Bartimaeus

This is making me want to give all three movies a relisten...it can be a little hard at times to appreciate the music with the movies themselves as a backdrop...

I disagree with the latter half of your post, but whatever. Personal preference, I guess. I've always felt like 16:10 is much more aesthetically pleasing than 16:9, having used both...I can't imagine what I'd think of using 21:9.

I don't "get" 21:9. I think 16:9 looks bad enough compared to 16:10 - why would I want the proportions even more stretched out?

Anyone else getting really annoyed by the new chat link filters Steam has put into place recently? (There were old ones, but they weren't nearly as insane as they are now.) It's ridiculous you can't disable it. Drives me a bit crazy.

Isn't Lawful Stupid kind of the role you have to play to be a paladin, though? I mean, you can't just go around murdering people because they registered evil with a spell...that is literally against the law, which following is kind of a big part of your alignment. And can't particular items screw with the alignment detected, to boot? You can't ever know what's on a person...there's reason why the spell is not enough to convict.

Aren't Paladins bound to the *Lawful* Good alignment...at least in 2nd Edition? I'd hate to agree with Volourn, but...

Oh yeah, they should definitely be able to be changed - I mean, I can't see how you couldn't. Funny thing is, a lot of the caps on the board had been popped for years, and I'm wondering why the board hasn't exploded yet...or at least have more problems than it should. It does admittedly crash if I even so much as unlock the CPU for overclocking - not even overclocking, just setting it so I could - but that's a relatively small problem for a board and CPU of their age and condition, (it's still using the default HSF...and I doubt it's had thermal paste reapplied in over five years, at the very least). @Humanoid: I can't even imagine spending $1000 on a computer - much less double that. $800 is pushing it for me...$600-700 is a very good amount, with $500 still being close to enough. I spent less than $400 on this computer sans the video card, which I'm still to buy at some point...although I did buy parts that were very steeply discounted - but if I hadn't been able to, I would've never gotten them, so.

Yeah, the only difference between the audio chips is that the ROG boards are supposed to have better shielding from internal interference or something or another, (all the Realtek chips seem to sound exactly the same to me regardless of their "specs" and anything the manufacturers do to "enhance" them, but your mileage may vary, I guess). Unrelated: does anyone know what the consequences of popped/deformed capacitors might be? I have an old FX-55 housed within this thing, and seems to be working fine, (and has been), but more than half of all the capacitors on the thing are wrecked. I'm wondering if I should be worried about that...

What features are you going to miss from the Deluxe, (you said it wasn't all that great on features before, so now I'm curious)? I see a Thunderbolt card, integrated Wireless and Bluetooth, ...more back panel USB ports, I guess...and Sata Express port. Hero has an integrated VGA port that the Deluxe doesn't have, so that's neat, I guess...not that you'll probably find any use for it, I'm sure. So I guess there might be a few scenarios where the Deluxe would be better, but I don't really see it for most typical users.

If you don't have need of the Thunderbolt port...or the other small things the Deluxe has in favor of the Hero, I can't see any reason why not.

From what I can see, it seems to be a fairly good board. 8 true phases, high quality gold chokes...normal/good quality everything else. Really, my only complaint is its price...and that there's at least one other Asus board (not mentioning other manufacturers) that has roughly equal build quality, (i.e. the Maximus VII Hero - which seems to be made of mostly the same stuff, with the exception of the transistors...where its are higher quality, but there are less compared to the Deluxe, weirdly). At $250, I was kinda expecting at least three PCIE 3.0 x8 slots, if not four...maybe 2-3 more fan connectors, etc. (To be perfectly honest, I don't think most users...essentially, unless you are running a crazy build like 2 super high end GPUs or 4 regular high end GPUs with 4 sticks of high speed RAM and/or doing some *crazy* CPU overclocking - which is becoming harder and harder to do as CPU die sizes get smaller and smaller, by the way...I don't think are going to ever be able to notice any difference between a $120-140 board and a $200 board in terms of motherboard build quality. The only reason I got my Maximus VI Hero was because it was ridiculously cheap for its quality at the time, and matched the price and not so minorly exceeded the quality of the board I was gonna get instead, the ASRock Extreme4).

100%ed Rogue Legacy. It's an alright game, I guess. I think the "mage" classes - particularly Dragon - are mostly useless, with the exception of Spellsword...if you spawn with the right spell(s). I wasn't as in love with it as a lot of other people were - I honestly didn't really like the Rogue"lite" elements too much. Oh well. 100%ed the first 2 (of 3) chapters of Bit.Trip.Runner. I put a few hours into it a year or so ago, then quit because I got stuck on a particular level, (1-11). Came back to it yesterday, and it seems a lot easier now than it did then...although 1-11 was still super hard. I went through all of chapter 2 dying maybe ten times. Weird.

What makes you choose the Deluxe specifically, out of curiosity?

http://forums.obsidian.net/forum/54-skeeters-junkyard/ Any information that would actually be useful for us to help you with your problem would be appreciated. Your motherboard would be a good start...

Uh, do you ever plan on Crossfiring? I didn't realize you weren't going to get dual video cards at all. If you're not planning on Crossfiring, like, ever, drop to a lower wattage PSU. You probably need an absolute minimum of...500W, (I don't think I'd be comfortable cutting it that close, personally, though), with 550W being fairly comfortable, and 600W being very comfortable, (this is probably what I'd get...and not just because 600 is such a nicer number than 550, ). And...uh, I know you mentioned *why* you're planning on getting that much RAM...but...uh, are you sure? I mean, I feel like most everyone could get away with 8GB...with 16GB being a little ridiculous but understandable for some cases...but 32GB for a regular desktop computer? That's server level amount of RAM. Are you *really* sure you need that much?

