New Rig, biatches!

[Swatter]

The rig is here...oh yes, the rig is here, indeed.

It was not supposed to arrive until Monday, but in a stroke of luck that can only foretell of divine intervention, it arrived early, before the weekend!

Those are the kind of surprises that make life worth living :)

[Nefaro]

So I installed my new 480GB hard drive and copied all my Steam library across to it (which was very easy actually)....and I've got 50GB left  :'(

I would be interested to see how this works out for you....I was always under the impression the biggest improvement you would see is by installing the operating system on the drive versus just the games/applications directly, especially since a lot of games rely on Windows libraries and components.  I have been hesitant to purchase a drive until I eventually rebuild my machine since I don't won't to go through an install of the O/S again, but if you see noticeable gain by just installing/moving apps to the new drive, I may reconsider.  Keep us posted!

I put my OS on the regular drive and only install the few games with noticeably long load times on my SSD.

When it comes to speeding up your game load times, you don't need the OS on your SSD. 

The only thing installing OS on it will do is speed up your Windows startup time.  Otherwise you're just using up precious extra space on the SSD with it.  In the old days, before we had tons of system RAM, the OS would use "virtual memory" which was a fancy way of saying it would use hard drive space to emulate RAM when it was out of it.  But anymore it's pretty negligible. 

Since I tend to leave my computer running for days at a stretch, and I keep my system tray pretty clean, startup & shutdown times aren't an issue.  So the OS is on the regular mechanical drive.

[Jarhead0331]

Dredd makes an interesting point that I've always wondered about. Is it better to leave your system on and running, or is it better to shutdown when not in use? I tend to shutdown, more to limit exposure to the Internet than anything else, but also to prevent wear, I suppose. Is it all in my head?

[Jarhead0331]

Can anyone give me suggestions for games to run for benchmarking? My old system was pretty good and there was nothing it could not run well. So far I've installed arma3, Elite and my DCS collection. Arma is running with everything at ultra with framerates over 60. Impressive.

The machine is very quiet. I'm surprised. My old machine made a lot more noise every time I was running load intensive applications. This thing is purring little a kitten with ice cool blue LEDs.

[TacticalWargames]

Put it this way when my daughter stays at mine at the weekend and her PC is on I can see the difference in how much I pay in electric a week (I have a pre payment meter). So having a PC on certainly costs and costs a fair bit. Most PC's are like having a microwave on these days.

So I'd say your best shutting down when not using it.

[MikeGER]

Put it this way when my daughter stays at mine at the weekend and her PC is on I can see the difference in how much I pay in electric a week (I have a pre payment meter). So having a PC on certainly costs and costs a fair bit. Most PC's are like having a microwave on these days.

So I'd say your best shutting down when not using it.

TW, my tip is: get (a used) Android tablet for surfing , YT vids, short emails, and casual gaming (with free apps) for your and your daughters needs

my Note 10.1 from 2012 saved me countless hours of desktop PC running time       

[Pete Dero]

Can anyone give me suggestions for games to run for benchmarking?

Maybe The Witcher 3 ?

[Grim.Reaper]

Dredd makes an interesting point that I've always wondered about. Is it better to leave your system on and running, or is it better to shutdown when not in use? I tend to shutdown, more to limit exposure to the Internet than anything else, but also to prevent wear, I suppose. Is it all in my head?

Not taken utility bills into consideration, I leave my computer on for days at a time, especially over the weekend when I use it much more.  Also during the nights, a number of my scheduled processes run like virus scan and backups, therefore not slowing me down when I am actually using it:)

[bbmike]

Keep an eye on 3DMark during the upcoming Steam sales. It gets heavily discounted sometimes.
I always turn my computer off. We're all in trouble if hackers can hack computers that are off.

[JasonPratt]

^^ Thru the power cords!!  :D

(The movies taught me all I know about hacking.)

I leave my system off, because it sucks more dust into the grills and fans, making me have to clean it more often. (Relatedly, if one or more of my fans picks up too much dust, it'll go out of balance, and like on a centrifuge that's bad.) Also when not in the winter, it uses so much power (it weighs 70 lbs or something) that it makes the room hot. Also, I have a hard time going to sleep with white noise from the fans. Also, we have a lot of thunderstorms in West TN (land of shaking earth and sky), so another good reason (besides hackers!) to turn off and unplug.

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, on benchmarking, clearly Arkham Knight is the king of practical tests in how well your computer can handle goofy-ass system architecture. It comes with a benchmarker, although as might be expected the benchmarker isn't altogether real in terms of game performance.  ::)

Pride of Nations has been improved in recent eons, but could be considered another chug-tester. It doesn't have a benchmarker so far as I recall, but it ought to.  >:D

[Con]

+1 for witcher 3.  Closest thing to playing a game like you were in a movie

Con

[DoctorQuest]

Dredd makes an interesting point that I've always wondered about. Is it better to leave your system on and running, or is it better to shutdown when not in use? I tend to shutdown, more to limit exposure to the Internet than anything else, but also to prevent wear, I suppose. Is it all in my head?

I always shutdown or at least use the sleep function. The mean-time-to-failure clock is ticking when the rig is running. Granted, components are much more robust than in years past but still...

On the other hand my desktop in my office at work runs 24/7/365. I need to be able to VPN to that rig to work on problems, etc. any time day or night. But....I'm not paying that electric bill. I also don't pay to replace that PC.

[JudgeDredd]

So I installed my new 480GB hard drive and copied all my Steam library across to it (which was very easy actually)....and I've got 50GB left  :'(

I would be interested to see how this works out for you....I was always under the impression the biggest improvement you would see is by installing the operating system on the drive versus just the games/applications directly, especially since a lot of games rely on Windows libraries and components.  I have been hesitant to purchase a drive until I eventually rebuild my machine since I don't won't to go through an install of the O/S again, but if you see noticeable gain by just installing/moving apps to the new drive, I may reconsider.  Keep us posted!

I have my OS installed on a 120GB SSD and the speed of booting up is incredible. I switch my machine off every morning when I go to work and every night when I go to bed. The only time I leave it on is when I run anti-spam and anti-virus checks on a Saturday night.

As for whether this drive helps? From what little time I got today with DCS, loading of a mission was considerably faster...I have no idea whether that was purely down to the disk or whether it was down to me continually going in and out of the game (and so it was cached perhaps?)

[Boggit]

How are you finding Windows 10 on your new rig (of which I'm jealous!)? I have hung back on it after reading our tech talk section, but it's been out a while now.