woah I missed this thread when it first started. I'm a perpetual upgrader haha. Currently my build is...
i5-4690k
ASRock Z97 Xtreme3
16GB Kingston Fury HyperX Red
Zotac GTX 970
all of this is in a Rosewill Blackhawk case which I added a Cooler Master EVO Hyper 212 cooler to, along w/ a Pioneer bluray drive. I've got this dual-outputting to the Acer 23" LED monitor at my desk via DVI and mirrored to my Toshiba TV at my couch via HDMI. This way I can easily switch between keyboard/mouse (WASD mechanical, Logitech G502) at my desk, or Xbox 360/Xbox One controllers on my couch.
Anyway, I love building PC's and I've actually assembled 5 or 6 in the last 2 years for myself and others. I just find the process really rewarding, and will def be glad to help out in any way I can in this thread.
Nice, noise. Next year I'll have to upgrade my GPU. Seeing both you and Mumbo's rig makes me a bit itchy for a new card. Granted, I don't own any games that tax my 750ti, but I do love me some new hardware. Luckily I won't have to upgrade my CPU for a couple of years (at least).
Eventually, I'll be running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on this PC, so it's not that big of a deal... Would be nice to have it working in Ubuntu though. I'm not that keen on attempting recovery if a problem occurs.
I might try a different Ubuntu install on another drive to test it on later (later being when I feel like it).
Before I installed the card, I ran a Video Stress Test in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast on near full settings and was getting decent framerates (AVG. ~50FPS).
With the card installed, I try the same and get ~2FPS on the menu. Not worth running the test when it's doing that.
I hear you. My main gaming rig is W7 x64. I used Manjaro XFCE in the beginning, but I got sick of the workarounds to play my Windows Steam games, so I turned it into a Windows rig. I still use my Manjaro laptop to play games, though (I can't quit Linux), and once I redesign my network I'll be Steam streaming to that laptop (unless I want to make use of the surround speakers).