptop, it won't matter if you're gaming or simming, you might as well build a new system and retire the XP box and W7 laptop. And when you're not running your games, sims, or even light webbrowsing, when it's otherwise idling or you're turn it off (and turning off a system is a waste of time and power nowadays) you can run something like Folding@Home or do something silly like mine for bitcoins.

"Torisugari no Kamen Raidā da, oboeteoke" <"I'm just a passing-through Kamen Rider, remember that!">

Honestly? Yes. As long as you do a bit of research and RTFM (Read The Frelling Manual), the hardest part of actually building a computer nowadays is only really getting the right amount of thermal compound put down before attaching an aftermarket CPU/GPU cooler (hint: small blob, a little bit of compound goes a LONG way!). As long as you have a screwdriver and read the manuals, even a 5 year old can build a system (see JayzTwoCents on YouTube helping his 5 year old daughter build her first system). The other hardest part is deciding on a budget for the system and how powerful you want the system to be. My usual recommendations are: - Do NOT skimp out or spend less than 10% of the budget on RAM, CPU or GPU. eg: $1000 budget means at least $100 for RAM, $100 for CPU and $100 for GPU. If you have to skimp on one of these 3 for something like a fancy keyboard - forget the keyboard and put that money towards one of these 3 parts! - Once you have picked the motherboard, get the LARGEST sized RAM stick you can (8GB for consumer-level DDR3) and don't bother getting 2 smaller chips for "dual-channel memory off the bat" as having Dual-Channel memory only really helps in memory-intensive processes like video editing and rendering. - ASUS, ASRock & MSI have great ranges of motherboards at different price levels, ASRock offering more quality and options at the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to ASUS & MSI. NEVER buy a Gigabyte-made Intel board for a low-end chipset (eg: B75 or H77 for Ivy Bridge/3rd-gen Core-i) as Gigabyte cheap out on parts at the low end have have absurd limitations on things like RAM sticks ("Sure you could fill all 4 slots with 8GB chips - as long as they're single-sided! Oh, you can only buy double-sided 8GB sticks where you are? Too bad for you! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" <- Had that happen to me) PCPartPicker is a great site to use to select parts as you plan a build as it takes a lot of the guesswork out of matching CPUs to motherboards. AMD-based systems tend to be cheaper than Intel systems when it comes to CPU & mobo, but you WILL pay extra in keeping a typical AMD chip cooler than an Intel chip with stock cooler (AMD's stock cooler = useless unless you're in a bind stuck waiting for a decent CPU cooler). ~~~~~ Edit: If you're wondering WHY I said that a small blob of thermal compound goes a long way when it comes to building computers remember these facts; No compound between the lid/heatspreader of the CPU (the metal part with the model number, match code, etc) and the underside of the heatsink is the WORST possible option as the microscopic pits and holes in the metal surfaces will capture air bubbles that will insulate the two layers from the other. Too little compound is almost as-bad as no compound as it reduces the heat transfer capacity the less there is. Too MUCH compound on the other side is worse than not enough as it'll act as an insulation barrier between the chip and heatsink OR it'll be squeezed out the sides with the pressure applied from the heatsink block and can interfere with the pins/pads of the processor chip itself (this is mainly for CPUs & APUs), either causing bridging between the pins/pads (particularly if it's a electrically conductive compound) or disrupting the flow of electricity between the socket and the pins/pads of the chip. If in doubt, use a tiny bit and spread it out over the whole chip. If it's too little/too thin once it's been spread over the chip then you can add a little bit more, whilst you can't remove excess compound without wasting it if you put a large blob on in the first place.

When it comes to most Minecraft LPers, it's almost a given for the LPer to either be talking like 80-90% of the time whilst he's mining or crafting, or to be in a Skype/Teamspeak call/channel with running commentary from other players, particularly if doing something on a server (see: Direwolf20).

