I want to build you a computer

[Schwaltzvald]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=2401305&st=compressed+air&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1051384115313

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882889003.

http://www.officedepot.com/catalog/search.do;jsessionid=0000cpqtqgUBvsLD67iUZ6a49on:13ddq0tfm?fkey=null&Ntt=compressed+air

I'm sure walmart/kmart bound to have something in their electronics departments

[Gollgagh]

well see I've asked around and most places haven't even heard of it before

north carolina is tech-retarded

Edited August 20, 2009 by Gollgagh

[Schwaltzvald]

north carolina is tech-retarded

NOW I KNOW WHERE YOU LIIIIIIIVVVVVEEEEE >:J

In any rate ya need some one from the board to send out a parcel of it? I'm sure you can order some from Amazon if it comes to that.

[Neo Samus]

well see I've asked around and most places haven't even heard of it before

north carolina is tech-retarded

If you go to Walmart or Target, the cans of air are usually near the blank discs.

[Gollgagh]

nah it's cool

[prophetik music]

i get air from office depot/max and best buy.

i use air pretty often - around once every four months for a complete cleaning (like, motherboard and psu and drives come out, i blow it out, let the wind do some cleaning, and then put it all back in). i keep an anti-static wipe thing near my desk to wipe out my cpu fan often, as well - usually every time i take the side panel off.

[Inimitable]

As long as this is bumped I'm gonna tag it to remind myself to take a look in a few months when I've got some graduation money...

Edit: Yeah, graduating mid-December.

Edited August 28, 2009 by Inimitable

[prophetik music]

when are you graduating? in december?

[prophetik music]

bumpalicious. just sent escariot some info on upgrading from my old hardware i sold him...8 months ago, i think. i sold him what was the guts of my computer at the time so i could upgrade to newer stuff.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Hey Meph, I don't know if you also deal with laptop building, but maybe you could give me a recommendation for one(or maybe build one).

I'm wondering what's the best graphics card I can get if I were to spend a little under a grand on a laptop. I've been looking around benchmarks and I'm thinking either the GeForce 130M or the 260M. You have any kind of recommendations?

[Level 99]

Brad, I'm gonna start a rival business and steal all your customers away. FYI.

:nicework:

[Schwaltzvald]

Brad, I'm gonna start a rival business and steal all your customers away. FYI.

:nicework:

But I thought they wanted PCs not easy bake ovens.

[Level 99]

But I thought they wanted PCs not easy bake ovens.

Heh, you'd have to know me and Brad to get the joke I guess. He came to me with computer questions when we first became friends, and now look at him! I closed up my little PC build shop ages ago, and his is thriving. The student has truly become the teacher...

And I don't make anything really these days, besides music and semi-pointless forum posts.

Actually, an on-topic question for the Prophet of Mephabio: whats your experience with the i5/i7 range, if any? I'm considering upgrading from a Core 2 Quad Q6600 and don't know if it's worth the additional price of the MB, Ram, and possibly a new PSU.

[prophetik music]

i remember calling stevo in october of 2007 asking why my computer wouldn't recognize my brand-new 300gb seagate hard drive. two months later i did my first 1500$ build, and three months after that i hit twenty systems built. what a joke =)

i7s are fucking gorgeous, particularly for what you'd need. spend the cash for the good mobo and the zalman zm650 (i think that's what i have, it's a 650w psu with the guts to put out 750w on occasions and 700w consistently without really straining, and it's an 80+ certified brick...virtually identical to the 750w model in design with one less rail) and you're set for a long, long time. i5s are even better, if you don't mind throwing the cash down for a higher clockrate.

i don't know much about lappy graphics cards, but if the m260 is anything like the gtx260 in design, it'll be awesome. i generally don't suggest spending the cash on a gaming laptop since it'll overheat constantly and drain your battery extensively. if you can get one with a discrete graphics card and a lower-level integrated one that you can switch between, that's a good idea because it gives you a ton more options for power management.

[Salluz]

I know that it's a tangent, but my Seagate of 250GB died on me if I am not mistaken.

[Escariot]

I know that it's a tangent, but my Seagate of 250GB died on me if I am not mistaken.

I think you should get a new hdd

[prophetik music]

I know that it's a tangent, but my Seagate of 250GB died on me if I am not mistaken.

mine wasn't a 7200.11, which is the model that craps out on everyone - it was a 7200.8, actually - but seagate's completely lost my trust recently.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

So I guess this is where I should post it.

Gang, why should I want to game at high(above 768 vertical) resolutions? It seems to me that an 8800 GTX can do the job just fine. What makes anything higher so special? Are there new DX10 features on a 260 or a 9800 that quite frankly nothing else can do?

[prophetik music]

not really sure what you're asking. if you've got a big monitor capable of displaying larger resolutions, then the best picture possible on that monitor is done using the highest resolution in-game, so that there's no stretching taking place. playing a game at 768 when it's on a monitor capable of 1050, 1080, or 1200 on the vertical side means you'll get a picture that's far less clean. an 8800gtx is horribly inefficient with power, too. not really worth the money, all told.

if you've got a large display, it's worth investing the 160-180$ into a gtx 260 core 216 (don't bother with a stock 260). it's a huge performance difference - think 40% different than a first-gen 8800gtx.

[SynthesizedStampede]

Don't necessarily want a computer built, but can anybody recommend me a good PCI (not Express ) video card?

[prophetik music]

they made a 3850 radeon card for the pci slot. beyond that, there's very little - the bandwidth limitations on the straight pci bus really, really limit what can be done without just having overkill. expect to pay a lot for a little, too - the nature of upper-tier pci graphics cards (upgrades made on a crappy and/or super-old pc by people who can't afford a full computer but have money to spend) means that you pay through the bloody nose.

edit: 4.3.2, page 28. the 3850 came out after i finished the faq, but most of the info still applies.

[Pyrion]

mine wasn't a 7200.11, which is the model that craps out on everyone - it was a 7200.8, actually - but seagate's completely lost my trust recently.

They largely lost my trust when they bought out Maxtor. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what the hell possessed them to make that stupid decision.

As for video cards, right now I'm a huge proponent of ATI, mainly because I went through three months of hell trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my GTX 285 (defective card) and 8800GT (shitty drivers). I got a few hours short of two weeks of uptime with my 8800GT before the drivers gave up, yet I'm staring at 17 days of uptime (and counting) on an ATI 4890 (XFX branding) with no problems.

[prophetik music]

graphics cards, mobos, power supplies, and the like are getting to the point where you go with your experiences with that particular brand. i have never had an issue with nvidia, and i'm all about the green machine - i've used an ati card once, out of thirty cards purchased (cheap HDCP-compatible tv box). go figure =)

[prophetik music]

bump. been a while.

[BardicKnowledge]

Brad, any chance of getting a discounted video card through you around black friday? I'm planning on spending around $150, and hoping that I can get a Radeon 4890 or the Nvidia equivalent for that due to thanksgiving sales (and the new line of cards just coming out making it relatively obsolete).