The Smokin Deist

build 1 - 800$ gaming:
 
PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (12nm) 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor $85.00 @ Amazon Motherboard ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard $79.97 @ Amazon Memory G.Skill Flare X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory $68.99 @ Newegg Storage Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $109.99 @ Adorama Video Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC Video Card $238.98 @ Newegg Case Thermaltake Versa H17 MicroATX Mini Tower Case $44.99 @ Best Buy Power Supply Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply $59.98 @ Newegg Monitor Asus VA24EHE 23.8" 1920x1080 75 Hz Monitor $114.98 @ Newegg   Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts     Total $802.88   Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-15 11:28 EDT-0400    
build 2 - 600$ light gaming: 
PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor $149.99 @ Best Buy Motherboard ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard $79.97 @ Amazon Memory G.Skill Flare X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory $68.99 @ Newegg Storage Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $109.99 @ Adorama Case Thermaltake Versa H17 MicroATX Mini Tower Case $44.99 @ Best Buy Power Supply Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply $59.98 @ Newegg Monitor Asus VA24EHE 23.8" 1920x1080 75 Hz Monitor $114.98 @ Newegg   Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts     Total $628.89   Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-15 11:28 EDT-0400    

If it doesn't include monitors in that price, then the below should absolutely be overkill with those games and be able to get decent frame rates at 1080p in most modern games. The power supply is overkill, but is currently on a decent price for what it has.
 
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($174.99 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($114.99 @ B&H) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($84.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Western Digital Green  240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($37.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($50.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 580 8 GB PULSE Video Card  ($169.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  ($68.98 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GX1 RGB 600 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  ($60.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $763.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-15 11:04 EDT-0400
 
If you want to spend less, then the below would be significantly cheaper, and probably still adequate graphics wise for those games she wants to play. You can also swap in a 3200G in to the below for $50-60 less and still be fine with those games, with the ability to upgrade the CPU & put in a discrete GPU if you wanted in the future.
 
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($149.99 @ Best Buy) 
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($114.99 @ B&H) 
Memory: G.Skill Flare X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($68.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Western Digital Green  240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($37.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($50.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  ($68.98 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($59.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $551.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-15 11:11 EDT-0400
 
 
Edit: I've just noticed there is basically no price difference between those two power supplies. Get the Thermaltake one if it is still the same price, on either build.
 

The Picasso IV was one of the best that came out for the Amiga--I just wish I could have added some of the modules to it. The Picasso96 software was pretty nice and it allowed me to create custom display modes and resolutions. I did lose a few, lesser used screen modes and the ability to peel down the different screens on the Amiga--the stock GFX chipset allowed you to drag down different screens displaying them all well even if they were at different resolutions at the same time.

I had two A4000/040 systems before. The first was in the standard desktop case and it was a nice step up for me from my A2000. But we had flooding in the FLGS I was co-owner of and the building's insurance paid for my replacement. So I ordered another A4000/040 (refurbished) from Software Hut but this one was in the Elbox Tower case with the larger daughterboard. That was my main system until I ended up handing all my old Amiga stuff to someone in the user's group to take care of a debt--I'm pretty sure I got boned in the deal.

I also wish I had a pic of all my old Amigas but we were still using film cameras at that time and it cost money to take and develop pictures.

I don't remember everything I had in there but I remember that the motherboard was fully populated with RAM that was hot-glued for some weird reason. It had my Picasso IV RTG card, An X-Surf II Ethernet card so I could surf via DSL, a Catweasel card to hook up PC floppy drives, maybe a Buddah IDE card, and possibly a SCSI card.

My biggest bottleneck was that I had the stock Commodore '040 board installed--I really wished I could have afforded good accelerator in there like one of the '060+PPC boards.

There should be a pic of my old A2000 earlier in this thread though.

This is not a specific component or part but it is definitely retro. I was a fan of Commodore Amiga computers and I didn't move to Windows until 2007. I didn't get many pictures of my old systems since digital cameras were still in their infancy and were pretty expensive. But I did get a picture of my Amiga 2000 in 1998 in a digital format by getting a Kodak Photo CD when I sent in this roll of film to get developed. (So this picture is a retro artifact on its own.) I was experimenting with using those as one way to get digital pictures onto my computer since my CD-driver software had support for the Kodak disks and format.

