I think 1080p with a good refresh rate, 144hz and up, is the sweet spot for now.

Use that saved money to get a gtx 980 or greater and DSR/downsample everything and it might not seems so "pokey". 

Yup, I figured out that anything above 24" won't look good enough on 1080p. Besides AA, there's also DSR that KillPixel mentioned - using those methods I think I'll be pretty happy with what I get. Crispness of the image wins over bigger screen size for me. I have been using 17"/19" CRTs for over 15 years now - never had the urge to go bigger. 

You run the 30" at 2560x1600 ... am I taking crazy pills here? 1080? The hell? :) 

I wonder what they'll try to sell us after 4K. Isn't that close to the resolution limit of the human eye?

I don't understand the infatuation with liquid cooling. I see little need to overclock these days and the stock Intel fans are all but silent except under heavy loads. It's not that liquid cooling isn't a little better or less noise, but the improvement doesn't seem anywhere near worth the added complexity and cost. 

Tubes filled with water inside your computer ... what could go wrong? 

is where the next 10 years are... and augmented reality after that. 

VR won't be a real, useful thing for at least another 2 years ... IMO. It'll be a toy for rich kids until then. 

And in terms of doing WORK inside of VR ... that's a ways out yet. I'm just talking about games that really leverage the platform properly. 

is probably only going to be a thing for pc gamers. The current gen of consoles will only be able to do 4K if the game is very simplistic looking due to the extra horse power needed.

If I was optimistic I'd say consoles need about 5 years. But I'm a pessimist so I'd say consoles need 10 years. 

Liquid cooling is what happens when the kind of young man who puts a spoiler and blue underlights on a Toyota sedan is more into games than he is into cars. 

I had kind of forgotten about VR, but I agree it's probably the coming thing for a lot of video games. I don't see watching movies or TV with it though.

Maybe a real video wall will become practical. I can certainly see the value of 4K monitors if they're 80" or larger and hang on the living room wall.

I think I may have to upgrade my video card this year. If I do, I can probably squeeze another year or two out of that computer. 

I could definitely see VR head gear taking the place of current iMax/3D movie theatres. 

I wonder what they'll try to sell us after 4K. Isn't that close to the resolution limit of the human eye?

It just depends on the monitor size. 4k @ 40" might be a stretch. 

Oh you guys don't think liquid cooling is necessary? Perhaps I'll downgrade it to the H80 instead, save $70. The CPU cooling is like the 4th most expensive thing I think!

Looked into pricing on monitors that go above 60hz and they're double the price. Yep think i'll just stick with my 60hz. or I could get a 60hz 4k 28" monitor: http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=MONSAM9282&name=Samsung-LU28E590DSXY-28-UHD-3840x2160-1MS-Response

But I don't think the image quality is worth the price. 

I used to be an AMD person and aftermarket coolers were pretty much a necessity. In 2007, starting with the Core2Duo, I switched to Intel. I've always just bought their boxed processors. They come with a heatsink and fan and a 5 year warranty. I've not had any problems at all. 

Strictly for overclockers IMO. A good quality aftermarket fan cooler is all you need! Don't use the stock cooler that comes with Intel CPUs they are shit 

The stock Intel coolers are fine. I've used them on every computer I've built since 2007 and there have been zero processor or fan problems. 

I pretty much overclock everything but never watercool. Too much money, time and maintenance.

Configure your case correctly, use quality fans, sinks, etc. and you'll be just fine.

The first thing I did when I got my 4790k was delid it, level it via sanding and applied liquid ultra and OC'd it to 5ghz with great temps. That's probably a little excessive and not for everyone.

I just recently got my gtx980 to 1.5ghz core / 8ghz mem!!! the thing is a beast!!

@ Rick - In my experience, intel coolers are fine for typical consumer use in a well configured case. They tend to last quite a while. However, for anything beyond that, the performance simply isn't there. 

i still have one of these: http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001476

been with me for 5 years (or more? it's been so long I can't remember). excellent cooler, super quiet, used on 3 CPUs so far. i'll be sad when the lga1150 socket goes away. 

"typical consumer" Lol, well that pretty much describes me and everyone I've built a computer for in the last 20 years.

Games, movies, music, YouTube and random web browsing... yep, that just about covers it. 

Maybe this is a software question rather than a hardware question, but here goes:

So I've been playing a few Quake 3 Arena maps for inspiration (and curiosity to see what some people whose Q1 maps I know have done for Q3) and then suddenly two of the maps I had in my baseq directory stopped working, as in, the little preview screen that you normally see just showed a Q3A logo and the map name was scrambled and the game wouldn't load the map. I tried deleting the maps and replacing them with fresh downloads but no dice.

Then I read on the internet that if files randomly become corrupt, that can be a sign of the start of HDD failure. Might this be the case? Or is Q3A (I run it via ioquake on Linux) known to be quirky?

I also heard some disturbing noises at one stage, but this was months ago and went away: a sort of a krrr-click, krrr-click. I thought back then my HDD was about to die, but as I said, the noises went away and never came back. 

Also: if I do need to replace the HDD, is it worth going for an SSD when the laptop isn't that great to begin with? Will it help at all (in terms of speed) with mapping, or is mapping more reliant on memory + CPU? 

If you don't have a good back up, make one now.

There are utilities to scan and check hard drives.

If it turns out that it needs replacing, go for an SSD unless you need a really large capacity (over 500 GB). 

I tried deleting the maps and replacing them with fresh downloads but no dice.

can you also try this:

rename the broken map to something else
unzip a fresh copy
try to run the fresh copy

i think if you overwrite a file and the size is the same, the hdd will just reuse the same sectors instead of writing to a new place on the disk. if you rename, the original will keep the sectors it is using and the hdd will need to allocate a different part of the disk to the fresh copy of the map.

if this makes the map work, then that definitely indicates that the original copy became corrupted on the desk.

have you tried running a disk scan? also, try getting speedfan and then checking the SMART info on your hdd to see if it is reporting errors of failing health checks.

regarding ssd in any computer: in all but the first piece of shit computer, and ssd is going to be a huge performance boost. it is the single best upgrade you can do to your computer; plus, ssds are quite cheap now. 

first = worst

why are words failing me. :S