Smallsasaurus

I have a 22" Acer. I've bought three Acers to date and I haven't hada problem with any of them. They are a bit more along the lines of a value buy and not a top of the line monitor, so if you really want all the whistles and bells, look elsewhere. But for me, they are just right. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009094

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127325 8800GTS for only $180, you really can't beat it. I actually just upgraded to this card a few weeks ago and I love it. It runs dual monitors at high resolutions and I have yet to see a hiccup when gaming. MSI is a solid brand, although brand is overrated when it comes to video cards, as all the specs are the same, just the fans are slightly different. Everything else you have seems solid. 500 watts should be good for now, but if you ever plan on upgrading your machine much (such as more RAM, SLI, etc) you're going to have to upgrade that too. If I get a chance I'll look around for another suggestion for a motherboard, but AndreiD's pick was a good one. edit: Just some food for thought about the motherboard: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/asus_p5e3_deluxe_wi_fi_ap I've never had a problem personally with a Asus board, although my one friend did. You can get this board for either DDR2 or DDR3 RAM. If it sounds like something you might like look around for it on newegg. I didn't check to make sure all this stuff if compatible with everything you plan on getting, but if you do think about going with this board (or any board), make sure all the specs match up first.

^^ hahahaha. I don't know why but that made me laugh for about 5 minutes. It's one of those days. Don't listen to the haters. I've had a Logitech G5 mouse for about a year now and it works just as well as the day I got it. I would recommend it, its easy to adjust the weight and has enough buttons to make most gamers happy. It'll cost you about $45-50 though. As for actually fixing it, I can't help you much. At least the ball mouses you could open and clean and pretend you solved the problem. you can get decent optical mouses for about $20 if you are just looking for a quick fix for a few months. And if you are buying you mouse for a desktop, man up and get a wired one. Batteries are no fun and low batteries/poor wireless connections might be the reason your mouse is freezing from time to time.

So I finally found some money and splurged for the Orange Box. Already beat Portal and I'm ready to move on to Team Fortress 2. Anyone have any tips/suggestions so I'm not going in completely cold turkey? It seems awesome, but complicated.

NIKO, I just built my dad a budget computer and used the first MoBo you had listed there. It posted first try for me, OC's like a champ, and had everything I needed in a budget board. My only 2 knocks against it was it only had 2 slots for memory, (so if you ever wanted 4Gbs RAM, you would have to by 2x2GB sticks, instead of 2 sets of very affordable 2x1GB sticks) and it only had a place to directly plug 1 case fan to the mother board. A simple adapter allowed my other 2 fans to work, but it was a bit of a nuisance. Long story short, anyone of those boards should be okay. Oh, and if you are willing to anti-up a bit you can get a Q6600 Quad Core for $200. Be careful though, I haven't tried this CPU in any of these motherboards, so I'm not sure its 100% compatible. It should work, but sometimes things are a little screwy. Also, this is OEM, so no cpu fan is included. If you are with in range of a Micro Center store, you can get one with a fan for the same price. The CPU Zero recommended is a great one too. Edit:Sorry, I lied, this is actually the MoBo I used: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128077 Pretty similar though.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360vgahdcable/ That should do it for you. It works for me. Assuming you already have this connector, I can't offer too much other advice. It was just plug and play for me.

Sounds messy. I hope you washed your hands afterward.

I guess I count as a newcomer and will gladly take advantage of a bump. 1) Tecmo Super Bowl - Best football game ever. No questions asked. 2) Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Game that got me hooked on Adventure games. 3) FFVII - I easily dumped well over 150 hours into this game and don't regret a second of it 4) Mario Kart: Double Dash - I don't think any game has caused more dorm room arguments and dead legs then this did for me over the course of 3 years. 5) Halo - The first game I truly considered LAN-party worthy. 6) (because 5 just isn't enough) - Golden Eye - The game that made FPS truly enjoyable. This is the game that lead to my eventual addiction to CS:S.

Pretty cool. I think I had heard this a while back, but completely forgot about it. Thanks for the update.

^^^^ That's the 100% truth. One of the funniest articles/videos I've ever read/watched was from a guy who was playing (I think) Shadowrun on his PC. If you don't know, Shadowrun is for both Xbox360 and PC and you can play across the different systems. Basically it was all these video clips of how slowly people turn with a game controller as opposed to the quick flick of a wrist turn around with a mouse. Its basically just hundreds of people yelling about him being a hacker and so on, and him talking trash about how consoles suck compared to PCs, but it was well written and well edited. I'll try and see if I can find it again.

Yeah, I'm glad they leveled Luigi out. Him and Captain Falcon were so overpowered in Melee it was absurd. I've been using a lot of Lucas/Ness too. Ness was awesome in the first game and terrible in Melee, so now that he's actually decent again, I'm happy. I like the Pokeman Trainer just for Squirtle and Zelda is surprisingly decent as well. I still need to unlock a bunch of people though. Oh, and my friend code is 4511-0147-2694. Online matching making is all screwed up right now, but if you play with friends you can actually get online, so if anyone wants to play just let me know.

I remember I got the original for N64 the day it came out and now the newest installment is coming out tomorrow. I got my copy on reserve and I'm pumped for it. It's the first worthwhile online game for the Wii. Anyway, does anyone else have a wii and plan on getting this? If you do my friend number is 2009-8537-1632-4092 and I'll gladly pwn you any time you want. Should be a great game.

Great game. I can play all except 2 songs on expert on guitar. High Tides is a bitch. Anyway, I guess my claim to fame would be me and my friends were ranked top 100 in score on In Bloom and Dani California, I think we may have slipped to just over 100 now. We are top 500 in a bunch of songs, but it get progressively harder to move on the boards once you get to around that.

Hmmmm, I guess it depends what type of "worst" we are talking about. Overall worst decision of my life was a keg ride that ended in a trip to the hospital and a metal plate in my shoulder to fix my very broken shoulder. I don't regret it, per say. It was just a bad decision. Worst as in a dick thing to do (excluding general mayhem with cops. Down with the man.) would have to be cheating on one of my ex's. Found out later she was cheating too, not that it made either one of us right. Once again, I don't really regret it, but it was a dick thing to do. I learned my lesson. You only have one reputation, make it a good one.

I'm an accountant for a Big 4 accounting firm. Right now my life is pretty miserable. I wake up about 5:30 and work until 8 or 9. And Saturdays. And even some Sundays. Busy season sucks.

Yeah, I actually get kicked from the servers and get a message that says something along the lines of Audio Buffer Overload. I have a screenshot of it somewhere. I'll post my specs later when I'm at home, but I have a pretty solid machine, its not like I'm running on the bare minimum. And I know I could easily disable sound, but talking to people and being able to communicate is half of what helps your team be successful and makes the game that much more fun, so hopefully that would be a last resort.

Alright, I have a tech question I hope somebody can help me with a bit. In game when a bunch of people start talking I'll occasionally get kicked by a buffer overload. I'm assuming something is putting to much stress on my soundcard and making stuff the game. Anyway, what would be the best way to avoid this problem? Are there any setting adjustments that help? A new soundcard maybe? I have an Soundblaster Audigy SE, not a great card, but I thought it should have been enough to take stress off of the CPU and avoid problems like this. Oh well. Sorry to sound needy, but I'm no good with audio stuff and was hoping somebody else might have a suggestion.