New Gaming Rig Time Again

My old one is almost 8 years old and is apparently feeling its age. Recent Windows Reliability Tool runs show several unknown hardware errors causing problems with my using the system with some of the apps I use.

I popped out for a look around and found a few options but over on PCGamer there was a pre-configured rig ready to go. The video card was quite a bit overpowered for my purposes but otherwise it would be a nice quick machine. I checked various sites I use, Newegg, Tigerdirect, Amazon, and even Best Buy. Ultimately everything but the CPU had the best price at NewEgg so I bit the bullet and paid the extra couple of bucks, buying it all at NewEgg.

Here’s the basic system with notes for the extra bits I wanted and followed by anything I purchased after I used this system a bit. I will note that I already have an IBM Keyboard, Logitech Trackball, Logitech 5.1 Speakers, and four Acer 23″ monitors. So this is in addition to existing bits.

As I’m doing more than gaming (and honestly, my gaming is somewhat mild considering), I added a second card to drive two of my 23″ Acer monitors. Plus as I do write code, I wanted to be able to spin up Virtual Machines for testing purposes so I added 16 Gigs more of RAM.

And again for programming, and because I wanted to get a 4K monitor, I added one. Generally monitors are less expensive at Tigerdirect however the 43″ 4K was on special and reviews showed it was a good monitor and good price. After using it for 6 months now, I 100% agree.

Finally I dropped by Best Buy for a new copy of Windows.

System is done.

My Logitech 5.1 Speakers weren’t working with the RealTek onboard sound chip. Some issue with drivers not being available for Windows 10. Plus I was troubleshooting a video/audio problem. I purchased a replacement sound card 7/25/16. Note that I have a rewards card so the price shown here isn’t the price I paid 🙂

I have a few games I enjoy playing and using a Logitech track ball works well enough for them although Starcraft II wasn’t working as well as I’d like. More recently I picked up the new Doom and then Wolfenstein The New Order. I found that using a Track ball doesn’t work as well for these sorts of games so I checked out and purchased a mouse on 10/2/16. I did check PCGamer for their review on Mice and this one was identified as the best gaming mouse. And note that the price isn’t the price I paid. As I have a rewards card, I was able to get the pair for about half of the listed price.

With all the other stuff I’m doing now; ripping my DVD and BluRay collection to computer plus the addition of a few games, I decided to pick up a couple of spare SSD drives. I want to see if I can mirror them first off, and then make them the boot disk if possible. I seem to recall last year that mirroring the SDD drives wasn’t possible in Windows 10 but we’ll see. Push comes to shove, I’ll have a bigger drive for other things where I need speed. Purchase date, 2/26/2017.