[Music Alchemist]

Your fan sounds pretty jacked up. You should have contacted Alienware, but the warranty is long gone by now. Hopefully that doesn't happen to me, but if so I will disavow Alienware on the spot (unless I still have warranty). XD
My dads gaming computer must be coming up on 6-7 years old. It actually still runs on ddr2 ram (something that wasn't that old at the time. May have even been kind of new.) I don't really know all of the tech specs, but it still runs great. It gets 130fps on battlefield 2 at all settings maxed and with a resolution just slightly lower than 1080p. It also still runs perfectly after all these years, despite not being connected to Internet in some 3 or 4 odd years.

 
I never did any physical maintenance, so it's only natural for that to happen.

 

[Rhamnetin]

Sounds like a pretty solid setup. What GPU are you using?
When I was looking into building a PC long ago (before I got my Alienware) I considered the 4790k. Despite being a few generations old they are still more than capable as processors. Most games aren't really all that processor heavy, which is why ram, GPU, and storage are always more important. But I like to make all things overkill.

 
i7's are becoming more important as time goes on.  More games are benefiting from them.  Of course the 4790k is outdated now, replaced by the i7 6700k which will soon be replaced by the i7 7700k.  Until Vulkan and/or DX12 fully take over, CPU bottlenecks will remain a real problem (IPC performance is what's really needed, not more cores and threads).

 

[NamelessPFG]

Sounds like a pretty solid setup. What GPU are you using?
When I was looking into building a PC long ago (before I got my Alienware) I considered the 4790k. Despite being a few generations old they are still more than capable as processors. Most games aren't really all that processor heavy, which is why ram, GPU, and storage are always more important. But I like to make all things overkill.

 
GTX 980, reference model. Got it for $315 shipped late last year and wanted to be prepared for my Rift CV1 the moment it arrived on my doorstep, which it did back in mid-May. The GTX 1070/1080 weren't out yet and were out of my budget anyway.
 
It's proving to be adequate enough at 1600x1200@95Hz (still missing my FW900 that could do 1920x1200@95Hz just as easily) that it should tide me over until Volta. Hopefully, by then, we'll either have DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters that don't suck compared to the built-in 400 MHz RAMDACs that were standard up through Maxwell, or I might end up with a G-SYNC display whose image quality I can live with.
 
But as far as games not being CPU-heavy go, DCS World and PlanetSide 2 are just two examples of games that are more than happy to turn your gaming experience into a slideshow even on a 4.6 GHz i7-4770K, and the former's already confirmed not to benefit much from NVIDIA's new Pascal cards framerate-wise because it's just that CPU-limited. It'd be a vomit fest if not for the wonders of Oculus asynchronous timewarp, that's for sure.
 
There's also other games like BeamNG.drive and Warframe that also quite visibly struggled on my old Q6600 box, even pushed to 3.6 GHz, but which hum along smoothly on the 4770K setup even before I factor in overclocking. CPU advancements had come farther along in six years (2007-2013) than I'd thought, that's for sure, but they've really slowed down after Sandy Bridge.
 
I've gone almost three years on the 4770K now; let's see if I can get at least six out of it like I did with the Q6600 setup before I finally decided I needed an upgrade. I'm thinking it'll still be good when Volta rolls out in about two years.
 

hehe. I'd imagine a computer that advanced wouldn't benefit from RAM drives nearly as much as mine.
 
The thing with my laptop's cooling system is that the fan eventually started going crazy at the slightest provocation and would make scary noises. This went on, on and off, for a few years. This year it finally stopped making noise altogether. Usually, when it's pushed too hard, it will overheat and shut off before the fan even makes any noise. On rare occasions, the fan will go crazy, trying to cool everything down. Most of the time, thankfully, it stays silent without going haywire in the first place.

 
Sounds like the fan itself is starting to crap out, except you've stated that it's clearly still running. Could be overheating, could be a sensor issue, could be something else entirely.
 
