Does anyone have a recommendation...

[PZ]

Thanks GKID   

[PZ]

Thanks for the advice gents - there happens to be a good deal on a USB 3 hub + LifeChat LX-3000 + 720p camera (I need to do Skype so need a medium quality camera) all for $57

Well, I bit the bullet and made this purchase, and I am delighted with the outcome. The USB 3.0 hub was only $10 and it works perfectly. The gaming headset (AB's recommendation) is an excellent choice - works perfectly, and I got the Livechat webcam to use with Skype.  Everything works better than I had hoped.

Thanks for the suggestions, gents 

[Art Blade]

you're very welcome

Glad you like the headset. When I first saw it, it was in something like a bargain bin, tons of them. Looking at the price, I thought I'd give it a shot. I didn't think it to be good but I needed a quick replacement for the Sennheiser. And you can imagine now how pleasantly surprised I was 

[PZ]

Indeed; it even has an inline volume and mute control which I like. 

It is comfortable, and non-intrusive, which is perfect.  It is cheap enough that it would not hurt to purchase it again if it went bad. 

[Art Blade]

my thoughts exactly. I had to buy a 2nd one. The first somewhat broke (wire) after a year, the 2nd (current) one has been OK ever since, for several years now.

[BinnZ]

I just got a new headset for my birthday, the Corsair Gaming VOID 7.1 Dolby Surround. The wired version. There are also several wireless versions of this headset but I prefer a wired one because I only use it in front of my PC and the connection is more stable than wireless devices.
Installing it was easy. I just plugged it in (there's a little USB dongle for virtual 7.1 surround effects in which you plug the regular audio jack) and downloaded the driver / utility and the headset was ready for use.

Sound: The sound of this headset is exceptionally good. I always thought that I had good audio on my former headset (Soundblaster Arena Gaming Headset) but using this made me immediately notice the big difference this headset delivers; I heard echoes from my gunfire in GTA coming from my surroundings. I never noticed the echo let alone the direction where it came from so yeah, improvement. There's more things I can hear now that earlier was masked by the inferior quality of my audio device, for example a very tiny vibrating fade after pressing buttons in the CEO menus in the computer in my ingame office.
The sound as a whole sounds very complete and true. It reminded me of the change in quality when I bought a new amplifier and loudspeakers for my stereo. The audio isn't 'screaming' any more but talking gently, so to speak.

Comfort: I chose this headset because it had big around-ear shells that don't press to my ears. My last headset was also an around-ear design but it didn't fit very well so after a few hours wearing the device my ears started hurting. Not with this headset; it fits perfectly and gently presses around my ears so that no molest of any kind is felt. The headset isn't very heavy either, which is nice as well. All in all you don't feel the thing on your head any more as soon as you start gaming
The ear cups block the ambient sound very good. Not entirely, but that is good. I don't want to miss important events in real life when I have the thing on my head, but it keeps outside any noise that would interfere with my gaming experience. The material those ear cups are made of is very soft; it's a sort of felt textile that feels soft and doesn't stick like fake leather does.

Mic: The mic seems of good quality. It is held in a rubber boom that is adjustable for good positioning. Form me, just turning the thing towards my mouth was enough to have it catch my voice perfectly. I tested the mic yesterday with a couple of friends and they noticed the difference in voice quality immediately. They all stated that the quality was much better and one guy said he didn't even recognize my voice any more; he could only tell it was my by my way of laughing, lol
So yeah, good mic

On the left ear cup is a volume controller in the shape of a small wheel. Very handy and easy to use, but when I put the headset off and back on I often touch is so that the volume was suddenly lower than before. That's just something to get used to I Guess. On that same ear cup is also a mute button. It's big and easy to find and by pressing it you mute your mic. Pressing it again will stop the mute. Very nice as of now it will be much easier to temporarily mute my mic when I need to. The only downside is that I couldn't tell whether the mic is muted or not; this version of the headset doesn't have a led indicator of some sort to show me if the mute is active or not. I have to check though, because there's help full sounds that can probably alert you when you mute the mic or open it again.