As I stated, this was my Amiga 2000 in 1998. For those familiar with the platform, I had upgraded it with a DKB Megachip 2000/500 board and the 2 MB Agnus--this increased Chip RAM, a shared memory space that the CPU and Custom chips could directly access, from 1MB to 2MB--the max that Amiga hardware could address. You could add Fast RAM, that could be much larger, which was where most of your work was done. I also had the Super Denise upgrade chip that upgraded my graphic chipset from the OCS (Original Chip Set) graphics to the ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) graphics which allowed more native screenmodes and also allowed me to easilly change from NTSC to PAL via software.

Also added by me was the Kickstart 3.1 ROM. Commodore had some of the OS on a chip--just enough to allow the computer to boot up off of floppy or HD. I was running Workbench 3.1 and later worked my way up to OS 3.9, the last update from the inheritors of Commodore until a recent release from Hyperion of OS 3.1.4--yeah, that version number is kinda screwy.

Now these chips originally sat in my old A500--the A500 was all self contained with a built-in keyboard and floppy drive. Since it and the A2000 came out at the same time, they shared many of the same parts. The A500 was more of a home/game machine while the A2000 was a classic desktop of the time with room for internal expansion cards. (The A500 was quite upgradable but that is a whole story of its own.) So when I had a second-hand A2000 drop in my lap, the upgrade was well worth it.

One last shared item was my accelerator, a Supra Turbo 28--a 28MHz 68010 that is as basic of an accelerator as you can get. It suffered from not having a spot for added Fast RAM but it was a big upgrade from the 7.16MHz (NTSC) Morotola 68000. On the A500 it was in an enclosure that plugged onto the side of the computer. If you remove it from its case and set a jumper, you could plug it into the processor slot on the motherboard. The A2000 had the base 68000 CPU soldered onto the mobo, but when you plugged an accelerator into the slot, it took over.

To run that external SCSI CD-ROM drive, I had an A2091 SCSI card in there that had the capacity for me to add RAM, but I didn't add it to this card since it would have conflicted with a larger 8MB RAM expansion (A2058) I had in there. I did have an Individual Computers Buddha IDE board to run my 2GB internal hard drive--which I had paid too much for earlier when it was installed in my A500.

That beefy floppy drive is the classic Amiga 1010. That modem was a Supra FAXModem 28.8--a real workhorse modem that I was just a little sad to let go when I upgraded to faster modems. I did do a fair amount of logging into some of the remaining dialup BBS' that were still around. I could also go on to the Internet, but it wasn't until I got my Picasso IV graphics card for my A4000/040 where I could see things in full color. The Monitor was a Commodore 1080, a great monitor that you could use with the Amiga, C-64 (with the Luma/Chroma video cable if you wanted sharper video, but it could do standard composite video), and C-128 (with the Luma/Chroma and 80-column modes). I believe that the monitor is showing output from a DCTV--an external device that displays high-color pictures via a composite video output. It also works as a slow-scan video digitizer. 

Unfortunately, I no longer have any Amiga hardware. My ultimate dream computer room would not only contain a fast new computer, but I would want to have a retro system or two set up as well. I do have emulation for both the Amiga and the older Commodore 8-bit computers, but there is something about running things on original hardware.

I still have those speakers though and they still sound decent. That device on top of the modem is an external caller ID display.

The pic displayed on the screen is still available on what remains of the Aminet archive. Here it is to save you from a long search


 
 

The Picasso IV was one of the best that came out for the Amiga--I just wish I could have added some of the modules to it. The Picasso96 software was pretty nice and it allowed me to create custom display modes and resolutions. I did lose a few, lesser used screen modes and the ability to peel down the different screens on the Amiga--the stock GFX chipset allowed you to drag down different screens displaying them all well even if they were at different resolutions at the same time.

I had two A4000/040 systems before. The first was in the standard desktop case and it was a nice step up for me from my A2000. But we had flooding in the FLGS I was co-owner of and the building's insurance paid for my replacement. So I ordered another A4000/040 (refurbished) from Software Hut but this one was in the Elbox Tower case with the larger daughterboard. That was my main system until I ended up handing all my old Amiga stuff to someone in the user's group to take care of a debt--I'm pretty sure I got boned in the deal.

