My crystal ball says you're missing an account.

I won't jump onto the bandwaggon and post setup pics.

About the HE-500: No, they are definitely the wrong recommendation in this case.

Comfort is actually the least of the three problems with them. It depends on your head shape, if the metal band fits you'll be fine, otherwise you just need to mod the headband with some pads, and you'll get used to the weight fairly quickly.

It's not like they aren't good headphones, but they are out of production and for a reason. There's newer, better options.

They are already far more expensive than the HD600/650 on their own and you absolutely need an amp, so I can't see <600$ happening.

However you might want to take a look at the HE400S.

#5
While I agree for the most part, for the love of god, don't try to run headphones directly off of the ODAC. 500 Ohms output impedance will fuck you up badly. Especially with something like the HD598 that go from 50 to 300 Ohms the frequency response will get messed up completely.

Also about compression: There's a difference between dynamic range and data compression.
Compressing data is completely normal and acceptable. Even FLAC is compressed, uncompressed would be wav for example. There's very few people who actually have the hearing to tell the most significant difference between mp3 (lossy compression) and lossless: the low pass filter. And guess what, CBR 320kbit or VBR V0 don't use a lowpass filter. Before anyone starts whining "it's lossy compression, there is a difference and I can tell", no you can't. 90% of the pictures you've looked at a jpg and lossy. Any digital video you've ever seen has been through lossy encoding. So there's no need to worry about mp3, 320k or V0 is as good as it gets. The only advantage that lossless (FLAC, ALAC, wav) has is that you can transcode it to lossy if you need to save space on a mobile device.

And then there's dynamic range compression.
Generally speaking there's 3 types:
-boosting quieter instruments is acceptable, maybe even desirable if you want them to be heard in a low dynamic range listening environment (e.g. public transport).
-boosting intruments/voices during quieter parts to keep the sound pressure roughly constant. You'll notice everything else suddenly getting slightly quieter when a new instrument/voice comes in. It sounds weird as fuck and you should try to find better source material.
-turning up the volume and then simply clipping the waveform. This is eeeeeeevil. Worst case this could actually damage tweeters. If you find someone doing this, burn him at the stake.

#17
Have you thought about the HD600 vs HD650?

#33
It just feels like they're trying way too hard for brand recognition.
The DCU doesn't work like that, for the most part it's strictly separated. The Joker is first and foremost a Batman Villain. You don't put the Joker in a Superman movie and you don't put Brainiac in a Batman movie.
I'm not saying he's completely out of place, I mean he appeared in Suicide Squad once. But that essentially came down "The Joker and his Harley Quinns" (yes that's plural) and was really dark. I'm pretty sure they don't want to go there.

MoS isn't bad, I'm just saying the execution was suboptimal.

I don't know, it might work out, the demographic that just goes "Superman and Batman in one movie? It must be good." is probably the same one that needs a "familiar face" (=Joker) to get them to watch Suicide Squad. And that demographic is probably larger than the upset nerd crowd.

Also, are you hyped for 2018? After 7 years of buildup and faceless armies...

#34
I completely forgot to mention that, look at the armour in the trailer and compare them. There's definitely some inspiration from The Dark Knight Returns going on.
Forget everything I said in the previous post.
GET HYPE! #Iwanttobelieve

I'm not saying Batman v Superman can't be good, but the odds are stacked against it.
1. Darker and edgier Superman is always a risk. Man of Steel was already way too close to failure due to that and some minor issue that just add up. If you don't execute darker and edgier Superman really well it'll just blow up in your face.

2. Batman vs Superman will always get the fans riled up, unless executed perfectly. Somehow I don't think that's going to happen. In alternate continuities it's a lot easier to pull off, but in the main continuity we already know neither of them is going to die. I mean DC* tried both and couldn't keep them dead. Barely a year and suddenly "well he was never dead after all".
*I still think it's bad idea to use a name that's brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department, so I refuse to call them Detective Comics Comics.

3. Bad execution of grey and gray morality. If "destroy" means "kill" this could look really, really forced. We already know that they can't die so what's the point? Both in "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Red Son" Batman(koff) had the motive and more importantly the means to kill Superman (yes, he kicked his ass), but chose not to, because he's the fucking Batman. And the Batman does not kill. Changing that is worse than darker and edgier Superman, there isn't a possibility, there's a guarantee that it'll blow up in your face. Again, neither of them can die so making Batman try to kill Superman is pointless. Disable/contain/whatever is fine.
It'll also be interesting to see if they can resist having Lex Luthors loss of hair coincide with his reveal as the villain.