Yesterday I had a little issue with the headset, and that was the volume. Somehow I couldn't raise the volume above what I should say 'soft to normal' volume. I thought, if this is the maximum volume something must be wrong. I tried to check for an online solution, which I didn't find. Several users reported issues with the mic volume due to a erroneous firmware update, but no lack of volume was reported. I decided to dig into various windows settings and finally I found that windows had adjusted the basic device volume to something like 20/100, which was the maximum volume permitted. When I put the slider to 100/100 the max volume was the way it supposed to be, now I really don't want to have the thing on my ears with maximum volume
I adjusted it back to 85/100 to sort of protect my ears for high volume surprises in the future
Funny how windows hides this volume control so good; sound control panel\device properties\levels\earphones volume.

The price is relatively high with its 79 Euros but it definitely is worth it

[Art Blade]

that's a nice present (already congratulated but just so it doesn't look awkward: again, "happy B-day" )

I might check it out if I can get my hands on it in a local store.

[LowPolyOWG]

I'm happy with my HyperX Cloud Revovler. Comfortable and has great sound quality.

Happy b-day, BinnZ

[BinnZ]

Thanx guys

[PZ]

Happy B-day BinnZ, and a very nice present indeed 

[LowPolyOWG]

Well, Binnatics' voice changed slightly, it was a little darker (must be the new mic picking up lower frequencies of your voice). Had a good session with grinding.

Anyway, he also wondered if SLI GTX 780 Ti is worth it. I would say "No", unless you want to game on high resolutions (1440p, 4K, 21:9 monitors with 144 Hz). The 780 Ti is 4 generations older by now, so it isn't worth hunting down 780s as Nvidia might drop driver support. 3 GB of VRAM will not be enough for future games. Also, there are very few games that scales well. Developers haven't been able to take advantage of multiple GPUs. I can put the blame on the graphics APIs prior (OpenGL/DX11) to DX12/Vulkan. Games have traditionally used "AFR" (Alternate Frame Rendering) where the GPUs takes turn rendering frames. Still, they cannot double the VRAM to provide meaningful performance increase for the user. For DX11, 4+4 is still 4 GB of VRAM rather than 8.

However, games are slowly going over to DX12/Vulkan on PC and the current gen consoles use low-level APIs already. Both APIs support CrossFire/SLI natively so developers can utilize the power of multiple GPUs in a rig.

I will go CrossFire with my new rig as I want to push games at 144 Hz/2560×1440 resolution and ultra settings. It also gives developers a valid reason to build their games around multi-GPU support.

CrossFire and SLI is a valid option if you don't want to spend 600$+ for a powerful GPU. Two GPUs which are less powerful can still perform equal or very close to a top end card. If they are in the same family of GPUs, of course.

[Art Blade]

I think one powerful graphics card is always better than two. From what I read and hear, working dual gfx support that you actually notice is more on the exotic side. Not impossible but rare. Dual cards make sense if you know exactly what kind of software you will be using that actually does support dual cards. I can only think of either business-related applications (including 3D design) or related to video production.

One card is good because
- It will always w0#k as expected (unlike dual gfx)
- produces less heat to deal with (particularly in the summer time..)
- less power usage
- cheaper as in more cost-effective

[LowPolyOWG]

Servers like multiple GPUs for their raw computing power. Yep, dual card setups are generally not used by all gamers.

http://imgur.com/a/vjQXW

An example of DX12 multi-GPU implented in Gears of War 4

[Art Blade]

using the computing power of multiple graphics cards is different from using them to display an application on a monitor but yes, that's another optional use. I know of super computers that are made of countless gaming consoles instead of countless vid cards

[LowPolyOWG]

The PS3 did serve that purpose due to its advanced Cell CPU