The goal for this project is simplistic to outline but the act of completion is another story. As I begin I set out to do one thing, build a high-end gaming PC that is at least 3 years future-proofed and will be able to be built on less than what most people pay for a used car, or roughly $1500-$2500. The expectations for this computer are high. In the end it should be able to play any game to date at highest level of graphical quality. Some of the tests chosen to test the rig upon complete are BioShock Infinite, Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim, Battlefield 4, and Kerbal Space Program (seeming light program, but the amount of graphics required with all the tiny pieces can prove challenging for many builds.) Each test will be considered a success when it can play the game at 1920×1080 and at a steady rate of 60 fps or greater. As before this build should hold up to its standards for at least 3 years if not more, and when it does need to be updated would only require partial upgrading instead of a complete re-build of the system. The build will include a few things of my own that I have purchased previously and will be included in the price of the machine but listed separately in the price of the system. For instance a 256GB SSD, and a 2TB 7200 RPM HDD.

The planning and design of this project is the primary time consumer of this project. For this project to work within the price range, every piece must be carefully thought out and compared to each other piece that it is going to be dealing with throughout the build. We want to keep every piece at optimum efficiency while keeping the price low enough that it does not blow the budget. As such a plan on how to go about the build must be made. Through my own thinking on how to go about this, I came upon the inspiration from the HBO show “Silicone Valley” where the protagonist comes up with a compression algorithm called middle-out. Though not directly related it gave me the idea of how I am going to go about designing and piking the pieces for the build. My plan starts at the core, and slowly grows out. As such my order will go: Processor → Motherboard → RAM → Graphics Card → HDD (Which is already selected) → Optical Drive → Power Supply → CPU Cooling → Case.

The processor is one of the most important choices of any build. The processor ability and type controls how powerful your system will be and the other hardware formats that will form the rest of the build. As for my choice of processor, it wasn’t too difficult. Because of budget restrictions the obvious brand is AMD. AMD is slower at its base and auto-overclocked speeds, but when configured manually, they can easily match up against their Intel opponents. So for my choice I went with the top-of-the-line Desktop AMD processor the FX-9590. The processor runs a nice $230 which is sweat relief from its Intel counterpart i7-5960X at $1,050. The FX-9590 is an 8-core processor that has a base speed of 4.7 GHz and can be overclocked safely up to about 5.2 GHz. Although at base speeds and auto-overclocking the AMD 9590 loses flat out against the Intel 5960X, when the voltages and speeds are configured manually you are able to get their performance fairly close, at a price difference of - $820 dollars. So it does take some configuring but if you are willing to put in the time you are able to save a ton of money.

The motherboard is primarily influenced by the processor you have chosen. Having chosen the FX-9590 my choices of motherboards are limited to those that have the AM3+ CPU socket. Through my searching and doing many compares on newegg and tiger direct I was able to narrow my choice down 2 different models. The ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 and the ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z. The more popular choice seems to be the Formula V. As for the reason I cannot really tell. As I look at the specs side-by-side the only difference was the audio chipset, and the Formula V has one extra PCI 2.0 x1 slot. Which lets be honest in a gaming build such as this the x16 are what is important to us for our video cards, and they both support 32GB of RAM. The real kicker that makes me go for the Sabertooth is once again the price difference. The Sabertooth goes toe to toe with the Formula V and is $165 versus the $230 of the Formula V.

RAM is the one area where we don’t have to be too careful about performance compatibility. The Sabertooth supports a wide variety of the RAM types so we get to kind of find the best speeds and lowest latencies we can find. However, this is a custom config build so I also want to find something that will be good for overclocking. For this I went with the G. Skill Sniper Series. These RAM sticks are designed for gaming and overclocking. I got the 1866 model, that from some serious review reading found that it can be safely overclocked to 2133 MHz for optimized performance. The RAM comes in 2 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB. This leaves plenty of room for further expansion to 32GB if it is needed in the unpredictable future. The price of this item doesn’t hurt either, coming in at a low $120 for 16GB.

The Graphics Card is almost tied for the most important piece in the build next to the processor. As I am designing a gaming build, I would say it is more important. However, the Graphics Card I choose will still have to be chosen keeping in mind the processor I chose. Because I am using and AMD processor to achieve the best performance I will need to choose and AMD based graphics card. This is the once section where we almost forego the cost, and we do not cut any corners. For the video card I go to the Radeon R9 series. As I am not cutting any corners I go straight to the top to the R9 290X Lightning by MSI. This version of the 290X is bulkier than the other competitors coming in at 2.5lbs as well with its increased bulk comes increased speeds, testing 7% better than its closes competition by Asus in all categories. The video card comes with a whopping 4GB 512-Bit GDDR5 RAM, and a core clock base speed of 1030MHz. For the performance of this card far exceeds its cost of $350, which is down from its original cost of $750.