290 might be worth it, depending on the person buying...but there's little benefit for paying an extra $100-150 for a 290X, IMO. I feel like we're not really helping you enough - is there anything you specifically need help with? (As a side-note, I'd suggest the Gigabyte UD3H vs the Gigabyte HD3 motherboard - little more expensive, but 8 true phases vs the 4(+1?) the HD3 has. Additionally, you may want to look at the EVGA G2 750W instead of the Seasonic unit - both units are fully modular, as well as very well renowned, but you're not paying a $20-30 premium for the Seasonic unit).

This is not really true of the games - at least, not in my experience. When I first went through Dark Souls, (without having ever played Demon's Souls), the biggest challenge were the controls, not really the enemies/bosses. I beat, I think, after the few three or so when I was finally got a decent grasp of the game, roughly 4/5 bosses on my first try. Dark Souls (on NG - that is, before beating the game at all) is really actually decently lenient...there's just a really steep initial learning curve. Once you understand your own character, and how bosses *tend* to move, (all the "giant" bosses are pretty predictable after one or two, if you care to notice - only the smaller, faster ones really leave any surprises), it's generally pretty easy. It's NG+(+++++) where you have to perfectly choreograph your character, and perfectly learn the moveset of each boss - 'cos each boss (and regular enemy) has twice as much (or more) health as they did in NG, do much more damage...and yet your character can get hardly any better compared to how they were in the middle to the end of NG - only the first few are comparable to NG difficulty. Then again, I enjoyed doing this, too, except for a very few that were blatantly unfair - e.g. the Capra Demon with the stupid dogs that had extremely random behavior and movesets that killed me probably 50 times in a row on NG++++++...or the Four Kings, where, unless you're wielding an ultra greatsword or something, you simply cannot do enough damage to outpace their spawn rate, and you die in a battle of attrition against 4 of them at once while they only have like 1/3rd-1/4th combined health left - stuff like that is not fun. But for the others, there's something neat about being able to know a boss so perfectly you can deal with literally anything and everything they throw at you, and then exploit those attacks to defeat them. On-topic: I like my games decently hard. However, if there is a set of difficulty rules where the game is "fair", (e.g. Core Difficulty for the IE games), then I tend to use that.

With a budget of $1800, I'd get a motherboard with at least six full phases... (edit): Maybe not. Can't seem to find a single >=six phase Z97 motherboard under <=$140 at the moment. I was expecting at least one or two...unless you're overclocking, 4+1 is fine, I guess.

A 280X at its most expensive is like...what, $300? Can probably get it closer to $250. A $120-$180 motherboard, a $60-120 PSU, a $200-300 CPU, $150's worth maybe of RAM, a $50-100 case...even at the highest values, that leaves you a little less than $700 for storage...

Crossfiring/SLI? Not a fan of doing it myself, but if that's what you're looking to do... (e:) Whoops, thought that read $1,000, not $1,800. At that budget, I'm not sure how you can avoid it, really...not unless you buy a $1,000 GPU, haha. Someone else will have to help you with that - $1,800 is more money than is sensible for me,

Update on that computer problem: I'm a moron. I need to work with more Intel CPUs...I assumed that was like that on purpose because, you know, AMD CPUs have a few blank spots here and there. Nope.

And finally, a motherboard: namely, the Asus Maximus VI (Z87). My former pick was the ASRock Extreme4, whenever it dropped down to about $120, but the Asus board just did that today, and it's a much higher quality board. I didn't really want to get an Asus board, because they seem to be having a lot of problems with their boards lately, but...it's from newegg, so hopefully I'll be good even if there are any problems - not getting rid of my current desktop, so I'm not exactly desperate for a computer ASAP anyways. Recap: Chassis: Corsair 300R (Non-Windowed, 'cos windows are ugly) @ $35 PSU: Silverstone ST50F-ESG @ $25 (it's an FSP Aurum S rebrand) MB: Asus Maximus VI (Z87) @ $120 CPU: Intel Core i7 4770k @ $100 RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 2x4GB DDR3 1600/CAS 8 @ $50 (holdover from my previous build because DDR3 is too danged expensive nowadays - giving the old desktop some very cheap 2x2GB Gskill stuff) GPU: AMD XFX 5770 (for now - my previous GTX 660 for $90 order actually did end up being canceled, sadly, so I'll have to wait for something decent to come by again) System SSD: PNY XLR8 120GB @ $35 Storage HDD: Some 5 year old or so 1TB Seagate holdover that I'm surprised is still working Storage HDD: Some 3TB WD Green that I got for free Total: $365 (discounting HDDs, since they're not specifically a part of this build, really, and the video card, since it'll end up being replaced sometime in the future most likely). Not too shabby - the retail cost of the CPU is almost more than that total. I'm fairly pleased. If I bought these all at closer to MSRP, (let's say within 10% of their current, about), it'd be closer to $800, (again, discounting HDDs and video card). All new, too, of course, (except holdovers, obviously).

Corsair 300R obtained for $35 after rebate, ($55 before). Yay! At this point, I just need a motherboard...and some cheap DDR3 for my computer so it can at least run, but I can wait for that.

Haha, what's this in reference to? Can't find a mention of "nightjar" in the last few pages of this topic... Bought a GTX 660 for $87 after MIR. Hopefully it's not canceled. My first nvidia card - not because I've had something against them before, but it's just how it's worked out in the past.

Yeah, it was supposed to be a favor for him, but at this point, I think it's done for. The very last thing I wanted to do before I called it quits, though, was screw around with the BIOS, possibly reflash it to see if that would help at all. Tough luck, I guess, as it's completely obstinate at this point. Not being able to use a keyboard means messed up beyond repair, I guess, haha.