Hyperstrike

Yep. My Fire/Rads, whose bread-and-butter are Choking Cloud, Hot Feet, and mostly AoE attacks? I'd never even CONSIDER taking them in for something like this.

Good! Because if you knew even half of what we know we'd have to send out strike teams to take you out.

For your own good of course...

If you look at his video again, notice there's a red "objective" arrow there.

Take a look here.
Grab the suggested information.
Start a help thread in the Technical Issues subforum
Paste the info obtained in there.

This'll give potential help-givers a leg up in making a preliminary diagnosis.

Nothing says "Uh. We pancaked up." like "Here's a power, NOW DON'T USE IT!"

Right, but my correction wasn't about general grammatical usage. But just about the usage of the mnemonic itself.

I'm reminded of russian "quota" nails.

No it's "I before E except after C".

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Holy crap! I legitimately corrected Arcana on something?


WIN!

Rule #1: Make sure the case fits your needs.
Rule #2: Make sure the case fits your budget.
Rule #3: If you have satisfied #1, and think you can flex around #2, buy whatever the hell you want.

Sorry but no.

I play during the day while at work. The owners, my bosses, don't mind. Just so long as I get my work done and my subordinates get theirs done.

This does mean, when someone asks me something I AFK. Even if I'm about to die in a mish. I don't even turn around and run to a safe spot. I just AFK and die. BFD, XP is easy. Finding jobs that pay like mine for the little I actually have to do? DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE! I have a better chance of winning the lottery, getting the Bughunter badge AND having Posi PERSONALLY auto-level a toon to 50 for me on Live, then fork over 10 billion Inf, 9999 Reward Merits, and a few thousand Alignment Merits all on the same day.

On the flip side, it's not fair for someone to be told they have to basically stand there with their thumb up their *** for an indeterminate length of time until I'm able to get back to the game (sometimes it can be more than an hour). And most of the time I'm running at a difficulty most SK'ed toons couldn't hope to finish without lots and LOTS of debt.

Yyyyesssss!

Agreed.

Yep. It's the only thing I'm missing on my current defense-capped Inv/SS (took MB for the bonuses). I still have it on my S/L capped build, and I always loved the proc damage on Taunt.

Me: *BURP*POINT*
Enemy: Oh! What he's said has traumatized me so! OW my poor widdle head!

And I miss being able to put it in my aggro aura!

Enemy: His very PRESENCE is so offensive it's causing me physical pain!

My build does both quite well. Replacing Taunt with another attack wouldn't really add to my DPS much as I already have a good attack chain going.

And on an Inv tank, you WANT to be pulling as many enemies in as you can handle.

Just set up monitors for your defense numbers and watch them doing this:

Sorry, but I have my own years and years (and year and years...crap, now I feel OLD!) of experience. This experience pretty much

I've built and owned more systems than I can conveniently count. Trust me, they're NOT "just the same". Yes, in some cases performance differences were noticeable only to the "I don't run games, I run BENCHMARKS" crowd. But there are differences in QOL between Intel and AMD platforms.

Moreover, for CoH, on a clock-for-clock basis, the performance difference between AMD and Intel is more than simply fractional percentage points.

If the person you're responding to is correct, why didn't you build an AMD rig?

Uh. No. Not everyone is going to want to deal with a liquid-cooled rig. Granted, there are sealed-loop systems out there. But they're only on par with some high end air coolers. If you want stupid levels of cooling, you would need to go with a custom liquid-cooled setup. And not everyone can (or wants to) hack that sort of thing. Especially with the periodic maintenance involved.

Without knowing what case you're talking about I can't comment on cooling properties. But cases, in most cases (pun intentional) are little more than cosmetic statements. Still, the difference between a $40 case and a $90-120 case can sometimes be startling. After having bled all over countless very cramped, hard-to-assemble cases, I've come to value ease of assembly.

Actually no. Listen to us. Simply don't take what we're saying at face value. We're merely part of the research process.

Would wind up saving him about $80 if he didn't need to piece and part the system together.

