Humanoid

Not a bad time to be looking for a new system - doing so myself - there's a nicely timed confluence of new tech releases that are genuinely practical for once. The Lynnfield platform (i5/i7 P55), second generation SSDs (Intel G2, Indilinx), 80+ Gold certified PSUs (Seasonic X series), ATi 5xxx GPUs (this week), and what looks to be a relatively smooth new OS release in Win7. I've had an Antec P182 case sitting unused in its box for a year now, which I rushed out to buy when it were being discontinued in favour of the uglier P183. That was before I found out only the new non-standard PSU housings would only fit in the new cases. Hindsight, yeah....

I'll avoid the console holy wars right now. In terms of TV selection, I've just bought a Samsung B650 series LCD and am pretty pleased with it. General reviews seem to show Samsung ever so slightly ahead of Sony (Z5500) in terms of display quality for LCDs and those two are the current market leaders, but the inbuilt speakers are pretty poor. Ignore the TVs marketed as 'LED,' they're just plain LCD TVs but with LED backlights instead of standard CFL backlights. Plasma remains a very viable option even though conventional wisdom recommends against them for gaming. LCDs are getting closer but still can't beat Plasmas for deep blacks. Risk of permanent damage from burn-in is now fairly negligible with current generation plasmas, but some image retention will still occur - e.g. you might come home from work and find that for a couple of hours you can still see the silhouette of some game's HUD because your kid left the game paused and walked away for a few hours during the day. Pioneer have unfortunately pulled out of the plasma market, however their TVs are still best-in-class if you can find any stock still around. Both Samsung and Panasonic are about a generation behind here. Samsung has the edge in colour reproduction and ambient light tolerance, while Panasonic has the better blacks and better inbuilt speakers. I'd say Samsung for general use but Panasonic for serious movie watching (in darkened rooms). For serious Blu-ray viewing, the Oppo BD-83 is a clear pick ahead of any other mainstream player I'd say.

10000rpm HDDs are pretty much obsoleted by SSDs which cost pretty much the same. Is an SSD worth it? Yes, it's going to make a far bigger difference than upgrading anything else in your system and I'd recommend one in any serious gaming system these days (indeed, in any system). Install your OS and games on it, and go for a low-speed HDD for your media files, etc. (i.e. a 5400rpm one like the Samsung F2 or WD Green) Aside, the new i7 860 has just been released at a similar price point as the 920 (and cheaper overall once you include the rest of the platform) and performs somewhere in between a 920 and a 950.

I did link a GPU cooler, and yes, it's compatible with the R4850.

Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 (rev 2) is a few years old but still better than anything else out there. Can potentially run passive with good case airflow but I'd cable-tie a 120mm slow fan onto it personally (such as a Scythe Slipstream 800/1200rpm).

I'm on target towards maintaining a one post per year average apparently.

The two blocks of two are generally configured for dual channel operation. The general idea is to have each 'block' set up identically - e.g. the 512+0, 512+0 that you had originally. So the ideal upgrade path would've meant getting two new, identical sticks and putting them in the empty slots (e.g. 512+1G, 512+1G). In the bigger picture though, it's still a worthwhile upgrade you've gotten, so there's no real reason to worry about it.

The die-cast one was the Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar, based on the F-16 stick. It was designed to be modular as well, with plans for additional replica sticks, first one being for the F/A-18, but nothing ever came of it. There was a touch of irony about it, being that some people would complain about it not being made out of the same die-cast metal as the F-16 stick - but then, neither is the one in the plane.... In terms of general usability and comfort though, I prefer the shape of the old Thrustmaster FCS, simple 4-button + hat design. I think it's supposed to be a reproduction of the F-4 stick. For space sims, I preferred the CH brand controllers, which had almost no tension at all to the point of being limp. They didn't feel right for conventional sims though. And the sticks were so big, it seemed like a gorilla would be comfortable using it...

Oh hi!

Horror of horrors!

Humanoid is generic and only vaguely descriptive. I could be many things. Oh, and I like Privateer.

what sort of inspiration? An inspiredly creative greeting.

Hi. Yay inspiration.