The HDD is an important piece of providing game performance. A lot of games require decent read/write speeds from the HDD to perform to the fullest potential. To solve this I go with 2 separate hard drive. The first and main hard drive is a solid state of 256GB. This will hold the primary OS, as well as be available for any games that may require high standards. The other hard drive will be a 7200 RPM 2TB hard drive used for mass storage. This will hold the majority of games and files, besides those that require high standards of speeds. Using the SSD as the primary drive also provides faster start times, load times, updates, and local file transfers and downloads. The SSD will not cost for me as I already have one from a previous build, the 2TB 7200RPM HDD also comes from a previous build.

The optical drive is honestly almost outdated in today's world. So I personally did not put much work into finding a decent one. For the most part all I did was find the cheapest optical drive with the highest reviews. In the end I settled on an obscure Asus model that had high reviews based upon user ratings. The drive will perform all the basic needs of a disk drive, such as playing DVD's or installing the random game from 10 years ago that one might have on disk and is not available for download somewhere. In the end the optical drive only cost $25.

Because of the amount of power that both the video card and the processor will take, I opted to go for a strong power supply. My former build had very poor cable management primarily because the power supply I had attached had several unused connections. This time I learned from my mistake and went with a modular power supply. With this I was able to make my first attempt at true cable management inside a build. Having just the connections I need and nothing more was truly helpful with this. As for the model I chose, Rosewell 1000Watt Lightning. Not only is it modular, but the pieces all color coordinated and have a very appealing look that just makes you happy when you see it. On top of the physical appeal, this power supply also offers plenty of room for expand-ability, using only a little more than 50% of the power supply currently. This power supply however, did set me back a bit more than expected, costing $170. However, with the cuts we made in other areas this is not a problem.

After further research into the processor, I came across one problem. When over-clocking like I plan to, there were many reports of over-heating. In short they found that the stock cooler was in-sufficient to go above the base speed. To solve this issues I began looking into alternative forms of cooling the processor. In the end I settled on liquid cooling, as it was the best if I planned to do overclocking. I chose the Corsair H100i. This was optimal as it provided a 240mm radiator and more than enough cooling capacity for my purposes. After reading reviews on the H100i, I decided to purchase another set of fans of higher quality to go on the radiator as many of the reviews commented on poor quality and short life of the stock fans that come with the H100i.

The case is something that requires less concentration, and relies more on personal preference. The only option for a build of this size is a full tower, the dimensions of the video card alone require this. As for my taste in cases, I prefer a nice sleek hidden power kind of look. I like something that looks weak, but can hold great power inside. Something seasoned, and something will allow it to show off what is inside. (AKA side windows) The solution I found to this was the AZZA XT1. A large full tower case that easily fits all the components and has many internal slots to aid with cable management, which is one of my goals to focus on.

Final Price of Purchased Parts:$1290

However, we must take into account, we would still need a monitor which for a decent one is roughly $200, then we also have to add the price of the SSD, and 2TB HDD which total to about $260, so total price is still $1750. So as long as we meet all the tests, we have met our goal easily.

Processor:

Motherboard:

RAM:

Graphics Card:

Hard Drives:

Optical Drive:

Power Supply:

In case already :/

Liquid Cooling:

Motherboard is in and connected to case.

RAM and Processor Installed.

Liquid Cooling Installed and Attached to the CPU. (With thermal compound of course)

Video Card Installed.

Hard Drives Installed.

Power Supply Installed (No Connections)

Power Supply Installed (Connected) and Cables Manged.

Finished Running Product.

BioShock Infinite:

Resolution: 1920×1080
Avg. FPS: 92
Result: Success

Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim

Resolution: 1920×1080
Avg. FPS: 63
Result: Success

Battlefield 4

Resolution: 1920×1080
Avg. FPS: 87
Result: Success

Kerbal Space Program

Resolution: 1920×1080
Avg. FPS (High Particle Count): 61
Avg. FPS (Low Particle Count): 110
Result: Success

All tests were successful.

I got the idea for this project from the early days of my gaming life. When I was young one of the first video games I ever played was Star Wars Episode 1: Pod Racer. All be it, this game is not very good, and has many flaws. But this game has more than just game quality to it. For me, it has sentimental value as being one of the first few games I ever played. However, as I recently discovered after purchasing the game, the game will not run by default or by any means of compatibility mode provided by Windows 7. This was a true let down to me so I set out to find a solution. The initial google search did not reveal much. There were a couple fixes here and there that worked few and far between.

