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#31
I'm a fan of Seasonic, but they build a lot of the Corsair units so it's a toss up. Many good brands to look at and for me I look at three brands for different reasons.
1) Corsair
2) Seasonic
3) Ultra (lifetime warranties)
But many other excellent to look at Thermaltake, Antec, NZXT, Coolermaster and XFX are worth looking at. In the end it's features and benefits and your Corsair is a solid choice !
Windows 8 is a bit weird. The desktop and Metro (whatever it's called now) interfaces are basically separate.
I'm using 8, but with a start menu restoring tool. I spend 90%+ of my time in the desktop. I got a Wacom pad to exercise the touch features, but I have spent very little time playing with it. I don't own a smartphone or tablet, so I'm not accustomed to navigating using gestures. I have the impression that the Metro applications are not compelling enough yet to make that environment interesting.
In terms of buying a new copy, the Win 8 System Builder license is the best deal at the moment. For personal use, it functions like the old full retail Windows license: you can install it on a blank hard drive, and you can transfer it to a new system that you own. If you transfer the license to someone else, it then is supposed to act like an OEM license: no further transfers would be permitted.
The $40 promotion Win8 upgrade was an attractive at that price, but it's no longer available.
I had two Intel 520's that were dead within a day. If Intel can't get it right, I surely don't trust anybody else to get it right. No Sandforce drives for me. These days, the other controllers are faster than Sandforce anyway.
Also, there is some forum that has a member that torture tests SSD's and you'd be surprised how durable they are. The Samsung 830 made it through almost 7 Petabytes of data before it finally gave it up.....and then it was because he had to unplug and power down the drive.
I've used (5) Crucial's (1) 300 series and (4) M4's and then (1) Samsung 830 and then a bargain basement purchase of a OCZ Vertex III. All are working great from the get go to date. I sure hope my day....lol.....isn't coming soon?
This is probably the best build you could have chosen in my opinion. I simply can't think of a better option for your price range.
I am not a fan of Radeon cards, their drivers are horrible compared to Nvidia at the moment, and they make more noise. At least that is my experience from having 2 of each over the last 4 years. Their high end cards are much cheaper though.
For eventual upgrades in the future I would probably look into an SSD. It gives you a major performance boost in terms of loading times. The SSD doesn't have to be large, just store your OS and most commonly used programs on it. The rest can stay on your Seagate.
Welcome to SF Atotehz,
You're 100% correct regarding the OP's build and SSD's. I have just installed a 7870 XFX and can tell you that it's given me great performance and is a whisper even overclocked. I can't speak to Nvidia currently and I know they are outstanding cards.
Thanks,
Good to know that Radeon is getting things sorted out. Nothing worse than a business with no competition(for the consumer).
I have a hard time believing that the drivers aren't still horrible though. AMD Radeon policy is that if you experience problems you downgrade your driver. This means that you probably won't be able to run the newest games at more than 75% performance, or not being able to run earlier games at all. I really dislike that about them.
I do like the radeon drivers accually. there i feelt more free to do stuff. i had a lot of fun playing with the gpu fan on my old gpu. WEEE uuu WEEE uuu ... That was when i knew where the noise came from. bought a Nvidia gpu later and.. yeah it was quieter and a bit faster. but i hated the driver. think they have been updating the drivers now. dont know about the nvidia drivers becouse on my laptop its radeom graphics.
Note im not a fan of any of thoose companies. look on my other thread where i where wondering about wich i should use. a Gtx 660Ti from asus. DirectCU II or the gigabyte radeon 7950..