Here... http://www.asus.com/au/Monitors/MX279H/ The hardware makes all the difference regardless of resolution
I beg to differ. Your set up is not only overkill for that resolution, it's absurdly exaggerated. That monitor (which is only of average general quality) would be properly paired with a single GTX970. Even for a good x1440, it would still be overkill.
depending on how I feel about spending more money, as If I haven't spent enough I may upgrade to this http://www.asus.com/au/Monitors/ROG_SWIFT_PG278Q/
I've been looking at those kind (27", 1440p, 144Hz) of monitors for a while but I just can't afford them. If I were to get one, I'd be getting this bad boy: http://store.acer.com/store/aceramer/en_US/pd/ThemeID.35703000/productID.314151300
Many x1440 buyers go for so-called gaming monitors which are TN panels, I'd much rather choose an IPS one like that Acer or the Dell I mentioned some posts above.
See, the fast pixel response and low input lag is important to me but the viewing angles of TN bother me when I'm not in a game. The XB270 is IPS and yet actual has lower total lag than the PG278! It's a win win. http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_xb270hu.htm
Just read the review, impressive monitor indeed (and long live TFT Central, I wouldn't buy a screen not reviewed by them).
I finally have a machine I'm proud of. I indulged myself after always staying 2-3 generations behind to save money. For instance just over a year ago I got 2 Inspiron 530's... one given to me and another off Ebay for $100. It came with a Core2Duo E8400 @ 3.0 GHz and 4 GB of RAM (1GBx4), and a decent video card. And I can upgrade it to 8 GB. To me that's a fine machine I can get years of use out of. I never really "needed" a laptop, and always told myself if I got one I wanted one with some size. I've learned that the smaller the devices... the more crap they try to cram into a tinier space, the more prone to overheating. That and I can't stand the keys being so small. So I was looking at these Dell Precision Mobile Workstations and they were exactly what I'd want... if I were to get one. And I did... an M6800 model (17.3") The specs: Intel Core i5 4310M CPU @ 2.70 GHz - I chose this because it had the integrated features I wanted, for only $35 more RAM: 16 GB Kingston Hyper X @ 1866 MHz Primary disk drive: Samsung 850 Evo mSATA SSD Secondary: Samsung 850 Pro SSD Wireless Card: Intel Wireless AC 1750 Dual Band Mini-Card Video Card: nVidia Quadro M2200 17.3" Wide LED Anti-Glare panel DVD+-/RW Optical Drive And I'm running XP on this sucker for now (of course - lol). But have another mSATA card with Win7 Pro 64-bit for if I ever want to take advantage of all that RAM and play some modern, resource intensive games. It's the first time I've ever owned anything nice/new.
Thanks. It's a new thing for me to own something new. I was going to go with a Core i7, but they didn't offer any integrated features the i5 I got didn't already have. And I certainly wouldn't notice any speed increase. And if I went with 32 GB of RAM the speed would've downgraded to 1600 Mhz. And since I'll never even use the 16 I have I'd rather have it running at the 1866. The video card I got was only $35 more than the default one that came with it. And the ones that were a step up from that were ridiculous, like 1G more. If I decide I want a better one I'll buy it and install it myself for a fraction of that price later on. It really is a nice machine with some nice size to it. And I got a cooling pad for it too that's large enough for it, durable, and quiet, to air it out and elevate it a bit. And a carrying case for it too it fits into... which wasn't easy to find for a workstation of that size. And unlike many Dells which use proprietary parts that make it impossible to upgrade, this one uses universal parts and makes the job easy. I'm happy with the purchase.
I like the fact that you've got two SSD's, I'm also planning to install a second SSD in my desktop. I've now got a 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD, but it just makes me sick hearing the HDD spin. I just love how smooth and silent SSD's are.
I like the HDDs sound. I also like the mechanical noblesse, the affiliation with the physical laws of great machines of old. The SSD is so... well, electronically plain.