I also wish I had a pic of all my old Amigas but we were still using film cameras at that time and it cost money to take and develop pictures.

I don't remember everything I had in there but I remember that the motherboard was fully populated with RAM that was hot-glued for some weird reason. It had my Picasso IV RTG card, An X-Surf II Ethernet card so I could surf via DSL, a Catweasel card to hook up PC floppy drives, maybe a Buddah IDE card, and possibly a SCSI card.

My biggest bottleneck was that I had the stock Commodore '040 board installed--I really wished I could have afforded good accelerator in there like one of the '060+PPC boards.

There should be a pic of my old A2000 earlier in this thread though.

Like an old system that was never opened? I would still open it up and inspect the capacitors on the motherboard just to be safe. Inspecting the PSU for it may or may not be possible. I think some of those old Commodore caps get a bit leaky over time. Luckily enough, you don't have to worry about battery leakage like you would with an Amiga.

It's pretty easy to open up and inspect. I don't remember if you need any special bits. I was part of a Commodore user's group for several years and I have opened up quite a few older systems to try to swap socketed chips to see if I can get it to work. I've also installed the JiffyDOS ROMS in several systems from the C64 to the 128D.
 
Another fun task was soldering in device number switches in the old 1541 floppy drives.

Cool to see old hardware. My old A4000 had the Picasso IV RTG Card for the graphics. It used a Cirrus Logic GD5446. It was a great card/GPU. It had 4 MB of video RAM--a lot for those days.

I can understand skepticism with the sequel but the optimist in me hopes that this will be a good progression of the game. Rewriting it from the ground up may fix major issues but can also introduce new ones. I also forgot to mention that Private Division (Take Two) is the other big name behind this and that may or may not be a good thing.

I will wait to see what happens with this new release as well. I love the original and I can hope for a worthy successor. If they botch it I know the fans will let their displeasure be known.

I have a Dell N5110 with 8GB of RAM and Win 10. So yeah...

But I do appreciate the efforts to help those of us with these conditions you are helping to fight.

Yep completely untouched besides opening the box to eye my prize lol. Zero discoloration and absolute perfection. Guy i got it from bought it new for his kid back in the day and his kid too zero interest in it when he showed it to him so he just stored it. All discs still sealed and everything. I think i am the first to take it out of the plastic lol. I'll get pics this weekend

The Picasso IV was one of the best that came out for the Amiga--I just wish I could have added some of the modules to it. The Picasso96 software was pretty nice and it allowed me to create custom display modes and resolutions. I did lose a few, lesser used screen modes and the ability to peel down the different screens on the Amiga--the stock GFX chipset allowed you to drag down different screens displaying them all well even if they were at different resolutions at the same time.

I had two A4000/040 systems before. The first was in the standard desktop case and it was a nice step up for me from my A2000. But we had flooding in the FLGS I was co-owner of and the building's insurance paid for my replacement. So I ordered another A4000/040 (refurbished) from Software Hut but this one was in the Elbox Tower case with the larger daughterboard. That was my main system until I ended up handing all my old Amiga stuff to someone in the user's group to take care of a debt--I'm pretty sure I got boned in the deal.

I also wish I had a pic of all my old Amigas but we were still using film cameras at that time and it cost money to take and develop pictures.

I don't remember everything I had in there but I remember that the motherboard was fully populated with RAM that was hot-glued for some weird reason. It had my Picasso IV RTG card, An X-Surf II Ethernet card so I could surf via DSL, a Catweasel card to hook up PC floppy drives, maybe a Buddah IDE card, and possibly a SCSI card.

My biggest bottleneck was that I had the stock Commodore '040 board installed--I really wished I could have afforded good accelerator in there like one of the '060+PPC boards.

There should be a pic of my old A2000 earlier in this thread though.

Cool to see old hardware. My old A4000 had the Picasso IV RTG Card for the graphics. It used a Cirrus Logic GD5446. It was a great card/GPU. It had 4 MB of video RAM--a lot for those days.

