Gaming Rig specs

[PZ]

Now, that's some serious hardware  >:D

[Art Blade]

I surely hope so :) Just had to add "GTX" to the wacoo  :-()

[Binnatics]

What is that plating that covers your mobo? Is in aluminium, doing both the cooling part and protection against any "accidentally falling screwdriver"? Or something else? Never seen that before... ;)

[OWGKID]

You're right BinnZ, it is some sort of "Thermal Armour" that boosts heat dissipation ;)

ASUS' official website for the Sabertooth Z97 Mark S

[Art Blade]

 :-()

[fragger]

Sweet :-X Nice looking piece of hardware Art, and impressive specs. That thermal armour is a cool innovation (literally :-())

Hope you have many happy hours of gaming with it 8)

[mandru]

Looks great Art.  :-X

I've really enjoyed my build on the Asus SABERTOOTH P67 so with the few years between then and now the specs on the Z97 MARK S really appears to have brought some monster upgrades to the product line.  :)

[Art Blade]

cheers guys :)

[mandru]

Another nice feature on Art's Z97 is that if you look at the first picture of the mobo next to its box in the link GKID7891 posted that every card slot on the board is protected with what the ad copy refers to as "White Dust Defenders - Repel the Dust, Expand the Lifespan".

The whole board (even the two second channel Ram slots) have removable covers that stay in place to (1.) help maintain and control the cooling air flow inside the shielding and also (2.) minimize the direct entry of dust inside the shielded board surface anywhere you have an unused card slot.  The second picture of the board (on that link) shows all of card slots open and unprotected for comparison.

I think that particular feature all by itself is as cool as all get out.  :-X

When I was looking to upgrade to my current mother board (on my last rebuild) I had actually ordered a previous iteration of the Sabertooth product line that also had the dust covers.  Unfortunately the shop that did the build went with the cheaper Asus Sabertooth P67 without telling me and then went out of business quickly there after.  Hence I didn't get a board with dust covers.  :-(

One thing that had sold me on that key aspect of the board (the one I wanted but didn't get) was there was that in the Asus documentation while researching potential motherboards for my rebuild were key claims that the covers had been developed specifically to exceed military specifications for the durability of components to be used in desert combat situations.  I know manufacturers make a lot of claims to hype a product but I still was impressed.  :)

[Art Blade]

 :)

The Storm Trooper case is also adding to the (as close as you may get to) dust-free idea by sporting removable dust filters. You remove them the way you'd open a drawer -- there's a handle and you pull them out, dust them off and push them back in. ^-^

[mandru]

Nice.  :-X

[PZ]

Hardware certainly has come a long way since 2009, when I built my first gaming rig. Everything is more refined, and has a more solid feel to it's construction.

[OWGKID]

New version of Mr. Blades motherboard for the Skylake CPUs (Intel Core ix-6xxx series)

[Binnatics]

Looks evenly impressive :-() :-X

[Art Blade]

 :)

[mandru]

My comp is going into the shop Wednesday for a few upgrades.

Upgrades include:

* My 300GB hard drive is being swapped out after being burned to two 1TB hard drives Striped in Raid 0 (zero) that will run Win10 and host my gaming.
* One 3TB HD that then grab the data from those two Striped drives (stitch it back together) for back up should either of the two 1TB HDs fail.
* Adding two 8GB Ram sticks to the current 4GB for 20GB total Ram in DDR3
* Having my GTX 680 pulled out and stepping up to a GTX 980ti

That's the Win10 side of things

* To facilitate a Win10/Linux Dual Boot (on start up) I'm adding yet another 1TB HD loaded with Ubuntu and a suite of utility programs which will become my Browsing Platform.


Internet Explorer or Internet Exploiter?

In setting up my preferences in Win10 concerning the Privacy Settings (specifically when browsing) they expect us to toss our systems open to accept all cookies including those from Third Parties.  I've always set my browsers so that all cookies are "cleared on window close" but it has become obvious that Win10 in the week since I upgraded is over reaching my browser preferences and recording my browsing history against my instructions.

MS calls it Personally Targeted Ads like it's a good thing and MS really wants to start profiting from it.  And they seem to get really snotty about it if you don't want to allow cookies.  The funny thing I've noticed is that even though I don't use the MS browser Internet Explorer and having my Firefox set to clear cookies on window close if I see something interesting and visit a site for a tech product or a clothing product line I'm still inundated with ads for those companies and their competitors days later.  Even if I'm using Firefox in Privacy Mode.  >:((

After verifying with the local shop (doing the upgrade for me) that the Win10 side of the dual boot will not be able to snoop into the Ubuntu drive I figured moving my browsing over to a Linux distro was the best way for me to put a thumb into corporate MS's eye.



