AWKWARD ZOMBIE

It's all I can find on the websites of local stores at a reasonable price. I could go up to a Piledriver X6 for a bit more cheddar but anything more than that is a bit too pricey for someone who's unemployed.

Any reason you can't order from Newegg? If you can't though, the Piledriver is your best bet. CPUboss rates it as being the same, more or less, as a 965. If you can order from Newegg though, you should go for the FX-6300, which is only like 8 bucks more than the Piledriver.

Newegg has a small list of shipping which doesn't include Iceland unfortunately.

I'm trying to buy it locally as it can be quite pricy paying for shipping and toll, so I'll probably just settle for Piledriver.

Ah, sorry, didn't realize you were in Iceland (I don't bother reading locations). Yea, go with the Piledriver. It's not a huge performance difference between it and the 6300, so it's still a good deal.

If it's the FX-6300 you're talking about, then it's good value for the price.

Note that it requires an AM3+ socket motherboard though, so your current one won't do.

When I looked up the Piledriver x4, it brought up the FX-4350, so I assume that's what it is. The x6 that he said he might be able to get though would be the 6300...I didn't bother looking up what it was at first, so I ended up recommending the 6300 anyway.

I have 2 360 controllers hooked up to my PC atm, and both work properly. However in some single-player games like Dark Souls 2 it will only take the input of one. Unfortunately the default one is the one with a broken shoulder button. Is there a way to change what controller is the default one/player 1? I don't want to unplug and replug controllers all the time.

I think most games will let you choose an input device in options or automatically detect which one you're using, but DS2 of course lacks such luxury.

Man, that's awfully specific. Are you sure it's not based on the USB port?

Windows 7 or newer?

Open start menu, search "Controller". Choose "Set up USB game controllers". Press the "Advanced" button and choose the controller you want to be default from the drop down menu.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I had already tried both those things. It might be a problem unique to Dark Souls 2 as apparently it can only recognize one controller? I theorize that it might be based on driver install date of the device, but I don't feel like reinstalling those at the moment since I need them to work tomorrow as I've got friends coming over. So I guess I'll just leave it be for now.

Well, it's been a good few years since I've built a rig and I'm pretty behind on tech, so I'm lookin' for pointers and advice

Here's what I'm looking at so far, plus a spare TB HDD I have lying around

For the GPU I was planning on a 770, but its price seems to have jumped a hundred bux when I wasn't looking, so I figure I might as well go for the 970, or maybe save $100-150 and get a 760 or an R9 290

Looks pretty good. If you want to make use of the overclockability though, you'll need an aftermarket CPU cooler, I'd recommend the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo as far as price/performance goes. The 970 is a great deal, and you should be able to find 290's for sub-$300, although they use a lot more power and run hotter. If you go with a 970, you can easily shave 100-150W off your PSU and save cheddar that way. Word of advise though, if you go with a Z87 board instead of a Z97 one, it needs a BIOS update to be able to boot with the i5-4690K. Practically all boards should have that by now since Devil's Canyon is 6 months old but it might be a good idea to be on the safe side and go with Z97 instead.

Good to know about the 290 running hot, cooling solutions is something I need to focus on, living in TX and all; I was thinking of getting an aftermarket cooler even though I probably won't get into overclocking

I also haven't run a PSU calculator yet to see just how much I'd need, but I figured 650W should be fine as long as I'm not running SLI or anything. I might also be completely overlooking some important points to consider in a PSU

Also great to know about the Z87/Z97, that would've been a pretty upsetting issue to run into

If you go with the 970, your system will probably draw no more than 300W at full load on stock. I'm on an overclocked FX-8320 and 780 and mine draws some 450W at full load.

I should point out that what the K stands for is that the processor can be overclocked - non-K parts are typically a bit cheaper while performing identically to K parts at stock speeds. At the moment though, the i5-4690K is actually cheaper than the i5-4690 so no reason not to go with it. Not only that, but you never know if you want to get into overclocking some years from now, perhaps in the unlikely scenario that you find your processor bottlenecking your games. So it's always good to have the option.

I think my printer has officially bit the dust

it said 'ink system failure' and when I tried to restart it, it informed me that it had been shut off incorrectly (which was not true, I used the power button) and the printer head made a rapid CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK noise.


It's an HP printer which means it was always kind of shitty and I mainly used it to scan things--I'm not in school anymore so my printing needs are minimal. It's not a HUGE loss, since the scanner part still works, but it's pretty annoying.