All I know is that laptops have a bad habit of having baffling, hard-to-diagnose issues that don't happen on any other system, especially not my custom desktops.
 
For instance, one of my laptops would not work with Windows 10 version 1511. Updates from RTM build 10240 would break the OS, clean installs would fail, and only when they finally brought out Anniversary Update version 1607 earlier this month did it actually work again! Every other system I had just worked in the meantime.
 

i7's are becoming more important as time goes on.  More games are benefiting from them.  Of course the 4790k is outdated now, replaced by the i7 6700k which will soon be replaced by the i7 7700k.  Until Vulkan and/or DX12 fully take over, CPU bottlenecks will remain a real problem (IPC performance is what's really needed, not more cores and threads).

 
Sadly, Skylake isn't that huge leap from Haswell that I'm looking for, and it doesn't look like it'll be easy to increase IPC from here on out.
 
Then again, I don't think we're going to get the kind of hardware needed to brute-force its way through DCS at a constant 90 FPS any time soon, and that's factoring in that DCS had its EDGE update finally brought out so it's running on DX11 instead of DX9. Even so, framerates plummet once you start doing gun runs on ground targets with all the dust plumes being kicked up or start flying toward an area with a lot of AI units shooting it out. There's only so much you can do about inefficient code when the days of doubled CPU performance year after year are long gone.

It's crying out for DX12 or Vulkan when the action really gets going, but that's only going to benefit particularly skilled graphics programmers who know what they're doing. Most of those sorts are going to be working on mainstream, general-purpose engines like Unity or Unreal that will benefit a wider array of game developers just from their being licensed out to people who can't be arsed to reinvent the wheel for basic game functionality, not some in-house flight sim engine.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Just saw the new Final Fantasy movie based on the upcoming game Final Fantasy XV, which will be released on PS4 and Xbox One on November 29th. It may or may not be released on PC in the future as well. Anyway, the movie has ridiculously good graphics. Makes it seem like they spent a gajillion dollars making it.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsglaive:_Final_Fantasy_XV

 

[Music Alchemist]

Steam's remastered version of the PS1 game Final Fantasy IX (released this year) is at the top of my PC game wish list.
 
As mentioned before, I already have the remastered PC version of Final Fantasy VII. But it feels way too weird playing it with just a keyboard. I mean, the original game designer, for whatever unimaginable reason, made it so that extremely slow walking (which you never want to do in the first place) is default. You have to hold an extra button down whenever you want to run, which is always. It's annoying enough with a controller. I read on a forum that "if you assign the Caps Lock key to the [CANCEL] command then it acts as a walk/run toggle when pressed." Guess I could try that and see if it works. But I'd still rather have a controller.

 

[Rhamnetin]

  Steam's remastered version of the PS1 game Final Fantasy IX (released this year) is at the top of my PC game wish list.
 
As mentioned before, I already have the remastered PC version of Final Fantasy VII. But it feels way too weird playing it with just a keyboard. I mean, the original game designer, for whatever unimaginable reason, made it so that extremely slow walking (which you never want to do in the first place) is default. You have to hold an extra button down whenever you want to run, which is always. It's annoying enough with a controller. I read on a forum that "if you assign the Caps Lock key to the [CANCEL] command then it acts as a walk/run toggle when pressed." Guess I could try that and see if it works. But I'd still rather have a controller.

 
Even for games that don't work with controller (although I would assume that game does), there are emulators and programs like this.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Even for games that don't work with controller (although I would assume that game does), there are emulators and programs like this.

 
I'd assume that, with the right configuration, I could connect a PS4/PS3 controller to a PC and assign keys to buttons.

 

[pureangus62]

   
I'd assume that, with the right configuration, I could connect a PS4/PS3 controller to a PC and assign keys to buttons.

