General

2022 Year of PC Gaming

With December quickly coming to a close, I am now looking forward to 2022. Sadly, the Steamdeck was delayed into Q1 2022 but the hunger for PC Gaming continues. My current “steambox” that I’ve talked about a long time ago continues to run albeit in a limited capacity. The Intel i3 3220, a budget processor when I got it back in 2013 still works but in the gaming sense is struggling. The original 8gb of ram had been upgraded to 16gb with the thought it would extend the life of the system which it has valiantly done. The graphics card in the system has been upgraded twice with hand-me-down cards from co-workers. Starting out as a XFX Radeon HD 6670, upgraded to an ASUS Radeon HD 5850 Top DirectCU. Then upgraded again to a Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870. The 7870 had recently failed resulting in a downgrade back to the 5850. I knew there wasn’t going to be much life left in this 2013 budget build and 2022 is going to be the year of PC gaming.

Research was done to build a competent gaming PC but within a price range I would be comfortable with. For PC gaming, my target is 1440p resolution and this made the Nvidia 3070 the graphics card that caught my eye. Now, trying to find a card with the current market and limited supply. I have a knack for finding items that are in limited supply but trying to find a graphics card which come in so many different variations is tough. After a few weeks of observing things, I came to the realization that putting together a PC myself was doable but the time commitment to be able to watch for the parts I need not feasible. So I instead turned to pre-builts.

Looking at pre-built PCs I wanted to ensure that I was buying something that was working now and could be upgraded into the future. I didn’t want to completely overpay for something just to get the graphics card either. I checked around at a number of sites like ibuypower, cyberpower, and newegg. It seemed like even with pre-builts I wasn’t guaranteed to see something right away either. I would have to watch a bit and the pounce when the right deal came along.

This brings me to Newegg on boxing day. I found myself looking at an ABS Gladiator with an Intel i7 11700KF, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (brand to be determined during build), ASUS TUF Gaming Z590 Plus WIFI motherboard, G.Skill Trident RGB 16gb DDR4 3200 RAM, 1TB Intel M.2 NVMe, 750W 80 plus gold PSU. The specs should be good for PC gaming today and into the future. I could have opted for the non-K variant of the processor and a 3060 Ti graphics card but for the minor price difference I felt it was worth it. Now, I just have to wait for the shipment to arrive.

General

Steamdeck

December 2021 is going to be an exciting time for mobile gaming. With the release of the steamdeck, I will have access to my expansive, yet largely underutilized, steam library. The promise of a powerful, portable device to play my PC games seems like something I can get behind. Although my preorder didn’t make it for the initial December 2021 release window, I’ll likely see my steamdeck sometime in Q1 2022.

General

Xbox Series X

With the new Xbox Series X just weeks away I thought it would be great time to update the blog. It has been almost five years since the last post and just like bumping a dead thread back, here I am. The new Xbox release is exciting times as it gives a fresh start to the console cycle and resets the status quo. The launch of this new console may be lacking a must have game but the performance boost coming to older games will make this worthwhile. The improved loading times and framerates will give me reason to play some of my back catalogue that seems to be never ending and growing continuously due to Game Pass. This brings me to my next topic of how great a deal Microsoft has with Game Pass. This catalogue of titles and day-one releases, being further supplemented with the EA Play catalogue, is an outstanding value. I rarely have to buy a game and yet I am being flooded with content.

Games I’ll be playing on day one:
Gears Tactics
Call of Duty Warzone
Destiny 2
Halo MCC
Borderlands 3


General, Technology

Star Wars The Force Awakens : DBOX Review

The Star Wars hype has been building for a while now, so to finally watch the movie in theaters with AVX 3D DBOX is a treat. This would be my first time seeing a movie on DBOX so I wasn’t sure going in what to expect. The concept is simple, a seat that vibrates and moves in sync with the movie. That all sounds easy enough but what I experienced while watching the latest Star Wars was game changing. The first 15 minutes of the movie I couldn’t stop smiling and almost giggling with delight as I felt the initial blaster fire rocking me in my seat. The movement of the seats matched the panning of the camera and immersed me in the film. I really felt like I was in the action as I followed behind the Millenium Falcon and the TIE fighters chased me. The subtle glide to the seat as I panned around the characters almost as if I was the counterweight in the steady cam following the action. I can’t explain how much I enjoyed the movie but the DBOX experience is something I hope to repeat before the movie leaves the theatres. I even went as far to look online afterwards to see how much a home DBOX setup would cost (too much). However, the DBOX experience isn’t for everyone. It seemed like half the people I spoke with ended up turning down the effects of the DBOX. For me, it was a two hour and 15 minute amusement ride I plan on riding again.

Gaming

Fall 2014 Console Gaming

It was back during E3 that Amazon was having an awesome sale on pre-order games. They would offer 30% off when you preordered 3 or more games. I thought, I may as well preorder a bunch and save some money, especially if I intended to pick them up when they were coming out. I pre-ordered Destiny (PS4), Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4), Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (360), Halo Master Chief Collection (XboxOne), and Halo 5 (XboxOne).

I received the first game, Destiny, a day after its release date on Sept 10th. I was charged $43.95 for the game which is substantially less than I would have paid at retail $69.99 before tax. So far I have really enjoyed the game and finally have a game that I can play online with friends as everyone I know has the game. I have to play it a lot right now because the next game in my pre-order, Borderlands, should arrive around October 14. Then after that, I should receive Call of Duty around Nov 4, and then Halo Collection around Nov 11. It’s going to be busy times with lots of quality releases coming out for the holiday season this year.

