Diddums

I'm genuinely intrigued to see what it'll do when it's complete. Although the tech is getting on a bit it was all seriously high end kit when it was released so should still compete with mid to high end kit nowadays. 2x980 seems to be on par with a 2080ti, but this is obviously very driver dependent. Even Nvidia and AMD have given up on multi-gpu stuff as it's a complete clusterfuck for drivers and generally needs a lot of spoon feeding to keep it running smoothly, rendering it pointless for all but the enthusiasts.

I've been using my trusty old 2500k with 8gb of DDR3 and and an R9 290 4gb for years. To put this in to some perspective, the R9 290 was bought a few weeks after our first Eurogamer meet and the 2500k a few years before that. It still works fairly well, runs anything and some games quite well, but there are titles out there which are starting to seriously stress the poor 2500k. I overclocked it to 4.4ghz, it's perfectly stable and has run like this for a few weeks with no problems and never going above 62deg. An upgrade has always been in the back of my mind but I've never thought I game enough on PC to justify spending over a grand on new stuff, despite you guys buying me games to get me back in to PC gaming. Star Citizen really hammered home how old this beast it getting and truth be told it sort of soured the taste a bit because I was gifted this awesome game by awesome people and couldn't even join them on it. Nevertheless, I spotted some old gaming PCs lying in my boss' storage at work. They looked lost, forlorn and like they hadn't been touched in years, so I asked what he wanted to do with them. I was told "take them, just wipe the drives" (midget porn? idk). Not knowing what I was getting apart from one very obviously being an Alienware Area 51 and the other an Origin PC, I gladly took them off his hands. Some photos: The Origin PC, cased in a beautiful, if slightly tatty Corsair Obsidian case (this was like a £400 case years ago): The Alienware. This case looks pretty but I can't stand it, where the fuck do I put my feet? Side note: This thing is heavy. I don't mean a little porky, I mean heavy. So that was out instantly, impractical, overweight, old, and nothing on top. A bit like me then. This is where things start to get interesting. I took this photo and only properly studied it a few days later. The keen eyed amongst you will notice a few things: Blue USB ports, so it's USB 3. It's not that old then. Core i7. I wasn't sure of the exact architecture, but I remember when Sandy Bridge came out, Intel changed their sticker so you knew it was a Sandy Bridge from the outside. I never looked in to this one, but Alienware tends to be high spec stuff. Another little detail which I'm sure you're all screaming about by now (I'm such a little tease aren't I?) is that it has two graphics cards: My interest was firmly piqued at this point, and excitement started building a bit. My hopes were for a 2600k, maybe 16gb of DDR3 and a pair of GTX 680s. This however gave me a little taster: Well, I can now confirm, having stripped all this stuff down, that the Alienware had two GTX 980s in SLI, 32gb of DDR4 (!), and a Haswell-E i7 5930k sitting handily under a closed loop water cooler which is OEM but a bit of the ol' scratch'n'sniff revealed it to be an Asetek, which is pretty decent, so I'll be keeping it for now. As you can tell however, this thing is dusty. Like the inside of Susan Boyle's coin purse dusty. This is going to need a load of work. The case is a load of wank so that's going in the bin. The motherboard is also some OEM jobbie but it's made by Foxconn who make tons of good stuff so it can't be that bad. The PSU is a Dell (Dell makes Alienware) 1200w jobbie, but it's amazingly enough 80 Plus gold rated (which apart from Platinum, is the highest quality rating you can get). It's also fully modular and has obviously fed this hungry beast with power for years so it's going to get a clean up and used if it'll fit (it's some weird shape, but looks like it'll work). The Origin contained the i7 2600k I wanted, 16gb of DDR3 and a single GTX 580. The PSU is a Corsair 850w non-modular so this will be plan B. Amazingly, the motherboard in this system is one I lusted after for years: An Asus P8-P67 Pro, which was pretty much the king of the hill when Sandy Bridge (both my i5 2500k and this i7 2600k are Sandy Bridge chips) was launched. The case however, is beautiful. So, time to tear it all to pieces and get to work. The motherboard seems to be a standard ATX form factor so fits perfectly in to the Corsair case. Some of the connections are questionable, such as the audio connector which is slap-bang in the middle of the motherboard so will need a bit of creativity to get it to look neat: The age difference between the case and the motherboard is fairly significant, so there are connections on both which the other doesn't accommodate. The case has Firewire, which by the time the Alienware was made, was consigned to the history books, and the case doesn't have USB3 connectivity whereas the motherboard has the interface for it, so I may need to get creative on that front too. The Haswell E CPU is considerably larger than the Sandy Bridge too: The 5930k has 50% more cores at 6, and the same for threads at 12, and it will clock fairly high so it'll run circles around this 2600k. These aren't pretty sticks, but what we're looking at here are 4x 8gb DDR4 2133mhz sticks of RAM: Aaaand installed: The graphics cards were seriously dirty and needed a bit of extra TLC: Time for a good stripdown for a clean and rebuild: Here's a comparison of before and after: Side note: the build quality of these things is amazing. Props to Nvidia. The SLI bridge is such an odd component, these things are literally fancy plugs and cost a fucking fortune: And installed: And that's where I'm at now. Yes the CPU is installed and no there's no cooler on it as I have no thermal paste so will grab some tomorrow. I might also pull the 980s apart and redo the paste on them too. The CPU is just to prevent the pins getting bent. To give you an idea of how neglected and dirty these components were, here are a few photos: So that's first on the list for tomorrow, then do the thermal paste, clean and install the power supply, sort out the storage and optical drives, give it a last clean and see what she does. I'll probably benchmark my current system so I have a proper comparison in terms of performance. This has been a bit of a road of self-discovery again if I'm honest, due to various personal reasons I sort of lost my soul for a few years and had zero inspiration to do anything, so I just sort of drank a lot and played loads of video games. Now in my new job, having weekends off, having less debt and being able to afford things again, I can feel my soul coming back and this little session this afternoon has shown me again how much I love this stuff. Really looking forward to carrying on tomorrow Cheerio!