Yeah, I'm on a mission to make all my machines as quiet as possible. The mSATA SSD's in particular are really quiet, since all they are is a tiny chip. When I took the Precision apart at first I didn't even know where my primary drive was. Then I see this tiny chip that says "250 GB" on it and I'm thinking: "No... this CAN'T be it!" It was. Normally it would cost $1000 more just to get a motherboard that supports an mSATA slot on that machine but I got it for free for calling and complaining about something unrelated that they screwed up. So they threw it in as a peace offering. These things are awesome, and from now on I'm using nothing else when it comes to mobile devices. It came with a Lite-On, but I prefer mine have hardware encryption so I bought a Samsung 850 EVO (250 GB) mSATA card for it instead to replace it, for $130. They make them from 120 GB to 1TB. And have a regular SSD for the second drive which is also a Samsung (850 Pro), also with hardware encryption. It's worth the few extra bucks. I think Samsung is making the best drives these days. Western Digital Blue used to be my favorite in the IDE & SATA days. I highly recommend looking into Samsung's SSD's. And their mSATA SSD's for laptops/workstations. When I turn my Precision on it literally makes no noise whatsoever. The only thing that makes noise is the fans on the cooling pad I have under it. I put Win7 Pro 64-bit on the Lite-On mSATA SSD that came with it and am setting it up for gaming just in case I want to take advantage of all that RAM and use it for high end gaming. But have XP Pro SP3 set up on the Samsung 850 EVO. Old school forever... LOL
I will probably buy a 500GB SSD for data storage. The only thing that's bugging me is that some say that SSD's are not as realiable as HDD's, at least not yet. I will probably choose one of these: http://www.ssdcenter.nl/category/208062/ssd.html No way, HDD is a thing of the past, the sound that it makes sounds so inferior. It's also slow to load icons.
SSD's are indeed a bit delicate I guess you could say, as read/writes will wear them down in terms of speed and durability to a greater degree than with the old school HD's. When you try to use CCleaner's "secure" deletion it even gives you a warning message to this effect. I do it anyway. So far I'm not noticing any performance decrease. I think it's certainly there but over-exaggerated at this point. But the technology is new and it'll be awhile until we have a better grasp on exactly how critical the issue is. I'm going to learn by personal experience and not let the hype deter/affect me at this point. And if as a result I have a drive clunk out on me in a few months I'll know better. As for Joxx's comment... I took it as tongue in cheek, but who knows in this place? lol. Some of us have some weird tech fetishes in here!
I just hope it also depends on how heavily you use the drive. I'm not using it intensively at the moment.
It does. SSD's are generally rated for a certain amount of writes (usually measured in Gigabytes) per day for a certain length of time. So a company might say an SSD is rated for 50Gb of writes per day for 5 years.
Yes, this gives me some hope: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling-endurance-test-blows-away-ssd-durability-fears.html http://ssdendurancetest.com/
Ultimately settled with 128 GB SSD (system/programs), 120 GB SSD (Games/VM's/ROM's), and 750 GB HDD (Optibay Data) for MSI GT70 0NC. Still 16 GB RAM (8 GB allocated by SoftPerfect RAM Disk), although tempted to upgrade to 24 GB. Other parts (CPU+GPU+etc.) still that same. Got a newer 750 GB HDD (130/100 MB/s vs 80/80 MB/s) out of free broken laptop, so upgraded to that. Attached the following to it: 23" 1080p HDMI Monitor 1 TB desktop HDD (and old 750 GB laptop HDD) in eSATA dock 2 TB USB 3.0 portable HDD Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet Bluetooth Mouse USB 2.0 Hub Original laptop BD-ROM in USB enclosure USB Floppy Upgrading Chromebook to 8 GB of RAM just for the hell of it. I got two 4 GB PC3-1600 sticks from that broken laptop so yeah... Attached an Apple Aluminium keyboard I got for free and cheap Mighty Mouse to it so that I don't have to turn around LOL. Chuwi Vi8 [8" 800x1200]: Intel Atom Z3735F @ Quad-core 1.83 GHz 2 GB DDR3 1333 32 GB Internal Memory + 64 GB microSD card Intel HD Graphics LG G Watch [1.65" 280x280]: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 @ 1.2 GHz 512 MB RAM 4 GB Internal Memory