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DRM (Digital Rights Management) is about to ruin the PC gaming industry. I am not the first to state this and probably not the last either. The discussion about DRM and PC games has reached new heights with EA’s release of Spore. Ben and Rob over at Tom’s Games discuss this here and here in their weekly episodes of Second Take.

Personally I really do not understand why EA and others are using SecuRom and similar products to “protect” their games. I assume the intention is to either (1) stop piracy or (2) stop people from selling used games. For me, the only thing they achieve is stopping me from buying their games.

Piracy is clearly a problem on the PC platform. It is a shame that people does not pay for the games they play and it is understandable that the industry tries to stop this. However, there does not exist any effective copy protection (yet) and I do not think DRM is the right way to stop piracy. DRM is only making it harder for the customers.

I have a stronger beliefe in digital distribution of quality games which are updated after their initial release to a reasonable price. Much like what the guys at Stardock intends to do with their “Gamers Bill of Rights”. This is of course a PR trick but I agree with them in most of what they say.

Back to DRM, copy protections like SecuRom are just creating problems for the people who pay for the products, not stopping piracy. Pirated versions of Spore and NoCD-cracks sirculated, probably even before Spore was released. I want to play the games I buy anywhere, at any time and I want to be able to install them as many times as I like. I payed for the bloody game didn’t I? I wouldn’t buy a bike which I could only use four times, within the city limits on Sundays!

Spore is unfortunately not the first game which incorporates such DRM solutions. Both Bioshock and Mass Effect have received massive amounts of flack for their DRM solutions which created a lot of problems for a large number of users.

So why? Dear gaming, record and movie industry. Why do you use DRM when it creates problems for the paying users, does not effectively stop piracy, increases the price of your products and give you a lot of negative media coverage? Some of the vendors have got it and they are pulling the plug on DRM as we speak. But Walmart, what about the customers who were unfortunate enough to by DRM (infested) music who are not able to play their music any longer?

Inspired by the Rawgameblog and Second Take’s Fall Games Preview I decided to make a list of my most anticipated games for the rest of 2008. These are the games which I consider getting my hands on unless they utterly fail and get really poor critics.

There are plenty of other games which look very interesting but I decided to make a top five. In doing this I had to leave out at least ten games I would like to buy. I also left out games with no confirmed release date. All dates are taken from Gamespot. You might want of have a look at all the games I am tracking. Nevertheless, here are the top five ordered by their release date.

Mount and Blade is set for a September 23rd release. Mount and Blade might not look like the most cutting edge game but I have already tested beta versions of the game and I know it is great fun. Talesworld are now about to release the 1.0 version of the unique game. The fact that it comes from a small provider makes the game even more impressing. Mount and Blade has a large community and there are already developed several mods for the game and you can expect many, many hours of barbaric fun from this game.

Far Cry 2 is going to be released October 21st. Far Cry is the sequel to perhaps one of the best halves of an FPS I have every played. The first half of Far Cry was a truly great game and I am hoping the new developers are able to pull off a complete great game with Far Cry 2. It sure looks beautify, let us just hope it is fun to play as well.

Fallout 3 with its October 28th release is another game I am excited about. I am a bit more uncertain about Fallout 3 than Mount and Blade and Farcry 2. As mentioned, I have already played Mount and Blade and I have a pretty fair idea of how Farcry 2 will play. I have never played any of the legendary Fallout games, Iam uncertain about how the gameplay will turn out and I am a bit uncertain about how Oblivion developers Bethesda Softworks will finish this game.

Gears of War 2 is starting a very hectic November with its November 7th release. Plenty of other great games are being released during November as it is probably the most hectic month of the year (in terms of potentially great games being released). Gears of War was the first truly great Xbox360 game when it was released two years ago, a short time after its superb trailer.

Left 4 Dead on November 20th is going to be a multiplayer blast. What is better than killing hoards of zombies with your friends? Just the fact that it is a Valve game increases my expectations an extra notch or two.

