BTGBullseye

Just a quick little tidbit... If you vote for Obama, you aren't Catholic. The Democrats right now support things (diametrically opposite to the standings of the Republicans) that violate too many of the Catholic churches precepts. A true Catholic cannot vote Democrat.

I have a nice family tree of complete alcoholics as grandparents and everyone further back, but my parents almost never drank until I hit 21. The net result is that I have an extreme tolerance for alcohol, but no desire to get smashed. ($300 of hard booze on my 21st birthday, and I only got moderately buzzed) I occasionally have a nice custom Screwdriver as a sleep aid. (mix about 1/4 shot each of vodka, rum, Black Velvet [Canadian whiskey], and brandy with about 12 ounces of OJ)

Well, I don't know about power to the video card, but the processor does top out at 35w. (exactly as specified in it's specs) Under load battery time is supposedly around 1 hour. Damn, can't seem to find my tube of PK-1... Have to look for it later.

Did I just read that right? You think AMD is anywhere near Intel performance/quality? AMD just got up to par with 1st Gen Sandy Bridge... As for manual voltage control, the new GeForce 6XX series has automatic voltage setting, and going higher just fries the card. (they either get rid of the manual voltage settings or get rid of the 5 year warantees)

The only hybrid drives I recommend at this time are Seagate. From the sound of things either the HDD is about to die, or you've got something overheating really bad and you're entire system is about to die.

I know of a few nice PSUs that'd fit that...

I'd recommend a hybrid, since right now they're about the same price as a standard drive.

Well, I think I managed to get the cooling solution in this laptop to set, and it now has max temps of 76c. Still, that's 10c less than my old laptop... I need to replace the stock grease/pads with some PK-1...

Well, you could always go for a hybrid hard drive... It's got both an SSD and a regular 7200 RPM HDD in one drive, and it isn't a significant increase in price from the regular HDDs.

Actually, I was installing Starcraft 2 in the background when I took that screenshot. (installing using a backup disk image from my HDD, and running Avast!, so lots of processor usage) Idle temps for everything are around 43c. (when the fan is off, and it's not on a laptop cooler) Max temps I've seen are 65c when maxing the GPU and CPU loads in a stress test.

Ok, so I just got the laptop this evening and this happened... [attachment=0]8.8GHz i5-3210m processor.png[/attachment] An 8.8GHz i5-3210m processor! This was just an error on the part of OpenHardwareMonitor, it's really only running at about 2.5GHz. lol

Yeah, you shouldn't hear a thing.

It's probly just that you were using up too much HDD bandwidth. Downloading something as big as WoW uses quite a lot of a HDD's read/write speed, and trying to play a game on top of it... Loading textures is all it takes at that point to cause lag.

Actually, here's a real nova...

Actually, if you're getting a brand new drive, the new batches of the Seagate drives are less likely to be DOA, and they perform about 20% faster than comparable WD drives. Last I checked, they were less expensive than the WD Black too. Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM $110 (I have one of these, it is on-par with mid-grade SSDs, about 20% better performance than WD Black drives) Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM $160 (same price as a WD Black with about 30% better performance)

If it dies, it will likely go nova and destroy not only this solar system, but also any nearby systems. If it also causes other nearby suns to explode, then a nova is actually a super nova, and could theoretically remove from existence our arm of the galaxy.

To each his own.

HD 6670 for $70 with a $20 rebate... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125403 HD 6770 for $110 with a $30 rebate... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121472

Ok, so I have finally gotten enough money to be able to upgrade my 2 year old Dell 1558 laptop (6GB 1333MHz RAM, i5-450m CPU, HD 5470 1GB GPU) to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246491 I'm also getting these to replace the single 4GB 1333MHz RAM module that it comes with: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211568 (gonna replace a 2GB module in my old laptop with the 4GB one from the new laptop, then turn it into a Linux box) What do you think? Not bad for $647 is it? (I'm doing the rush processing, hence the added $4)

Here's a decent review comparison of the 660Ti and the HD 7870... http://teksyndicate.com/news/2012/08/16/nvidia-gtx-660-ti-vs-amd-radeon-7950-vs-amd-radeon-7870 Here's the Tomshardware site that he got the benchmarking from: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,3279.html (seems the 660 Ti beats the 7870 by 25w in the power consumption chart)

The external drives just perform like a 5400 RPM laptop drive, and the internals perform close to SSD speeds... The real difference in pricing is that people don't realize that it's cheaper, easier, and you get a better bang for your buck when you get an external enclosure and a normal internal drive. Most don't even realize that assembling your own external drive is possible. (I did quite a lot of research into this when I was looking for an external HDD) Overall I came up with a 2TB Seagate 3.5" drive that performs at 130MB/s or faster read+write, (mid-grade SSD speeds) an external enclosure that has both USB 3 and eSATA II ports, and all for the same price as a 1TB external drive that couldn't even max out the USB 2 connection it was limited to. (I am very good at looking for deals, and I'm not afraid of putting in, literally, 4 screws to assemble it) Still, I must mention that most of the older tech is the same price as the new stuff, and the rest is more expensive... If you were looking at some of the older drives you'll be seeing that $100+ price tag on drives that have less space, and perform worse than some new drive that only costs $85.

No problem.

Good laptop coolers can be as low as $20 on Newegg, but beware the really expensive ones. ($55+ are usually a big ripoff)

I actually suggest this laptop cooler... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834981029 I'm using one now, and amazingly it's beating out the Thermaltake Massive23 LX that I had prior. I also got one of these for a friend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834988073 He has absolutely no complaints, and it has dropped the temps in his laptop by at least 8c. (mine does 9-10c)

I'd definitely look at the possibility of getting a 1200w, since I have seen several that are less expensive than that 1000w PSU you're looking at, just look for deals. This would actually be on par with the one you posted, but cost you ~$40 less... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182188 (and it has up to 100a on the 4-rail 12v [2 x 20a, 2 x 30a] whereas the Cooler Master one only puts out a single rail of 80a which increases the possibility of damage to your system)