You want the crap scared out of you? Try full-immersion cooling. And yeah, it's EXACTLY what it sounds like.

Actually, outside of the "DIY Plumbers Specials", there are a couple nice self-contained and sealed liquid options out there. They're quiet (compared to air) and only slightly warmer than some top-end air solutions.

But yeah, seeing some of these guys playing around with quarts of glycol, system flushing, etc, I can TOTALLY understand how you'd suction-cup your butt to a chair at the mention of liquid cooling.

Honestly, with your budget, a separate soundcard isn't really advisable. And, unless you're a foofy audiophile, you aren't going to really be able to discern a major difference between a discrete card and the on-motherboard sound.

Also, in the recent past, I've dealt with a couple people with Xonar cards that've been getting flaky when used in conjunction with CoH.



Okay here's what I came up with. I've SLIGHTLY exceeded your $1000 budget cap. But bear with me.

First off, I'd say get the case first. It's got both an instant rebate AND a $10 Mail-In Rebate

Antec 900 Case $10 MIR
Antec 620W PSU
Asus P8Z68-V LE Motherboard
8GB (4GBx2) G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1600 Memory
Intel i5 2500K Boxed Processor (Comes with CPU Heatsink/Fan)
500GB Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Drive
Blu-Ray/DVD Reader/Burner
Basic Crappy Black Keyboard
Basic Mouse (Optical)
1 Copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM)
EVGA GTX 460 Video Card (BUY THIS LAST!)

All told: $1060. Maybe $1100 once the end-of-year instant rebates fold.

Also, if/when your tax return comes in, you may want to look at a small SSD to pair with your hard drive. Which is one of the reasons I'm recommending the z68 board. You can tack in a small SSD (32GB) on the z68 and have it work like a gigantic cache for your most-used programs on your system. Over the course of a week or two, the algorithm will track your usage and decide what to cache to the SSD. As it learns your usage, your system's storage response will speed up. Kind of like a manually constructed version of the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drives (except your SSD cache will be MUCH larger).

One thing about the motherboard though, when you get it, do yourself a favor and grab the very latest BIOS update that Asus provides. It should save you lots of weird behavior and the accompanying headaches such behavior engenders.

If you decide that'd be a "Nice thing to have" and can afford it, I'd recommend this drive.

And again, the reason I recommend leaving the video card to last is BECAUSE the new nVidia cards are due out very soon here. You might catch a break and be able to step up to buying a 560 instead.

Honestly, I'd recommend the 460 over the 550 anyhow. The difference is only $15 and the 460 still outperforms the 550 by about 12-15%.

I know you wanted two opticals. I'd say wait on the second one until your budget can take it. I chose the Blu-Ray so you get maximum utility out of it. You can basically read and burn pretty much any optical media you want.

The 900 is a nice, fairly roomy case. It already comes with several fans. If you need more, simply stop by your local electronics store and pick up 120mm fans to supplement (you'll have a couple free mount points).

I picked the Western Digital drive because I've had naught but good luck with them. I can't say the same for Hitachi, Seagate and Maxtor (also Seagate now). They aren't THE fastest drives out there (well, unless you're looking to buy 10,000 RPM Velociraptors), but they're nice, steady, stabler performers.

Why the i5 2500K? i5 because it's your best bang for the buck. 2500 because it's right in the middle of a decent price range. And the K because the cost difference between the overclock-friendly K chip and the standard 2500 was $10. Why not leave yourself an option for a small performance boost at some point to extend the life of the product?

G.Skill Memory, the memory picked is supposed to be compatible with the board (did the research) and I've had very good luck with G.Skill in my system builds over the last few years.

However, if you want the absolute guarantee of compatibility, go Crucial.

Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600: $50

And on Newegg the same RAM is $40

I just went for a basic keyboard and mouse. If you want something fancy-schmancy you can pick something out in your budget.

