@Minion-Queen said:

Depends on what it is.

Basically a simple continuous shape of wood, preferably some very attractive bamboo, that is pretty big, about 20 inches tall and wide that looks like so:

Does anyone here know of a company that you can send a simple 3D model to and that they can produce it out of wood and ship it to you?

@Nic said:

If she likes RPGs, then Divinity: Original Sin would be a good choice. It has co-op with an interesting mechanic when you don't agree on which path to choose.

Just watched some reviews of this. Looks like it may be exactly what we're looking for, thx.

@coliver said:

If you liked Diablo 2 (and not so much Diablo 3) you would probably love Torchlight and Torchlight 2. Both were made by former Blizzard devs who created their own studio after Diablo 2. They move back into the classic dungeon crawling experience of both the original Diablo and Diablo 2.

I pretty much played through Torchlight in one night one time when I had insomnia. Loved it. Not sure I loved it enough to dig into Torchlight 2, but it was a great one-off.

I've actually never played Diablo 2. We liked 3 for a while but it got so old so quick with how the map was carved into "acts" with cut scenes and the most contrived, grab-baggy storyline you could imagine. Made me wish they'd do an Amalur reboot in Diablo's isometric format.

Played through Portal 2 w/ a friend, it was pretty great. Left4Dead I've never tried, I'll have to take a look.

Baldur's Gate sounds right up our alley, I think we'll look into that first.

I'd never heard of that site either, thank you!

@scottalanmiller said:

Age of Empires 2 HD.... lots of us here play it. AoE2 was so much better than AoE3, 3 was a total failure. AoE2 was by far the best of the serious. @NTG had a weekly AoE2 game for a long time. It's been patched and released via Steam with some major new updates that make the new version way better than what we had long ago.

I'll check that out tonight! She was looking at Age of Empires Mythology or whatev, I'll look at 2 w/ her too. Thx.

GF and I are looking for something to play together here and there to relieve stress. We put a few dozen hours into Diablo 3 co-op on an XBox One but the story was so absolutely terrible and the balance was so off that we threw it out the window yesterday.

She likes RPG-style elements, and so far Borderlands 2 was the most fun we've had. We couldn't get into Borderlands 3 w/ the zero-gravity BS.

Ideal would be couch co-op but we're open to anything and have two gaming rigs available if PC ends up being the only option. She claims to have played and loved Age of Empires 3 back in the day too, and we're open to pretty much any genre.

Any ideas?

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt

$90/G3258 dual core intel
$130/FX6300 hex core AMD

For $40 I think it's worth it

Agree. Though you can get an unlocked Intel quad that turbos to 3.7Ghz out of the box for $105 on Amazon.com ( i5-2500K ).

@thecreativeone91 said:

Did you return the MSI?

Sure did. It had a few dealbreakers, mostly a

1. Very subpar screen
2. MISSING LEFT WINDOWS KEY WTMFF how do you use a PC in 2015 without the left Windows key? I tried mapping it to the Caps Lock key but it was just a productivity killer.
3. Got super loud under even weak load.

The great news is the new ASUS, which was a few hundred $ cheaper, delivers on all of those fronts. Under the most intense load I put the MSI under it's still just about silent. It has these giant vents in the back and pushes all of the airflow out that way so you never feel it. It's even cold enough to use to game on your lap, which I did last night. Played a few rounds of Dota 2 on my lap in bed while watching The Fly w/ the gf. Super duper impressed w/ the ASUS so far with the singular exception of it being very ugly. But it also somehow, even w/ a GTX 965 instead of a 970 like the MSI, is able to do my 3 27" 1440p monitors AND its built-in screen, which the MSI could not.

@thecreativeone91 said:

@creayt said:

Ok so upon further research it turns out that 2 of the sticks are buried deep in dismantling and 2 are easily accessible. I'm not feeling super confident about the process to get to those other 2 sticks, but desperately want to put in all 32GB. Do you guys know how to find someone that can safely do the install? I don't trust the Geek Squad at Best Buy and have found that they typically have less knowledge than your typical techdestrian. Are there warranty service providers in every state that I might go to? If so how do I find someone trustworthy. Thx.

