Flitterkill

Mine was..... NOT!

Just got it up to room temperature and booted.

Also came with a bonus 16 gig micro sd card (for an Android phone containing three mostly good Star Wars films and three not at all good Star Wars films... )

$765 shipped and I suspect well spent.

I shall, as it should be around these parts, produce pictures and such. Marvin has me beat though. He's building a new rig and the video card is $500 at least...

Will it arrive Wednesday? Thursday? Will the box instead contain a variety of assorted rocks and gravel? Anticipating finding out...

Mostly. Need to purge....

Over the lifetime of the annuity payments you would be better off lump sum. IF you were 18? Maybe annual. 30? Ehhh...

Again, at this amount, the level of catastrophic stupidity one must have to blow it is difficult to quantify. The reason most lotto winners lose it all is they get a few million banked (sub 40) and then use it exclusively as a piggy bank. Sure, it's invested, but they keep pulling from it without a clue in the world and the crap they spend it on...

All academic as they say however, for arguments sake, let's say that lump sum for this Wednesday, after taxes, is a check for 600 million.

If your investments are pulling 3-4% a year you aren't investing. Those returns are way too conservative. But hey, again, let's just roll with 5% returns annually.

5% on 600 million.

Now, again, capital gains and other taxes abound (for reasons mostly good - a whole other discussion there....) but let's say that those expenses pull off half of your investment returns annually. That leaves an effective return yearly of 2.5% but hey, screw it, lets round down to 2%.

That's 2 bucks for every 100 returned yearly after taxes. $1000? That's $20 of course. 

$200 on $10,000

$2000 on $100,000.

$20,000 a year - in-pocket - on every million stashed.

Times 600...

A paltry 12 million a year and your principle remains intact.

That's a million dollars a month of walking around money. $30,000 a day.

Don't like my estimates? Cut it in half. Make it $500,000 a month and a mere $15,000 a day. And you still have 600 million in the bank.

I think, dear Turnbull, you could live a little more above your means than you stated.

Omen it is. 

Seems the 960m is well and truly just a marketing rebadge of the 860m. They lock it down so no overclocking and there is a slight boost in freq and stuff so it evals as slightly better than the 860m but this makes my decidering much easier as the 960m versions on the used market seem to be pulling at least $175 more. So not worth it. Especially if I can push more out of the 860m with a little work.

Well, I think I might have swung myself over to the HP Omen and will start to turn ye'olde 2007 build over to headless unit.

Had about two months away from the desktop system to do things and stuff. With me now having D3 Reaper of Souls (and needing to clean the office) I installed and ran a round or two on it. I forgot how utterly nice the old 24" Dell 1900x1200 panels circa 2005 are. Ten years old now and still gorgeous. Matte! Matte I say! Your eyes just fall into them vs. the glossies. I know the backlighting bulbs will one day (sooner than later) fail out but for now - yeah, this will work - again.

Now the question is will I find an 860m version cheap enough to sway me away from dropping more dime for a 960m version. Sole drawback is they both carry only 2gig of ram on the cards but given the premium nature of these guys I can probably flip it a year and half down the line and still keep a good amount of equity out of the deal.

Another option is to, perhaps, push forward with the notebook as my primary from now on. Relegate the old 2007 gaming system as a headless fileserver and use the new notebook as 24/7 main machine - plugging in a full size wireless keyboard and kicking the vid out to the 24" panel for desktop work and then just unplugging that stuff for couch time. In that case I might justify splurging more.

Or I could just not game on a notebook and spend x-amount on a motherboard, memory, cpu, and vid card. Which would be what? Let's ballpark 125 mb, 250 card, 200 cpu (i5), and 75 memory. $650 to upgrade the desktop and $15 for a new fan for the 4 year old notebook? Ugh... Mind you, that would be without an SSD upgrade for the desktop.

Agree re: Lenovo. Seems they can jam the specs in but the build quality seems lacking.

Surprising, especially in a predominantly PC gaming community. Who'd a thunk it

And no, it doesn't, those two just appeared to be in the sweet spot sub-1000 (the more sub the better). For example, there is an HP 17" Envy recent release (6 months to a year) but it carries only the 940m or less (920m Is that even a thing - forget...)

I might - *might* - go with 15.6" if I can find an HP Omen on the cheap...

Lenovo Y70

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Y70-TOUCH-Laptop-80DU000NUS/dp/B00MYR9EEA

ASUS ROG G751J1

http://www.amazon.com/G751JL-17-Inch-Gaming-Laptop-model/dp/B00T7EXKLG

So here's the deal. My HP DV7-6135DX which has been gloriously awesome lo these 4+ years (2011 model) has two "problems" (not really but...). The dedicated video card within can't hack Fallout 4 or Unreal Tournament 4 (flawless with Mass Effect 2/3, Skyrim, etc.) so the future has arrived and I can't play it and about a week ago the internal CPU/Video fan has probably thrown a bearing (or the brushless equivalent). I could (and probably will) replace that fan but I'm looking at better notebook options now...

