unreal25

I believe there are Clevos (not sure what's the name of the company building them) with high res matte screens. I game on an IPS (Dell U2412M) and it works equally well as any TN screen I used before. Even though in image quality and color saturation it actually falls behind RGB LED on M17x-R2 quite a bit. The reason is, I'm guessing, is that most people buying gaming laptops are fucking clueless (just browse around NBR and you'll get the idea) and fall for crap like i7 CPU while gaming on laptops with one of the worst screens ever (seriously, I used higher resolutions on my old Sony CRT screen ~15 years ago). Unless the consumers are educated (and I haven't seen either Dell HP or Lenovo doing anything on that matter; remember when they advertised their 6870M or whatever and claimed it gives "better" picture -- someone needs to educate them first ), I just don't see it happening.

Hi. You must be new in the GPU world. I don't think Skyrim ever really worked on my crossfire setup, despite claims that it has been "patched" multiple times.

GTX 780 sounds great! I think it'll be great even with current gen CPUs.

Well yeah everything that's not HiFi is bashed there. If I was buying stuff in the ~$80 range, I'd probably get something like this Amazon.com: Buying Choices: Audio-Technica ATH-M50 Professional Studio Monitor Headphones with Coiled Cable , but then again, I do listen to the music a lot. If you just use it for playing games, it really doesn't matter that much. I used Steelseries Siberia gaming headset and I was pretty happy with it for gaming, neglecting the fact that the pull-out microphone seemed to be braking after pulling it in and out for a while.

I mean don't get me wrong, they work fine with music too. The problem is -- as soon as you try something better it's hard to go back.

For gaming and watching movies pretty much anything will do and I doubt there will be that much difference between these models. Sennheiser you linked are $34 on Amazon with free shipping. Typically the pricier the better (with the exception of likes such as Razer, tho some their stuff is decent). That said, I doubt he needs a $500 headphones (Sennheiser HD 650), but Sennheiser is a good general brand for this kind of stuff but note that even $34 Sennheiser isn't going to be bedazzling. The reviews for this kind of stuff online are to be taken with a grain of salt. I mean we've all seen "the best XXX I've ever used". I'm sure it is mate, especially if all you used was cheap stuff then suddenly jumped to something 2x or 3x the price or either overpriced stuff maybe without good amplifier / with poor onboard audio etc. I haven't used any of the four you suggested, but I'd go either with Sony or Sennheiser in ~$60-$80 range. It should work great for gaming/movies.

The price "drops" can be very weird. For example, look at the CPUs. There's still the same price on Sandy Bridge i5-2500K as it was way back, and for some reason it costs exactly the same as i5-3570K. But, look on the bright side -- it could be way worse, like it is with smartphones.

Welcome to the computer world. It will happen regardless of what you buy now. In 5-7 years, It's hardly going to matter at all if you now buy i5-3570K or i7-3770K, or whether you bought GeForce 660 Ti or 680. Even in just ~two years you'll be able to buy a better GPU than say 680 GTX for a bit less money. Buying a piece of computer hardware NOW only to be used >= 2 years LATER... pretty much just wasting money. I really suggest you consider building your own, they're really not that difficult to put together on your own or just ask a friend or someone to show you. The only thing that wasn't as easy to put on for me was H60 cooling (I managed to strip one of the screw holes), but it works fine now. 680 GTX IMO makes sense if you want to play games on 2560x1440 resolution and SLI/CrossfireX if you have a multi-monitor setup (e.g. on my 660 Ti, FarCry 3, Bioshock Infinite work just fine on 1200p). For laptops it does make some sense, since most of them are either more difficult or cannot be upgraded at all. With a desktop, it takes what 5-10 minutes to upgrade most of the components, so it just seems kind of foolish to me not to use it. Other than that, you can always goof around with overclocking and keep running benchmarks with your new $2.5K purchase if that makes you feel happy, which is something I never really understood .

I'm afraid that by the time that happens, there'll already be what 1-2 new CPU architectures (probably applies to GPUs as well). Buying stuff for something that *might* happen few years ahead is IMHO waste of money. Then again, buying a pre-made $2K desktop is an equal waste too. Just for comparison Brian, how much did your stuff came out to?

I don't hear anything like that. TX650 psu here. Yeah, just RMA it, I heard their support is pretty good. Then again, it may be something specific with these high-power psu. It's kind of difficult to hear it even if they had with all the fan noise in stock configuration.

