I’ve talked with a few guild members that are looking for suggestions for how to build extremely inexpensive gaming PCs with a heavy emphasis on "inexpensive". This is about as cheap as it gets for a gaming PC with new parts, though I am always looking for ways to go cheaper while maintaining performance. AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are excellent for gaming on the cheap. When an AMD APU is compared to discrete Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) typically the GPU will always win on performance but the APU will always win on price, if you avoid super-expensive memory.Sunday, August 30, 2015
Joe's Value Gaming PC (AMD A10, August 2015)
I’ve talked with a few guild members that are looking for suggestions for how to build extremely inexpensive gaming PCs with a heavy emphasis on "inexpensive". This is about as cheap as it gets for a gaming PC with new parts, though I am always looking for ways to go cheaper while maintaining performance. AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are excellent for gaming on the cheap. When an AMD APU is compared to discrete Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) typically the GPU will always win on performance but the APU will always win on price, if you avoid super-expensive memory.
Save your money on RAM!
Recently I was chatting with a guild member about computer upgrades
and he mentioned that he was considering paying for some very expensive
overclocked memory in the hopes of realizing better performance in web
browsing and gaming.
Don’t buy it! Outside of a few specialize applications/configurations memory speeds usually don’t matter much. Which ones you might be asking? If you’re using an AMD APU for your graphics and don’t have a discrete graphics card then memory speeds matter because that is now your video memory also (APU’s don’t have video memory inside the processor die). You might also see a benefit on workstations that perform heavy amounts of virtualization. For browsing and gaming though save your money and go with the budget memory.
Don’t buy it! Outside of a few specialize applications/configurations memory speeds usually don’t matter much. Which ones you might be asking? If you’re using an AMD APU for your graphics and don’t have a discrete graphics card then memory speeds matter because that is now your video memory also (APU’s don’t have video memory inside the processor die). You might also see a benefit on workstations that perform heavy amounts of virtualization. For browsing and gaming though save your money and go with the budget memory.
The Dollar Menu Speed Run
One thing that many people notice when they join our guild is that guild
chat is often very quiet. That’s because most of the action happens in
Ventrillo (voice chat). If you want to join and have the most fun with
us grab your mic and download Ventrillo. The software is free and
headset mics are cheap. The one I use is just a little over $20!
Often people tell me, "my mic is broken" or "I don’t have one and can’t afford one" and so on. It’s okay if you don’t feel social enough for voice chat, just be honest. For everyone else here is the cheap headset that I use, the Logitech H340. For the price it sounds great to me.
If you’ve never heard of Ventrillo and don’t know where to get the client this is the place: http://www.ventrilo.com/
Often people tell me, "my mic is broken" or "I don’t have one and can’t afford one" and so on. It’s okay if you don’t feel social enough for voice chat, just be honest. For everyone else here is the cheap headset that I use, the Logitech H340. For the price it sounds great to me.
If you’ve never heard of Ventrillo and don’t know where to get the client this is the place: http://www.ventrilo.com/
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Joe's Favorite Fan Films
Have you ever
thought to yourself, “Ugh, Hollywood has run out of ideas” and
wished you could find something more interesting to watch? I have,
all the time. Thankfully YouTube seems to be filled with fan-films
that are better than much of what I see in theaters. As I discover
these gems I'll be adding them to a special playlist on my channel as
my guess is that the types of fan-films I enjoy other gamers will
also!
I'll update it from time to time and if you come across an interesting fan-film please let me know!
Hermes arrives!
If you've been watching my channel for any length of time you know I'm always looking to save money and despise Microsoft Windows (mostly due to money). So I went out and looked for the best bang for the buck I could find and here is a video of what I picked up!
For the mere $180 this computer costs it is an amazing little machine that exemplifies why I am a believer in buying refurbished items. As long as they work it doesn't matter if they're pretty!
My new little friend runs Zorin OS 9 Core 64-bit and ran flawlessly the first time Zorin ran, zero driver issues! It's an example of why I have no problems with leaving Windows behind as Microsoft goes down a road of restrictive environments, privacy intrusions, continues to be unable (unwilling?) to deal with its security shortcomings.
If you didn't already know all of the videos on my channels are all processed by a trans-coding computer that also runs Linux. I've been very happy with its performance which is why I knew I didn't want a dual-booting notebook and instead was ready for a Linux-only notebook. I can't beat the price for performance ratio it offers! Windows would run rather slowly on a machine like this, but Linux runs great!
Now you'll get to see a whole lot more blogging here courtesy of Hermes, so I hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading my little blog.
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