Also, if you want hook up your video card to a large-screen TV that doesn't have a DVI port, you'll likely need an HDMI to mini-HDMI cable. Mini-HDMI goes into the back of the card, HDMI goes to the TV. Then change TV source to HDMI.
If your TV's native resolution is 720p, set your resolution to 1366x768. You may be able to run higher, but text will be fugly and unreadable for you.
If your TV's native resolution is 1080p, you should be able to do 1920x1080 with few problems. If text is fugly and unreadable, fall back to 1366x768.

Hopefully this gives you a nice starting point.

As a guy who's built and owned multiple Athlon-based systems, I should pull off a glove and slap you with it.

And I've been building systems for decades. And, honestly, I think you're either lucky beyond belief or simply selectively editing your memory.

And an AMD Quad-core is overkill for CoH as CoH only scales to two threads. At which point, we're looking at performance per-core used.

Quite simply put, Intel's current offerings give enough of a performance boost for tasks relegated to the CPU to make it worthwhile to spend for the Intel platform. Anything under 10% is essentially trivial and within margin of error for any testbed.

Therefore it's quite handy to see that on a clock-for-clock basis, Intel's i5 offering delivers more than 10% greater CPU performance for a game like CoH.


Agreed.

What are the actual loads on all the rails though?
It's really easy to say "X watts total" and still be over on one of your rails.

More power to you. But as a system builder, I wouldn't recommend ASRock to anyone. End of story.


My concern isn't performance. It's reliability.

Turn up your graphics from low-res and bare ultra.

I play at 1920x1080 with settings at Ultra and then customized above that. Why should the OP have to play at some crummy low resolution simply to enjoy higher graphics settings?

As noted, it's more than name-brand preference. The initial suggestions made in this thread would yield a system that maintains acceptable performance at higher settings. Moreover, long experience on my part denotes a stability advantage, as well as greater time between system inception and obsolescence.

In which case the cost is ammortized out longer. It means they don't need to make a 4-digit purchase for a complete system for that much longer.

That's what was said when high levels of Ultra Mode started making people's video cards scream and beg for relief.

Remember, this isn't a DX game we're talking about. This is an OpenGL game that stresses a system and it's graphics apparat quite differently than DirectX games do.

Technically nothing is "required" period. You can still play at fugly settings and postage-stamp resolutions on an nVidia GT 8600 with a P4 and 2GB of RAM.

But if you're building a new system, you're not building for a low water-mark. Why not maximize your performance returns, so long as the system fits into one's budget?

Corsair? Corsair what? Your link is to G.Skill memory.

Also, you neglected an optical drive.

Honestly the OP should hit up my guide on asking for a new computer/components and fill it out. It'll help decide what if any, of the things you put in were needed or not (like the monitor).

I'm going to say that I just disagree with everything stated here and leave it at that.

Okay, on second thought, no, I'm not going to leave it.

AMD is a "cheap" option. It's NOT the best option for a gaming rig though.
Moreover, BECAUSE AMD is turning out slower systems, they will "age" and obsolete faster than a marginally more expensive Intel machine.

When the difference between a machine that lasts 2 years and one that lasts 3-4 is $70 bucks or so, just spend the extra money.

Moreover, the Athlon chips you're recommending are essentially last-generation product that's being supplanted by AMD's newer (but still inferior, and now with even higher power consumption!) chips. As such, these items are slowly going to filter off the market.

As to AMD chips being easier to mount a fan on?

Uh. WHAT?

Exactly how hard is it to push down four retention tabs until you get a "click"? Yes, some retention systems on 3rd party coolers can be crazy (I'm a battle-scarred Zalman veteran myself). But the basic Intel 1155-1156-1366 retention mechanism is stupidly simple.

And yeah, for most every day tasks, you won't notice the difference between an AMD and Intel chip when web browsing or checking your e-mail.

But when running high-physics settings in CoH at high resolutions, yeah, you're DEFINITELY going to be able to tell the difference simply by where "acceptable" performance lies at a given level of options settings.

And note that I haven't gotten into motherboard chipset stability comparisons between AMD and Intel-based boards. To say that Intel chipsets tend to be more stable than AMD is damning Intel with faint praise.

*KNOCKOUT BLOW!!!*
<Flying Hellion> I can see my house from here!