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The 'Perfect' Gaming Setup
1up is running a fun piece looking at how to take your gaming setup from merely functional to truly outstanding. From the article: "So you already took the plunge on a hot new HDTV. You've got an Xbox 360, but you're hungering for more HD gaming goodness, and you don't care how much it costs to get there. If that's the case, you're ready to enter the extremely hardcore domain of rolling your own home theatre gaming PC. This is not a project for the light-hearted. If you've never built a computer before, you're better off experimenting on the one you already have first with simpler exercises, like RAM and video card upgrades. Get comfortable, expect mistakes, and don't be afraid to see your own blood - computers can be pointy on the inside."
.. wise words.. i nearly ripped my finger off on the inside of a drive bay. sod bird flu.. coolermaster- the slient killer
--AlexC
Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
You can wait 6 months, and pick up the required parts for half the cost, or even just buy an off the shelf system. I guess it depends which you value more; an immediate payback for the time you spent, or money in the bank and time saved.
This is nowhere near perfect; Where the hell are the ponies?
Most of the nicer chassis don't have razor sharp edges on the inside. Spend $35 on a case and PS, and you may need a Band-Aid or two - but most folks who are building even mid range gaming rigs will spend money on a case.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I guess it depends which you value more; an immediate payback for the time you spent, or money in the bank and time saved.
Dont be so quick to consider just saving in the short term will do fine. If you want to be constantly bleeding cash for parts, fine. Just dont be disappointed by the low quality.
Start with a very highend setup(proven components that are built solidly) and keep the configuration relatively unchanged until you cannot go further with that setup. Only add components infrequently as needed(should be about 1-2 cycles/2-3 years after) and in the largest possible increments and/or highest quality as possible.
Repeat as necessary given that you have a system that will last a long while with parts that were made to last a long time, and that things just wont break 15s after the short warranty's up.
For gaming, that should keep you going for a good while.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...I was expecting a nice PC setup and hardware tips, but I see its unfortunately aimed heavily towards superfluous things to add to your console.
Here's my current gaming rig, I need SLI to drive the very high resolution 37"(1920X1080) display (anti-aliasing etc.)
CPU: AMD 3700+ SD Overclocked to 2530mhz (230X11 Aircooled 80mm @ 5,500RPM w/ 4 Heatpipes 1.456V 36C/44C) (very loud, my PC is in a seperate sound isolated room...I have been considering water cooling but have yet to take the plunge)
Board: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
RAM: 4 X 512 OCZ Platinum EL Rev. 2 TCCD (230mhz 2,3,3,5 Aircooled NB 2.8V 37C/41C)
Video: 2 X eVGA 7800GT SLI (stock)
Drive: 74GB WD Raptor
Sound: Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic + PA2v2 Headphone Amp + Sennheiser HD595 Headphones
PSU: Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W Power Supply (not recommended, poor quality control on these...some are fine others are not...I got a not)
Case: CM Stacker
Display: Westinghouse 37" 1920X1080 LCD (best purchase of my life)
37" may seem too large for a PC display, but I sit back in a reclining chair with a viewing distance of about 6 feet. It's so comfortable I can game for 16 hours straight(which I do on occasion).
It's a sweet setup...I'm CPU and fsb limited but I can play almost all games at max settings 1920X1080. Low resolution emulated games (Dos, MAME, Atari ST, NES, commodore, amiga, apple IIgs) etc. all look great on this screen.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Wow - what insiteful reporting. Get rechargable batteries and have one set in the charger and one set in the controller. How did this get posted to slashdot anyway - TFA certainly didn't mention anything that would involve openning a case - just "Let me use my 7eet skilz to use a wireless controller". How lame. Let me get back to my prototype Conroe rig and I'll get back to you with an ultimate system in a month.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
1 Copy Super Smash Bros. Melee
1 Bigass Couch
4 Wavebirds
1 Gamecube
1 Decent-Sized Television
I'm not sure what other equipment anyone could EVER need.
Is the source code for the cluster raytraced quake3 out yet? A couple of dozen dual CPU nodes would be pretty ideal if that's the case.