Cool to see old hardware. My old A4000 had the Picasso IV RTG Card for the graphics. It used a Cirrus Logic GD5446. It was a great card/GPU. It had 4 MB of video RAM--a lot for those days.

Spectrum! lol I never actually played with those but I do have a fair amount of experience with its bitter rival, the Commodore 64--later I picked up a C128.

Here's my BBC Micro, (one of three) circa 1981 ... configured with twin 40/80 switchable 5.25" drives, a 6502 co-processor and a datacentre fitted. That gives it the ability to have a "winchester" hard drive inside which is mimicked on a CF card and it can read Fat 32 USB sticks.

 
The "joyboard" project is a system whereby I traced all the tracks on the keyboard and wired them out to a system of jacks which I cabled to mirror the keyboard traces. The net result is I can hook up home made "joysticks" and buttons so I can play all those games with awkward keys. When I was a teen, I worked to assemble "brand new" 8086 PC's with a "turbo boost" of 8Mhz with 640K of ram fitted with a 5Meg Winchester hard drive. Man... this thread makes me feel old ?
 

 

I can understand skepticism with the sequel but the optimist in me hopes that this will be a good progression of the game. Rewriting it from the ground up may fix major issues but can also introduce new ones. I also forgot to mention that Private Division (Take Two) is the other big name behind this and that may or may not be a good thing.

I will wait to see what happens with this new release as well. I love the original and I can hope for a worthy successor. If they botch it I know the fans will let their displeasure be known.

Announced at Gamescom yesterday morning:

Kerbal Space Program 2 is coming in 2020 for the PC, XBox One and PS4. According to information from the Official Page, the program is being rewritten from the ground up by star.theory--it seems that Squad is somewhat out of the picture but the original dev team for the original KSP is no longer at Squad.

Promised features include more parts, interstellar travel and multiplayer. Support of modding is supposed to be expanded as well since the developers plan to open up more things that can be modded in the game. Fans are a bit nervous, of course, but from the developers video, it seems to be going into good hands. I hope that this will be a worthy sequel to a great game.

Cinematic Trailer:
 
Developer's Story:
Scott Manley's first impression:
 

This is good news--KSP2 won't have microtransactions, loot boxes and won't be an Epic Store exclusive.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/kerbal-space-program-2/epic-exclusive

What SCSI device you use ?
 
Before, I used four 36GB Hitachi Ultrastar 15,000 RPM SCSI SCA-80 hard disk drive in RAID-0, connected on Adaptec SCSI Card 29320A-R PCI-X 133 MHz, in my old rig dual Xeon Prestonia LV 1.6 @ 2.61 GHz (+63,1%). It was a beast (+160 MB/s seq) ? It was 13 years ago.
 
 

What do you mean "remember"? I still use SCSI! ?

Announced at Gamescom yesterday morning:

Kerbal Space Program 2 is coming in 2020 for the PC, XBox One and PS4. According to information from the Official Page, the program is being rewritten from the ground up by star.theory--it seems that Squad is somewhat out of the picture but the original dev team for the original KSP is no longer at Squad.

Promised features include more parts, interstellar travel and multiplayer. Support of modding is supposed to be expanded as well since the developers plan to open up more things that can be modded in the game. Fans are a bit nervous, of course, but from the developers video, it seems to be going into good hands. I hope that this will be a worthy sequel to a great game.

Cinematic Trailer:
 
Developer's Story:
Scott Manley's first impression:
 

I don't think that my anemic hardware can help in this project but thank you for helping with Parkinson's research. I have Parkinson's and I hope your efforts will help me and others with the disease in the future. I live in terror of Lewy Body Dementia after seeing my mother go through dementia after she went into remission the second time from lung cancer.

I have a Dell N5110 with 8GB of RAM and Win 10. So yeah...

But I do appreciate the efforts to help those of us with these conditions you are helping to fight.

I don't think that my anemic hardware can help in this project but thank you for helping with Parkinson's research. I have Parkinson's and I hope your efforts will help me and others with the disease in the future. I live in terror of Lewy Body Dementia after seeing my mother go through dementia after she went into remission the second time from lung cancer.

I have a Dell N5110 with 8GB of RAM and Win 10. So yeah...

But I do appreciate the efforts to help those of us with these conditions you are helping to fight.