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.

You should also post your case for reference, as some coolers may be too tall to fit. The Cooler Master Hyper series is by far the most recommended after market coolers for that price range, so it'd be worth looking into those coolers for your needs. I think the most recent revision is the Cooler Master Hyper T4, should set you back about $30. The sound quality of the cooler master fans is debateable, but at this price you can always get a quieter aftermarket fan and throw it on the heatsink and still be at your $50 mark. For something right at your $50 mark, I'd suggest the BeQuiet! Shadow Rock 2 cooler, though. It has more surface area than the cooler master cooler and should perform better than it when it comes to thermals. If you decide you want to save up for something closer to the $100 mark, you can start considering higher end air coolers with more cooling capacity. The Noctua NH-D15 was awesome for me before I upgraded to my custom loop, very quiet and kept my CPU at about 50C while overclocked and under max load. Be sure to check for case compatibility with your cooler, as some may stand too tall to fit in your case. Most should be fine, but there are some that will have problems. And don't forget that we're a little more than a month away from Black Friday, sites like Amazon and Newegg sometimes discount these kind of parts too.

But he's INFJ. ...You know what happened to the LAST person that was an INFJ like me, right? *sharpens knife* Right? *insert Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference* I feel fine!!! To be fair, Jeb is waaaay more prone to violence than INFJ's are supposed to be... hmmm... we might have a case of a wolfspider in bumblebee pantaloons here, folks.

I guess I'll just build my system with a GTX 960 to play everything current and maybe add another if the performance of the SLI is comparable or better to a single GTX 980 for VR. If not I'll just sell it and suck it upo and buy a GTX 1070ti or whatever they come up with. But theoretically and according to nvidia's own schemes, if the GTX 980 is enough for VR, the 960 SLI, provided with 4 gb cards instead of the regular 2gb, should perform well. The performance of SLI is going to largely depend on how well the game scales with SLI, assuming the games work with it at all (some games benefit from SLI). Nvidia just released drivers supporting VR SLI, so at this point the thing to be looking for is whether the developers update their titles to work with VR SLI. Personally, I don't recommend SLI just due to the many drawbacks versus using a single powerful GPU, but it's all about whatever floats your boat. Just keep up with the tech and reviews as VR approaches the consumer space and you should be fine with whatever choice you make.

It's not just ASUS boards... It's most realtek implementations that have this issue. Odd, my previous Gigabyte boards and my friend's Asrock board don't have the same issue. For that matter, the foxconn boards I've encountered don't have the same issues either. Asus is the first brand I've encountered to be this troublesome with their on-board audio, especially since the Windows registry edits that exist don't work with the Asus boards because, on reboot to apply the changes, the old settings get forced back. And upon google searches, most threads discussing these issues stem from an Asus board of some kind.

There's one game that comes to mind right now, I played it on the dreamcast when I was visiting my cousin a long time ago. I didn't remember much about it but when I go back to describe it to other people I tend to compare it to Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. Funnily enough, it was about a year ago when I accidentally found it again and kind of laughed when I figured out what it was. Being a Berserk fan now it's kind of funny to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_the_Berserk:_Guts%27_Rage

Tattoos are a very tricky subject to me. There are plenty of people who get them for the right reasons (deep, personal meaning, something that represents them either directly or abstractly, etc.) but then there are those that get tattoos I'd refer to as stupid, those being names of people you're seeing/not in a relationship that'll last, tattoos you get while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, basically tattoos that, given time, leave the person regretting they got them in the first place (there's a show on Netflix called bad-ink that basically sums up this topic with real examples). I'm indifferent to tattoos as a whole and can really only judge them on a case to case basis. I'm not one of those people who will get offended by someone over a tattoo (I've met plenty who do). Sometimes a tattoo can say a lot about a person, like if they have a swastika on their forehead or some kind of religious/gang art tattooed in a very visible spot, but aside from that I don't think it's entirely easy to judge someone based on a single image. Case and point being an old coworker of mine had a tattoo of a zombie Eeyore eating Piglet. I don't know what judgements you can make from a person based on that or other obscure images. I haven't gotten a tattoo because I honestly have no idea what it would be or where it would be. I have plenty of joke ideas, like getting the phrase "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here" tattooed on my waistline or getting a teardrop tattoo that slowly turns into a snake as it goes down your face, but those aren't things I'd actually do to my own body.

Aside from recommending an add-on soundcard, I don't have a software recommendation. I've been personally battling the Asus Realtek manager for months with various issues without much luck in fixing them (including this one) vs. finding a work around. For some reason, this seems to be common with the Asus boards and the realtek audio.

Personally, I'd skip the 970 for the time being. Even Nvidia has officially recommended for 1080p VR a minimum of a gtx 980 GPU. http://www.tweaktown.com/news/47539/nvidia-recommends-gtx-980-ti-1080p-90fps-vr-gaming/index.html Granted, VR would probably be okay with a 970, the 970 has a technical issue with VRAM utilization (basically framerates tank after going above 3.5GB useage). I recall reading earlier this month that the 900 series in general may not be that great for VR outside of GameWorksVR, and that it might be worth waiting for the next GPU release. Apparently the next nvidia GPUs will feature HBMv2 and go up to 16GB on a single GPU. Not to mention one of the Oculus Rift guys, David Kanter, has mentioned in a podcast recently that VR on nvidia GPUs could be "disastrous" due to supposedly poor async compute performance. If I were to get a phone for VR, it'd be the new Sony Xperia with the 4K display. I'm basically waiting for those kinds of display to enter the VR realm before jumping in.

Metal Gear Solid 5. The prologue was so metal.

Cinema