[reignofchaos]

Wow unbelievable. Your parents just donated one of the biggest icons of gaming history to an old age home.

[Kumar R]

Originally Posted by reignofchaos

Wow unbelievable. Your parents just donated one of the biggest icons of gaming history to an old age home.

By way of user experience I must comment that the card while excellent for games, had a number of annoying (in my view) faults.

It could not output non 3D display. So a cable had to run from the '2D' VGA card to the Voodoo which would 'pass through' all non-3D usage. The cable was very thick and short and created a mess at the back with all the other wires, it also kept getting loose due to the twist. In those days it was difficult finding a similar short cable. In addition the card would get heated up very quickly and the system would restart. Graphics intensive games (there was one called Turak which came bundled with the card) could be played for about 1.5-2 hrs at most before the need to quit and let it cool. And of course the card was really long and made removal of the HDD impossible once installed. Overall, a mixed bag.

[Arch-Angel]

Kumar R was the card a 3dfx voodoo glide? That card was an icon of its time! Surely a picture of it in your pc would be great! In other news, DDR4 prices have officially meant that only the few willing to splurge for new technology would be able to adopt it. Deja vu!

[Kumar R]

Originally Posted by Arch-Angel

Kumar R was the card a 3dfx voodoo glide? That card was an icon of its time! Surely a picture of it in your pc would be great! In other news, DDR4 prices have officially meant that only the few willing to splurge for new technology would be able to adopt it. Deja vu!

Hi, The card was called 3D Blaster, made by Creative (who also used to make the soundblaster cards). If I remember correctly Glide was a driver software for all graphics cards with the voodoo 2 chip and not the name of the card itself. Sadly no pictures as we did not have a digicam in those days. I found this ad on OLX spanish where someone is selling the card for EUR 100 ! Vintage value I guess !

[Arch-Angel]

Originally Posted by Kumar R

Hi, The card was called 3D Blaster, made by Creative (who also used to make the soundblaster cards). If I remember correctly Glide was a driver software for all graphics cards with the voodoo 2 chip and not the name of the card itself. Sadly no pictures as we did not have a digicam in those days. I found this ad on OLX spanish where someone is selling the card for EUR 100 ! Vintage value I guess !

Now that i rack my brains a bit, it definitely is the driver like you said! Seems that it actually was an API which later became open sourced after its takeover by nvidia. Good old days. The reason i remember this that when i was really young, i remember seeing the adapter options showing voodoo glide in the video options for old games. And at the 100 euro pricing for the old 3dfx card. Some people will pay lots for nostalgia i suppose.

[wishnipon]

I always prefer a desktop as my primary computer, simply because of the ergonomics of a bigger screen, keyboard and mouse. A desktop is not only very easy to set up, it offers a great degree of customization as well, while being easy to maintain in the long run.

Building a new system has been on the cards for quite sometime, as the older one was having a lot of hiccups in recent months. This time, I bought the parts separately and assembled them myself.

The setup

I kept the configuration realistic, in tune with my computing needs which are rather basic, limited to surfing websites, looking up information, buying online, working with documents, listening to music and the likes.

It is a 4th generation Intel® Core™ i3-4130 Processor (3M Cache, 3.40 GHz) based system with a 4 GB Corsair Vengeance® DDR3 memory, a 120 GB Sandisk Extreme II SSD, a 1 TB Western Digital Blue (7200 RPM speed, 64 MB cache) drive. All of this sitting on a Asus B85M-G motherboard, fed by a 450 W Corsair VS Series™ power supply and housed inside a Cooler Master N200 cabinet.

I have retained my old 20″ LED monitor, keyboard and mouse.

The system that boots in ten seconds

I want my computer to be very fast. I need fast boot times and the programs must load in a jiffy. This is where the solid state drive comes in. (SSD vs HDD – Why Solid State Drive). I have addded a 120 GB primary SanDisk Extreme II (CNET review) SSD for Windows 8.1 and other apps, while adding a 1 TB secondary drive for files.

The system that will last ten years

I have chosen only quality components, all of which will go a long way in making my system stand the tests of time.

I have spent more on the PSU and cabinet. First part of this PC World article explains why it is important to get a good PSU:

Higher-quality power supplies almost always use bigger and better capacitors, chokes, and other internal components, and they come outfitted with larger heatsinks for superior heat dissipation—all of which translates into more weight. Larger cooling fans, which typically move more air while making less noise than smaller fans, are another plus.

The N200 cabinet I chose comes with adequate ventilation, dust filters and extra fans in the rear and the front, it is an efficient cooling system for my setup. It also has provisions for adding cooling radiators, indicated only in heavy graphics intensive gaming. On a side note, it is one of the few sober designs from Cooler Master, in a crowd of flashy designs!

Asus is known for using good quality components in their motherboards. For instance, the B85M-G uses Taiwan AP-CON solid capacitors which, rated at a 5,000-hour lifetime and a maximum operating temperature of 105°C, are said to have 2.5x longer life span than standard solid capacitors. The B85M-G also comes with various protection features like protection against over-current and short-circuit damage to any USB devices, anti-surge protection. A nice review of the board I got can be found here: The Tech Revolutionist.

Future plans

I very much want to buy the Microsoft Natural keyboard. It comes at a price, but is probably the most ergonomic keyboard out there.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by wishnipon

I always prefer a desktop as my primary computer, simply because of the ergonomics of a bigger screen, keyboard and mouse.

