prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

hey, i haven't run a deal in a long time. hurr we go. my wife and i are expecting a baby by early december. if you buy before the baby comes, i'll give you a deal on labor costs for the system! normally i charge 10% the cost of parts plus 50$ as an assembly, handling, and random parts fee. i'll reduce that fee down to 5% + 50$ or just 50$ (whichever saves you more, 5% less on cost of parts or 50$ off). so, you're effectively getting a ton of money off the cost of a custom-built computer, made by OCR's most well-known and active system builder - building systems since early 2008. here's a few of the systems i have priced out recently. take a look and see if you want any of them. obviously they're completely flexible. just tell me what you're looking for and we'll go from there. ---------------- Ivy Bridge and 7000-series graphics for under $1000 CPU: i5-3570 3.4ghz quad-core (3.8ghz Turbo Boost), with Hyper 212+ CPU fan GPU: Radeon 7850 2gb - excellent for 1920x1200 gaming RAM: 8gb (2x4gb) DDR3 1600 Mobo: Z77-based motherboard, USB 3.0 and SATA 6gb/s support PSU: 650w 80+ BRONZE power supply SDD: 120gb SSD DVD: DVD-RW drive Case: Antec Three Hundred this is an excellent sub-$1k gaming machine. the combination of an awesome CPU and one of the best price-performance GPUs on the market make for an awesome machine optimized for most things you could ever want to do. having a solid-state drive makes for sub-30s boot speeds and an exceptionally responsive OS, and the PSU is a awesome long-term solution that allows for upgrades down the line as well as rock-solid performance until then. parts: $866 fee: $86 ($50 waived) total: $954 ----------------- Music making monster CPU: i5-3770 3.4ghz quad-core (3.9ghz Turbo Boost) WITH HYPERTHREADING (8 cores!), with Hyper 212+ CPU fan RAM: 16gb (2x4gb) DDR3 1600 Mobo: Z77-based motherboard, USB 3.0 and 6x SATA 6gb/s support PSU: 500w 80+ BRONZE power supply GPU: GT 520 - fanless card SDD: 256gb SSD HDD: 2x 1tb WDC Black DVD: DVD-RW drive Case: BitFenix Ghost - complete with sound-dampening panels! this is a fantastic music-making machine for most people out there. eight cores of 3.4ghz is amazing - you'll really have to struggle to max out that much parallel processing power. 16gb of RAM means you'll never load up too many instruments or synths, and the two 1tb drives means that you have twice the bandwidth to load and stream high-quality audio samples. note: for an additional $90, you can get a fanless PSU. another $40 will give you an almost-silent Noctua CPU cooler. i'm also familiar with water-cooling solutions and would be happy going over those options as well. the two above options - cooler and PSU - would make for an almost silent computer, easily well below ambient sound levels. parts as listed: $1275 fee: $64+$50 (5%+$50) total: $1389 ----------------------- Budget gaming beast CPU: i3-3220 3.3ghz dual-core RAM: 4gb (2x2gb) DDR3 1333 Mobo: H61M-based motherboard, USB 3.0 and SATA 6gb/s support PSU: 500w 80+ BRONZE power supply GPU: Radeon 7750, factory overclocked HDD: 500gb WDC DVD: DVD-RW drive Case: Rosewill Blackbone this is a great, cheap machine that'll pound through most modern games at 1920x1200 with medium/high settings. if you use a smaller screen res, this will easily be able to max most modern games that aren't known system-crushers like Metro 2033 or Witcher 2. it's got a speedy CPU that can easily be upgraded for more power or cores, a solid graphics card that is the rough equivalent of an Nvidia GTX 560 SE, and a great PSU and case to last you for a long time. parts: $540 fee: $54 (50$ waived) total: $594 --------------------- FAQ: Q: why not buy from another custom builder, like Digital Storm or Magic Micro? A: custom builders fall into two categories. they either are a boutique shop doing incredibly amazing builds for way too much money (like Digital Storm or Falcon), or they're an assembly-line gig building crap for cheap (like iBUYPOWER or Magic Micro). since this isn't my job, i don't have to charge stupid money, or cut terrible corners, to make a system that's pretty darn awesome for the price. Q: i saw a build with that processor speed for $350! why is your stuff so expensive? A: well, first off, numbers aren't everything, as any benchmark between AMD and Intel will tell you. in addition, most budget systems cut corners on mobo quality, PSU quality, etc. i only use high-quality components that i'd feel comfortable installing in one of my systems. almost all of the systems i've built are still functioning three and four years later for the people who bought them, which is darn good compared to most boutique manufacturers. Q: why is your fee so high? 10% is a lot of money for some of these builds! A: custom builders rarely charge less than a 40% fee just for putting it together, not to mention for the software installation, testing, or extra parts needed. since i do this in my spare time, i'm content to make a little less to help the community as a whole. Q: but you're a dick! how do i know you won't lose my money or something? A: i do everything through paypal, so we have a full record of the entire thing. paypal covers you for loss just as much as it covers me for fraud, so it's a win-win for us. Q: you should have used XXX instead of YYY! you're terrible and know nothing. A: if you think i'm using a poor choice of component, let me know! you're probably wrong and are just spouting whatever garbage you saw on 4chan, but it's worth talking about either way so everyone knows what's going on. i've put together more than 200 machines since early 2008, and performed countless hardware upgrades and fixes in the interim. i even worked in a computer shop, tearing down systems as the breadwinner for my family, for a while. i've got tons of hands-on experience, and if i picked a specific component, there's probably a good reason for it.

