Ha yes I've been having a blast with this hardware mostly because Steam has captured my attention this past week with the AMAZING holiday sales they've had on games..and no I'm not a paid sponsor but i'm SO glad I've finally converted to PC gaming On that note I see where I've made the mistake, instead of connecting the Power molex to the power supply i connected it to the exhaust fan on my case thinking it would provide enough juice, wrong! Thanks for the clarification I'll let you know if it works.

I'm using the oh-so-stylish NZXT M59 classic mid tower (sorry don't know how to apply hyperlinks) which can be found on Amazon or Newegg for a decent price. The size and upgradability on this case seems decent, but if I were to upgrade what would be your next logical tower to conquer LAN parties or a keep a curious cat that can't get enough of the shiny blue lights at bay??

Hehe, there's a ton more customization in PC gaming. The mods alone make it worth it dozens of times over -- you can make a game like Morrowind, which is a fantastic game, but quite dated (from 2002), look brand new with the right mods (for those interested, a video of this example is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs

Did you get a chance to see if the correction worked yet?

One of our forum members (Tribar) is also on the M59 case. I actually built that one for him myself, so I got to see it up close -- I agree, it definitely has that edgy look. That was a terrible pun, I apologize

For making your case even more awesome, there's always what I call 'light modding.' You can see an example of one of my light mods here: www.gamersnexus.net/forum/15-hardware-a-...g-with-evil-red-leds

I think you already saw this guide, but in case you didn't, these are some great 'soup-up' add-ons for LAN parties: www.gamersnexus.net/features/50-guides/6...s-to-soup-up-your-pc


Regarding actual cases, that all depends on how much money you're willing to spend. There are SO many cool cases out there now, it's really exciting the number of options there are in the $100-$200 range. The HAF X (featured in that light mod forum post) is my current favorite case, but the Chaser MK-I is another -really- cool looking case:

www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/615-thermalt...k-i-lcs-case-esports

Of course, the Antec LANboy has quite a following as well -- I'm mixed about the Lanboy, it's sort of bright colored, but definitely has a unique look to it:

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129093

So many cool cases

Yes the correction worked flawlessly! I've yet to attach the temperature probes for the simple fact that the programs I downloaded show my temps anyway, and I want to keep cable management as neat as possible!

The case is def cool, though I can see where a full-tower would do me justice but until I get a second/ newer graphics card I should be fine for now..speaking of which do you think it would be smart to invest in Crossfire with Radeon 6870's in the near future, or to go with a brand new single GPU In a couple years from now?? I'm having a hard time MAXING out games like The Witcher 2 and Crysis with my setup now..granted I haven't totally "tweaked" my hardware yet like overclocking, etc.

And I loved the article on case bling! I ordered a couple blue cathode lights to match my theme, it loks great so far!!

Modding the case is fun and all but it's my game library that i plan to "pimp out" to the MAX!! Which leads me to my next issue; modding games that are integrated with Steam! I haven't experimented yet but so far from comments and such it seems like Steam games are harder to manipulate, is this true?? For example I have GTA4 and Just Cause 2 that i'm sure with the help of mods could be much more immersive, however, I'm a total noob when it comes to scripting and editing folder contents.. especially with games! Are there any forums on this site or that you know of to help a novice modder on his journey??

Side Note: My next logical hardware upgrade will be an SSD. 1. Because they are competitively priced with normal HDD's due to the flooding overseas. 2. They make a BIG difference in game loading times, immersion, etc. 3. I need a back-up device for my games especially if I plan on modding them.

Side note side note: Will an external HDD be a viable option to back-up content given the fact that 90% of my game library is on Steam?? Somewhere i heard that Steam doesn’t allow you to transfer their files in some cases..

Note: I think I went a bit long on this one, sorry about that. Feel free to skim/jump around. I write a lot when it gets late (5AM ...)

Haha, I was the same way. I currently have all the temp probes stuff up in the top corner of my case. I set all the fans to 100% anyway, so nothing's getting hurt by it. I just finished managing my cables and then saw 10 more heat probes... no way.

I honestly don't like or recommend SLI/CrossFire very often. I always say to go for single cards that are more powerful -- I just finished working on this post that details the upcoming GPU releases:

www.gamersnexus.net/features/50-guides/6...meline-2012-schedule

As you see here, the 7950 and 7970 (and 7990, although it isn't mentioned in that post) are all coming out early next year, so by the time you actually need to upgrade, those cards will be about the same price as you paid for your initial card and they'll be many times better. Crossfire steps down to the slowest card in the array, so that means if you were to link a 5970 with a 6970, the 6970 would slow itself down.