Gaming

Growing Steam Library

It seems like my Steam library has been growing substantially over the past year. With Valve offering such impressive sales, like the recent Summer Sale, and Humble Bundle putting together such great packages benefiting charities, I have been able to grow my Steam library on a budget. One site I found to be interesting is called SteamDB with its calculator. It quickly shows how large my library is and what it would be valued at in current prices. One sad stat for me however is number of games not played. As of me writing this, it stands at 83%. Just as I start to bring this number down I end up buying another humble bundle or a steam sale comes along. I think of my purchases as a hobby or collection and enjoy increasing its value while spending little.

Technology

Dell Venue 8 Pro

Sometime in December, I stumbled upon a daily deal from the Microsoft store. The online deal was for the Dell Venue 8 Pro for $199. I hadn’t done any research into the device but I thought for a full fledged Windows 8 tablet running x86, lets go for it. A couple months down the road I find that it is a very capable device which runs Windows 8 very well. This is how I imagined the OS was suppose to work. The gestures feel natural and allow for quick access to applications and the multiple apps on screen at the same time is simple to do. My custom steambox/PC also runs Windows 8 but I don’t end up using much of the OS outside of the desktop view. The Dell tablet has great battery life at just under 10 hours, which is especially good as it runs an Intel Atom processor. The processor is the latest in the Atom Bay Trail family. There have also been interesting results from people online using the tablet for gaming. I haven’t yet ventured down this path myself but by picking up an OTG cable and a USB hub I would have the ability to use my gaming mouse and keyboard. It seems surprising that it wasn’t long ago when Apple released the iPad to initial scepticism that there isn’t a market for this type of device. Now the tablet market is overtaking the PC market. It will be interesting to see what comes next, will it be wearable devices? Only time will tell. By the way, this was typed on my Dell Venue 8 Pro.

Gaming

Humble Bundle – Origin Bundle *Update*

I have been getting into PC gaming lately and I recently made a donation with the Humble Bundle and got some great games. This is my second time I have donated to pick up some games. The first time was with the Deep Silver humble bundle a couple weeks ago. With the current bundle, I picked up a number of Origin titles:
Deep Space
Deep Space 3
Medal of Honor
Burnout Paradise
Crysis 2
Mirrors Edge

Battlefield 3
The Sims 3

The last two titles are given out if you make a donation larger than the average which at the moment is $4.79 and an absolute steal for the games you would get at that price. The money with this humble bundle all goes to charities and kudos to EA for not trying to turn this into a money grab. Be sure to check it out as the bundle will only last until August 28th, 2013

*Update*
Origin and the Humble Bundle team expanded the bundle. Now included in the bundle is Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 and Populous. These are great additions to a very popular bundle which as of this update has sold over 1.7 million times for $8.4 million dollars. Great to see these charities doing so well.
Link: Humble Bundle

Gaming

Steambox : Planning Phase

There has been a lot of discussion lately about Valve making their own gaming hardware. From this discussion there has been a number of articles written regarding building low cost gaming devices with the primary goal of playing games from steam on your TV in the living room. Most of these are using decent enough hardware to provide low to medium quality at 1080p resolution on the TV. The results have been very promising with current generation consoles being left behind. That sparked me to get going on my own steambox.

It has been a number of years since my last big desktop build and times have changed. Prices have been coming down and performance has been steadily increasing. No longer do you have to spend thousands. For my build I want something that won’t take up a lot of space in my living room. I took a look at a lot of smaller sized cases and decided to go ahead and pick up the Fractal Design Core 1000 mATX case. This is a little black box that will suit my living room. I don’t need anything fancy such as water cooling so for $34.99 I am set.

Next, knowing I am going with an mATX case I need to ensure I get an mATX motherboard. My requirements are minimal and keeping the costs low are my primary concern. When looking at motherboard there is a wide range of features that while very nice and cool would be overkill in my budget device. My requirements, USB 3 and SATA 3. I ended up getting the MSI B75MA-P45. This meets my needs of low cost, $64.99 and my other requirements. To match up with this I decided to break the trend of other steambox builds and opt for an Intel i3 3220. This dual-core Ivy Bridge processor runs at 3.3ghz be supports hyped-threading. I thought if I am going to spend a little more somewhere it may as well be the processor.

To go further with that line of spending a little more for better performance, I went with a SSD from Samsung.. The Samsung 840 series 120 GB. This is going to be primarily a gaming device so I don’t need a lot of storage. I do have the option to add more hard drives later should the need arise. The SSD is going to give the box another big speed boost.

Last I just picked up 8gb of ram that was on sale. Nothing special, just Corsair Vengeance Blue 2x4gb DDR3-1600. This will give me a good start and with my motherboard leaves two slots open if I ever get the need to double up to 16gb of RAM. The power supply, also from Corsair, corsair enthusiast series TX550M. My main reason for choosing this power supply is the quietness found in the reviews and the fact it’s a modular power supply which should help with cable management in this small case.

I am going to be reusing my graphics card from a different device. It’s an XFX Radeon HD 6670 1gb DDR3. It was a very inexpensive card only costing me $50. This may need upgrading as it looks like the weakest link in my build. I will throw it all together and see what kind of performance I get and make a decision then.

So there you have it, my steambox. Lots of room to upgrade and keeping costs down on my budget gaming computer. I can’t wait to see how it comes together as the parts should be arriving later this week.

General

Ace of Spades (PC)

I was watching some random gaming videos the other day and one video really caught my eye. The game is called Ace of Spades. It has been described as Team Fortress meets Minecraft. It has all the visual style of Minecraft as well as the world manipulation and some building elements. It mixes in multiple classes and weapons for head to head combat. There are multiple game modes ranging from deathmatch and capture the flag all the way to zombie mode. The game comes from indie publisher Jagex who would be best known for Runescape. Ace of Spades is available on steam for the regular price of $9.99

School, Technology, and Life