4. Dark and gritty overload within the movie. Batman is always dark and gritty, that's part of being the Batman, but combining that with dark and gritty "Man Of Steel" Superman might be too much.

5. Dark and gritty overload within the franchise. Suicide Squad isn't going to be unicorns and rainbows. And from what it looks like so far neither will be Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the possible Batman movie in 2018. That leaves Justice League and The Flash. Although that shouldn't affect Batman v Superman itself. Also it could still work even with that much dark and gritty.
Let's just hope they don't use one of the sure ways to fuck up a franchise beyond repair via bad publicity. We're talking about stuff that'll make the Joker's tattoos not even worth mentioning anymore. For example the New52's rapist backstory for the Amazons. Oh god, imagine the rage if they used that for the WW movie. There's definitely a big pool of stupid ideas that they have to avoid.

6. Civil War. It doesn't actually matter wether or not Civil War is good, it forced them to put BvS (almost) into the dump months. While this hasn't stopped some good movies from being successful, with BvS already being on the brink and a lot of people already expecting it not to be good, this might just be the final nail in the coffin.
There's also the difference between good and commercially successful movies. It doesn't have to be both or neither, but with the lack of hype and Civil War so close after I can't imagine it sucking and still being successful.

About Suicide Squad:
Why the Joker? There was no need to and I can already hear the inevitable "Heath Ledger was better".

Well apart from waiting being the better option I don't think it's a good idea.
I don't feel like installing windows on another pc just to test it when there's enough people with >=3 cores on this forum.
You could do it. :D
Just run timedemo on the same demo at least once with -threads # in the launch options, # going from 1 to 6, and post the results.

The problem is that my testing indicates TF2 can only use 2 threads effectively, which I hope is a bug on my side.
If it were true an overclockable dual core (right now only the Pentium G3258) would get the same fps as an overclockable quad core (e.g. i5-4690K) with the same architecture and at the same clockrate, at a fraction of the price.
If TF2 uses 3 threads, like the myth says, or ideally 4 or maybe even 5, an overclockable i5 would be a good idea.
If however TF2 uses >5 threads, possibly even >=8, which is what I'm hoping for (#Iwanttobelieve) then a low end Quad Core Xeon with Hyperthreading (e.g. E3-1231 v3) would win hands down while being cheaper than an OC i5 + cooler, not even counting the motherboard.

But right now I really don't know. And I'm not recommending anything based on beliefs, so until someone can verify or disprove my test results, I'm not recommending any CPUs for TF2.

1.

So you'd be able to get the same performance for less money.

2. There's no such thing as an i5 4790K. I admit my experience is limited in that regard, but I don't think TF2 runs well on imaginary CPUs.

I'm also still waiting for someone to post their results with -threads 1-8 to find out how many threads TF2 actually uses.

I can only repeat myself.

There's nothing wrong with either, PCIe SSDs have been used in Server for years now and the SM951 is an amazing M.2 SSD.
The PCIe SSD are just aimed at a completely different market and fairly uncommon for consumers. Finding a 2TB SSD with 2000+MB/s read and write with decent $/GB isn't a problem. Now try finding one with just 256GB. You're lucky if you can find one with 50% higher $/GB that gets past 800MB/s. It's getting better but I don't think they're worth it yet.

The SM951 is great, only 30-40% more expensive than the 850 Pro and you get three times the speed. But try finding a motherboard with an M.2 32Gb/s port. If it's just a 10Gb/s port you're down to 1000MB/s. Two 850 Pros in RAID0 would be cheaper and faster. Not to mention that you can add a third one and catch up with even an SM951 on a 32Gb/s port. Try adding another M.2 SSD. Not happening you've got just one port. I mean you've only got 16 PCIe lanes, you can't just use half of them on 2 SSDs. It's possible but I don't see the point of going LGA2011 just so you can use M.2 SSDs.

There's no such thing as future proofing.

Unless it starts raining M.2 32Gb/s ports with the release of Skylake you'll get what you need (sequential write) cheaper and easier (without drastically limiting your choice of motherboards to certain high end ones) by just using 2 or 3 SSDs in RAID0.