When I first used Mandrake (now Mandriva), it was around the change from XP to Vista, and I preferred the clean "old" style of Win9X/Win2000 over the uber-fancy-shmancy "Let's make everything look pretty and abuse the poor older GPU's when you just have the plain desktop open!" design. Using Win7 I can make a half-arsed reproduction of the "Windows Classic" style that was Win9X/2000 (XP was Luna, Aero is Vista/7), but it's no substitute to the way WinXP did it. When it comes to Win7 though, I all-bar rip out Aero at the roots to get something I can stand even when running the beastly hardware I have. When it comes to KDE 3.5 Vs. KDE 4+ Vs. Gnome, give me KDE 3.5 ANY day of the century!

I'm a sucker for the old-school Mandrake-Linux/Mandriva-Linux, Dad currently uses Zorin-OS which is a much more user-friendly alternative to Ubunutu (even if it is based on Ubuntu at the core, like SteamOS). I've also dabbled with SteamOS on my TinkerRig (it was previously known as SteamRig) which isn't too bad for being based upon Ubuntu.

Yeah, that's my main backup rig, I've got parts for systems ranging back to Intel 486's and early Pentium 1 chips floating around the places, since Dad & I are both tech guys and we do NOT throw out old parts until they're deader than a doornail. I think the ONLY family of Intel chips we DON'T have is the first-gen Core-i series like an i7-920, we've got some Core2Duo's in some Dell Optiplex systems (refurbs), and Dad's currently running on an i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge, second-gen Core-i), but the first generation of Core-i's is probably the ONLY family pre-Ivy Bridge we don't have at least one sample from (we currently don't have any Haswell/Broadwell chips, though my next upgrade is going to be from one of those two families). Oh, if you're wondering what dad's system is... Chassis: Thermaltake Armor Revo Tower w/ HDD Dock Mobo: ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K (stock clocks) RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz DDR3 (4x8GB) PSU: Thermaltake 850W EVO Blue PSU Optical: a standard ASUS DVD DVD±R/RW Storage: 4TB Seagate Barracuda GPU: Palit 2GB GTX760 Cooling: CoolerMaster Hyper 212, 4x GELID Wing 12 120mm PWM Blue LED Fan (2 pulling air out the roof, one pushing air through the 212, one pulling air out the back panel) OS: Zorin-OS 9.1 (Ubuntu-based, muuuch cleaner) Monitor: AOC U2868PQU 4K He doesn't need the 4K for 3D arting or gaming, he needs it for working on 2 or 3 stories at once since he does a LOT of writing! XD

On average, most preparations of Coffee has more Caffeine in them (particularly in a per-Litre scale) than soft drinks and energy drinks do. And the LD50 of Caffeine is 150-200mg/kg of body mass (so 1.5-2g of Caffeine per 10kg mass). As someone who drinks mostly Mt Dew Energized (Aussie Caffeinated Mt. Dew, released mid-2012, 154mg/L), I would need to drink at LEAST 1x 1L bottles of it per-kilogram of my mass on the low-end ratio of 150mg/kg. Seeing as I'm around 127kg, that means I'd need to drink 127L of Mt Dew Energized to have a 50/50 chance of dying from caffeine, at which point I'm more likely to have issues from the amount of Sugar (123g/L) long before I hit the cap on the Caffeine. Everything (including water) will kill you in high enough concentrations, so you have to look at the big picture and balance out things so you don't blow them out of proportion. Thanks Wikipedia!

Easy way I use to tell if to use "Your" or "You're" in a sentence - If I can use "Mine" in the place of the word then it's "Your" (eg: "These cats are mine." Vs. "These cats are yours."), if I can use "I'm" in the sentence then it's "You're" (eg: "I'm such a geek AND a nerd!" Vs. "You're such a geek AND nerd!"). Then again, I have a bit of an inside joke with my dad (we're both Aspies) where I'll say "I'll have two tutu's too, whilst you're down the shops" as code for "Get me a pair each of chicken schnitzels and chicken shish kebabs at the cafe on the way back from shopping". (Side-note: Up yours US English Dictionary in Chrome! Shish is an actual word meaning "skewer", not a slagging typo!)