yeah, you don't want to upgrade just because. wait until there's something you've really gotta have that makes the upgrade worth it. for me, that was an SSD for my primary and an eight-core CPU for my music machine that really turned out to be necessary, and both have been awesome upgrades that were well worth the price. ssd for my primary means 30s boots a year later and loading screens that basically aren't there, and the eight-core on my music system has meant songs that i literally couldn't have handled on my quad.

i used the wrong term, yeah - i meant firmware and said hardware. that's pretty clear if you read the rest of the post, where i say that you should have a real card to do RAID =)

hardware raid is outdated. never make a raid with onboard raid. get a real card that supports your drives. also remember to research it when you use drives that aren't supported by most mobos anyways =) also don't raid OS drives. the benefits you get are negated by the fact that SSDs are cheap as balls and way faster. a 120gb SSD is under a hundred now.

he uses crap low-level characters to do it. no loss.

bardic and i put in some serious time this weekend and cleared an act and a half. we just got to act three and are really enjoying it. he's playing as a tanky engineer with absurd AoE fire dps and dual-wielding weapons, and i'm doing an outlander focused in the glaive, daggers, and the repeating fire that lowers armor for anti-bosses with dual pistols. i blow through mana like it's my job but it's really fun to just melt down the biggest bosses with rapidfire.

mike forgot the part where we met at a five guys and i delivered the machine, and then we hung out for a little while while marveling at the 50-flavor pop dispenser. also a critical part of this build.

yes, since that installs all the crap that comes with dells, not to mention probably won't work since your computer isn't signed as a dell.

5400rpm drives are great for storage, but don't load games and stuf on them. like, my backups are 5400rpms (because i'm poor), and my htpc stores movies on a 5400rpm drive.

i wish some of you were on anvil rock, as it seems that none of my friends are ever on for dungeons. i am level 50 and still haven't had a chance to do one yet =(

it wasn't just my psu that bit it, apparently, because i couldn't get it functioning. so i'm out =/

i will try to hook my primary PSU to my system and see if i can frankenstein my way through the rest of my track, but i'm not hopeful. if anything was fried i don't have the cash to fix it. i didn't have much anyways, but i was really looking forward to destroying everyone who opposed me this year and winning everything ever, so it's kind of disappointing.

no, probably not, honestly. with ivy bridge having released some new CPUs, you're just looking at waiting until the next gfx refresh, which won't be for a while.

power supply in my music system took a dump again, so i've gotta withdraw. no way i can replace it in time to still finish what little i had on my track. =/

i would have linked my HoM stuff, but i forgot my login for guild wars =(

i can't afford borderlands 2 this year =/ not with the burrlet on the way. as it is, though, TL2 and GW2 (which someone bought for me) will be dominating what little time i will have over the next few months, so it's just as well i've gotta wait on BL2.

it's pretty hard to recommend upgrades when you don't tell me what he's running. what gpu, ram, and cpu are in it? how old is it? i would not recommend upgrading to any AMD chip at this point. some of the numbers look ok, but real-world performance is lacking. that said, i wouldn't pay less than 100$ for a CPU on a gaming machine, so there's that too. the APUs that AMD is selling is OK if you know you can't go with a graphics card, but who builds a gaming machine with no graphics card? it wouldn't make any sense.

read this for my opinion on hybrids. i am of the opinion that, since laptops should never be primary storage, SSDs are always the better option. they're more durable to the dings and knocks that laptops often take, they're exceptionally fast, they generate little heat, and they last as long as the laptop if not more, whereas standard HDDs are expensive for the size, noisy, slow, and susceptible to most of the environmental issues that laptops are exposed to. a 120gb Vertex 3 or Agility 3 or Enhanced Cronos is 85$. this is stupid cheap. buy that instead. my desktop primary is a 120gb SSD, and not only does it boot W7 cold in 30s, i've got six games (including two MMOs) on it and don't have issues with space or loading times. get an external for heavy storage.

release in two weeks! who hasn't preordered yet and wants to do a group buy?

blues are fine for general use. HDDs have come pretty far in the last year or so, honestly, as the removal of most of the taiwanese factories from the production line forced them to actually fix the issues plaguing their factories (and in turn, the drives themselves). i'm fine with most of the new seagate drives, and the offbrands are decent if nothing else. i still prefer caviar, though, over other drives if price is equal.

the HDD should be the same as any other one...just plan on formatting it when you get it out. blu-ray drive, no. honestly you can usually sell the whole pile of parts on ebay or craigslist for ~50$-75$ if you really want.

i'm going to come up with awesome, that's what!

well, shoot - i didn't see this thread for a few days and now i'm two days behind on mixing. gotta catch up!

i am so excited!

i should point out that the thread was 52 emails long before i told him to put up (buy the stuff) or shut up (go away) =)