Outer Colony Forums

I was private messaging with Mazarus a bit this week, and the topic of hardware came up. Out of curiosity, what sort of hardware do you guys have in the PCs you intend to use to play Outer Colony?

The more detailed the specification you can provide, the better, but I'd specifically be interested in:

- Your CPU Model
- Quantity of RAM
- Your GPU (Video Card) Model
- Storage Drive (especially interested in RPM / SSD speed)
- Your Motherboard (if you know it)
- Your Sound Card (if one is present)
-Any other information you'd like to provide (if you've got an awesome case, a heavy duty PSU, 7 optical drives, a bunch of extraneous lights, liquid cooling, or other general excellence)

I will commence!

I'll start off with the machine I use to develop and play Outer Colony, my primary desktop:

CPU: Intel i7-6700 (Skylake / Quad core)
RAM: 32GB DDR4 (2133mhz)
Mainboard: GIGABYTE GA-B150M-DS3H
Disk Drive: SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 2280 256GB (PCI-E SSD) - OC's java builds are extremely I/O intensive, so I desperately need this.
GPU: NVidia GTX-960
Sound: Onboard
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold - 800W

The build for this rig was originally done back in 2012, and I've had to cobble it back together repeatedly after various hardware breakdowns, with the latest overhaul being from this past summer.

I'll aim to post pictures soon, plus post for my laptop (which has done plenty of development work for OC) and my server (which I use for SVN and other miscellaneous development tasks).

What sort of machines are you guys rocking?

Ahhh my stupid old computer!

CPU: Intel Core i7 (Bloomfield I think...) 950 3.07Ghz
Ram: 6 GB Kingston HyperX
GPU: MSI Twin Frozr II GTI:X560 Ti
Harddrive: WD Black Caviar 1TB 1001FALS 32MB Cache (7200 RPM I think)
Mobo: ASUS Sabertooth x58 (onboard sound)
PSU: Corsair AX760

It's been mostly reliable. Upgraded to this CPU/MOBO maybe... six years ago? Now the thing crashes and won't boot about once a week. First time I thought System Restore fixed it but nope, it let me boot back up but then crashed happened again in a few days. Then I thought Windows 10 System Reset fixed it, but nope same thing. Then I thought taking a ram stick out, but nope. Then I though swapping my ram around, trying different combos of 2/4/6 gb (I have 3x 2gb sticks) but nope, each time making the hardware change would let me boot back up and get some use out of my comp but then it would crash again hours, sometimes days later. Most recent crash wouldn't boot with swapping the ram sticks, so I unplugged everything from my PSU, tested it (it's fine I think) then plugged it all back in and it works again BUT FOR HOW LONG?!? AARGGGHHHH

Ah the ol' blue screen of death. I didn't get that... just straight to power failure every time which made me think it was the PSU but seems not to be. A new comp is definitely an option I'm considering, but I've been working a bit with a VR startup so definitely want a rig that meets the minimum specs for the Vive when I do. I'll definitely hit you up for advice if I build something new! It seems stable again now... but who knows for how long. If I was going to replace my motherboard on a budget, what would you recommend?

Venting... Comp went on the fritz again today. Crashed, then would only power up for a second before turning off... what they call motherboard POSTing I think? Anyway, tried a bunch of things like RAM swaps, reconnecting PSU cords, and even reinstalling the cpu and heatsink with new thermal paste (I think I put way too much on... is that bad?) but nothing worked. After spending some time looking at new parts and dreaming about upgrading, I read a Tom's Hardware article on all the things to try if this is happening. I noticed that my power and reset case button cords were routed under my video card right against the mobo, so I took out the video card and moved the cords on top. Now suddenly my comp boots up again! I can't imagine this is actually a real solution to the problem since it was working fine for five years like that and the crash/won't boot problem has recurred a few days after all my other "solutions" seemed to work. We'll see. I'll keep you POSTed eh

I did check the CPU temps when I first started and thought they looked ok. I just checked again though and they're kinda high so I'll definitely reinstall that sink with new paste... haha oops. Maybe my last changes solved it though. Computer's been stable for a few days despite the high temps so I've got my fingers crossed... I was getting weird boot behavior before that made me dismiss overheating, because after it crashed I could often boot back to the windows login screen or bios and Windows recovery without having to wait for it to cool down. Might have been too quick to dismiss that option though.