New gaming rig + whats everyone playing?

General
1

So about 2 months ago when discussing tactics during the starting phase with my dota2 teammates on how we were going to take the game within 30 minutes, my new kitten suddenly decides to jump up on my computer desk, knock over a half full bottle of water, which yes, you guessed it, toppled off the desk, landed upside down on the horizontal topside exhaust fan of my gaming rig, and half a litre of fresh, pure cold ice water rained down onto my graphics card and motherboard.

An initial diagnoses found that although only those two items were destroyed, as I had built it up as the very first core i7’s were released it was all gen 1 tech and it would be impossible or far too expensive to try and find a gen 1 motherboard to piece all the old gear back together. So, although I dont do nearly as much gaming as I used to, im STILL waiting for infinity and it may be the last game I ever really sink myself in to and so decided I will do one final gaming rig refresh. I ended up going with an A97, 16GB Ram, 2GB GTX 760, core i5 CPU with a few terabytes of storage. I bought farcry 4 pretty much just to have something to play, and although I wasnt expecting too much to be new i’ve always loved the series and am enjoying it a lot so far.

Hopefully this rig will be enough to run Infinity in great detail when it launches in 2056. I intend to play it from a room I will have pre booked at the Chinese owned international space station.

I was wondering though what other games people are playing? The missus is working all through christmas and new years and so i’ve got a fair bit of time upcoming to kill with weeks off work. All I play is dota2 (getting bored of it) and farcry4 now. I’m not the biggest fan of delving into space sims unless its really got everything I want, so i’ve stayed away from a few of the titles that have come out recently. I invested several years of my life into eve online so…dont even start :slight_smile:

Looking forward to seeing some progress soon. “take my money already”…

Scud

2

I made a topic for PC specs a while back. Your PC Specifications for Battlescape

I had hoped for that thread to be used more but it kind of got buried. You should post there to bring it back ; )

As for games, I don’t play any atm. The only game I’ve actually tested on my computer is Wolfenstein: TNO and it was mainly because I wanted a DOOM beta key. To tell you the truth, the only two games I care about are DOOM and Infinity. btw, nice computer!

3

I have a laptop that can’t run modern games. Minecraft seems to run fine though so I play mostly that.

I’m going to wait for Infinity before I buy a decent gaming computer. I was going to get it for Elite Dangerous but once it turned out they don’t have planetary landing yet (if ever) I decided to wait.

4

So that’s how PC killers look like … those distinct lines, the terror in that face …

My rig “still” runs on the first generation of i7. I even got the extreme version in it. It looks puny for nowadays standard but still is good enough today for almost anything.
I plan to go all new next year. Newest CPU, DDR4, PCIE SSD but will keep my GTX 680 for another some years.

At the moment I’m playing a little Space Engineers. Also nearly completed The Banner Saga (really good …) and Child of Light.

See more here …

1 Like
5

yes I did play a bit of space engineers right before the old rig died. I liked it initially, but it became boring relatively quickly. The larger servers were just endlessly trolled and the small private servers got boring after not very luck. Space Engineers as an MMO could have been really cool.

6

Planning similar if budget permits. My old i7 920 has held up like a beast even with the high overclock it has on it, tbh a little surprised it hasn’t fried.

It can be a lot of fun if you go into one of the large PVP survival servers with a group of friends, it certainly gives a similar experience though you have to be ready to lose everything as usual with any pvp sandbox or player run server environment. Now that blueprints can be used in survival there’s a lot more you can take with you though, if only your designs and planning (and engineering).

Been playing a little bit of space engineers and not much else lately, life rearing it’s ugly head as usual getting in the way of my video games.

7

I’ve actually been playing Baldur’s Gate lately. I just got to the final chapter, and realized too late that I was essentially making my way toward the final battle. I’m not done actually playing the game yet, but I’m running out of story! So, I think I’ll be starting over and trying a few other character builds before I move on to BG2.

My Corsair Vengence K95 RGB keyboard just showed up on my doorstep today, which is the first big addition to my computer since I built it back in the spring. It’s weird adjusting to using a mechanical keyboard again. I haven’t had one in over a year now. It’s pretty swank (and I loves me some gimmicky rgb leds), but it just feels weird to type on.

But the colours, children! The colours!

8

I rebuilt my machine almost completely last year. I do a considerable amount of gaming, so I felt obliged to sink a fair amount into this rig, replacing motherboard, CPU, and GPU, as well as replacing my two different monitors with two identical monitors.

I got the ASUS Sabertooth Z97 motherboard, paired with an Intel i5 4670k. To round that off, I got the ASUS DirectCU II GTX 780. I was tempted by the (at the time) upcoming 780 Ti, but my wallet started screaming “aw hell no” at me. I’m glad I didn’t, as that would have been a stupid amount of money for a card that the Maxwell series is making obsolete.

