GiantZombies

I just did a quick check before posting and I'd just like to say. I'm sorry if anyone hates reading tons of stuff, I can get very analytical at times (You can thank Squad for that). I don't mean to write an entire novel for a forum post. But hell, I'm trying to get you guys as much info as I can so I can get the info I need. So I'll thank you for your patience in advance. I'm open to overclocking, I just wasn't really thinking into it too much when I typed all that. The main thing limiting me on this is that I know even less about overclocking than I do about building a PC in the first place. After a bit of thinking though I'm starting to see I could get a good bit of extra performance for little to no extra cost if I do it. So if you or anyone else can point me towards a good tutorial or something, I'd appreciate it. And yeah, I'd like to get a Core i5, but it's definitely out of my budget from what I can see. This is the part I was most concerned about, I was considering this as the starting point of my build more or less. Since (I'm assuming) most of everything will revolve around what motherboard I choose. I'll have a look at the ones you suggested and see which looks better. And to reference the last point, I'll probably go with something I can overclock, just so I have the option to do so. I'm with you completely on this one, this is something I've needed to upgrade in the past so I expect I'll need to do it again sooner or later. I'll probably start off with 8gb (if possible) and then upgrade later if I wind up needing more and I've got room for it. I know nothing of graphics cards other than integrated doesn't always do what I want it to. So I'll more than likely end up getting one of the ones you suggested. Depending on price though, I may go with something different if I can get comparable performance for comparable cost. I actually am a music/movie hoarder, but luckily I've got an external HDD I store all of that on. I've heard SSD's are pretty pricey, but I don't expect I'll need a ridiculous amount of space for what I'll be using the PC for. So I'll have a look at the one you suggested and see if it's in my price range. *crosses fingers* (I NEEEEEDDD fast load times) I guess I did kinda leave this part out, thanks for bringing it up. The last system I was playing on was a Toshiba Satellite C55t-B5110 (I'll link it below). Long story short, it's dead and no warranty is going to cover it. So I feel my money would be better spent building a PC rather than buying one off the shelf. Link to PC in question - http://www.toshiba.com/us/computers/laptops/satellite/C50/C55T-B5110

Hey everyone, I'll try to make this as short as possible and just get into the details. I've been playing KSP on a laptop for the better part of 2 years now. Nothing too fancy, just enough to get me through daily use and play a few relatively low-demand games. When I first got into KSP I thought "This thing is never going to run this but whatever, it's worth a shot", and much to my surprise (integrated graphics/ancient CPU) it ran quite nicely until I started building bigger and bigger things. Well long story short, my laptop is no more, and seeing how it's a off the shelf laptop from Best Buy I don't expect it's really worth fixing if it's even fixable. So I've decided to go about building a PC which will hopefully be at least a bit more capable than my old toaster. Problem is, I've got no experience with actually building PC's (Seriously, none, nada, zip, does replacing RAM count?). Luckily for me, you folks have this awesome thread set up where I can hopefully ask questions to my hearts content and figure things out. So to start off with, I'll fill out this build helper thing. Sorry if it gets confusing at some point or another, I'm horrible at formatting things like this. What are you planning to do with this computer? Please be as specific as possible. General everyday use, with a bit of gaming on the side. What is your budget? $500-$600 USD Does this include a copy of Windows? Yep, gonna need one. Unless someone who would recommend Linux over Windows can point me in the direction of a good build and humor me a bit while I pester them with questions about it. Does this include peripherals (a keyboard, monitor, mouse, speakers, etc.)? For the most part, no. I've got a mouse I used with the laptop because of my undying hate for trackpads. Speakers, check. Monitor, check. If anyone can recommend a nice keyboard though, I'll probably be needing one of those. Are you from the United States or a different country? Are you ordering from your own country or from across borders? US, and I'm not exactly sure where I'll be ordering from yet. Wherever you may be from, does the store that you are planning to order from have a website? It's okay if it isn't in English, we can manage. Like I said, I haven't picked a retailer yet but I was planning on going with Tigerdirect or NewEgg. I'm open to recommendations though. If you are from the United States, do you live nearby a Microcenter? Just checked and... Nope... Do you have any specific requests with the build? Not really, just that it be able to outperform my old laptop. Which I suspect won't be hard to do. Do you plan on overclocking? Nahh. Would you prefer the build to be particularly small? To be honest smaller is better, but bigger is usually easier as far as I know. So it doesn't really matter I guess. Would you prefer the build to be particularly quiet? I don't care, make it as loud as a turbine engine, as long as it stays cool and does what I want it to it's fine by me. I rarely get on a computer without having headphones on anyways. In general, do you prefer this to be a computer that you can spend money on now and let it rest, or a box built for continuous upgrading? I'd like to be able to upgrade if I can, but to be honest when I actually do upgrade I'll probably build a new rig with a bit bigger budget. I'm just kinda getting my feet wet with this first build and trying to get a grip on what I'm doing. Do you ever plan on utilizing NVIDIA's SLI or AMD's CrossfireX technologies? These features, with a compatible motherboard, allow a user to link multiple identical graphic cards together for added performance. In real world terms, this lets you buy a second identical graphics card down the line as a relatively cheap and easy way to gain a fairly large boost in performance. However, this requires buying a SLI/CFX compatible motherboard and PSU now, which may result in slightly higher initial cost. Nope, for what I'm going to be using it for I don't see a need to do so. Alright, that's finished (I hope). If I've left anything out or anyone needs any more information let me know. If you're patient enough to put up with me and answer all my inevitable dumb questions I'm more than willing to help out where I can, I just need some guidance on this and some recommended builds. Thanks!