Xbox 360/One controllers can plug right into windows and go. I think for PS3/4 controllers it isnt difficult to get them running on a PC it just requires a simple piece of software or something. Im not a playstation guy so Im not sure exactly. Logitech has some controllers that are essentially a USB plug and play version of a PS one

 

[Rhamnetin]

 
Xbox 360/One controllers can plug right into windows and go. I think for PS3/4 controllers it isnt difficult to get them running on a PC it just requires a simple piece of software or something. Im not a playstation guy so Im not sure exactly. Logitech has some controllers that are essentially a USB plug and play version of a PS one

 
Valve has an... awkward controller too.
 
http://store.steampowered.com/app/353370/

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Inputmapper and DS4Windows are two programs that make it easy to use the PS4 controller, and make it appear as a 360 controller.

https://inputmapper.com/downloads/inputmapper-1-5


Can even reassign, and use the touchpad on the controller as a faux-mouse. It's having an issue on my PC (and others) where Exclusive mode isn't kicking in (it needs to, for it to work properly), but they made a program to turn on BEFORE using these two programs. It's a minor hassle, but you only need to turn it on once a day if you plan on using the controller.

https://inputmapper.com/downloads/download/5-tools/63-duleshock-4-exclusive-mode-tool

You just open the program, press any key, and in like 5 seconds it works. Then you open Inputmapper and everything will work fine. A reminder that if you unplug the PS4 controller, you'll have to close Inputmapper and turn on the exclusive mode tool again.

Some people don't even need to do this stuff, but I sure do.

I used to have wired 360 controllers, but the cable always, always splits where it meets the controller, so I stopped buying them. Since I already own a PS4, it just made sense to use it for all my needs. The minor hassle of using two programs isn't a big deal. Turn on the tool, then open input mapper, you're done.

My PS4 controller is on its last leg, however. Light bar stopped working ages ago, the heat off the controller is enough to make your hands uncomfortable, and the dual shock vibration has stopped working almost entirely. Oh, and the grips rubber has all but rubbed off entirely. It's taken some abuse.

 

[Music Alchemist]

My PS4 controller is on its last leg, however. Light bar stopped working ages ago, the heat off the controller is enough to make your hands uncomfortable, and the dual shock vibration has stopped working almost entirely. Oh, and the grips rubber has all but rubbed off entirely. It's taken some abuse.

 
Hmm. My PS3 controller looked almost like new after years of use.
 
Is the PS4 controller always hot like that?

 

[VRacer-111]

Used to be mainly a PC only gamer...now it's pretty much only console. Mainly for PC it was racing sims, flight sims, and Mechwarrior series. Pretty much now, all I care about is Destiny and with Assetto Corsa just released for console there is finally a sportscar driving sim on console. Hawken is on console too, so kind of have Mechwarrior covered there. HALO is what really got me started on condole and Hydro Thunder Hurricane has kept me thrre, along with Destiny.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Used to be mainly a PC only gamer...now it's pretty much only console. Mainly for PC it was racing sims, flight sims, and Mechwarrior series. Pretty much now, all I care about is Destiny and with Assetto Corsa just released for console there is finally a sportscar driving sim on console. Hawken is on console too, so kind of have Mechwarrior covered there. HALO is what really got me started on condole and Hydro Thunder Hurricane has kept me thrre, along with Destiny.

 
DRIVECLUB is one of the reasons I'd want a PS4. This other racing game you mentioned makes it even more appealing for me...but I may still end up waiting until they have the reverse compatibility thing figured out.

 

[Deftone]

im looking forward to gears 4 on pc 

 

[Typo]

  im looking forward to gears 4 on pc 

I hope they fix the windows store by the time they release it.

I bought quantum break on the winstore and it was forcibly locked to 60 fps, even though I have a 144hz monitor. And you were unable to use steam overlay. I read somewhere they were going to fix both of those things, hopefully Gears will be the game they fix it with. There's no way I'm playing a shooter with locked frames.