Actually I'm exaggerating a bit - plug a Vax of just about any flavor into the back end of the VT100 and you can play Nethack, or get a PC with Win95 or better and run the color version.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I just bought myself a completely new gaming rig -- my first such rig in about seven years. Prior to that I'd been upgrading various components in my old box. But the newest games were starting to far outstrip my machine's ability to play them (Doom 3/Quake 4 were the earliest offenders). Thanks to a pleasant year-end bonus from my employer (and rather serious prodding from my partner), I got a completely new box:
Sadly, the graphics card has turned out to be the biggest problem in the new rig. It seems that everyone is having trouble with the new NVidia 7900-based boards. My first card would display "exploding" geometry once it warmed up a bit. Happily, eVGA have been very good to deal with, and performed a free cross-ship RMA. The new card still exhibits a few glitches, but only when I expressly go looking for them. When actually playing games, it's been very well behaved. It's only done the exploding geometry thing once since then, during a game of Oblivion. I'll keep leaning on eVGA to perfect this card.
I have very mixed feelings about the Creative sound card. Creative has a very spotty reputation for drivers, especially when multiple CPUs are involved. However, virtually all the competing sound card vendors have gone away, or have chosen instead to go for a race to the bottom in terms of price (and, sadly, quality). So I got the Creative X-Fi. It makes the games sound pretty good (it's breathed new life into QuakeWorld), but I would have much preferred something that works with Linux. I have my eye on the upcoming Razer Barracuda sound card, though...
I'd have to say that I'm probably happiest with the case. I was very paranoid that I wouldn't have enough space for all the cruft I planned on putting in it, or that it would be very difficult to work with, but it's turned out to be just lovely. It weighs a ton, but no more than the old Antec tower it's replacing. It's very accessible, has a large interior, very well ventilated, very sturdy, has a clean appearance, and the blue LEDs don't hurt, either.
As I said, this is the first new rig I've put together in seven years (the last machine I built was a dual-Pentium III on a PC-100 motherboard). I'd appreciate commentary from a more experienced eye. Could I have selected better RAM? Better drives?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
A "Perfect Gaming Setup", eh?
I hope this begins and ends with two words: Spend Money.
In-between, details can be added about spending lots of money and, if they really need to add more length, advice on where and what.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
before I hit submit.
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought this was an Ask Slashdot..
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
1 copy Super Smash Bros. Brawl 1 Bigass Leather Couch 4 Wii-motes 1 Wii 1 Big-sized Television. Now that's a party.
Waffles rock.
Here is my list to go along with one of those 'hot' new Xbox 360s:
* String - to hang your 360 power supply from the ceiling with - summer is coming and you can't be too careful
* A nice Microsoft logo-ed binder to keep your receipts in - for the monthly ritual of returning your Xbox 360 to Microsoft for replacement
* The world cutest UPS delivery girl - maybe by your fourth or fifth shipping off of your latest 360 to Microsoft you will finally have the courage to ask her out
* A black and green fire extinguisher
* An original Xbox - So much for BC...
* A 1500 dollar gaming pc - might as well play the better looking and better featured versions of all the pc games on the 360
* A standalone DVD player - the 360's DVD playback is fantastic, kind of...
* A 1500 dollar 'media pc' - So you can have actually useful living room media features to supplement the amazing media capabilities of your Xbox 360
What a waste of 10 minutes of my life. There were no real guidelines on how to do this as the original title implied. This article is just filled with a bunch of stuff a 10 year old already knows. Anyone have any real links to how to do this??
Rechargable batteries? 1up.com being too stupid to work their HDTV into the non stretch mode? Playing PCs on an HDTV (gee, what a novel idea considering there's a subclass of HDTV's without built in tuners made for just this purpose), "building" an arcade machine? And the FINAL piece to perfect the ULTIMATE GAMING SYSTEM is importing games from Japan- something no one has suggested before.
I was hoping this article would cover important things, like making sure your reciever is getting surround sound from the xbox 360 and not enhanced stereo- or properly calibrating your system for video games; but it was much more useless.
www.GrenadeHop.com
You've never had fireworks fights have you?
