Obsidian

If you have hardware that supports it, OS virtualization under Fedora with IOMMU passthrough (basically hardware passthrough) may be something to consider. You'll want 2 GPUs, 1 for Fedora and one for your VM, but you'll also want to make sure the GPU for your VM is compatible with older OSes (finding XP drivers and such). Nvidia tends to suck for these set ups because their drivers will detect if you're running a VM and refuse to load if they do, but there are changes to the VM settings you can make to get the driver to load and run. There's a small penalty performance-wise, but the experience is WAY better than trying to run the VM through something like Virtualbox, Fusion, or using Wine, especially for graphically intensive applications, IMO. The major cons here is making sure you have the appropriate hardware. You'll want a good CPU with a decent amount of cores and RAM (like with other VMs) in addition to the two GPUs, but also a CPU+Motherboard that supports IOMMU. There's a lot of tutorials on Youtube to set it up, and plenty of reddit posts with further details (obligatory Level1Techs mention). I run a setup like this myself, except my system has 3 GPUs, one for the host, one specifically for XP, and one for modern gaming. I've been able to run any game I'd like without worrying about OS compatibility. You can even set up an OSX guest if you want to mess around with Mac for some reason. If you want to go nuts and throw some money at an option, you can also checkout Unraid (SpaceInvaderOne on Youtube has a lot of helpful videos for working with Unraid), which can do the same thing but does not require a GPU dedicated to the host. Which, given the GPU shortage, may not be a bad idea if you don't have a spare GPU laying around. Unraid is geared for much more than hosting VMs, but it apparently does an awesome job for that as well.

Dark Souls 3, trolling with Havel's Shield is so fun.

Dark Souls 3

When I see games like MGSV getting 100%, 10/10s, etc, I'd have to say yes, this is true far too often. But, that's also why I've stopped caring much for mainstream gaming sites lately. While they aren't always the best, I usually refer to steam reviews and discussion boards to help gauge a game's quality before purchasing.

Metal Gear Solid V. Finally beat it, despite it being an unfinished game.

Prospekt, god this mod is terrible. Wouldn't recommend playing it at all.

I know someone who has access to the design specs of the headsets... The actual value of the hardware used is under $120. That means they are charging ~$480 just for assembly, which I feel is totally absurd. These headsets are only really worth ~$300, not double that. Yeah, that sounds about right. I hope we won't continue to see smartphone-esque pricing schemes with VR, and it doesn't help that the rift is coming to market without a competitor present. Any news from WCCFtech needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as they report the news like they're skeet shooting. A lot of rumors and news we've seen from them doesn't pan out, though that's not to say they're always wrong. That being said, there are shipping reports leaked showing Nvidia GPUs using GDDR5X RAM instead of HBM, but I suspect the HBM will be reserved for their higher end cards and won't be seen in the next gen equivalents to the 970 and lower. Like how AMD did it with their HBM-equipped cards. Who knows, AMD might be the better option for a VR GPU when the new cards from both teams are released. We'll have to wait to see what the performance looks like.

A friend suckered me into playing Who's Your Daddy, which isn't nearly as perverse as I had hoped. We both came to find out we would be both horrible parents and dead babies.

I've always wanted to see a fallout game take place in China, iirc China had all the cool stuff before the bombs dropped in terms of tech.

So, with the preorders for the rift being opened, how's everyone feeling on the price point? At 600 USD, you get a rift, a few games, an xbox one controller, and a remote. Definitely more than what was being thrown around last fall, which was a price point in the 300-400 USD range, but is that still something you'd be willing to invest for what is, at time of writing, a novelty? Also, since we've been discussing GPUs for VR in this thread, it appears the rift requires a minimum of either a GTX 970 from green team or a R9 290 from the red team. Makes sense given the high resolution of the Rift's display, which hopefully will eliminate the screen door effect observed on the dev kits. Personally, I became more interested in the Vive than the Rift when we started hearing more about it, but if the headsets sit around this price point, especially given a leak that the PS4 VR set may cost ~800USD, not to mention the horsepower the companies are claiming you'll need to run the sets, I'll be reserving any kind of investment until we see more hardware maturity from both GPU and headsets. I'd also be curious to see if we'll see a separate Rift purchase options for just the headset and how much that'll bring down the price.

Orbital Ear "The NSA satellite always hear you, even when you're sleeping...."

I agree with a lot of this, minus the random aggressive tone. Funnily enough, I got the same celebrity *twitch* please don't throw another TV at me ;_;

Anxious I guess and not looking forward to work tomorrow. My boss just returned from medical leave and tomorrow will be the first time I've worked with her being there, so either things will be business as usual or her usual control-freak self will be in full gear and the team has been doing "everything wrong" since she left (which would be bull, the business has been going smoothly and succeeding just fine without her there and team morale I think was better with her stand-in). I guess I have faith in people only so much as to expect them to act shitty all the time.

Oh yeah, those coolers should be fine since the case has a 140mm mounted in the rear and those coolers won't be taller than a 140mm fan+IO shield. As for noise, I'd say both coolers I suggested should be fine for your needs. They'd dissipate the heat much better than the stock cooler and thus make it harder for your CPU to reach the higher temps that cause your current fan to scream.

Idk, I imagine Charles Dickens could break a keyboard pretty fast... *ba dum, tsh* Aside from making horrid jokes, watching anime in an attempt to settle down before bed.