I believe The Sims 4 is currently free on Origin, for anyone who wants it. I'd be tempted, but I'm not entirely sure what it has over Sims 3 other than looking better. I think it goes back to the Sims 1/2 system of not allowing you to freely explore the town, like in Sims 3, but whether that necessitates short loading points, I don't know.
Haven't posted here in a while, life gets in the way of posting on game forums. Anyways, wall of text time. I was looking at my PC which is almost 5 years old now and thinking of getting something a bit newer. But the thing is I'm kinda happy with 1080p at my desk and for most games I can get close enough to 60fps. What I kinda want more is something that is a better machine for ripping BluRays, possibly even starting to look at ripping UHD discs.
Then I realised, I have a 4K TV . If it's a machine for ripping BluRays under the TV seems like a decent place to live. Also the 4K TV is the highest res display I have and even if I don't do 4K itsupports 1440p/1080p at 120Hz and has HDR capabilities. And currently I just have UHD BluRay player and a Switch connected to it. After all these years a HTPC finally kinda makes sense. So here's the current build plan for a HTPC:
Storage: Either a 500GB or 250GB SSD and a spare 640GB laptop HDD I have. My mass storage needs are largely covered by my NAS. Storage would be entirely for games, applications and working space for any discs I'm ripping. I'm considering a 1TB SSD and dropping the HDD entirely but that's another $100 that could probably be better put elsewhere.
CPU: Waiting for Ryzen 3 to know for sure but based on what has been said I'll likely go for the Ryzen 5 3600 assuming the cost comes it similar to the 2600X. In single threaded synthetic benchmarks the 2600 is about the same as the i5 4590 I currently have AND it has 6C/12T instead of the 4C/4T. The 3600 is rumoured to be 8C/16T and clocked higher so... it's going to be a bit of a leap, especially for ripping movies.
RAM: 16GB of whatever DDR4 is cheapest on the day.
GPU: With the landscape as it is it'd be stupid not to go with NVidia here. Especially for a HTPC I want to be relatively quiet and power efficient. Before deciding on making this a HTPC for my 4K TV I was leaning towards the 1660 which is more than fine for 1080p. Currently I'm between the 2060 and the 1660Ti. The 2060 delivers about 15-20% higher framerates and more comfortably gets to 30fps at 4K on Ultra settings in most games. But it also adds 10-15% to the total cost of the build. I'm probably going to end up going with the 1660Ti unless I can find ~$100AU somewhere else in the build...
Motherboard: Also waiting for the new chipsets that come out with Ryzen 3 before I dive too deep into this. I was thinking about ITX but all of those boards come at a premium and include things like WiFi which I don't need. Currently thinking a full size board makes more sense purely because of the expansion options. Possibly a PCIe TV tuner if it's a HTPC box, possibly a 10Gbps NIC, maybe more storage options. Options are good and the full sized boards are about the same price or cheaper than the smaller ones.
Case/PSU: I found a relatively decently priced fairly nice looking HTPC case which also has space for an optical drive. It's not small but I can find space for it and being "not small" just means space for some 120mm fans I can run at a fairly low RPM. For the PSU I'm going with something that's ~500W and 80Plus Bronze. Probably Corsair.
Other: A BluRay ripping machine needs a BluRay drive. I have a portable one currently but it's not one that plays friendly with UHD discs. I may get a UHD friendly drive down the road but probably not at the start as it's an extra $90AU and I only have a handful of UHD discs. Also obviously Windows licence
@skywake That sounds honestly rather close to what I was planning on purchasing. Though I intent do have at least 1TB of storage. And if possible, solid state. Probably 250GB solid state and the rest as an ordinary HDD. Depends on price.
My current PC is closing on 7 years old now and really can't run anything made in the last few years at this point except at the lowest settings.
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Had a lot of fun with Katana Zero on my PC last night.
Beat Metal Gear Rising last week and it was just amazing.
This blue eye perceives all things conjoined. The past, the future, and the present. Everything flows and all is connected. This eye is not merely seen reality. It is touching the truth. Open the eye of truth... There is nothing to fear.
Heads up - the Borderlands Handsome Collection on Steam is something like 97% off for £4.82 or less if you own any of the items already. The package includes Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and all DLC - including that which wasn't included in both season passes.
First off: That trailer grossed me the heck out. Other than that, I'm excited to see the series back, although I'm surprised it's not from Beamdog. The remakes they put out were shakey, to be sure, but I figured they were simply learning the ropes while they built up to Baldur's Gate III, but I guess it went to Larian Studios instead.
Which is fine, I Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 were great games, and I could see them pulling off a worthy successor. Then again, I personally only liked the 2nd Baldur's Gate game, and I otherwise didn't care for Bioware's Dungeon & Dragons games. Even if it's more like Divinity with D&D rules, I'd be happy, so long as the writing is up to par.
@CanisWolfred Oh, wow. That trailer is real nightmare fuel. The cthulhu thing he eventually turns into is a lot less grotesque than I would have expected based on that transformation, though.
Pretty cool. Guess that'll give me even more incentive to play the Switch ports of those CRPGs releasing soon.
I find it interesting to hear them talk about how much player agency is core to their games, since I had been thinking about that sort of stuff lately and what that means in terms of game design.
There seems to be a sale going on for Xbox Game Pass for PC - for $1 (or 1 Euro or 1 GBP) for the first month, and $4.99 every month thereafter. Article Link
Went with a 500GB m.2 SSD, 16GB DDR4 and a Ryzen 3600X. The 3600X is a bad value relative to the other 3000 series CPUs but litterally everything else is out of stock. Didn't get a new GPU yet, will upgrade that down the track.
Can already see a significant performance boost in Cities Skylines. And, more importantly for me, a BluRay rip that would usually take 3 hours took 1 hour.
So in a few weeks here I will be looking to get a laptop, nothing to fancy but I would like to be able to play games on it like World of Warcraft. My budget is no more then $500. Any suggestions?
RetiredPush Square Moderator and all around retro gamer.
Have redeemed my 3 months of free XBox Game Pass with my Ryzen CPU. Currently downloading Bro Force and Forza Horizon 4. If anyone has any suggestions on what else I should give a spin during the free trial I'm open to suggestions.
@Tasuki
For lighter games like WoW really anything will do. Just make sure that you have a decent SSD rather than going with a HDD because these days HDDs don't make any sense. Also avoid the really, really cheap and nasty laptops with 32GB of Flash.
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"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"
So if you like crpg games (Wasteland 2, Planescape, etc) then keep an eye on Disco Elysium. Early impressions are that it's one of those generational great games. Since I'm not a PC gamer, I'll spend the days waiting for the inevitable console port. I'd like a Switch port, but chances are this'll be a PS5 or Xbox Scarlett console port. The game is gorgeous.
Switch Physical Collection - 1,247 games (as of April 15th, 2024)
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Crusader Kings 2 is now free to play on steam. The DLC is also discounted 50% across the board for a short time, although the whole lot still amounts to over £100, so I'd advise you to be selective as to which DLCs are worth buying. "Charlemagne" allows you to start in the year 769AD, as opposed to 1066 in the base game, and 867AD in "Old Gods" (which allows you to play as pagan rulers), "Sword of Islam", "Rajas of India" and "The Republic" allow you to play as Muslim rulers, Indian rulers and republics respectively, and various other expansions add various other mechanics like relics and secret societies.
I'd certainly recommend it. Certainly now that DLC production should be winding down a bit.
In related news, Crusader Kings III has recently been announced. I'm not too eager to buy it, with the investment I've made into the previous one, but I'd be interested in checking out some gameplay when it's closer to release.
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