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OS Neutral Post your Gaming Rig (or the one you want)

gkarris

gkarris

macrumors G3
Original poster
Dec 31, 2004
8,301
1,061
"No escape from Reality...”
Place to post what you are using for games - ANY games. If all you use is a Pi for retro, post that. If you use a Mac Classic, that. Steam Box, anything. Cheap laptop for Indies - go for it.

Especially if you built something cool (or find something online worth noting). Great sales on ones would also be a great post if someone happen to be looking.

Please no "this OS is better than that" - games are on everything. No consoles or iOS devices (there are other threads for that).

So, I just found this - OMG! (I LOVE CUBES). New HP Omen Desktop.

http://store.hp.com/us/en/ContentView?storeId=10151&catalogId=10051&langId=-1&eSpotName=omenxdesktop

Want...:

HP_OMEN_Typhon_q4_fy16_spriteImg_2.png
 
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Man. I owned every one of those PB's.
Still kills me what I paid for the 540c. ($3500 just for the comp and an extra $900 for a massive 32MB ram chip)But that was ALSO when they were just released way back in the when and overall it was one of my favorite computers.
Now?
Have a 2011 iMac, but have built a Hackintosh with an I7 4790K, 1TB SSD (Mac) 500 GB SSD (Windows) plus an extra 250GB SSD I picked up cheap for windows storage. (Them games be gettin big). A 24 inch Acer 2560 x 1440 monitor, 32GB Ram.
I was rocking the GTX970 graphics for OSX, but when I got my Vive I upgraded to a GTX1080. (and killed the Hackintosh aspect of the system til drivers come out, luckily it was just a matter of "downgrading back to the iMac, I did NOT sell like I was supposed to)

The hack ran GREAT until the 1080 upgrade and until native drivers come out I'm stuck with 2 workstations.
But it was worth it for the speed increase ob the Vive and all my other non-VR games. (especially at 1440, theres not a whole lot it can't do.

My spoiled self also has a nVidia Shield hooked up to my 4k, and an AppleTV4, but I have yet to really try any gaming on those platforms. Although the shield does allow me to Stream WOW to My Sony 4K, and it is a thing of beauty at 55 inches. (With a wireless Mouse and Keyboard)

That's entertainment.

WRC

(Edit: Oh yeah. I looked at that cube you mentioned as well. A monster but a bit pricey. There are so many monster gaming builds out there right now)
 
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Mine is in need of an upgrade... maybe this year, but most likely next year. Still plays games decent, but not taking advantage of the 120 Hz refresh rate monitors. Plus, I'm thinking of maybe getting into VR gaming... having a blast with my Samsung Gear VR goggles.

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desk_aug2016.jpg
 
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Still rocking MP 6,1 with 3.7GHz quad core & dual d700. Waiting to test some hardware for eGPU goodness - if Apple finally delivers what has been part of the LightPeak (Thunderbolt) specification from the beginning, we'll have tons of options. But yeah, for now the CPU performance is acceptable - just need beefier GPUs.

HP at least are trying. Neither their Blackbird nor this cube thing will ever touch either Mac Pro or NeXT Cube, but at least they are trying (sadly).
 
erayser said:
Mine is in need of an upgrade... maybe this year, but most likely next year. Still plays games decent, but not taking advantage of the 120 Hz refresh rate monitors. Plus, I'm thinking of maybe getting into VR gaming... having a blast with my Samsung Gear VR goggles.

01-01-14a.jpg


desk_aug2016.jpg
Click to expand...

That's impressive looking. Do most games extend across 3 monitors... How? See my signature for my gaming devices. Mine was built in 2013, upgraded to a new video card last year. Wondering how much improvement there would be in a new rig at this point? :)
 
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Huntn said:
That's impressive looking. Do most games extend across 3 monitors... How? See my signature for my gaming devices. Mine was built in 2013, upgraded to a new video card last year. Wondering how much improvement there would be in a new rig at this point? :)
Click to expand...
Sometimes I play games in 3 monitor surround. Since my GPU's are ageing, I mostly play in windows mode and play on the center monitor for the extra FPS. At least I can multitask...LOL. I can't see you sig at the moment (on phone), but if you're running at 30 to 60 FPS, you're fine. Most monitors have a refresh rate of 60 hz anyway. My monitors have a refresh rate of 120 hz. Since my GPU's are old Kepler, I'm not getting the full use of my monitors. I'd like to get into VR gaming in the future, so it's in need of an update. I'll look at sig later when I get home.

