As mentioned in a previous article, my current system was struggling to play even a demo of the new Risen RPG game on what I would call “acceptable” quality settings.  To most, that would simply be medium texture quality, zero antialiasing and maybe 1680 x 1050 screen resolution but, to me, that means 1920 x 1080 with everything up as high as it’ll go whilst still maintaining a playable frame rate.  Sadly, my current system wasn’t even capable of the medium settings with Risen even though it was sporting 2 x GTS 8800 GPUs, 2Gb of RAM and a pretty meaty AMD processor which escapes my memory at the moment.

I called on my trusty friends at Premier Computing and asked them to see what they could build me for £600, and explained that this was going to be a dedicated gaming system.  I immediately got an email back asking “Is that including or excluding VAT?”… and at that point, the small snowball was gently nudged over the edge of the mountain.

My response, after fiddling around with my calculator, was that the £600 would be excluding VAT as I’d rather not compromise on quality and performance for the sake of £90 and so they came back to me with a spec for a system which would undoubtedly do the job without breaking the bank any more than it was already.  Their proposed spec was as follows…

• ASUS P7 P55D EVO Motherboard
• Intel Core i5 750 Processor (4 x 2.66Ghz)
• 2 x 2Gb Ballistix DDR3 PC3-10600 RAM
• 1Tb SATA hard drive
• ASUS GTX-275 896mb GPU
• 600w OCZ PSU
• Standard ATX chassis
• Windows XP Pro (because I’m scared to upgrade!)

It wasn’t, if I’m honest, the kind of spec that would have you trembling at the knees wishing it was already out for delivery… but it was affordable, especially considering I was being given the opportunity to pay for the system of a three month period, which is one of the benefits of using the same people to build all your systems for the last twelve years or more.  I’d look at the spec and wonder whether I should go ahead or not, whether I should take that reckless leap and suffer the financial consequences and yet I would still end up closing the email and trying to forget about it.

A week or so later, after very much careful consideration, I decided to go ahead with it.  After reading Ben’s gaming benchmark charts several times over, I spent some time researching between the higher end ATI and Nvidia cards and eventually decided on the GTX 295 rather than the GTX 275.  It was less than twice the cost but with a huge difference in performance and it was powerful enough that it didn’t require two cards.

I also had to consider which operating system to use because, quite frankly, I couldn’t hang on to XP Pro for the rest of my life… it just wasn’t possible.  It was stable, effective and did everything that I wanted it to do and wasn’t, most importantly, VISTA!  That still left Windows 7 though, and the option of 32bit or 64bit… would I want to risk a 64bit operating system to have more RAM at the expense of compatibility?  After asking Dan and Ben what they thought, the decision was made to go with Windows 7 64bit and see what happens.  My system was now ready to be ordered.

Only an hour or so after giving the go-ahead, I received an email explaining that the GTX 295 cards were out of stock everywhere and that the expected delivery would be either the end of January or mid February.  This, as I’m sure you can imagine, took the wind out of my sails quicker than you can say ZX80.  It was at that point that I started the quest to find a GTX 295 on my own.  I had compromised with my last system, opting for 2 x GTS 8800 cards in SLI mode rather than the 2 x GTX 8800 cards that I had originally wanted, because they were also out of stock at the time, and I wasn’t going to compromise again.  It had taken days of research to decide on the GTX 295 and that’s what I wanted.

Enter eBay.  Several people were selling the cards, many of whom had as many as ten units each.  To err on the side of caution, I sent messages to all of the sellers to ask if they actually had the cards in hand and all but two of them admitted that they were awaiting stock and that it could be as much as ten weeks before they would be able to send out the card. To me, this was unacceptable because there was nothing on their listing explaining about any sort of delay… but that’s for another blog entirely.  Ultimately, I went with someone called Andy_Lakes31 who had assumed I was close to Colchester as he asked me to drop by and see the card working.  When I explained that this wouldn’t be possible, he said that he’d be happy for me to send him half of the payment just now and half when I received the card and could confirm that it was working perfectly and so I agreed.

The following morning, I had a message from eBay saying that they had been monitoring the activity on Andy_Lakes31′s account for sometime and had decided just after midnight to cancel the account, and that I shouldn’t send any money to him.  Too late.  I had sent him half by bank transfer the previous evening, and now his auction had disappeared from eBay along with his account.  I contacted them and they confirmed that they had indeed cancelled his account due to shill bidding and when asked whether he had read my final message to him, which contained my address details, they confirmed that it was still unread.  Andy Lakes had my money, but no address to send the card to, and eBay weren’t prepared to help me out because they had warned me not to send him any money… the day after the auction closed, and 12 hours after I had paid the money.

Long story short, I have no way of ever clawing back my money and my bank has said that the only way would be if Andy took it upon himself to ask his bank to reverse the payment.  I can’t see that happening, and so I had to buy the card from another buyer who, even with only seven feedback, has been absolutely fantastic and very friendly.

Between placing my order for the system, and waiting for the graphic card to arrive, I receive another call letting me know that the Ballistix memory wasn’t available and so I’d have to decide on another set of RAM instead.  That RAM ended up being the sexy as hell “OCZ Reaper” 12800 7-7-7-24… and at a price I couldn’t ignore, I ended up with 8Gb instead of the 4Gb that I was originally getting with the Ballistix RAM.  I also discovered that the 650w PSU wouldn’t be enough to power the system now that the GTX 295 GPU was on the way, as it required around 430w of dedicated power when running at maximum output.  This had me looking around for an alternative power supply, and opted for the Coolermaster Silent Pro 1000w and, along with that, the standard ATX chassis was replaced with the Coolermaster Dominator 690 chassis complete with three built in fans, and room for four more.

The GTX 295 card arrived today and, within 30 minutes, I was on my way to Glasgow to pick up the brand new gaming system.

It’s sexy.  It’s beyond sexy in fact, it’s incredible.  The silent PSU really IS silent, even during the extensive 3D benchmark tests that we ran the system through.  The case is functional, yet stunning, and is HUGE but has plenty of space inside for air circulation and more gizmos.  The RAM… wow, the RAM… I couldn’t stop looking at it.  In fact, I couldn’t really stop looking at ANY of it… from the cobalt blue heatsinks to the GTX 295 (which is as big as a baby’s arm holding an apple), and even the processor iteself.  This is no longer a gaming system.  It is a work of art.  Considerably more expensive than the original spec but, in all honesty, more value for money and more worthy of the term “gaming system”.  The finished spec reads as…

• ASUS P7 P55D EVO Motherboard
• Intel Core i5 750 Processor (4 x 2.66Ghz)
• 4 x 2Gb OCZ Reaper DDR3 PC3-12800 7-7-7-24 RAM
• 1Tb SATA hard drive
• 18x SATA DVDR/W
• Zotac GTX 295 1.792Gb GPU
• 1000w Coolermaster Silent Pro PSU
• Coolermaster Dominator 690 chassis
• Windows 7 Premium 64bit (because I need to move on!)

Yet again, Paul and Jim at Premier (0141 221 8716 for anyone who wants a serious PC) come through with a fantastic piece of kit.  It’s testimony to their systems when you consider that my mum still uses a system that they built for me back in 2002 and it still runs like a dream.  I hope this system will still run like a dream in seven years time, although I seriously doubt it’ll even be able to cope with some of the newer games in three years time, let alone seven.

Until then, I can enjoy every 16 x antialiased pixel.

Last five articles by Mark R

• From Acorns to Fish
• Alone In The Dark
• Why Borderlands is Better Than Borderlands 2
• Falling Short
• The Division: A Guide to Surviving the Dark Zone Solo