On a laptop, even if the thing is plugged in I think the danger is far more to the hardware than you. My laptop is relatively beefy (for something with a non-Nvidia GPU ;) ), and its power pack is only capable of delivering 70W. I think I'd have to try pretty hard to hurt myself on that (maybe sticking one's tongue to the power circuitry while it's plugged in?).

On a desktop, there's more concern, partly because they're capable of drawing/outputting an order of magnitude more power (if it's really beefy), and partly because you have parts with giant capacitors attached, especially in the PSU, that can hurt you very badly. Still, a USB port isn't going to do anything. Even if <5W was dangerous, you'd have to try pretty hard to actually touch the leads on the USB port :)

As Quiz said, there's really no way to justify that entire budget on a single-monitor system, short of special requirents (say, a really nice sound setup, for instance, and even then...).

You don't even have to spend some of what's been spent on some of these builds necessarily (for instance, if you don't overclock, save on getting the nicer CPU cooler). Just get something like what Tomtom built, swap in a 7970, and then use the left over money to get a bunch of games, or take a vacation, or buy a really big cheeseburger... :)

Yeah, it sounds like you're not really going in the right direction.

If you're not a gamer in general but looking for a sandbox MMO, then shooting for TOR is bad both because it's anything but, and because it's intensive enough (for an MMO at least) that you need at least a decent system to play it well.

I'd say consider taking a look at Guild Wars 2, as it'll at least be better than TOR, by all indications, in terms of having some more sandbox-like features, but... that just creates a bigger system requirements problem.

Quizzical's suggestion is probably best: just pick up a non-intensive MMO that suits your needs. There are plenty of sandbox MMOs, from simple titles with a bit of crafting all the way to EVE Online, if you're looking for a torurously complex game

OP, as others have noted, your CPU is just fine for running TOR.

My mobile 1.6ghz i7 has no issues (and despite being an "i7", isn't any kind of extraordinary CPU), and far more importantly, I asked my friend running a Core 2 Quad Q6600 what kind of time he's having playing the game, and he isn't having any trouble at all playing decently, in any zone. He says in very rare occasions, in especially crowded zones, he'll have a second of very minor hitching here or there, but that's as bad as it gets, and an E8400 outperforms the Q6600 in basically all situations (even in quad threaded applications).

Also, if you do run into trouble, it's worth noting that you can do a 20% overclock on basically every E8400 ever made, without having to do any serious tweaking. Just go into your bios, turn your FSB to from 333mhz to 400mhz, restart, and you're done. This assumes your machine allows overclocking, but if it does, it's a really nice speed boost that's quite free. You don't have to mess with voltage, you shouldn't have to do anything with RAM unless it's really crappy (and you should just buy a 4GB DDR2-800 kit anyways, so that solves that problem), because at 400mhz, the RAM should just run at 800mhz anyways, so you just increase the clock and you're good to go. My E8400 stayed stable a bit above that clock without higher voltages (3.7 was stable; 3.8 was not), but it may have been a good chip. Nevertheless, I've known many people who have owned that chip, and not one has ever failed to do that overclock. It also can be done with the stock cooler; I had no trouble at all.

The above poster has a point; having hands-on help is a big plus.

It's too bad you live on the west sideof TN; I'm just a quick hop from Johnson city :)

I'm absolutely shocked that that PSU hasn't exploded on you.

Yes, you need both connectors, but it doesn't matter, because you need a new PSU anyways, badly, to the point that I wouldn't even risk running further games until you do replace the PSU.

I have to say, that's a very impressive price for that card.

I don't know, it almost seems like the OP might be able to squeeze by on that PSU if there isn't a lot of money to spend (of course, replace it if the money is there). I mean, I can't see the CPU and that GPU pulling more than 200W together, and even that much would require stressing both extremely hard, which I don't see a game doing with that CPU, given that its 8 threads would never be used.

So really, I have a hard time seeing the whole system draw getting too much above 200W.

This survey shows exactly what it should, especially on a game sight. Most users are using 4-8GB. 4GB is more than enough, but 8GB kits are so cheap, there's no reason not to get them for new machines.

OP, after turning shadow quality all the way down (off?) I had no trouble running the game fluently on my Mobility Radeon HD 5730. Perhaps you could do the same.