Me too! But you don't need to buy a desktop to enjoy this ergonomic experience

I use a Dell Latitude laptop with a docking station on my desk (dual monitors, keyboard, mouse etc.). When I get to work, I place my laptop on the docking station and voila = desktop convenience.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by wishnipon

I

The system that will last ten years

Congrats on your system but a system that will last 10 years???
Could be wishful thinking based on the expected components lifespan but more importantly based on what could come in 10 years.

For example, in 2004, Intel had a great and fast Pentium 4 processor. 32 bit was the norm, <100 GB used to be the hard disk sizes, RAM could be measured in MBs, more than 90% were using CRTs, graphic cards were ancient, and very few had heard of wireless devices. And there was no iphone too.

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/quickrefyr.htm#2004

On an ergonomic keyboard, I would say that you should look at it before you buy. I bought a logitech k350 (basically a mk550 last year) and I simply could not adjust to the different key placements of the keyboard. Used it for less than 6 hours and sold it to a colleague at a 60% loss.

[55-Nitinol]

Hi All,
I am thinking of building a budget gaming rig. I have chosen the following components.
1) Processor - AMD FX-6300
2) Motherboard - ASUS M5A97
3) RAM - G.Skill RipjawsX (F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL) 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3
4) PSU - Corsair VS650 650 W
5) Cabinet - Cooler Master HAF 912 Combat
6) Hard Drive - WD Blue WD10EZEX 1 TB
7) SSD - Kingston SSDNow V100 SV100S2/64G 64 GB

Can someone please tell me a good graphics card for my setup(or CPU-RAM-Graphics combo)?
I still have to buy a monitor.
Budget constraint - ~50K

[StarScream]

Originally Posted by wishnipon

The system that will last ten years

Originally Posted by vasudeva

Congrats on your system but a system that will last 10 years???

I think it's very possible, given a few basics: You buy good components today, especially an advanced motherboard because what changes over a decade more than anything else is connectors and slots; You have a good stable OS (NT, 2000, XP, 7 etc.) - if you look at the trend there all the intermediate ones made by MS are crappy; Over that period you upgrade and change whatever is possible and for that a desktop is the easiest DIY form factor.

My personal story of a 10-year old machine started in 2000 with an assembled 1.2 Ghz Pentium with a good Intel motherboard. Over the years (and I got rid of it around 2011) everything changed except the processor and motherboard - the OS went from Win 2000 to XP, I remember buying RAM for it in Canada because N. America was the only place I could source Rambus modules, the hard disks changed (I think it had an IDE interface, not even SATA), the graphics cards changed. It had a lot of PCI slots, so I added LAN/Ethernet and USB 2.0 support, remember dial-up was the order of the day when it was bought! Other than the RAM most other components were awfully cheap because they were going out of fashion.

I understand that beyond a point something like this becomes more of a project (akin to a vintage car) and not everybody has the bandwidth or inclination to mess with their machines. Take my case, I didn't have the time to build a new machine so my next one was/is a Dell XPS 7100. It's worked fine until this year when my main HDD crashed and the graphics card (an ATI Radeon - total overkill) burnt out. Says a lot about Dell's components. But what I did build into the system was redundancy, so I made my second HDD primary with a fresh install of Win 7 and reverted to using the built-in graphics of the motherboard. Total downtime - maybe a day or two in 3 years. Total expense - zero. It'll happily work for another three years at least, I believe, with little or no investment.

[arunphilip]

Originally Posted by harry10

The battery of my Dell Studio 14 is not charging more than 48%. Does that means it's gone for a toss?

I saw this thread very late, so sorry about the delay. It appears that half the cells in your battery are flat, hence the ~50%. This is strange, because you'd normally see this progressively (e.g. 87% or 75% to begin with).

Originally Posted by harry10

If that's the case which reliable online site can I buy a new battery from?

Compuindia is Dell's official online partner, so go with them. Failing which, theitdepot.com, Flipkart or Amazon.in. As a last resort, eBay.

[mail4ajo]

I am planning to build a PC for movies/occasional gaming/internet all connected to the TV. What is the basic configuration I need to consider? I can spend about 40-50K for the setup.

Major needs are should run Blue Ray, HD movie & music dump, internet browsing and regular apps that PCs can run. No monitors, output to my current TV.

[Manas5]

I have recently built a PC with below

- Intel Core i5 4440
- Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H
- Kingston HyperX Blu 8 x 1 GB DDR3
- Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 7200rpm
- Liteon 24X OEM SATA DVD Writer
- Sapphire Dual-X 280x 3GB DDR5
- Corsair VS650 PSU
- Cooler Master HAF-XB EVO
- Xigmatec XOF 120MM 14dB
- Logitech G602

I built it primarily for gaming and run it hooked up to my Philips 40PFL5059/V7 40 inch TV via Yamaha YHT-196. After gaming on consoles for about 3 years I decided to move back to PC gaming. Since the current gen of consoles are based on x86 architecture I expect to see more cross-platform games and better ports. This makes PC the ideal platform as the games are cheaper and more varied.

[ramzsys]

Need a low(est) cost CPU+Motherboard combo suggestion. AMD was in use till now so for a change, intel might be preferred.

case+smps+processor+motherboard+2gb ram < Rs.10k.

Help!

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by ramzsys

case+smps+processor+motherboard+2gb ram < Rs.10k.

CPU Pentium G-3220 4000
Mobo Gigabyte GA-H81M-S1 3750
RAM Transcend 2 Gb DDR 3 1200
SMPS + Case Any Generic 1000

Total 9950