new member - greetings

[tfb]

Greetings folks,

 

   An avid gamer, I found my way to these forums and both LinusTech and NCIX reviews via Star Citizen; which will likely dictate my next major system build.  The name is Ian; a Canadian living in the US working information security for a major US financial institution, I am borderline casual/dedicated gamer depending on the week; and live in a truly 50/50 technology house – half-MacOS/half-Win7, half-IOS/half-Android; so any flames/hate I will gladly accept from anyone.

 

   I am fascinated by the potential of mITX/compact-efficient systems (call it the Apple fanboy in me;) such as the Silverstone FT03-mini, especially with motherboards carrying more and more functionality at that level; such as the ASUS ROG board with the sound card and NGFF port (once components are released/benchmarked to see if it’s any good) providing potential for a fairly complete system in the small-yet-quiet form factor. 

 

A brief review of my systems/memorable games showing just how old I really am:

 

o  TRS-80 Model 3 – Taipan, Rakka-Tu, Galactic Empire (all tape player based games)

o  Apple ][e – Ultima 2, any/all of the Scott Adams adventures

o  80386 home built and soldered (this one was a watershed and I still have the MB somewhere;  guides existed on CompuServe towards how to achieve efficiencies on these boards for someone proficient with a soldering iron and spare wiring.) – the Ultima IV, V and VI series (still to date, the BEST hands-down enjoyable series of games in my life.)

o  Between these, tons of early online gaming – LP-MUDs mostly (Krynn @arizona, overdrive (@quartz.Rutgers?) and the great Avalon (if any of these are recognizable to anyone, reach out to me!))

o  A socket 478 ShuttlePC system – more so a hand assemble, as it only accepted Shuttle MBs, their "ice" cooler, etc.) – I built this to play WoW and UO and any Sid Meier game I could find.

o  My 2008 Mac Pro essentially has played me through my current gaming ensemble – Civ V, Secret World, LOTRO and a bit of EvE.  This box will essentially run my home media streamer once I stop using it; given it’s carrying about 12TB of external eSATA and handling that task today.

o  The Next build – TBD – for WildStar and Star Citizen. 

 

My current geek-outs include building Vacuum-tube system components, transmission-holography and dumping money into an Airstream.

 

I look forward to noobing out in the community.  My immediate questions are going to be around understanding the release schedules for different component companies – does ASUS/NVIDIA/etc. tend to stick to a given release cycle (ala Apple) or can we suddenly see a new component on the market on a random Tuesday; only because the R&D process ended that particular day?  This will impact how/when I decide to pull the trigger on a new system (or likely systems (one mega/one mitx) build in anticipation of StarCitizen release or current games I am involved with…

 

Cheers,

 

Ian

[Faroeseviking]

Welcome!

[Jozi]

Welcome to the forum

[boggle4321]

welcome

[mgsstar]

Welcome! If you want advice with your new build, go to New Builds and Planning a create a thread.