EDIT: Just looked at your rig in sig... Your 970 will out perform my Tri-SLI 780's on current AAA games. Nice rig....
 
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erayser said:
Sometimes I play games in 3 monitor surround. Since my GPU's are ageing, I mostly play in windows mode and play on the center monitor for the extra FPS. At least I can multitask...LOL. I can't see you sig at the moment (on phone), but if you're running at 30 to 60 FPS, you're fine. Most monitors have a refresh rate of 60 hz anyway. My monitors have a refresh rate of 120 hz. Since my GPU's are old Kepler, I'm not getting the full use of my monitors. I'd like to get into VR gaming in the future, so it's in need of an update. I'll look at sig later when I get home.

EDIT: Just looked at your rig in sig... Your 970 will out perform my Tri-SLI 780's on current AAA games. Nice rig....
Click to expand...

Thanks! It cost a whopping $1000 (not including monitor, keyboard, and gaming devices). I built it in 2013. :)
 
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I built a gaming PC in the early winter of last year. Been very happy with it. I used the EVGA Hadron case to put it together in. It looks great, it's tiny small and does the job.

- Skylake Core i3 @ 3.7 GHz (w/HT)
- 16GB DDR4-2666 MHz RAM (Dual Channel)
- Samsung 850 M.2 SSD + 2TB Seagate
- EVGA GTX 970 SC w/ 4GB

Runs nearly everything at Ultra or High at 1080p/60.
 

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monokitty said:
I built a gaming PC in the early winter of last year. Been very happy with it. I used the EVGA Hadron case to put it together in. It looks great, it's tiny small and does the job.

- Skylake Core i3 @ 3.7 GHz (w/HT)
- 16GB DDR4-2666 MHz RAM (Dual Channel)
- Samsung 850 M.2 SSD + 2TB Seagate
- EVGA GTX 970 SC w/ 4GB

Runs nearly everything at Ultra or High at 1080p/60.
Click to expand...
Build price?
 
calderini said:
Man. I owned every one of those PB's.
Still kills me what I paid for the 540c. ($3500 just for the comp and an extra $900 for a massive 32MB ram chip)But that was ALSO when they were just released way back in the when and overall it was one of my favorite computers.
Click to expand...

I've got a bunch of the same stories. It still kills me that I once paid $800 for 16MB of ram for my 386-40MHz. $50/meg seemed so cheap at the time.

What makes it worse when you realize that your $3500+900 was in 1994 dollars. That's $7100 in 2016 dollars.
 
DevNull0 said:
I've got a bunch of the same stories. It still kills me that I once paid $800 for 16MB of ram for my 386-40MHz. $50/meg seemed so cheap at the time.

What makes it worse when you realize that your $3500+900 was in 1994 dollars. That's $7100 in 2016 dollars.
Click to expand...

Or $260 for a 52MB HD in 1989 - but it was a faster one!

Wish I had kept a lot of my old boards and parts (starting to miss my 486SX CPU/Motherboard and 3DFx card :()

I guess these parts are becoming collectible and people are building "Retro Rigs"... :)

 
gkarris said:
Or $260 for a 52MB HD in 1989 - but it was a faster one!

Wish I had kept a lot of my old boards and parts (starting to miss my 486SX CPU/Motherboard and 3DFx card :()

I guess these parts are becoming collectible and people are building "Retro Rigs"... :)
Click to expand...

$900 for a 20 Meg RLL drive around 1985. And not one of those MFM ones that would format at 30 Meg on the RLL controller. It was 5 1/4 half-height. The Adaptec controller for it was about $300 more for the full length card. I went for one of the more expensive controllers because I figured I'd be using it for years, RLL isn't going anywhere, right?

I actually don't really regret that one too much since I got good use out of it. Where I have regrets are things I like the time I bought a 213 meg drive for $550, then a month later they had a 245 meg for $500 so I bought it too. Those early IDE drives seemed so cheap :).

