Gaming Rig specs

[Art Blade]

Update on my gaming rig issue regarding unidentifiable hardware:

Today I noticed my "Action Center" (w7 taskbar notification gimmick) had one message. It simply told me to download drivers for my USB 3.0 device. ???

I clicked on the message which opened FireFox and it immediately started a download:

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/K84HR/USB3_AsMedia_Win7_64_Z11480.zip


WTF >:(( Why doesn't windows download and install those drivers when it already knows they're needed and where to be found? Maybe because it's a zip file?  :D

So I downloaded and installed those drivers from Asus and now I have no hardware issues any more.

:)

[PZ]

Leave it to Microsoft...

[fragger]

Yep. Typical... ::)

[Abletile]

Nice one eventually!  :-X

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[durian]

Man, I envy you for having such a monster rig, Art. 1,200 euros is a lot of money, I think few pc gamers spend that much.

[PZ]

Yes, we consider Art to be among the very few  :-()

[Art Blade]

Well, I had to choose between spending it on say a 14 days holiday or.. so I opted for the "or." :-D

[Binnatics]

it's a very nice "or" indeed ^-^ Will last apparently longer than the holiday :-X :)

[Art Blade]

those were my thoughts, exactly.  :-()

[PZ]

   I'll go for the "or" just about any time over a consumable!

[durian]

it's a very nice "or" indeed ^-^ Will last apparently much, much longer than the holiday :-X :)

Fixed. A very wise choice  :-X

[nexor]

Just upgraded my 2TB HDD to 3TB and what a mission, win7 don't recognise above 2TB  >:((
After a lot cursing and almost a whole day wasted trying to find a solution, I still haven't found one that resolved the problem  :D

[smg id=6240 type=preview align=center caption="HDD"]

[Art Blade]

nexor, check this out

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

[nexor]

Thanks Art I checked it out, instructions are pretty easy and accurate to follow up to a point then it goes haywire, vital steps they give that will complete the function don't exist so you're back to square one. 
Seagate offer a program "Seagate Disk Wizard" for download, this program  is developed by Acronis and have a couple of handy functions, one of these functions "Add A New Disk" removes the unallocated section of the hard drive but their clone disk function can only be successful when you purchase their full version "True Image 2013"
that you only find out when you attempt to clone your HDD.
But then I found another program "Mini Tool Drive Copy" this little program did a perfect clone of my existing HDD to the new one and now I have the full usage of the 3TB  8)

[Binnatics]

 :) :-X

[Art Blade]

makes me wonder exactly why MS can't implement a simple option. Just something like a dialog, "for single hard disks with more than 2TB capacity: click here to make it your boot drive / click here if it won't be a boot drive" >:(( :D

[mandru]

 ???

*note to self buy two, three or four 2TB drives but never a 3TB or larger drive*

[nexor]

And now MS has taken over Nokia and Vodafone, Vodafone used to be Vodacom, the largest mobile phone network in Africa.   :o
Not only do I have to put up with MS regarding my pc, now I have to put up with them regarding my mobile phone and as my service provider    :D :D

[nexor]

You'll do well mandru  :-D

[Art Blade]

Not only do I have to put up with MS regarding my pc, now I have to put up with them regarding my mobile phone and as my service provider

That's how world domination starts.. their OS already is spread out worldwide regarding windows PCs.

[fragger]

I can't believe some of the short-sightedness displayed by some developers. Here's something similar...

I've been using Photoshop 7 for many years, since it came out in fact. It never gave me any grief until I got my first 2TB HDD. When installing, Photoshop by default uses whatever volume it's being installed on as a "scratch disk" for temporary virtual RAM and has done so since its early days. Trouble is, in its early days a HDD with anything over about 2MB capacity was unheard of and the programmers apparently never thought that HDDs would grow to have the capacities that they have today.

Consequently, if you try to install Photoshop 7 or earlier on a volume that has over 1TB of space it apparently can't cope with all that room and will instead decide that the scratch disk (installation drive) is already full, will tell you so and won't install. There are several workarounds: 1) create a <1TB partition on your HDD and designate that as the scratch disk (I wasn't keen on doing that when I already had a big bunch of stuff on the drive); 2) fill up your single-partition >1TB HDD with junk to bring the available space down to under a TB, then designate it (in other words defeat the purpose of having more than a TB of space in the first place); 3) designate a second HDD as the scratch, if you just happen to have one on board (but it still has to have less than 1TB of free space); 4) use a removable USB storage device as the scratch (however this will have to be present whenever you want to run Photoshop - if it isn't, PS apparently can't tell the difference between a missing volume and a full one so you'll get the "Scratch Disk is full" message and Photoshop won't run).

Whichever option you choose, Adobe have conveniently forgotten to tell users that the only way to designate a volume other than the install one as the scratch disk is to hold down the Control key while the installation procedure commences. A dialog will then open allowing you to designate a scratch volume and installation will continue. If you don't know that, you're screwed - you'll get the "Scratch Disk is full" message and installation will be cancelled.

And the woes won't end there. Even after designating a different volume from the install one as the scratch disk, Photoshop will still not let you save any files from within itself on any volume that has over 1TB of space. Which means saving to another volume (usually whichever one you designated as the scratch) then copying the file via Windows Explorer if you actually want it on your >1TB HDD.

Admittedly more recent versions of Photoshop (such as CS) don't have this issue, but since a new version of PS costs thousands of dollars and I refuse to pirate, plus the fact that the newest version is cloud-only (sigh), I prefer to stick with 7. It's the one I'm most familiar with anyway. Which means a lot of file-moving whenever I want to w@&k with it. There are no patches to address the scratch disk issue as 7 is now unsupported by Adobe and I've never been able to find any kind of a crack to do the trick. Believe me, I've looked...

And all because some programmers apparently didn't realise that HDD capacities might get quite large in the future ::)

[nexor]

And I thought I had problems   :-D
At least I managed to resolve mine, the procedure I used turned out to be quite simple  :-\\

[Art Blade]

I've got a new 27" monitor. LG 27EA53 widescreen with IPS LED "life-like colour expression" technology, 1920x1080 native resolution (16:9) for €238.-- (not too shabby  :) )

I wanted one extra, for use with my old PC and, when needed, for dual display usage with my new PC, so I needed two monitors with the same specs. The new one should have had the same res as my old one, 1920x1200 (16:10) but none of those about 50 monitors which that shop had on display (literally, hehe) had a higher max res than 1920x1080, that stupid Full HD factor. >:((

However, it looks a bit crunched but it is wider indeed, basically it means that you can watch CinemaScope films without black borders. Looking at this forum while typing also looks a lot wider  :) Actually, it looks cool, a 16:9 mode in games makes them look a lot more like being in a movie.

Although I had to downsize the following pics to 1024x640 and 1024x576, the aspect ratio was maintained. Here a before/after or, old/new comparison (click on the pic to enlarge, only then will you see the difference, or click on it and then "details" so you get to see the media library, those pics are next to each other which means you'll see the difference even better) :

[smg id=6274 type=preview align=center caption="1920x1200"]
[smg id=6275 type=preview align=center caption="1920x1080"]

[PZ]

Impressive!  :-X