The GPU is certainly less powerful than most 4000 series desktop GPUs.

DOH!

ECC Memory, that explains it. ^_^; A 4GB ECC-capable DIMM can still be had for less than $50, but at least the price is just slightly high now, instead of absurd.

Yeah, that's not what you buy for desktops. Desktops don't need the error protection, and it introduces added latency, iirc (because it takes an extra clock cycle to do the error check/correction). You definitely just want the normal $30 DDR3.

Umm, that RAM is NOT worth $100, and there really isn't a justification for it.

8GB kits of 2x4GB DDR-1333 DIMMS go for about $30-$35, not $100.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611%20600006050%20600006069&IsNodeId=1&name=8GB%20%282%20x%204GB%29

Even really good, low-latency 1.5v DDR3-1333 (the kind that isn't just overclocked at higher voltages) is less than $40:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231308

Even an 8GB kit of good DDR3-1600, with low latency and voltage, is less than $40!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233180

Hell, even a kit of DDR3-2133, which has almost double the bandwidth, isn't $100

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231518

In short, the answer is: The store is a ripoff, and generally terrible. They don't even have the RAM specifications right. They're claiming their 8GB kit has 72 512MB chips, but that would be an absurd 36GB of RAM, not 8GB.

Another set of sliders, allegedly from AMD (being reported by a different site) seem to more or less corroborate the performance claims from Tom's Hardware, though it's hard to tell exactly, since they've only given tesselation performance (not exactly a great overall measure).

http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/item/25278-hd-7970-up-to-60-percent-faster-than-gtx-580

At the resolution tested (2560x1600, not really a common one), the mean seems to be about 45% faster. Given the modest speed difference between the 580 and the 6970 (~15%, isn't it?), 60% - 70% faster than the 6970 is about what I'd expect.

It's a really new game (a few people are in the early start and that's it), but from what I saw in beta, yeah, you should have no trouble running it, but you will be running it at pretty low settings.

Originally posted by eycel

Alot of people use this as an excuse about laptops,"oh there just way to expensive".  This is why I always explain to nvidia fanboys that there products being way overpriced ruins the market at least in mobile sector cause they make most laptops cost so much more then AMD, there a fine brand indeed still even if there overpriced but people constantly bitch about pricing.  Either way, you can get some damn fine gaming laptops for under 700$ any more and still be way way more power then the average gamer needs.

You can get a passable gaming laptop for $700, meaning something that will physically play games, at moderate settings, at low resolutions, at okay framerates, but I can do just as well for $400-$450 with a desktop, and for $600, I could make something vastly more powerful.

That discrepency just gets bigger and bigger as prices go up.

I'm not saying don't get a gaming laptop; they make a lot of sense for some people, including me (though I spent about $1200 for something nicer).

But unless heavy use of that mobility is going to be made, it makes a lot more sense to get a desktop and either pay far less or get a far more capable machine (or both), and I think that describes the majority of users. It certainly describes the majority of users who have sought help on this site over the past couple of years.

Originally posted by NiteSkie

Bleh, I would never say that.  What I said was that the performance is basically a 6870.  With my sligh OC it matches the 6870.

You were saying it only matched a 6850, which it does not, even at stock clocks it is faster than a 6850.

No, you said it was practically a Geforce GTX 560 Ti, which your card most certainly does not reach any kind of parity of performance with.

And even then, your statements are not exactly well supported by any kind of evidence.

Really, look at benchmarks of the 6850/70 and 6990M

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6990M.57308.0.html

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-review/20

The 3dmark Vantage test (GPU score) is the only apples-to-apples test here (both running on the P Preset), but since this is the same chip, a synthetic benchmark is fine for comparison.

Even the fastest 6990M benchmarked by Notebookcheck only manages to just about match the 6850 (the 6990M might be a few hundred points lower, but I'd consider that within the margin of error). It does not match the 6870, which is 2,000 points higher.

And what your card does when overclocked is irrelevant, because I could just as easily overclock a desktop 6850 and do the same thing (only I could overclock it more because Sapphire Trixx unlocks voltage on the 6800 series). The fact that your card goes faster when overclocked isn't a tribute to your card, because all cards do.

