Gaming Rig Upgrades

Change is necessary.  Without it nothing good happens.  But you have to have a good reason and a plan and that's what I present here.

I've been using an Intel X58 Based Core I7 940 for gaming duties for a good 7 years now.  It's one of a few rigs I currently have and it lives happily at my buddy's house awaiting it's weekly visit from me.

Over the years it's changed a bit but most of the core parts ( pardon the pun) have remained the same with the Board, CPU and memory remaining unchanged.  It has gone through a series of video cards, however.  Beginning with a 1000Watt Power supply ( because they needed it!) I started out with a pair of Nvidia GTX 285's.  Great cards but total system draw was on the order of 800 watts!  That and the extra 20F of heat they pumped into the room annoyed my buddy when he got the power bill.  So I looked for something a bit more efficient.  I switched to what was then a top of the heap (as in kicking Nvidia's rear at the time) Radeon 6970 2GB.  That card served me well for close to 3 years and now resides in my home game rig where it still does admirable duty as a backup gaming rig.

A couple of years ago my buddy suprised me with a gift.  An Nvidia GTX 970!  The 6970 was starting to have trouble with newer games and with the added strain of my new penchant for live game streams was just not up to the task.

That was it.  I had no plans to do anything further until a completely new build.  But something struck me with the GTX 970.    The fact that a 7 year old rig based on an 8 year old platform was still viable for gaming with nothing more than the change of a video card.

With some admittedly casual research I'd found that the X58 platform had a wider appeal than just me.  People were actively seeking them out and using them for everything from bitcoin mining to gaming rigs.   I also found a subculture that sought to push the platform further.  The Xeon crowd.

Now everybody pretty much knows that with every new Intel consumer processor family comes a new Xeon derivative.  Or maybe it's the other way around.  Regardless, I knew that there was an equivalent Xeon for the Nehalem/Bloomfield processors and I found it in the X56xx series. 

A bit more research found that others had already blazed a trail with the Xeon X56xx processors and since many servers were coming off lease they could be had from recyclers for dirt cheap prices. 

This story is long enough as it is.  Suffice it to say that I took the plunge and so far have enjoyed the fruits of my labor.  The videos below document the journey.  Check them out!

....or live in ignorance.... :-)

Gamer Rock

A curated selection of tunes assembled into a playlist.  All these songs were found within the games themselves.

See if they bring back any memories for you.

Path of Exile: Punishing you for no reason

Fall of Oriath: Strange Days

The World of Path of Exile is not the same.

There's the obvious stuff like a new Act to play through.  New monsters to vanquish and of course the mandatory passive tree respec the first time you log in to POE v3....

Yeah, that last one is always a treat.  Treat as in getting punched in the face while simultaneously being crapped on by a swarm of pigeons.

But perhaps most jarring to longtime players is the elimination of the cruel and merciless modes.  To my eye it appears that Grinding Gear took my advice and eliminated the XP penalties in favor of harder boss battles.

At least to MY EYE...

A friend of mine with a couple of characters past level 80 claims to still be getting an XP penalty on death.  I haven't experienced this myself but it that's what I have to look forward to I may dump this game once and for all.

Already in Act 5 I've gone through 2 vicious boss battles that took my level 40 something witch at least 30 minutes and almost as many deaths to get through.  Neither of which cost me any XP.

There does seem to be a kind of trade-off or perhaps just a side-effect of revamping the underlying game progression.  Higher level characters can literally walk through maps in Act 5 with little fear most of the time.

Other than a blank slate this was bound to be the case with veteran characters.  Grinding gear was looking to attract more players so those new to the game would see the same rate of character progression through the acts as veterans saw with cruel and merciless game modes.

So the veterans are kind of the odd-man out.  If there is an XP penalty for higher level characters it's likely a compromise to keep the game interesting.  Otherwise your level 80 Marauder would be waiting till Act 10 to have any kind of challenge.

One oddity when playing co-op is both welcome and annoying.  As you may already know you can't join a player somewhere you haven't been.  However with the advent of Act 5 there are maps where you can still adventure with a friend.  It's only in the boss battles where you'll find that you're once again on your own.  Better than being completely blocked from participating but annoying when you find out that your buddy can't help you.

But there had to be some compromises somewhere....

The alternative would have been to wipe out everyone's characters and start over.  Something that wuld likely lose veteran players.  After all, get about 500 hours into Path of Exile and chances are you know the NPC speeches by heart.  If I never see the Western Forest again it'll be too soon...

So as we bravely go forth into this new world of Oriath all we can do is see what all of these changes have wrought and go from there.

I'm well on my way as you can see below.  As Adam the Woo would say, " Join Me, Shall You?"