Haswell should be out in June/July 2013 if I remember correctly. Depends what do you plan to use the computer for. For games, it's probably a much better idea to go with stuff like Titan, but that also depends what resolution you're using, whether you have or want to have a multi-monitor setup etc. Yes! I also suggest considering doing it yourself... it's kind of fun too.

Looks pretty amazing IMO. But the multiplayer mode is probably what's going to make or break it.

Hah yeah it seems there's a reason this one costs more. Sorry to hear about them outsourcing their support. I only used their customer support once before this happened (I think; it was 5 years ago) and it was outstanding.

"Look at the size of that thing!" Well the fan speed is adjustable depending on where you connected the fan. If it's CPU_FAN as suggested in the instructions then it's adjustable either through BIOS or motherboard software (that's how it works on my Gigabyte).

Yeah it seems that this is more of a problem on IPS displays (I suppose because there the black is actually black ). Keep us posted about the replacement!

Pft. If only you came 5 years ago.

I'm not sure if this will work for you, but I've been using Slappa Velocity Matrix backpack for a while now and it's been holding ok despite heavy use. Here's how it fits M17x:

Yeah, not sure what are the price in Switzerland, but in the US the "best buy" was (IMO) i5 3570K (due to overclocking capability) for $200. Previously, it was I believe i5 2500K that was selling here like crazy. Yeah, AMD CPUs are what at least 1 generation behind Intel. Plus I wanted to invest more in other components. I went with nVidia card just for a change since I had AMD cards before but I also want to learn to do some CUDA programming. The one thing I'd really like to have (that I don't) is a projector. I have such a huge empty white wall right in front of my couch where I usually sleep, I'd love to be able to watch stuff while in bed.

Btw, what made you steer from your chosen path of AMD ?

That cooler is giant.

I got 100k lifetime ip on the EU West account I played since last Fall (I also have an NA account). If by easier you mean, mechanically less involved then yeah. There are lots of things that dota2 has better but gameplay-wise my experience was that dota2 is garbage in comparison how fluid and responsive gameplay in LoL is.

Two words: mechanical keyboard. The non-backlit versions are probably less prone to braking so may be a better choice if you don't really need a backlighting. I would highly highly HIGHLY suggest you to give a try to a mechanical keyboard. I cannot stress this enough. I've used only two so far though. I had the "legendary" IBM Model M waaay back when I was a big noob so I gave it away (my mom got it for me from her work when they were getting rid of old computers). Right now I am using Logitech G710+ and I have to say I am delighted with it. The typing feel is miles ahead of a crappy Dell $10 keyboard that I use at work. I think its worth ordering it online if you can and returning it later for a fee just to try it out in case you don't like it since I found it difficult to find them in stores. I have used two of the gaming keyboards that aren't mechanical: Razer Lycosa and and Logitech G15. They are OK overall -- Lycosa has a particular rubbery feel on keys that has a tendency to peel of fairly quickly. I've used Lycosa for about 2 months and ASDW and left shift look pretty worn out (atm I have no clue what to do with it -- I am planning just selling it on eBay for ~$10 + whatever the shipping will cost). Logitech G15 is more durable in that respect and the typing feel is a little different even though both have rubber domes. They aren't bad I just think they're worth quite a bit less than their retail price. The ones you linked has some very cool features, but to repeat what I think of them. 1) I literally never look at the keyboard when I am gaming. It would distract me so much from the action that is happening that it would probably result in me getting killed in game. If I wanted something extra, I would probably want something more along these lines: 2) I simply can't trust with anything fancy like that made by Razer. They have some good stuff (some of their mouse pads and Deathadder) but they had some big flops, big bugs with e.g. Razer Mamba that never got fixed etc. If it was made by Logitech, OK. Razer? No way. If I wanted to buy something that's not mechanical, I would look for a Thinkpad-style desktop keyboard (I really love the nice feedback feel they give, unlike the more shallow classic notebook keyboards). At the end, a lot is going to be about your personal preferences. If you really feel that a certain keyboard "feels" better to you -- than it's all that matters. But be very that a lot of this "gaming" gear is often built with flashy lights and cool looks, but with parts that are of questionable or sub-par quality.

I tried it for 10 minutes then uninstalled it. That said, everyone I know else seems to like it. Maybe I just got sick of the whole genre during the Diablo2 era and got remind of that during Diablo3.

Sounds great! Let us know how you like it once it arrives and you have more chance to try it out.

Yeah the $30 I paid for Deathadder on eBay is truly outrageous. I mean... who can possibly afford something like that these days?