As one of my first ideas of troubleshooting I extracted all the files off the CD. When troubleshooting game issues I find it easier/better to work with the files directly on my computer. After I had extracted the files I tried to run the game using PowerISO. However, I came to find that the game does not use .iso files like I had been used to in the past, it used .mdf files at its cores, which threw me off as PowerISO did not seem to run it. After some googling I found a free program called Virtual Clone Drive, that seemed to mount the .mdf files just fine. From my previous google search I encountered a Patched-Installer for the game, which I tried. The patched installer did get the game to run! However, that is all the game did. Outside of the main menu, the game would either crash begin a race where there were no graphics, just a blank screen. This threw me off for a while, however, I had run into this problem before trying to run the game DOOM. The fix to that was an opensoure software called dxwnd. That actual purpose of dxwnd is to allow fullscreen games in windowed mode, and vice versa. However, as I discovered with DOOM (Through the use of google and forums) it often fixes many graphical glitches by default. So this is exactly what I did and after a little messing with the settings of dxwnd, I was able to get the game functioning perfectly! Below I will add the tutorial I made as well as links to the resources I used such as dxwnd, virtual clone drive, and the patched installer that were vital to making this function.

This tutorial was developed through trial and error along with some intuition, the game will work with some of the settings below changed, however, I have spent the time to fine tune the settings to get the best playing quality I could achieve. It has been tested on Win7-8.1, This is not guaranteed to work on any Windows OS prior to Win7, although you are welcome to try!

• Start off by extracting, and then mounting the CD image, in this case it is an .mdf file. This can be opened by Virtual CloneDrive by using the Open With menu.

• From there run the patched installer titled “Install-SWEP1RCR.exe”

• Now open DXWnd and allow admin privileges. Go to File>Import> and go to the Exports folder located in the DXWnd directory. Look for Star Wars Pod Racer on the list. After choosing it, this should show up on your DXWnd list.

• After that is done, copy the modified SWEP1RCR.exe to the folder in C:\Games\Star Wars Racer. This will enable full screen. Please note 1080p only works with a controller, otherwise your racer will be unable to boost.

• Go back to DXWnd. Right click on Star Wars Pod Racer and choose modify.

o Main

           
              Make sure Optimize CPU is enabled
           Run in Window disabled
           Keep aspect ratio disabled (only disable for 1080p)

o Video

           
                 Uncheck everything

o Input

           
                 Uncheck everything

o Direct3D

                 
                 Make sure Clean ZBUFFER @ 1.0 fix is enabled
           Change the path to C:\Games\Star Wars\SWEP1RCR.exe

o Compatibility

           Enable fake version Windows 98/SE

• The game should now be playable!

Virtual Clone Drive

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

Patched Installer courtesy of play-old-pc-games.com

http://www.play-old-pc-games.com/support-files/Install-SWEP1RCR.exe

DXWnd

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

The goal of this project was to develop a scanner in the Lair to properly take inventory of the items in the LAIR. I started out the project by studying current inventory systems in place. I did so through forums, looking directly at free online inventory systems, as well as by taking an in depth look at both of the places I work at that use inventory systems to see what the best way to go was. The choice was clear to use a scanner, even from the beginning that was what I had in mind but I wanted to see what else was out there. Unfortunately, the other systems that did not use scanners or spreadsheets all seemed to be very inaccurate. Which if the system is inaccurate it can do more harm to the LAIR than it would good.

Once I obtained the scanner from the LAIR I went to work with trying to program the scanner to do some basic features. I was easily able to find the user-guide to the scanner itself, however, this could only help so much. I started off by putting the scanner into “programming mode” as the manual called it. This was done by scanning a bar code that was printed out. It was later that I actually discovered that the bar codes for the scanner were all generated with ASCII characters. Once in programming mode I was able to find some generic 'programs' for it that made it do simple things like hit an 'enter' key each time after it scanned something. Which may not seem helpful, but think if you were using a laptop going around and scanning items, would you want to hit enter every time you scanned something to go to a new line? Of course not, and this simple ASCII bar code solved that issue. It was then proposed to me that I should try to make the scanner open up a text file by default. I tried to find any pre-existing code to do this to try and make something of my own but was unable to find anything on the subject. I looked through every pre-programmed code that the manual could provide and nothing linked to opening a file. With some google searching I was able to find out that it was possible. However, every story I encountered of this doing so included pre-programmed codes in the user-manual of the scanner, and all of these scanners were much newer than the one I was working with, thus, not seeming to work with it. Taking the fact that all of these bar codes are just ASCII, I attempted to try and make my own with nothing to go on. I first tried something simple, like hitting the enter key where there was plenty of examples to try and base something off of. After resetting the scanner, I was able to get my own 'enter' command to work with the scanner. However, I could not make it programmed in to happen every time, so each time you wanted to hit 'enter', you would have to scan the 'enter' bar code. In general I believe this project is possible but would require much better programming/ASCII knowledge than I have/can figure out. It would be certainly possible however if one were to invest even $30 or $40 into a newer scanner that would already have the newer commands pre-programmed that just need activation through the bar codes in the manual.