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[Snall]

To be fair thief, most places have electricity and it's still way easier then moving a 50 pound (Mine's like 70) full tower around with all the peripherals. 

Still I dont like gaming laptops because they get WAY too hot, which DOES make them more prone to death, though I dont know if a really good cooling pad would help or just make liquid..which is bad (lol).  Plus I've never built a laptop.  Next desktop I build in 2-3 years will def be liquid though, although air works fine if your box is mostly soundproof. 

[Thief^]

If you're buying a gaming laptop as a "portable desktop" (i.e. always plugged in) you might as well buy or build a small-form-factor gaming pc like a shuttle. I have built one before, for someone who went to lan parties a lot. Much lighter than a tower pc, just as powerful, much cheaper than a gaming "laptop".

[Umi]

http://www.xoticpc.com/what-thermal-compound-what-purpose-a-3.html

I guess I misread it.  It is the IC diamond thermal compound.  Not liquid cooling.  My bad.

[Jay]

Manual overclocking of the new Intel chips is essentially pointless

Just going to take this opportunity to call BS on this.
My i7-860 will turboboost ONE core to 3.6 GHz.

I disabled it and am running at 4.0 GHz for FOUR cores with no heat issues whatsoever.

[Thief^]

Just because you have no heat issues doesn't mean it's stable. Common misconception.

I'm assuming you know what you're doing, just in case anyone reading this gets any funny ideas.

[Jay]

Just because you have no heat issues doesn't mean it's stable. Common misconception.

I'm assuming you know what you're doing, just in case anyone reading this gets any funny ideas.

I'm aware.  I was using that as a general "it's working fine" thing because I didn't want to go into all the various stress tests I've put it under.
It's more stable than most retail computers (at stock clocks, no less) I've worked with, actually.

That assumption would be correct.  2.8GHz -> 4.0GHz is a dangerous overclock, not to be attempted unless you are confident in your ability/your rig.
I've been running it like this for approximately four months.  Amazing DF performance.

[sizeak]

I've been running a E6300 dual core 1.8GHz stock at 3.0GHz for 2+ years and it's still perfectly stable. Overclocking is fine as long as you stay withing recomended heat and voltage envolopes and stress test correctly.

[Thief^]

It's probably one of the rebins I mentioned. 3GHz the speed of the top core 2 duo E6___ chip, so you possibly got lucky and your E6300 was originally a E6850 (depending on how much you've pumped up the voltage to make it stable). You may not even technically be overclocking it...

EDIT: At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've seen a chip which wasn't even stable at its stock speed...

[buman]

I've been running a E6300 dual core 1.8GHz stock at 3.0GHz for 2+ years and it's still perfectly stable. Overclocking is fine as long as you stay withing recomended heat and voltage envolopes and stress test correctly.

Exactly, over clocking is a natural progression in getting better value for your money. Anyone in this thread warning to stay away from over clocking doesn't know what they are talking about.

A great resource is tom's hardware http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/

they have benchmarks of various hardware and if you are not too sure about general system set-ups they have articles on low price/mid range and high end rig comparisons.

I guess it really depends on your level of interest:
1) don't know much about computers? buy from newegg or the other non rape retails listed in earlier posts.
2) Know about computers/ can build them? You can learn quickly how to put one together based on any number of guides on the internet.
3) Want to learn more? over-clocking and optimization is no harder then building the computer and the same websites will have guides for both.

[Thief^]

Exactly, over clocking is a natural progression in getting better value for your money. Anyone in this thread warning to stay away from over clocking doesn't know what they are talking about.

Well that's rude. I have been building PCs for years, as have most people I know, and all but the most recent have been overclocked. However, I would warn people away from it because it does carry heavy risks, ranging in likelyhood from:

• Warranty is invalid on any overclocked parts, or in some cases on any part in the same system as an overclocked part
• Bluescreen crashes, system freezes or spontaneous restarts
• Reduced lifespan of overclocked parts (mostly only as the result of overvolting in an attempt to get a stable overclock)
• PCI errors (I don't think this is an issue any more, but altering the FSB used to also change the PCI clock, often causing errors in every add-in and onboard device in the PC)
• Heat damage (though you're doing it wrong^tm if you get this)
  
• Part death (mostly only as the result of overvolting in an attempt to get a stable overclock)
• Power supply death (if this happens to you, your PSU sucked, and therefore you're doing it wrong^tm)
  
• Data corruption (if memtest86 runs through fine, you're probably safe. If memtest fails, even if your PC seems stable, back off the overclock. If you can't get memest to pass, you've killed a ram chip)
• Motherboard power converters exploding (this was expensive, it took out nearly everything in the PC. There was even fire)

Note 1: It is impossible to verify an overclock is actually stable, without he tests Intel/AMD use for binning cpus in the first place, which aren't public. No stresstesting application that I know of actually tests every instruction and function unit in a cpu. The best you can do is run as many different high-load applications as you know of (stress tests, benchmarks, games...) making sure you actually load all the cores to 100%. Even if it passes everything, think twice about any bluescreen crashes, system freezes or spontaneous restarts you get, they could still be caused by overclocking.

Note 2: Shop overclocking services are worth crap all. I haven't yet seen a pre-built pre-overclocked PC that was stable.

[Shades]

Feel free to compare 3dmark like results of your clocked 4.0ghz chip against the factory settings. I don't know of any main board that can be used to clock the chipset without disabling the internal scaling options so your loosing out on a lot of optimisation.

I'm happy to be proved wrong but just stating clockspeed shows a lack of understanding on performance. I'm not saying you can't get faster by manually changing things but it's been a long time since the amount of increase from what you can do easily has been worth it from my point of view.

[DDR]

I'd offer advice, but, as I pulled my gaming PC out of a dumpster two years ago, I don't think I'm qualified.

Thing works nicely, though. Best advice I can offer is to not be afraid to mess around with the insides of a computer. If it looks like it fits, and it feels like it fits, then you pretty much can't go wrong. It's much easier, imo, than actually using one. Pro tip: Don't saw stuff. It's machine's way of saying 'it doesn't fit'. Similarly, don't hit stuff with a hammer, and make sure it actually snaps in right. I got hurt both times, though nothing to leave a scar.

[Thief^]

If you want the opposite end of the performance scale, my brother recently acquired a 486 laptop.

[Shades]

If you want the opposite end of the performance scale, my brother recently acquired a 486 laptop.

Can you get him to install DF on it and see how it runs

[Thief^]

Unfortunately, I believe DF won't run on Windows 3.11.

Also, not only is DF's executable is bigger than the amount of ram it has, but all of DF is bigger than its hard-disk.