Thanks, I'll go about doing it in VirtualBox before I actually go ahead with doing it for real. Strictly speaking, I'm not totally doing it for gaming. I've been wanting to do it for a while now, but I'm just now getting around to it.

Thanks for all the help guys, I appreciate it. I went out and picked up a cheap external hard drive yesterday so I could back up the stuff I didn't want to lose, and I did a clean install of Windows 7 to clean out my computer before I went ahead with anything else. I also played around with Linux a bit before I started the install process and I think I'll like it once I get used to using it. I don't play many AAA games, mainly because this computer just can't manage running most of them, so 90% of the games I play are Indie and as far as I know the ones I play support Linux. Now, I've got one final question. How should I partition my hard drive? From what I've read, a boot partition is important so you don't mess up the MBR or anything, so I'll make room for one of those. The root partition seems to be necessary as well, so I'll make room for that too. But are the home partition and swap space partitions absolutely necessary? I'm not going to want to have files accessible from both OS's, but if either of those are needed I'll make them too.

Alright, so I've finally broken down and decided that I want to install Ubuntu. Actually, I've wanted to do it for a while. But I never really saw a reason to do it until I started gaming on my PC. I've heard that it's far less resource heavy and games tend to run better, and with my budget that's a huge plus since I won't be getting a new computer for a while. So, I've got some questions if there are any Ubuntu users here, or anyone that might be able to point me in the direction of someone who could help me out with this. First off, unless I just completely fall in love with Ubuntu once I actually start using it (which I suspect will happen). I probably won't be doing much on it besides playing games on it and getting used to using it. So I'm planning on setting my PC up to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. Now, to the questions. 1.) When I do this, is backing up my system a major concern? I don't exactly have a spare hard drive or something laying around that I can use to do so. 2.) Will I need to install all of my drivers again on the Ubuntu partition? 3.) What sort of things will I need to learn, if any. To be able to switch over to Ubuntu completely? I'd really appreciate any help or advice on this. I'm pretty eager to get started with Ubuntu.

Just wanted to say hello to everyone, and get my first post out of the way. I've been lurking the forums for about 6 months but I never bothered with making an account, so I'm not a complete noob when it comes to KSP. But, that being said, I've probably still got a lot to learn. I've been addicted to mods for about 3 months, and even though there are some really awesome ones out there. I always feel like I'm lacking a part that would be really useful or convenient. So, I was wondering if anyone could point me towards some decent tutorials for Blender, just to get me started. Or just give me a direction I should be heading towards, as far as creating things for KSP goes. I'd like make some things that are tailored to the needs of a specific job, and possibly even release a part pack if I get to a point where I feel like they're good enough to release. Anyways, thanks for reading, everyone. Feels good to finally be a part of the community!