I got my laptop for going to college overseas (so a desktop was out of the question, unfortunately) way back in the good old days of Feb' 2011 


The only good thing I can say about it is that I got it for a great price. Cheap even for what it was.

It's an Acer Aspire 5552G-5828

AMD Phenom II X4 N930
15.6 monitor
ATI Mobility Radeon DH 5650
6 GB DDR3
500 GB Hard drive



I keep thinking I'd like to upgrade but I like to be wise with my money so I'll probably keep using it until either it dies or a game comes out that I rally want and literally can't play. (like less than 15 fps with all settings as low as possible)

Just built one on Monday, but the laptop before that was my college laptop.now that I've got a desktop, it'll only be used as a secondary.

Quoting Borg999,

reply 18

Quoting parrottmath,

reply 17

Just upgraded my work/gaming PC. The last one lasted about 4 years, but what do you expect from a laptop

I haven't looked into it in a very long time, but you can play decent games on a laptop without upgrading the graphics card and RAM nowadays, or are out of the box, middle of the road, laptops sufficient?

I used to buy a new pc every year, but now that money is tight (got down-sized in '09) I have cut back to once every 3 years. Several years back I switched to laptops instead of desktops. I got my new one about 2 months ago because I had bought Age of Wonders III and it would bog down badly. The new one seems to handle it all in stride.

Model:                                     HP Pavilion 17

OS:                                         Windows 8

Processor:                               AMD A10-5750M APU with Radeon HD Graphics 2.50 GHz

GPU:                                       AMD Radeon HD 8650G

System Memory:                     8GB  Micron Technology 1600MHz

Anyway, it does the job for me.

Here is the scoop -

• MSI X99 SLI PLUS
• INTEL I7 5820K 3.3GHz 15MB Cache, LGA2011V3 6 Core
• 24GB (6X4GB) DDR4 2400MHz Patriot VIPER EXTREME
• (2X) 240GB Patriot BLAZE SATA III 6GBps SSD (Striped in Raid 0)
• (1X) 1TB WD SATA 7200 RPM 64 MB Buffer
• MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4GB 1279 MHz Boost Clock
• CORSAIR HYDRO H100i Liquid CPU Cooling
• EVGA SUPERNOVA 850W (Bronze)
• ANTEC P-280 Case
• WIN 7 ULTIMATE 64 BIT
• NET NET Under $1800 (okay, $2100 with the 16Gigs of DDR4 I added)

Believe it or not, this was a Bare-Bones build from Fry's.  I did an item by item comparison on everything on NewEgg and it came out to only $40 less even without tax.  As an entry level DDR4 box, the MSI classic proved to be an exceptional value/performance choice for the motherboard.

I run 3-23", monitors so the 970 (I couldn't justify the $550 for the 980) uses an HDMI to DVI adaptor for one of the monitors.

I actually got the P280 case from Fry's as a price match for $64.  I can't believe Antec has discontinued this case.

The EVGA Bronze will get replaced with a 1000W Platinum soon.

Just need 2 more sticks of the Patriot DDR4 to fill up the last of the 8 slots (top picture only shows 2 sticks installed before I got the additional 16GB when it went on sale today).

The Corsair Liquid Cooling fit nicely in the dual fan top area that I configured as an intake, with the original fans I took out from up there placed on the hard drive racks, also as an intake.  This allows the rear fan to create a push-pull flow through.

Not that it matters, but the Windows experience is 7.8 out of possible 7.9 where everything but the CPU calculations per second rating of 7.8 was at 7.9.

I'm happy with auto-turbo OC setting native to the MSI Bios that is estimated at 3.8 GHz, as well as the EXTREME DRAM speeds, and with the SSD's striped, my boot time acts like it is just waking up from sleep

I have the OS on the raid drive, and I'm going to experiment with migrating the steam folder, and other apps to the 1TB WD.  So far though I am quite pleased with the performance.  I will probably get another 970 when prices come down, but I found out this board limits the 2nd Card to 8 channels.  I would need the MSI Gaming board for that, but I suspect I will have plenty of time to strategize getting approval from the wife for that little operation before I actually need it.

