Exciting news is afoot, and it could mean a change to the focus of my blog. Actually I’ve been considering a name change for a while, since the proportion of my gaming time spent on WoW has lessened somewhat. I like blogging, but when i’m not playing WoW there’s not much I can write here. So, the exciting news- I’ve been given a beta key for the Warhammer Online game, otherwise known as Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, and shortened to WAR. I’m going to download the client tomorrow and roll a Dwarf Ironbreaker! I’m sure there are terms and conditions that beta testers have to adhere to, and I might not be able to write too openly about certain aspects of the game (don’t want my key taken away!!), but I’ll give it more than a passing mention in these pages.
The reason I haven’t downloaded the client already is I’m picking up my new PC tomorrow. More specifically, I’m picking up the parts I ordered from Scan computers, and a friend from work has kindly offered to put them together for me. I’m quite excited about going down the DIY route as opposed to the bells and whistles approach from Alienware (I mean, what’s the point in pazzazz when the thing don’t work??), and it’s been a lot of fun just picking out the bits that are going in. Here’s the lowdown-
The main bone of contention was the choice of processor. I’m quite keen on Quad Core processors to future proof my rig as much as possible. However, the price at the moment for the very best of these is prohibitive- £700 I think. The new Wolfdale processors are remarkably well priced but are impossible to get hold of. The E8400 came in stock on Wednesday morning and were sold out by lunchtime. So I’ve settled on a stop gap- a cheap as chips Pentium Dual Core E2180. Off the shelf its two cores run at 2GHz, but I’m assured that with a little nudge it can run at speeds of 3GHz+. That’s math I like. An upgrade to Quad Core in 6 months is on the cards.
For the graphics card there’s not much contest, the smart money is on the nVidia 8800GT, which is well priced and suffers very little in terms of performance when compared with the likes of the Ultra and GTX, the really high end cards. An Arctic Freezer Pro fan will keep that overclocked processor cool, and 4GB of RAM, the Antec 900 gamer case, 500GB Samsung hard drive, a logitech G15 keyboard and a nice 22″ Samsung monitor make up the set. All told, I’m spending less than a grand. Less than half the price of the Alienware rig for what’s likely to be only marginally worse performance. But the upgrade potential is massive because of the money I’ve saved. The downside is there will be no warranty. But the Alienware warranty was barely worth the paper it was written on anyway, and I like the thought of having things in my own hands.
Have a nice weekend folks, and any suggestions for new blog names are welcome 
0 Responses to “Build me a rig!”