To resolve my panel problem, I replaced two differently sized (but otherwise fine) Fujitsu-Siemens monitors with a couple of Dell Ultrasharps. They were particularly good purchases for their price, but still accounted for about a third of the cost of the upgrade.

I’m currently using a G19 keyboard and a G9x mouse. I quite like the GamePanel on the Logitech keyboards, so if they release a quiet-ish mechanical keyboard with the GamePanel, I might make a switch.

I’ll also probably replace my case at some point, as it suffered an injury when I lifted it rather clumsily, pulling the top panel off and yanking out the LEDs and power switches in the process.

An SSD at some point would be nice too, but for the amount of storage I need, the current prices are far too steep for me.

EDIT: Almost forgot, I’m keenly eyeing up the Saitek X52 Pro to enhance my Elite experience. However, I recently bought the Moto 360, and I can’t really justify spending money of more computer peripherals at the moment, especially when I already have a functioning joystick.

9

@Kichae I also own one accompanied by the M95 mouse. The K95 is truely a monster of a keyboard! Be sure that you have both of the screws for it because when I received mine it was short a screw. I filled out a form for another screw and they ended up sending me a whole other wrist rest.

@Topperfalkon Dell is the best when it comes to monitors. The downside is that if someone wants a 4K experience then they’re probably better off buying elsewhere. Dell is a competitive company but the 4K displays they offer are expensive compared to similar monitors from other brands.

10

@Ovrki1 Oh yeah, both wrist rest screws were there. So far, I’m fairly impressed. It’s a very minimalist keyboard by my standards, but I’m enjoying it so far. I also plan on getting the M95 mouse (I had originally ordered it, as it was on sale, but had a typo in my billing address that locked me out of my credit card/bank account, and the sale had ended by the time I managed to get my accounts restored). Just waiting for it to go on sale.

I have so many macro keys, I don’t even know where to begin! My last gaming keyboard had 6, and I never even used them!

11

The funny part is I don’t use the macro keys either but they’re there if I ever decide when it’s useful to do so. The software is programmed to be used in conjunction with the M95 so that’s a cool feature. What gets me is I don’t even use half of the buttons on the M95 but, well, you get the point. Corsair rocks! Corsair is my favorite PC related company.

12

Yeah, I’d possibly go to ASUS for 4K if I was heading in that direction. However, I don’t plan on going any bigger than 23", and increasing the pixel density of a fixed dimension monitor stops making sense after a while.

I’m very happy with Dell IPS monitors at the moment though, I’m glad I was convinced into getting them.

13

I’ve been wondering about your thoughts when it comes to a multiple monitor setup. You say that you use a dual setup instead of a triple piece set. Do you think two is, in a way, better than three? I mean, is that what you prefer? Keep in mind, I have no experience in a multiple monitor setup and I really do not see myself ever doing so but it’s interesting that you go for dual over triple.

14

I can’t speak for a 3 monitor setup, and I won’t pretend to speak for Topper, but I also use dual monitors, though mostly for work. 99% or more of my gaming is done on a single screen. I’ve never felt the need to add an extra screen, and just don’t see the cost associated with a 3rd monitor as worthwhile. Maybe if I had a 3+ monitor setup I’d feel differently, though.

15

My thoughts are similar to Kichae actually. It’s mostly for allowing me to work on more stuff side-by-side than it is for gaming. Aside from that, I use it to keep chat windows or system monitoring stuff open on a second screen whilst playing on the first screen. I don’t think playing games on two screens is practical, unless it’s like SupCom, which uses additional screens for different tactical views.

16

What comes to mind when I think of a multi-monitor setup is a single image being broadcast over more than a single screen. I tend to forget it’s possible to use certain programs on one screen and others on another. Usually those who I’ve seen take advantage in gaming using multiple screens are people who play racing simulators.

17

Right, and a 3 monitor setup makes sense in a racing simulator as they’re used for peripheral vision. They might make sense in other vehicle based games for the same reason (flight simulators, I think, get fairly good use out of 3+ monitor setups as well), though I, personally, really don’t understand how people can tolerate the gaps generated by bezels and whatnot. That would drive me nuts.

1 Like
18

I feel someone needs to mention EVE Online in this thread, as that game can easily use up two full monitors for potentially relevant UI elements, with the third (central) one being necessary if you want to be able to see the game at the same time.

But yeah, other than EVE I personally find that around 2 megapixels provides a good balance of detail and performance in most modern games. Sure, it’s nice to have a second monitor to keep track of who’s talking in TeamSpeak and what-not, but personally I prefer using either overlays (which are closer to my centre of vision) or laptops (which are cheaper when considering framerate) to do that.

19

oh I know! I guess I could see it more easily tolerated by someone like you or I in a racing game by justifying the gaps as a cars windshield frame xD

20

I have exactly the same problem, I wouldn’t be able to cope with the bezels.