Unless you can confidently drop approx $1200 or more you aren't aren't getting a new "gaming" notebook/laptop.  And after cancers and Leslie kinda sorta getting side-swiped by a distracted driver back in October resulting in broken things and more bills that ain't happenin. Yes, you want to buy me a fancy new Razer? By all means I'll PM my address ASAP. Otherwise... (Oh those Razers look so good...)

So, much like my DV7 which I nabbed for $420 6 months after it was released (yes, that was a nice), I'm targeting something good but about a year out from release. I can hustle up a Cowboom/Ebay/Etc. deal and get back up to speed without dropping a grand and have something that isn't total crap.

Right now the best inexpensive gaming notebook, new even, is a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series. 15.6" screen, i5, GTX 960m 4 gig, $750-ish. It's an option but it's also not 17". Also it's all plastic. Great reviews re: power and cooling though.

My requirements? 17" screen. I care not whether the Intel chip is i5 or i7, or if it is 4th gen or 5th gen. I will not get an AMD chip in a laptop. Dedicated video of course (duh) and it should be equal to an GTX 950m or better. I do not need to run games at ultra settings to be happy. 8 gigs of ram or more. Don't care about the HD/SSD as I can work around or change that easily enough if I need to. I rarely travel enough to be concerned about weight or battery life. This guy will spend its' life in the living room plugged in 24/7 with occasional trips to the upstairs office.

HP appears to be out right now. Most of what they carry now or over the last year just doesn't get the job done (they used lower end ATI/AMD mobile video in recent models - just doesn't cut it at all). 

I've targeted two decent options - linked up top.

The Lenovo rocks an GTX 860m which is kinda sorta last gen but is still effectively equivalent to the current GTX 950m. The ASUS carries the GTX 965m which is a tad better. 

Lenovo is 4 gigs dedicated, the ASUS just 2.

I'm leaning Lenovo since it is lighter and thinner. There's a lot more going on there are well features wise (click the links). The ASUS gets equally good reviews but is also 10 pounds and has fewer features.

Might pull the trigger, might not. Thoughts? Other options I'm missing? Eventually I'll get that 2007 desktop C2D gaming Death Star back up to spec...

So is a Ancient Corrupted Ashbringer a thing? Because I got one with Onyx last night and he wanted the transmog immediately. 

Well got a surprise under yonder tree - that being Reaper of Souls. Was going to grab it earlier in the Fall but stuff, reasons.

I knew things were perkier once Jay Wilson left but had no idea how much fun this thing got in a short amount of time.

Biggs clued me up last night with a couple GR runs - lot to learn and re-learn ("Ohhhh right... You hit the enter button to bring up chat...")

Prob spec out a Sorceress for S5. Addicted to Disintegrate.

Message me and invite me in when you catch me online. More than happy to join.

Also, a new alt. GC clan appears! gamrsco. Because it was there for the taking.

-Fk

As is usual, I rock the regular season and then crash in the playoffs. I knew this was the case when the week prior to the playoffs my team went off for 140 or 150 something. Just knew the following week would crash and burn. And it did. That's ringers.

GC #2... You draft RB Anderson (Denver) and RB Bernard (Cinci) 1-2 and they are only last-year good and not this year good then bad things are going to happen.

The nut about Ringers for the first playoff: I made the right tactical moves (picked up KC defense, etc) but my regulars just took the week off.

Feh.

Looks like a new MC version is conflicting with something - not an intentional shutdown.

EDIT: Might be a bukkit thing - anyways, timing - looks like the server conflict started tonight.

Impressive!

Drop 150 the week before. First round of playoffs?

Just so much suck. A perfect storm of suck.

Congrats to the winners and so on, best of luck in yonder final game.

This resolved yet? Also - that exchange rate has to be brutal...

There does not appear to be a block on PayPal. When you click to buy a membership it should do a currency conversion when you get to the PayPal site to finish the transaction.

Also credit cards should just work I imagine...

Crazee.

glhf indeed.

I think there has to be a mulligan given here and LeoA can get him back.

I mean, what am I missing here? Why would you drop him?

Also I'm playing Leslie this week while we are in WI for TurkeyDay. Should be entertaining banter...

Have we moved on?

Need a rethink or a shutdown?

Desktop: Core2Duo circa 2007  

Notebook: i5 (2nd Gen) circa 2011/12 (just hits the min reqs)

Desktop: Nvidia 8800GTS 512 circa 2007

Notebook: Dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6490m 512

Desktop: 6 gig

Notebook: 8 gig

The i5 requirement seems like no big deal these days though people working on oc'd i3 rigs are in for some disappointment.

8 for the pc and 2 for the card (4 recommended). My have times changed.

Nutz. I'm gonna have to live off Twitch streams to get my jones.

New management again? Cra-zee.