The Desktop PC Building Thread - Page 17

GUI-wise: Too much changed, and even when I reverted it to "Windows Classic" it's still annoying to use. Things pop-up when they didn't used to (the notification area or whatever) that you can't customize anywhere near as efficiently as you could in XP, they clusterfucked up all of the control panel, network panel, and explorer in general. Not to mention the fact that you cannot disable the annoying ass "search" box in the start menu. I never use my mouse, Windows seems keen on trying to change that behavior. Contrast that with Linux, and anything that isn't working in <insert WM of choice>, I just open the x files in vim and fix it myself, because it's all easily accessible. Edit: Probably the worst change Microsoft made? That fucking ridiculous directory path for the explorer now. Instead of just tab'ing and typing your tree, alt+d first. TLDR: I hate change for change's sake.

As much as I'd love to hate W7, I have to say it's pretty damn sweet. I still spend 80% of my time in Linux, but when I want to game, I don't mind booting into 7.

GUI has been cleaned up pretty well. And although I still can't navigate around the control panel, 7's focus on being able to search just about everywhere makes it not matter.

I'm too trained in on windows key or windows menu + applicable hotkeys, many of which have changed. egh.

7 drives me nuts, but I'm not saying it does everything wrong.

+1

Why bother navigating to a program or control panel item when you just use that "annoying start menu search bar" to get to it instantly.

Also, all pop up notifications in the notification tab can be customized by application to either always show, show when a notification is there, or never show.

It's been far more stable than I recall XP ever running and if you game you pretty much need it for the latest DX builds and to take advantage of the latest/greatest cards and games.

Funny, I never used the Windows key, ever, until I started running Linux

I really just use it to open the start menu or to WIN+D to get to desktop.

Unless you need to fit like 2 big fat graphics cards.. 5870's? Or need massive cooling, just get the simple antec 300 case.

Oops, forgot to add as it was fairly smooth and non-notable, I did upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 , also student discounts FTW. On 3DMarks 06 I got 17603 3DMarks link Some pics of my half rate cable management, works for me though. (note that I had to move the right stack of power cables to below the HD racks on the left because the case wouldn't close [the clearance here is one of my slight peeves about this case], kept them tied together though.) And damn some heatsinks are huge (the big metal thing with the bronze nibs in the pics above), here's a towering side view of the one I've got (don't mind the junk in the back).

Wheres a good place to sell used custom PC's?

Just got an Nvidia gtx460 and a midsize new case. It's so much nicer than my huge full-size case. The video card is kicking ass, I get about 80 fps in black ops, 60-70 in BFBC2 and get 296 via stress test on CS:S oh and if anybody wants to buy an HIS Radeon 5750, PM me edit: i also just bought this sweet heat sink http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118019

shitty pic, but my new fan and heatsink are awesome i fixed the wires and everything and did a bit of cable management i tried overclocking, i got up to 3.76ish with amd overdrive autoclock. i took some screenshots with my fan high and low to compare temps. i'm a total noob at overclocking so i was wondering if anybody had some input if these temps were ok. my fan is pretty noisy at 2500 rpm so im trying to find out if the low fan speed temps are ok to be running fulltime fan low fan high

I'm thinking of putting together an HTPC that would also serve as a light file server for media and automatically backing up my laptop. My criteria are: - Quiet - Enough graphics power for smooth 1080p HD playback over HDMI - Enough CPU power to support light multi-user use over Win7 RDP I do not care about: - High-quality audio - Any kind of gaming - Power usage (within reason) I am thinking about going with the Intel Core i3-2100 with integrated graphics on a motherboard with the Intel H67 chipset. By all accounts, the integrated graphics are more than capable of handling 1080p playback thus saving me the expense (and noise) of a separate graphics card. The dual-core, hyperthreaded CPU should give me more than enough power for the occasional RDP session. Is there anything else I should consider? The CPU is a little spendy at $125, but I don't see AMD offering anything comparable and I do like the idea of not needing a separate video card.

You can always add a GPU later if you find it necessary, but I doubt you will. I saw this the other day: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835185097

I'm not a big fan of scythe's products, but this does seem well rated, and the size will be more forgiving than other options in a htpc. While I don't have any recommendations for htpc cases, I have heard a few having issues mounting more than 1 hd or even the regular size psu when the specs say you should be able to, so buyer beware.

Thanks for the suggestion. I found the Cooler Master Vortex Plus on sale for $20 a week or two ago so I snapped that up in anticipation of needing it for this build. I am also using a relatively large HTPC case (Thermaltake Lanbox Lite) so hopefully cooling will be less of a problem for me.

Wow, this thread took me back to 1999....

Desktops, lol.