#29
Forget about SATA Express for now. And M.2 aswell. They're limited to two PCIe 2.0 lanes, 10Gb/s (1000MB/s), compared to 6Gb/s (600MB/s) for SATA 6G (aka SATA III). I don't even know of any SATA Express SSDs. M.2 got the same speed so it never made sense to make any SATA Express SSD that are:
-bigger
-using an interface that no one uses
-only get the full speed when using said interface and when plugged into a SATA 6G port, which 95% of the customers would do, are limited to 600MB/s, which will only lead to a ton of customer complaints

There's only the Intel SSD 750 and DC P3000 Series with SFF-8639 aka U.2 which use four PCIe 3.0 lanes -> 4000MB/s (even with PCIe 2.0 you still get 2000MB/s), but there's two significant drawbacks:
1. You won't get that speed unless you have an M.2 32Gb/s port, which is as rare as unicorn blood and the motherboards it's on are appropriately expensive, and an M.2 -> U.2 adapter.
2. Unless you are made of money you probably won't appreciate paying 400$ for a 400GB SSD that only gets you 900MB/s write (or 550$ for a 400GB SSD that gets you 1000MB/s).

So I say: Fuck that.

You could just get the Samsung SM951 which is faster and half the price.
But again you'd need an M.2 32Gb/s port.

So fuck that too.

Might aswell just get a proper PCIe SSD and be done with it.
But those are expensive.

So guess what: Fuck that aswell.

Just get two 850 Pros or whatever and put them in RAID0.
It's cheaper than any other option, you get the same performance and none of the interface bullshit. Any motherboard should have 2 SATA 6G ports.
You should move all finished renders off of the SSDs anyway and if an SSD dies mid render you'd have to redo it either way, RAID 0 or not.

Could we move this to the PC Build Thread though?

#25
Thank you.

#26
Sorry, it just sounded so wrong after everything I'd read that day.
I see your point now, but the low CPU usage was probably due to fps cap I was using at the time (for streaming).
Also shuffling all threads around would be weird, even by windows' standards, but it would explain everything. It would mean that TF2 runs into a single threaded bottleneck at two threads already. G3258 confirmed best CPU for TF2. This is exactly the nightmarish shit that kept me from thinking about TF2 performance.
threadpool_affinity doesn't change anything for me.

Could you test -threads 1-4 aswell, if you have a Quad core? Or at least an i3/FX-4xxx, 4 logical cores should do just fine for this test.

#27
Why do people think watercooling is a good idea? Spending 140$ on an AiO makes no sense when a 70$ air cooler gets you the same performance and is quieter.
Assuming TF2 uses 8 threads, if HT just gets you +30% were talking 5+GHz for the i5 to pull even.
If TF2 only uses 2 threads a Pentium G3258 (65$) will get you the same peformance as a 230$ i5-4690K if you manage to get the same clockrate. And even with a 140$ AiO, which still makes no sense, it would be cheaper than the 4690K without a cooler. Or you know you could get a Xeon E3-1231 v3 for 250$ and still save money because there's no reason for a Z97 mobo anymore. Getting an i5 only makes sense if you're absolutely sure you need 3-5 threads. Only 2 and the Pentium will get you the same performance at a fraction of the price, 6 or more threads and you're better off with the Xeon.

This is going to be a long post.

#14
Benchmarks.
http://www.teamfortress.tv/thread/7598/tf2-benchmarks
Get someone with an i7 to timedemo the demo with and without Hyperthreading. The only difference between a true i5 and an i7 with Hyperthreading disabled is that the i7 has a bit more L3 cache so the result should be fairly accurate, if anything the "simulated i5" would actually score slightly better than a true i5.

I would do it but TF2 is incredibly bugged for me.
Here's a list of the average results (5 runs).
Multicore Rendering disabled: 83.07 fps
Multicore Rendering enabled and
-threads 1: 83.87 fps
-threads 2: 133.39 fps
-threads 3: 134.37 fps
-threads 4: 135.19 fps
-threads 5: 136.07 fps
-threads 6: 136.11 fps
-threads 7: 136.10 fps
-threads 8: 135.84 fps

I'm hoping this is just me, because otherwise this means two things:
1. I should've recommended the G3258 all along.
2. The TF2 engine is so far beyond saving that only a port to Source 2 can save us now. In that case I could totally understand Valve not fixing anything anymore, it'd be like spitting on a grease fire. Best case nothing happens and you just wasted time, worst case it blows up in your face.

#15
He asked specifically about TF2, which is the exception to the rule, unless... See the answer to #14.
I agree about the +100$ though. +50$ for a Xeon is ok, +100$ is meh, unless you absolutely need it.