You'd have to do that with MSI or someone authorized by them to keep the warranty.

Ah, didn't think of that. The laptop is actually ASUS so I'll try going through them first. Thx.

Seeing a ton of different options for my new rig on NewEgg, how does one choose which RAM to go w/? They have what appear to be fancier options like Corsair Vengeance ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233265 ) and then what appear to be higher rated generic options like G.Skill ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231705 ).

I don't really know anything about RAM other than general compatibility ( I think my laptop, ASUS G751 w/ an i7-4720 HQ takes DDR3 1600 ), so as far as voltage, timing, cas latency, I'm not informed enough to know what kind of performance advantage or other differentiation each option holds. The laptop sneakily OC's its graphics card under the hood on this particular laptop, but I don't think offers any proc or RAM OC-ing, though I'd love to be wrong on that.

Any guidance on how to pick RAM would be great. I'm now deep in love w/ this laptop as it delivers on almost every one of my needs for a portable workstation, and actually somehow feels slightly snappier than my Xeon 1240 32GB workstation, which is... amazing.

Ok so upon further research it turns out that 2 of the sticks are buried deep in dismantling and 2 are easily accessible. I'm not feeling super confident about the process to get to those other 2 sticks, but desperately want to put in all 32GB. Do you guys know how to find someone that can safely do the install? I don't trust the Geek Squad at Best Buy and have found that they typically have less knowledge than your typical techdestrian. Are there warranty service providers in every state that I might go to? If so how do I find someone trustworthy. Thx.

What's the price difference on the dual vs. quad procs you're looking at?

I learned the hard way how important 4 cores are for me, but I run serverware in the background and tend to multitask all day, every day. I'm sitting here working off of 8GB for the next few days until my new RAM gets here and it's also extremely painful, I've had to close app from Windows messages saying my I was out of RAM repeatedly and even crashed some things. It might not be a bad idea to ask them to describe their general usage habits and then make an executive decision on whether their "computing personality" does indeed require the cores and sticks.

The new $1250 laptop with:

And without:

Rapid mode.

And best of all it can take 32GB of RAM. EEE.

Picked up a semi-cheap ASUS gaming laptop that has a lower-end graphics card and amazingly, it can do the 3 1440p screens at 60 Hz out of the box w/ 2 cables and THE BUILT IN screen as well. I'm going to go 3 portrait and the laptop landscape on a stand. Pretty amazed at what this $1250 eyesore can do.

Interestingly enough, there's a quote from Anandtech from an article yesterday saying that PC update cycles average about 3-4 years. Thought that was interesting.

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt Can't unless it's pure AHCI

Sorry to hear that. Better luck next RAID.

@MattSpeller said:

For fun / reference;

840pro 256gb on AMD RAID (AHCI not passing through due to RAID enabled for another array, this is a single drive)

Now throw it into rapid mode and watch those numbers climb.

@thecreativeone91 said:

Overclocking a Xeon is generally a bad idea, not much you can do with them.

Personally I would avoid OC all together it just shortens the life of the components, especially when caps and power regs are so close to their rated specs already.

But what about FUN?

@MattSpeller said:

@thecreativeone91 said:

Wasn't PCChip like one of the worst you could get?

IIRC Yes

There was a day when that was also Asrock, MSI and some other much more common brands. They've improved a lot over the years but it'll be 5-10 more before I'd trust them with my hard earned money.

Kind of looking at a ASRock right now. Are they considered pretty shoddy? Someone in one of the NewEgg reviews implied that you can use the ASRock bios to OC even non-K processors. If that's true that'd be awesome, I'd love to zip up this Xeon even if it made the proc die in less than a year. I also keep my apartment at about 67 degrees, and am thinking of running the case half open w/ a tower fan that I run blowing into it, so I'm feeling pretty confident on cooling. But yeah, if I could get my 1240 v2 up above 4 Ghz for 4-5 months I'd be a happy camper.