PC Format died years ago, but I think Custom PC is still going, that's the one to go for, absolutely excellent magazine.

Ooooooh, which one? PC format and Custom PC are the two I used to buy. Every month, without fail.

Just wait goddammit. You kids these days are far too impatient

Thanks all, and happy birthday to Brede and Playertd

They're popular in south africa because everyone has android over there so they just work. When a new one is released everyone bitches about compatibility but Garmin always sort it within a couple of weeks. One thing to be aware of is that inter-app compatibility is its weak spot. If you're using some thing like Myfitnesspal then make sure it works. Build quality is fantastic.

This game is shit.

And now you're stuck with us. Soz m8.

This. This is why I come to the internet.

Sup Clive, how's things dude? All is well here, still got quite a few of the old guard around, loads of new faces too. Still the best community in the world, even Auptyk popped in at one point. Still going strong

Dave your budget is ridiculous, that's far too much! Also, as I mentioned before there are quite a few bew bits of tech on the horizon so you'd be nuts to buy now. I'd highly recommend waiting a month and readdressing this otherwise you're just gonna be kicking yourself when the new stuff hits and the old stuff goes for much cheaper. I'll keep you posted

Diddums and I* And yes, why the fuck not.

Listen to hardstyle like normal people ffs. oh and welcome to the forum

Oh jesus, please forgive me, I know not what I do. Fairy's muff. If you want that sweet sweet o2 then go ham.

I watched it all whilst cleaning the house and it just confirms all my suspicions. It's a rushed, half arsed, last chance hurrah from a dying studio. RIP Bioware, you were once epic.

Why not just buy an air cooler? No need for water cooling unless you’re overclocking, even then my 2500k is overclocked to 4.4ghz on air and rarely breaks 60deg. From memory your Ivy Bridge also runs cooler than my Sandy.

We absolutely rekt last night. It's immense to get back in to it after a long break. I don't give a shit about the PVE, nightfalls, nonnadat crap. Just hopping in and playing catchup to Nick was amazeballs.

I don't get Booooooooo'd without a fight. Game on motherfucker.

We've had a few sneaky little buggers in here lately, one only sneaking his link to a direct competitor to FG (well, we all know there's no competition to FG but we'll just call it that) a week after signing up. We, the most amazing community in the world, need to up our game to prevent being used as a billboard for pussy ass links. A quick guide: Look at bios. Link? Report it. Look at avatars. Logo? Report it. Look at account background. Logo? Report it. Look at signature. Link? Report it. Anyone who reports a bad guy will get an internet cookie from none other than the Diddmeister himself. You heard it here folks.

At this point it's more likely to get my coin by a factor of a thousand compared to Anthem. (That and I just want to live down my fucking fuckity fuckup of Division 1).

Yet. We play the long game.

99.99999999 it's the PSU. in the mean time, try booting off one ram stick. Ram sticks don't fail in pairs so try boot on one, if fails, try next one. Also. When your PC boots it will beep. Listen to the beeps, they are a code and will tell you what the problem is if the mobo isn't fucked. What motherboard you got?

Dude. Enough already. I know, you want that original feeling back from when you joined FG and we were all on Destiny. I know. I get it. It was also a very fond era of gaming history for me too but you need to remember it was many, many years ago now. People have had kids, people have lost loved ones, people have changed careers, and you need to adapt, not constantly try get everyone on the same game all the time because it's not going to work and you're just frustrating yourself. These things come and go. I've had these times in WoW, MW2, Black Ops 2, Destiny, and now I'm chilling, waiting for the next big one. You can't force this, it has to come naturally. Let it go. Those glory days will return, I promise, but you need to let it come on its own, not constantly look for it and try force others to join you. It ain't gonna happen. As for Anthem, Angry Joe's latest vid highlights for me what a crock of shit it is, and AJ is the Youtuber I resonate most with. The game, as it stands now, is a definite no for me. I am impatient enough as it is and this would drive me up the wall. If they fix it I might have another look, but this will never be a £60 game for me.

So it's a load of broken wank then. Fair enough. Lee you bought the season pass yet?