Get 10 people. Buy 40 Roman candles and 10 lighters. Tie 4 to the end of a stick with duct tape. Wind the fuses together. Put the firework sticks into a duffel bag. Go to a field like a football field at a high school at about 5:00 in the morning. Dispense firework sticks to all and put 5 people on each side of field. Get someone to say go and start shooting at each other's teams. When it's all done throw away your sticks and run away and hide at closest friend's house, because the cops are now after you.
Most fun ever. You may want to wear goggles.
You need to buy Asus Cases. Definitley not budget, but a quality PSU and rounded edges on the inside. I haven't gotten cut in 4 years, but then, I work on the software side for a living, so most of my upgrading is done to my home comp.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I just found this site while researching HD-compatible games for my HTPC: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/
They have a list of PC games with their widescreen status, and how to get it working if it's not officially supported.
It's pretty bad when they shoot both their feet in the opening paragraph:
Sorry, since when did "owning all the current consoles (plus an HDTV)" become the definition of hardcore? The answer, obviously, is since the Playstation, but that's outside the scope of my argument here. And my argument is that it's pretty bad when a publication gets core definitions wrong in the very subject they claim to be reporting on.
It's really sad when this is coming from 1up.com, which is part of a company that has a bunch of gaming publications (Ziff-Davis). When the biggest names in gaming journalism get such fundamental things wrong, what does that say about the state of review and criticism of this hobby?
The worst part is, this is not even a gaming-specific concept. Someone who is "harcore" relative to others who enjoy a certain hobby is not a concept that is exclusive to gaming. You can be a "hardcore" model train fan, or any other hobby for that matter.
But we all know that sacrifices have been going on for the past 59 years.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bug for those so uninitiated.
Okay, so it was a fly, and not a chicken, but it had wings, and it did die in service to the computer gods!!
2^3 * 31 * 647
My perfect setup doesn't involve an HDTV or an Xbox 360, but instead consists of a full audio cabinet that includes every system from an original Pong, Atari 2600, SMS, NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, GC, and a few others like Neo Geo, 3D0, etc. all hooked up and playable.
The sheer fun factor blows any HDTV/Xbox 360 setup away. There isn't a human alive (including grandparents with Pong) that can resist playing something. It's kinda like a large scale Nintendo Wii.
They all see a fair bit of play, except the PS1, it has aged the worst of all of the systems which has been surprising.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
During those six months new state-of-the-art components will have come out. Wait another six months and pick them up for half the cost. Same money, better system!
Whats with all the "Funny" ratings on informative posts?
The author mentions building an arcade cabinet, but doesn't say anything about gutting an existing cabinet. I was able to get a hold of a cabinet with a dead screen at a local arcade auction for $40. Since the only thing that was dead was the screen, I was able to sell the innards to a professional restoration company for $30, and netted a perfectly good stable cabinet for $10.
Yes, but don't forget all the pointy end-points on soldering of the motherboard, video cards, etc... even with a nice case those litle guys are still around to remove some skin from your knuckles (of course, with a nice case one oftimes has more room to work with too, so less knuckle-skinning).
You play party games on your GameCube, and you claim to be "not sure what other equipment anyone could EVER need." To play independent party games, you need a set-top PC. Why do you reject all independent games immediately?
If you're referring to computer monitors, those are also much smaller than a typical 40 inch HDTV.
Do you have tips for finding arcade auctions in Fort Wayne, Indiana?
So where are the four-player shared-view games that work with a PC connected to a high-definition monitor and four USB gamepads? Shared-view multiplayer means that all four players are in the same playfield and the screen is not split. Examples include Gauntlet or Rampage or Rampart or Bomberman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade) or Secret of Mana or NBA Jam or Smash Bros. or Amplitude, none of which would benefit from using four separate monitors.
SNES9x does not come with ROM files. You have to rip them from your Game Paks, and at that point, it's cheaper just to hook up a used Super NES. So what PC native games have four players in one view?