Also on a side note I've noticed now after the Win10 upgrade that the Xbox App that MS has added to Win10's core functions (even though I have removed the Xbox App from being pinned to the system start up) is thrusting its way in between me and FC4 when I fire it up.  I nor my games have ever been associated with Xbox and never want to be.  I resent the damn intrusion.

More over I've come to understand that this infusion of Xbox into our PC gaming in Win10 will limit all games to 60 FPS.

A speed governor on our frame rates?  Outrageous!  \:/

Setting my own video preferences in my games, on my computer is my choice not Microsoft's!  This intrusion runs contrary to the whole concept for why I'm a PC gamer.

So I will need to find some way to silver bullet Xbox and quick before I go into FO4.  Maybe there will be a gamer at the computer shop that has already figured out how to pull Xbox's teeth.

[OWGKID]

Get a SSD rather than a HDD to boot from. You can disable the Xbox DVR on your PC by logging in with your Microsoft account. Maybe you could hold out for the Polaris/Pascal GPUs rather than buying the 980 Ti.

[PZ]

You can uninstall IE11 (not Edge) in W10 by going into the programs/windows features app. I've done so despite windows warnings with no ill effects to date (about a week or so)

You can also uninstall the xbox app and it's live tile, but will need to use the power shell.  Definitely worth it in my mind, and I've uninstalled all the useless windows features cluttering up my start

[Art Blade]

In my opinion the 980ti is the mother of all good cards for a somewhat reasonable price, good choice :) I "only" got a 980 without "ti" because it wasn't available just then and boy, it wouldn't have come cheap, either.

You're going to be blown away with its performance when playing solitai.. er, FC2.  :-D

[mandru]

Get a SSD rather than a HDD to boot from. You can disable the Xbox DVR on your PC by logging in with your Microsoft account. Maybe you could hold out for the Polaris/Pascal GPUs rather than buying the 980 Ti.

Thanks for the recommendations GKID7891 but I don't really trust SSD drives for anything other than disposable storage.  In the last couple years here on OWG I've come across at least 3 tales of woe (two of those from Binnatics alone between him and his dad) about an SSD with the OS loaded on it snarfing out and turning the computer into a very expensive doorstop.  And that's data collected from the small sample of posting members here on the forums.

Besides that 1TB SSDs cost around $300 U.S. dollars.  That means just one SSD would be almost as expensive as the purchase and install for my three standard 1TB drives plus almost the full cost of the 3TB back-up drive.

As for the pending release of newer and more powerful graphics cards I'm wanting to get this done now while I can still enjoy it and at a price I can afford.  :)

I have a MS account?  ???  Why haven't they told me about this?


PZ the only thing I know about power shells are the ones the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wear.  >:D


Thanks Art I'm looking forward to giving this new card a run for its money.  :-D

[OWGKID]

You could get a 250/512 GB SSD if you'd like. Having a SSD to boot means no way going back to HDDs for me (as boot devices)  ;) My MX100 SSDs works great in my laptop/desktop (no issues with them). :)

If you need a GPU, no problem, but I believe 14 nm die shrinks and HBM2 is worth the wait: The Polaris is about 2x power efficient, a Polaris GPU sample equal to the GTX 950 used about 86 watt compared to 147 for Nvidia ??? ;)

A MS account is necessary to access Xbox Live.

[Binnatics]

I have my windows installed on a small SSD (120Gb) and have a raid0 config with 2 hd's of 250Gb which is where Steam installs my games.
120Gb is roughly enough to give space to windows and some 'normal' programs. No need for more imho. That's quite a cheap way of designing your HD space and RAID 0 really doesn't beat SSD by far ;)

[OWGKID]

I have a 256 GB SSD which covers my needs and a 3TB HDD for everything else ;) Next thing to do with my rig: Upgrade my MSI R9 290 to 2x R9 490X (CrossFire setup  :-D) and perhaps a 1440p 144Hz freesync monitor :-()

Upgraded my keyboard yesterday (Bye bye Logitech K120, hello Corsair Strafe RGB) :-D

[PZ]

I too use an SSD as boot drive, but just for the OS. If it goes bad, I'll just throw it out and get another.  Just to squeak out a bit of extra life, I turned off automatic optimization, which is not needed on an SSD anyway.

It sure is nice to use the solid state drive - the boot to desktop feels almost instant.

[Art Blade]

nice keyboard, GKID. Cherry for the key switches is a good brand, I used to have Cherry keyboards