Well, let me rephrase that: I invite you to show me a card that contradicts that statement.

Originally posted by NiteSkie

Well since not one of those posts in any way addresses the claim that people might find use for gaming laptops, a considerable portion of your initial post, I guess the correct answer is no.

What do I win?

Sure, cause you will never let it be otherwise.  It's not that important to me.  I pointed out a bunch of posts in this thread that contradicted what I said, and you still come back with that.  Not worth my time, really.

I can see how it wouldn't be worth your time to present examples that don't exist, since none of the ones you did present in any way addressed the above topic.

So... what do I win?

Originally posted by NiteSkie

So there you go, Catamount.  Did I satisfy your requirements?

Well since not one of those posts in any way addresses the claim that people might find use for gaming laptops, a considerable portion of your initial post, I guess the correct answer is no.

What do I win?

Originally posted by NiteSkie

Good God, people talk out of there asses here more than anywhere I've ever seen.

Really?

That's funny, because I can't find a single post in here that actually disagrees with anything you've said. Perhaps you could point them out to me?

No one has ever claimed that it's impossible for someone to have use for a gaming laptop; that would be foolish, given that many of the people in this thread, including those recommending against the purchase of one, own a gaming laptop, including yours truly. Gaming laptops are inferior gamings machines, offering considerably inferior performance at all price points. It's also fully recognized that some people have as much use for the laptop part of a computer as the gaming part.

Can you show me a single post that disagrees, explicitly, or implicitly?

Originally posted by eycel

A 550m is a very powerfull graphics card indeed, and at resolutions of 1366x768 that card will score over 10k in 3dmark06

My G80 Geforce 8800GTS could do that too, but that doesn't mean it's a fast card by today's standards, and it certainly doesn't mean it'll play all games at "maximum detail".

I have a gaming laptop too, not because it's anywhere near a substitute for a gaming desktop, but because I already own a desktop, and used to spend long hours away from home every day with nothing to do between classes. The Mobility Radeon HD 5730 in my gaming laptop is about 90% the speed of a Geforce GT550M, and it most certainly does not play "every game at maximum detail". Even at the absurdly low resolution of 1366x768, with maybe 2x AA tossed on, Crysis runs at about 30-35fps on medium-high settings, and about 25fps at high settings (not maximum, just more or less high). At "maximum" settings, with full anti-aliasing, it'd be lucky to push 10-15fps. Even at those settings, 30-35fps isn't exactly ideal, which means that really, that game belong at about dead medium.

The MWLL mod is even more intensive, so I opt to run it on low-medium.

Sure, it can run the Call of Duty games at their highest settings, but so can nearly any gaming machine; Those arent' intensive games.

Just look at the GT550 page on Notebookcheck:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-550M.42264.0.html

Does it look like it's giving 60fps at the highest settings on every game, or even coming close? Most games that are even remotely intensive look like they squeeze out the necessary 45+ fps at about medium settings, and again that's at an absurdly low gaming resolution of 1366x768, usually with little or not AA tacked on (and at those piddling resolutions, a least a bit of AA is about the only source of mercy on your eyes).

I'm not trying to be mean here, but what you're claiming about this card is flat out wrong, and giving people wrong information about their potential $800+ purchases is simply not a good thing to do.

It's not a bad GPU, but don't grossly exaggerate.

Originally posted by Gabby-air

Yeh it is a rather weird situation, the problem with me being able to test the PSU is though that if I put another PSU in the system it voids my warranty so maybe I'll just take it to the store and let them figure out what's wrong. I opted to try to solve it myself since it's a 45 minute drive. 

But yeh like you've said, there are no overheating issues as I monitored temperatures while playing and using prime95 and even memtest86+ came with no errors. Grpahics card had a clean installation of drivers and there are no files in /minidump. 

Yeah, despite the high quality of your PSU, that sounds abundantly like insufficient CPU power causing instability.

The app crashes are because the computer is reading files incorrectly (as if the files are corrupt, but they aren't; they're just being processed wrong). This can cause bluescreens, too, but doesn't necessarily, while almost every other candidate for problems would be almost certainly causing symptoms you don't have.

If it's under warranty, then like you said, just let the store deal with it.