So about a month or two ago I picked up a new PC, an ASUS to be exact. I heard they were somewhat decent and so far it hasn't disappointed in the least. The thing is a beast too with a i7 3.40Ghz, 16GB of RAM two 1.5TB hard drives and a 1GB Nvidia Gtx 560 Ti. It cost a pretty penny at roughly $1,500 not including one modification I had made to it.

I had a 850W Thermaltake Black Widow power supply put in, in place of the laughable 500W that the rig initially came with. I consider it a solid investment.

Apparently I was just in time in replacing the old computer too, I took it out and tried to hook it up to the monitor and get it to operate so I could delete everything on it in preparation for selling it to a used second hand shop(Hey money any way you can get it, right?).

But as soon as I got it hooked up the thing died faster than a avid Mcdonalds lover having a heart attack, so much for that plan I suppose.

The rig did have a minor problem, I had it shipped to store and it most likely was damaged in that process(the faceplate is cracked and a piece of the side is missing. Nothing terrible, but unsightly especially when you pay $1,500 for a new rig.) Anyway the store told me they didn't have anymore of that model in stock to take a faceplate from. And that they had contacted the manufacturer and they didn't have one either.

So they settled for knocking $225 or so off the price of the PC, which I have to say is pretty good for just a busted faceplate.

Anyway, in short...now I'm wandering around the net telling my friends "Hey GAIS look at mah new rig!!" swinging it around like a certain body part I could mention. Only none of them want to hear it, and they're all tired of it. So instead I'm telling you folks that actually read the tripe I write(That's right...all three of you.)

Off to enjoy the thing somemore, heh.

So anyway I was up at best buy awhile back, and I picked up a rather expensive mouse. It was roughly $85 "Razor Lachesis" it was called, I'd never heard of it but I figured I'd give it a try. Boy what a mistake that was, I swear this mouse is a drug addict with a horrible sense of humor.

Randomly whenever you try to click things with this mouse it will throw your pointer halfway across the screen into the corner. And it doesn't do this somewhat slow, no its like lightning...one second you're trying to click on a desktop shortcut and the next you're wondering where the heck your pointer went.

It's like the mouse has a mind of its own "Ohh...trying to click on something are we...*yoink!*", not only that but this mouse actually fights you when you try to reposition it. It apparently wants the pointer to stay in that corner very badly.

Apparently this is a fairly common problem too, I looked around and theres a few "supposed" fixes for it. One of them is to upgrade the firmware...yeah that didn't work. Another is because of the high PPI (4000 or so) of the mouse regular mousepads and tabletops don't take well to it, or vice versa.

Which I think is complete garbage, regardless apparently I paid $85 for a expensive paperweight that loves to make the users life miserable. The only way this mouse could get any more awesome from an a-hole standpoint. Is if it had a compartment that holds a rabid grizzly bear, and whenever you click something it lets it out to maul you.

In short, don't buy a Razor Lachesis mouse...unless you're a masochist.

Well, the topic pretty much says it all. I've been jumping back and forth between DA:O and Oblivion with about 80 mods lately. Not really a whole lot left to do other than wait for some of the big hype games that are coming out(DIII, GW2 etc). I've lost a lot of interest in most the other games I own, Guild Wars has just...been going steadily downhill in my opinion ever since NF.

Theres only so many times one can play a particular game in a short span no matter how much one loves said game, and nostalgia from cracking open a dusty old game for a while doesn't last long either in my experience. Maybe I just have too much time on my hands, I've tried almost all the F2P MMOs(most are not worth the time it took to make the GUI). Tried some of the P2P's(WoW, Warhammer, Conan, CoH).

I hope I'm not burning out on gaming, I'd buy more console games if I had the income to keep a PC and a Console habit going. I'm debating taking a break from gaming for awhile, but then what would I do? Play solitaire...? Wait...thats a game on the PC grr...

It doesn't help that I'm a picky son of a...a lot of game genres just are not up my alley as it were. Racing for one, platforming, puzzle, any kind of sports game really. Cant stand those style of games personally, I've been so desperate I even tried one of those MMO flash games for crying out loud. What was the name of it...secret...something...sacred it started with an S.

My mind is apparently trying to blank it out already, excuse me whilst I go use Google. Sacred Seasons 2, that was it...If you are wanting to know if it is any good, my mind trying to blank out the name of it should be a clue enough on that particular subject.

Is it just me or does it seem like theres a generally decline in the quality of games in general as of late? I know we still have our year breaking games and all that(DA:O, Oblivion, Fallout 3, ME etc). But other than those, it just seems to me that the amount of complete failures of games and or games with no real reason to exist are being pumped out at an amazing rate.

Perhaps I'm simply too spoiled when it comes to gaming, regardless it seems I'll have to look a bit harder for something to occupy my time for now.

Well recently I just got through blowing around $200 on my computer at a local Radio Shack, over half of which did not need to be spent, this of course I was not aware of thanks to the local Geek Squad in Best Buy. I had purchased a after market GPU from Best Buy and also a new power supply to go with it, since anyone that has done any after market PC modification knows a higher GPU requires more wattage and a stock power supply is woefully inadequate.

I picked what appeared to be a 450W(a stock power supply is generally 350W) power supply and was assured that it would most definitely be enough to run what this PC would have. A month later I'm having trouble with my PC randomly rebooting, now..there are only a few hardware related reasons a PC is going to randomly reboot and then stop booting altogether. Hard Drive corruption...temperature issues, and a power supply that cannot sustain the wattage needed for the PC to run. At the time I had already run through driver related fixes as well as spyware/adware/viruses so it was highly unlikely it was a software problem.

I ended up buying and self installing a new hard drive which worked for about a week, but then started to exhibit the same problems as previously mentioned. Since I of course did not feel like losing what I had thought at the time was yet ANOTHER hard drive, I ended up downloading a program called SpeedFan and checking my GPU/CPU temps, sure enough they were higher than was generally considered safe for the models I was using. Now I clean my PC case at least once every 3 to 4 months...so nothing was clogged, and I don't smoke around my PC at all so it wasn't that causing the issue.

It was most likely that the stock fans either could not cool enough for the after market GPU or one or more of the fans was not operating correctly. I of course decided I did not want to mess with fans going out on me or anything else, rather tired of the problem at this stage of the game. I took it in to Radio shack and had a liquid cooling system put into it. Come to find out during that installation that the BFG power supply installed by Geek Squad was NOT a true 450W power supply.

It was a stable output 304W power supply(LESS than stock) with a maximum wattage output of 450W, the GPU itself was pulling 50W alone, it was apparent that this was the cause of the constant reboots as the power supply could not keep up with the power demanded. I ended up getting a stable 680W power supply from Radio shack, and calling it a day...I would go after Geek Squad but knowing how businesses operate they would merely state it has a maximum wattage output of 450W we did not specify STABLE output. Even though they clearly stated it would surely run my PC with no issues.

In short...If you are going to do after market mods to a PC either do it yourself or go to someone you personally know and trust...that or be shafted.