Things are so much better and easier now and I don't seem to do as much with it. Remember having to manually enter the bad sectors from the label on top during low-level formatting? Remember having to count which wires in the cable to twist over for a second drive? I feel like I enjoyed playing with computers a lot more back then, and I'm not really sure why when I think about the details.

This was a bit before my time, but my school bought 1 megabyte of core memory for $1 million. It was still a conversation topic when i was there. Amazing to think that I'm typing this on a laptop with 16,000 times that memory.
 
Huntn said:
Thanks! It cost a whopping $1000 (not including monitor, keyboard, and gaming devices). I built it in 2013. :)
Click to expand...
I mainly build computers for fun... Productivity is more of a priority than gaming. Since it's a more of a hobby to me, I like to make look good... so most of my money goes into making it look good than the main computer parts. If I didn't care about how it looks, I wouldn't bother with custom water cooling, braided cables, lighting, and unnecessary nickle and dime goodies.

In this pic... I even wrapped the cable with string to keep the GPU cables aligned... and used Tri-SLI PCB board for a cleaner look (actually got that free from someone on OCN because liked my build).

2968d655_01-18-14a.jpeg


I couldn't stop there... I had to do lighting on the water blocks. Felt like sin not to do lighting since I bought clear acrylic water blocks.

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It was worth spending the money because it's my hobby, and I enjoyed doing the build... but to put things in perspective.... all the custom water cooling parts and tools alone (not including computer parts) you could have built close to 2 computers in 2013. :(
 
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erayser said:
In this pic... I even wrapped the cable with string to keep the GPU cables aligned... and used Tri-SLI PCB board for a cleaner look (actually got that free from someone on OCN because liked my build).

I couldn't stop there... I had to do lighting on the water blocks. Felt like sin not to do lighting since I bought clear acrylic water blocks.
Click to expand...

:eek:

OMG - that's very awesome - thanks for posting!
 
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gkarris said:
So, I just found this - OMG! (I LOVE CUBES). New HP Omen Desktop.
Click to expand...

Plus: It does look pretty damn cool, in a geek-chic sorta way.
Minus: I bet that thing weighs a TON, and would probably take up an entire corner of your office.

Despite erayser's frankly awesome looking computer builds tempting me back to the dark side, I've become very much an adherent of the smaller is better school of thought. My days of building giant machines are long since over. It might look cool, but that hadron case monokitty posted is more my speed these days.
 
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Renzatic said:
Despite erayser's frankly awesome looking computer builds tempting me back to the dark side, I've become very much an adherent of the smaller is better school of thought. My days of building giant machines are long since over. It might look cool, but that hadron case monokitty posted is more my speed these days.
Click to expand...
I'm a fan of tech... no matter what platform. I like Apple products, Windows, Samsung, Sony, NVidia, AMD... etc... I have an iPhone and an Android that I swap sims on... and I use an iPad daily. Maybe I'm not totally in the dark side? LOL... :p
I just like new tech no matter what brand or platform.

I would never recommend my builds to anyone... especially custom water cooling. The tech fan in me likes to build, upgrade, modify and tinker. I can't even stay on stock iOS on my iPhone's since the 3G iPhone. It's not for everyone.

I understand where you are coming from on smaller is better. My next upgrade/build will only have one GPU. I'm tired of SLI/Crossfire and dealing with issues with multiple GPU's. Everyone has preferences... just as long as we are happy... that's all that matters.
 
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This is mine, even with a better photo it wouldn't look as tidy as some of the beautiful ones above. But it's a monster for Windows games, and it runs Mac OS X for everything else.

I built this a few years ago, when I was going to replace my old iMac but Apple dropped the DVD drive from the new ones, which I really wanted. It currently has 3 SSDs, 3 regular hard drives and a DVD drive. There's an infrared receiver from an old Macbook Pro, so I can use an Apple remote with it. It has about 8 USB 3 ports in the case and I think 5 USB 2 ports. I've added various bits and increased the overclock over the years, to keep it reasonably current.

It originally had two GTX 670 graphics cards in SLI. I recently got rid of them and replaced them with a GTX 1080, which is very nice. CPU is a 3770K at 4.4 GHz. 16 GB of RAM. Motherboard has headers for two more hard drives, should I choose to add them. Needless to say I will probably never buy a real Apple computer again, this thing is much better.

IMG_20160830_165648.jpg
 
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