As far as performance goes for me; It runs everything I want and it runs it smoothly. So thats things like Minecraft or League of Legends, such games play at about 40-100 fps at medium to high settings. Other than that I just browse with it, play music and program on it, although I prefer programming on my laptop.
And yeah, cooling it can be a real nightmare, especially if your video card came without its own cooler .-.
What I don't get though is that you guys need so much space for a computer, here's my setup so you know what I mean:
WARNING! 4K pictures!
Spoiler For Spoiler:
There's my full setup, which is a computer, laptop, widescreen monitor, subwoover and speakers, nothing hidden under; its all sitting on my desk.
And here's the inside of the computer; just look how cramped that all his!
And here is it with the PSU lifted.
The case is a Antec Aria, A microATX case, which is 10.6" x 7.9" x 13.2" (WxHxD). It normally comes with a PSU that was build for it, but the guy I bought it from blew that thing up.
So instead I took my own PSU and just put it on the spot where normally the CD Drive and the HDD's were going to go. The HDD's not lay under the card reader where normally a USB hub is attached, that one is my own and was routed to the back.
As far as specs go, it can't compete with your PC's. This was a budget build and it was in total ~120 euros.
CPU: Intel Pentium D, dual core rated @3 ghz. (Socket 775, still very much upgradable) RAM: 2GB DDR2 memory (I can upgrade this to 4GB If I wanted) PSU: Some PSU that gives 350watts. GPU: GeForce 9500GT, overclocked to the maximum stable. CD Drive: None USB Ports: 4 Sound Card: None Cooling: By PSU, CPU and a external one which is placed all the way in the back. Its not perfect, but it does the job. Over time it gets hotter and hotter, but this takes a long time; after about 10 hours of maximum load (Yeah) it was 70 degrees. If I think it gets to hot I just temporarely take the top off and it cools quickly.
How good "good enough" is depends on what you're doing with it, of course. To play Skyrim dual-monitor, you're going to need a pretty nice GPU (or enjoy looking at pixels)
Skyrim also was not written to support multi-monitor and I've found multi-monitor hacks very unstable(especially when using mods)
How the heck can a game (other than online multiplayer games where more monitors gives an unfair advantage to the player, such as in Starcraft II) lack multiple screen support in 2013? Did the programmers take an arrow in the knee while implementing it?
SSD: no, No, and NO. Here's why: SSDs are flash memory, which has a limited number of Read/Writes. After a few years (depends on usage), the drive will either a: slow down immensely or b: stop working. This can happen to anything with flash memory eventually, such as flash drives and calculators.
Just a quick note, this is not actually true any more. Early SSDs were prone to failure, but the tech has improved vastly since then. The average hard drive has a life of around 10-15 years; SSDs can now survive over 100 yrs. In addition, hard drives are prone to mechanical failure if you bump your case around a lot; my SSD's been dangling in my case (haha cable management) and has absolutely no problems. Since most OSes have support for TRIM nowadays, there's really no reason for write/read speeds to deteriorate over time as well.
Another note about RAID: I'd highly suggest not doing it, especially if it's your first time; for RAID0 (which pimathbraniac talks about), if any of the drives fail all your data is lost. Other RAID arrays provide redundancy, but decrease performance.
Isn't SSD lifetime reduced only during defragmenting anyway? For TI calculators, the Flash chip was apparently weared out only by garbage collecting and defragmenting, not by archiving/unarchiving/flash unlock, from what I remember.
Skyrim does actually support double monitors, it only does this really badly, and you need to do some video setting tingeling to make it work properly.
Seeing all the things you want to do, I recommend you build a computer the following way:
Note: Do not take all of this before someone correct me on any things that wont be good.
-Motherboard: I am not sure which one you would need to get, I would recommend a ASUS, as those always worked fine, but you dont want a to new one, as the stuff you are going to put in your machine is secondhanded, thus old, and wont fit in newer motherboards. -AMD Athlon 4800: that one is pretty epic, I have it myself, and it was about 60 euros secondhanded a few years ago. -Atleast 2 gigs ddr ram, however, the more, the better. -GeForce video card, however, because you want 2 screens you need a fancy one, meaning that this part will most likely be the expensive thing.
As far as storage goes, you should head over to the nearest computer shop, and ask what they have to offer. I almost dont know anything about these kinds of things, but I think you want around a 40 gig SSD to boot from, and 1 terrabyte HDD.
Ofcourse I did, I watched all 3 seasons atleast 3 times, the 'movies' like 8 times each, and equestria girls... Lets just say I was bored a complete day, and then has an idea...
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