#16
Very simple. Does it use more than 4 threads? -> You'd benefit from Hyperthreading.
At the same speed there's almost no difference between DDR3 and DDR4.
Can you name any chipset features that you're missing right now? I doubt it, but feel free to prove me wrong.

The idea behind buying a Xeon is actually not buying a similarly priced Xeon.
I'll show you with Haswell Refresh as an example:
i7-4790 4.0GHz 312$
Xeon E3-1271 v3 4.0GHz 339$
Xeon E3-1241 v3 3.9GHz 273$
Xeon E3-1231 v3 3.8GHz 250$

For comparison:
i5-4670/4690 3.8/3.9GHz 224$

I guess you can see now why the 1231 is sexy as fuck if the workload benefits from Hyperthreading.

There'd also be the option of running ECC RAM, but I don't know if you need that.

#17
Exactly.

#18
Not even close.
You're thinking of processes and even then you're far from the truth.

Let me break it down to ELI5-level.

A CPU is basically a really complicated calculator.

Now if you take a number of instructions, for example
[process]
1. 4 + 3 = x
2. x + 7 = y
3. y + 2 = z
4. display z
[/process]

That would basically be a process. It would also be a thread, you can follow the order of the instructions like a thread.
Now if a thread doesn't wait on it's own (e.g. "wait for 5 seconds") or has to wait (e.g. "wait for input") it'll run as fast as it can, just as if you'd be typing it into a calculator as fast as you can, meaning 100% core usage. On just one core. Any additional cores/calculators won't do anything.

Now if we want to take advantage of a multicore CPU we'd have to rewrite those instructions a bit.

[process]
1. 4 + 3 = x
2. 7 + 2 = y
3. x + y = z
4. display z
[/process]

This will obviously give you the same result. But it still won't use more than one core. And windows won't help you with that. It should be especially obvious with the first process, windows can't just willy nilly change your program based on what it thinks is right. If a program hasn't been programmed to use multiple cores it simply won't. Even if the programmer has already changed to order like in the second example windows is still not allowed to just rip the program apart and run it on two cores. It has to be done manually, a bit like this:
[process]
1. start 2nd thread
thread 1 runs here in the "main process" ______ thread 2 runs over here
2. 4 + 3 = x ______________________________ 7 + 2 = y
3. wait for thread 2 to finish _________________ end this thread
4. x + y = z
5. display z
[/process]

The only thing the operating system (windows) has to do with the whole multithreading is scheduling. Only one thread can run on each core at a time so someone has to organize that. Now if your OS is stupid or if you have only once core, it'll run step 1, then step 2 & 3 of either thread 1 or 2, then step 2 & 3 of the other thread and then step 4 & 5. That's 9 steps, way slower than variant 1 or 2 with just 4 steps. However if you have another unused core and the OS utilises it, it'll go like this: Run step 1 on core 1, run thread 1 step 2 & 3 on core 1 and at the same time run thread 2 step 2 & 3 on core 2, then run thread 1 step 4 & 5 on core 1. But it still takes 5 steps compared to 4. This is only worth the effort if step 2 takes far longer than step 1 & 3.

And now you know why multithreading is such a huge pain in the ass.
-worst case you basically have to rewrite the program
-it's not always possible
-it might not even be faster

#19
See the answer to #14.

#20
Considering that 1600MHz is the highest speed your CPU (and any other Intel CPU since) officially supports I wouldn't call it low speed.
Latency is going to pretty much the same so the only thing you gain from 2400MHz RAM, be it DDR3 or DDR4, is bandwidth. And you are probably not bandwidth limited. Going from single to dual channel rarely makes any difference and if it does, it's usually 5% or less, definitely never above 10%. That said, take what you can get, if there's no noticable premium on DDR4 and DDR4 mobos by the time you buy, you might aswell go for it.

#21
See the answer to #20.

EDIT: Added multithreading ELI5. Please don't kill me, I know it's horribly inaccurate, but it's the simplest way I could put it.

EDIT2: Fixed two typos.

I don't even know where that myth comes from, iirc it always supported at least 4 threads.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1406716
That's right after the update that added multicore rendering.

It might be due to the 1 management/main thread + # of cores - 1 worker threads setup and Quad Cores being the max at that time. http://techreport.com/review/11237/valve-source-engine-goes-multi-core

But you've been able to force pretty much any number of threads with -threads for quite a while now.

Do you even know what threads are?

http://i.imgur.com/Eelw9IZ.png