Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

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Originally Posted by Warsaw

You might be surprised. In one year? No. In Two years? No. In three years? Maybe. Four years? Probably.

Also, remember that gaming is one of the most intensive applications, too. Unless you intend to fold, decode/encode tons of ripped video, or otherwise do some serious simulation, you aren't going to see the benefits. Your feeble human reflexes can't tell the difference between one nanosecond and three. As far as using 3D modeling applications and 2D graphics software, that's GPU-accelerated anyways.

It doesn't matter if you don't intend to upgrade for a good long while. If you don't have to drop the extra $150 on a motherboard later, why do so?

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Except it's likely that I will have to, since I doubt I'll be upgrading until at least two steps after 1155/2011

Well, you asked for opinions, and you got mine. I wouldn't want to blow my cash on a socket that was obsolete before it was even released. 1156 is and has always been the wrong way to go for anyone serious about his computer's longevity.

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Originally Posted by ThePlague

So the questions arise; should I buy a new graphics card, and have all of my other parts bog it down? Or should I buy the parts and have my graphics card bog them down?

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Get the parts and upgrade the video card at a later point.
They might be bogged down but replacing a video card is alot cheaper than buying new parts you'll want to upgrade at a later date anyway.

Alright, thanks.

e: What's people's opinions on gaming mice? The one I currently have is making my hand cramp lately, so I just bought this, along with those PC parts I previously linked to. What really got me into buying that was the precision aim and the adjustable back.

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Originally Posted by ThePlague

Alright, thanks.

e: What's people's opinions on gaming mice? The one I currently have is making my hand cramp lately, so I just bought this, along with those PC parts I previously linked to. What really got me into buying that was the precision aim and the adjustable back.

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To be honest you don't actually need all those high DPI and ergonomics and so on to be good in an FPS - I know a guy who uses a cheap 3 button Microsoft mouse and gets a 2:1 k/d ratio in COD4.

Nevertheless, I love the way these mice just fit my palm perfectly and are quite comfortable to hold for hours at a time. I find the on-the-fly adjustable precision and all that to be a bit of a gimmick, have yet to see it really affect my actual skill in game, but you can't beat the ergonomics of these. I use a Steelseries Ikari Laser, bought it at almost $30 off, pretty happy with it apart from its lack of side-to-side scrolling. It's actually quite difficult to feel comfortable with normal mice again once you've used a Steelseries Ikari Laser.

Oh, and there's the showing-off aspect, as is the case with the rest of the PC assuming it's a custom build. Yes, that $60+ Logitech or Steelseries or Saitek is ultimately doing the same damn thing as a $5 surplus store mouse, but hey, if bragging about your CPU and video card isn't enough, there's the mouse!

I use a Razer Plasma Diamondback, but Razer doesn't make mice like they used to. They've gone from dense, high-quality plastics to light, chintzy shit that breaks in three months unless you are willing to drop more than $80. That said, I do like the Mamba and current iteration of Lachesis. Both felt good in my hand, and had decent weight. The Lachesis has customizable lighting. :D As for the R.A.T., I've never really fancied it. Too many greeblies. The Logitech G5x is pretty good.

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Originally Posted by Warsaw

You missed the point. I'm not talking about performance. I'm talking about longevity. Socket 1156 has always been an evolutionary dead end and doesn't provide any of the benefits that 1366 does apart from supporting Hyperthreading in its CPUs. Socket 1366, however, is going to be gone in a few months as Socket 2011 takes its place.

My point is that he won't be able to upgrade later for a reasonably (well, as reasonable as Intel gets) unless he uses Socket 1155, 2011, maybe 1366, or AM3. I don't know about you, but when I build a PC I make sure that I can upgrade it in the future for as little as possible.

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With my experience of upgrading and i and alot of people i know have done it for a long, long time. Is that most upgrades are done in chunks.

For instance i bouht my q6600 so it would last me for a long long time and i'd be able to upgrade ect when i needed to, however when it came down to it, the chipsets had changed and it was useless, by buying mid range or high end shit most people are expecting 2-3 years outta their PC these days, which isn't as big an ask as it used to be. i know i got a hell of alot of miles outta my old 8800GTX. so much that even when i upgraded the main shit (CPU, Ram Mo board) in a single upgrade i kept the 8800 for another year afterwards before moving on.

Things like GPU's and HD's get upgraded sporadically, But as for Motherboard, CPU and ram Dont, they tend to be tied together pretty much.

Again, unlike 1156, LGA 775 was a very long-lived platform. With the 1156, you can't upgrade in chunks because by the time you've finished going around, it's not supported anymore. 1366 has had a somewhat longer life, but it's going out the door in a few months, too. I'm just saying if you are going to be building a new rig, then make the base components (CPU and motherboard) be the ones you can keep around for awhile.

By chunks i mean, CPU, motherboard and Ram is all done at the same time.

90% of all upgrades to these parts i've seen are done like that.

Case in point, the plague who posted just a little while ago is doing that exact upgrade

And it worked for me, except I bought a regular motherboard(not micro ATX) and had to buy a new case (Antec 300). In the end it was a good decision anyway. Now all I need to do is save up for a new graphics card.