That said, I'm not tooo surprised about The Witcher 2, although I'd imagine by now Crysis should be max-able. Are you talking Crysis 1 or 2? We can probably do some .ini tweaks to Crysis or some OC work.


Glad to hear you looked into the case lighting, they're pretty fun to work with. I do agree that games come first

Steam games can be harder to work on, but it really depends on the game. You have full access to all your games' folders, it just comes down to finding the rights ones -- and some mods are written in a such a way that they 'look' for the wrong (non-steam) folders. This is not too common now since Steam has become a large consideration among most modders.

You can typically access Steam files in this vicinity:

C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\[game name]\

It might also be:

C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\[your account name]\[game name]\

We've done several posts on modding Skyrim (the most popular of which can be found here.), and I never had any troubles other than crashing when mods conflicted.

You won't actually have to 'script' anything for the most part since you'd just be installing pre-made mods. I'll see if I can poke around for some GTA 4 stuff and try to learn how to install it that way I can tell you

Here's my question for you: are you interesting in writing your own mods or would you rather use existing ones? I can point you int he right direction from there


SSDs definitely do make quite a big difference (you've probably seen our article on that by now). They can shave off a few seconds of load time, and while many people challenge me on whether or not it's noticeable, it is quite obvious when gaming. For example: on my 7200RPM HDD, I can 'zone' (change levels) in the game X3: Albion Prelude, which is an open / singleplayer space game, in about 3 seconds. That's 3 seconds I can think: 'I'm playing a game, it's loading,' whether I actively think it or not isn't important, the fact is that I'm not immersed for those 3 seconds. With an SSD, I can zone it in about 1 second. Huge difference.

There are utilities that force Steam into a mode where it can 'move' games from one drive to another. It is commonly used for SSDs (i.e., you install the game on your SSD, then you want to 'shelve it' for a while so you can play a different one). I'll do a full news post on this over the next couple days for you and others who ask frequently

haha not at all it was an easy read

Good advice, I'm def eyeing the new Radeon that was announced but I don't see myself spending over $200 for a single GPU so the waiting game begins..LOL

YESS the Witcher 2 is great and is running stable at medium/High settings so can't complain there..I'm referring to Crysis 1 at the moment but at this rate i'll be onto C2 as soon as i'm finished with the first! Crytek's engine is just too good to pass up..(even with the "console port" criticism when C2 was first released)

When it comes to modding i'm most definitely content with using pre-made ones. Some of the graphics overhaul mods for GTA and even Crysis are AMAZING. Not to mention new weapons, attachments, maps, etc.. My modding experience as of now lies with Left for Dead 2. I was able to download a "split-screen script" and move it into the 'cfg' file for LFD2 which allowed me to play with a buddy using a 360controller + mouse & keyboard..at the same time..cool i know!

Sounds like SSD's are the way to go! Specially considering i have a measly 30gigs left on my main HDD..time for an upgrade! As always, thanks for the help

The Radeon 7-series gaming cards will be quite expensive, haha. I'm going to wait on them for a bit. I may play around with the nvidia models, but they haven't even been officially announced yet. It's definitely a waiting game with hardware!


That L4D2 mod actually sounds really cool. Yeah, most of them are quite simple. You just drop the files into the folders and that's that. Most mods come with a readme that should give specific directions which are tailored to the game. A lot of mods operate based on file replacements -- for example, many of the GTA overhaul mods will overwrite existing textures with much higher resolution ones. If you installed GTA via Steam, the good news is that if you screw it up, it's very easy to recover the files without a complete re-install. Of course, it's always recommended to back things up. If you do accidentally delete or overwrite a necessary file, here's how to typically fix it:

1. Find the file you overwrote the old one with. Rename it to [currentname].old. This will be your backup in case Steam can't fix it.
2. Right-click on the game in Steam and go to Properties, then Local Files. Verify the game's cache.

You can also use this navigation to back the game up prior to mods. This will save you a lot of hassle

To one of your questions you asked earlier, I wrote this post a few days ago with your question in mind -- hopefully it helps!

www.gamersnexus.net/features/82-swguides...ifferent-hard-drives