So, all is right with the world now.  No more tech envy induced OCD about not having proper equipment.

And, yes, that is my cat asleep in the basket.

The ASUS GTX 590 3gig DDR5 is still a power house (& power hungry), but you should be fine with its dual GPU's.  And, with 3-DVI's, it's perfect for triple monitors!

Prices are only going to drop for the 2011 sockets, as well as DDR4 so I'd say you're on par for a build within the year

My current desktop is three and a half years old. The previous computer lasted for ~3 years before it stopped working entirely. The computer before that had the infamous "capacitor plague" and had its first hard failure while I was playtesting Twilight of the Arnor, although I think Hellgate: London had more to do with the breakdown.

I hope to get a new machine next year, since recent games are starting to overpower my video card, and I don't have enough ram (6 gb).

I think my FSX is still about 200gig ....and I pared it down already...removing 'inferior' aircraft...

I could sell you some servers to fix that problem.  

My main PC has been neglected a bit as I've gone crazy on my home lab.  48 Cores, 208Gb of RAM, 22TB of Storage.  THAT heats up the room.  LOL.

Gaming PC is a 3770k, 16Gb RAM, R9 290.  It gets the job done.

Then i am lucky i am not into that kind of shit. But i still skipped on games like Titanfall or Max Payne 3 cause of the lack of space on that SSD - and i have forbidden myself to install games elsewhere (regular HDDs)... not that i regret much, at least i saved some money 

What qualifies as inferior aircraff anyway?

My Dell xps 8100 is 3.5 years old.  I still have the original equipment - 8 gb, 3.2 ghz i5, (it says multicore 2, hyperthread 4) 1 Tb HD, AMD HD 5700 video.  I still can't see any reason to update it.  It would be nice to have a SS drive but its not necessary.  I don't play "twitch" games like action shooters, so I don't need max frame rates.  My reflexes are such that I just get frustrated with those types anyway.  When I decide it is time to get a new one I will probably get another Dell as I have generally been very happy with them for 15 years or so.   I am just too old to "build my own" any more, sad to say.   30 years ago I did.

I built mine as well Island Dog. I built it in 2011 and expect it to last another few more years.

• I5 3570K Overclocked to 4.2
• 8 gigs ddr 3 ram, (will upgrade to 16 in January)
• 1 terrabyte HDD which I use intels cache drive of speeding it up. very nice of Intel to support this)
• Asus Z797 Extreme 6 mobo
• EVGA 670 GTX w/ 2gig ram (dx 11 card, was top of line 3 years ago)
• Win 7 Pro 64
• Corsair 850 watt Gold PS.
• I use an aftermarket cooling fan and heat sink on my processor. big bulky thing.
• Corsair full tower case. 
• ASUS 27" 1080p HD monitor. (cant remember name)
• ....crappy crappy speakers which need upgrading asap!

I can upgrade more ram and switch to a full SSD to extend life out of this rig. I doubt will will need more than 4 cores in the next two years but my mobo can upgrade to an I7 if needed for the extra threads. The I5 is not 'multi' threaded which is why its cheaper. 

What turned out to be a "budget build" in "value build's" clothing was simply because I looked at Z97 (socket 1150) boards and all the associated accouterments relative to a new rig and it turned out to be less than $300 than the bare bones DDR4 route for a comparable setup (but including two (2) T770 Ti's with 2 GB DDR5).

I think anyone building a system again after a few years now will find the technology has gravitated to a much more streamlined process.  Even liquid cooling is fairly cut and dried nowadays. 

Case in point; used to be you had to browse tech forums all night to get answers and downloads to fill in the compatibility blanks for the "machinery" you had chosen.  And the broken English and grammatical errors in manuals could be very misleading. 

I must say I was quite impressed with the quality and layout of the MSI Motherboard and BIOS in particular.  There are still some broken English grammatical headscratchers in the manual, but the BIOS was amazingly robust, and its point and click interface was refreshing.  The fact that I didn't have to search endlessly for RAID, or other updated drivers since they were native from the DVD was a huge plus for me. 

Much easier build than I anticipated based on my 6 year old expectations of the last time I built a system.