The case

After selecting a case for my new living room computer I had to buy some more parts to piece together a running PC. The case I selected was the Lian Li PC-C32, in black. Overall I am satisfied with the case. It is fairly spacious, it looks good, it was pretty easy to mount everything inside of it. However, when I got the case it was a bit bigger and lighter than expected. The plates used for the case were a bit thin and the top lid had two screws in the front which I did not see and they almost made me force the top off. Other people have said the case comes with one motherboard stand too many. I did not have that problem as I installed a microATX board. The stock fans on full speed were a bit nosier than I would have liked too but it was nothing a replacement of fans and a fan controller could not handle. I chose the ZM-MFC1 Plus controller from Zalman.

The hardware

The computer consist of a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H microATX motherboard with an on-board AMD HD3200 video chip powerful enough to playback full HD video. The AMD 780G chipset is a favoritte among many reviewrs (1). The motherboard is fitted with an AMD Athlon 4850e CPU which only requires a limted amount of power and 4 GB of Kingston DDR2 memory. Both the 1TB Spinpoint F1 hard drive and the SH-S203B DVD player came from Samsung. The plan is to get another hard drive and install it in a RAID level 1 to have backup of images, music and movies. Hopefully will the prices of solid-state-drives fall while the performance contines to increase so I can get such a drive and use it for the operating system drive. The whole ting is powered by a NorthQ Giant Reactor power supply which I had laying around.

The software

I have I have been using Windows Vista 64 because I had a license and I eventually plan on getting a better graphics card to be able to play games. Currently the cards are either too expensive, too noisy or not powerful enough so I think I will be waiting until the next generation arrives or until someone starts selling better cooling solutions for, for instance the AMD 4870X2. If I wasn’t planning on gaming I would have used a Linux distro for sure.

The problems

I wish I could say everything went accoring to plan. Unfortunately it did not. First, the PSU is a bit too noisy. The 850W version of the Zalman ZM1000-HP could be a possible solution. Second, the DVD is way too noisy. I do not plan on using this much but it sounds like a plane taking off. Third, the stock fans were too noisy on full spead. This has been solved by using a fan controller. I might also replace the fans. Fourth, I will certainly get a modular PSU the next time I buy a new one. I hate all those cables. Finally and most annoying. The graphic chip has some problems with HDMI and TVs. If I select the right input on the TV and then turn on the PC I get an image and everything works perfectly. However if I change the input on the TV to something else and then back again to the PC, I do not get any image. It seems it is a problem with the Catalys driver and the handshaking with the TV. I hope this will be fixed with the release of a new driver. As a consequence of this problem I have not used it as much as originally planned. I have not moved neither movies, images nor music to the PC.

The future

As mentioned I have planned to get another disk and a new graphics card. This is however somewhere down the road. It would have been nice to get a quieter PSU as well but with the noise level of the graphic cards of today it is no point of getting a silent PSU before I know which graphics card I will be pairing it with. When new and more powerful CPUS are comming I will probably update those too. However until later the two core AMD should do the job.

Building a combined HTPC and gaming rig for the living room is according to a lot of people a stillborn idea. Nevertheless, I have a HDTV and a surround setup and I want to enjoy PC games using it. Where the HTPC is slim, cool and silent the gaming rig is big, powerful and noisy. Finding a good compromise between these two extremes is challenging and much like trying to cross a cat with an elephant.

To build a good HTCP you would want a PC with a decent storage, capable of high definition (HD) video playback. It should look good in your living room, be small, slim and silent and have a high WAF rating. Most modern computers with an integrated graphic chip coupled with a CPU with low power requirements are able to do the job. Low power requirements mean limited heat which again means no or only very few fans for cooling. Platforms based on AMD’s 780 or Nvidias GeForce 8300 based chipsets have for these reasons been popular.

A gaming rig should produce as many polygons as possible per second. To do this you need a very power hungry CPU and GPU. Power means heat, and to move this heat away from the CPU and the GPU you will need large coolers and a lot of fans. This combined with the fact that most graphics cards are quite long you would want a quite large case for this gaming computer.

For fans there are some simple rules. The larger the fan is the more hot air does it move per second. The higher the velocity of the fan is the more air does it move per second but the noise will rise to unbearable levels.

Requirements

So let us look at the requirements for a HTPC/Gaming computer. I’ll start with the one which are absolute. Since I have a girlfriend it has to look good! Looking good would in this case mean black (to match the other equipment), small and probably shiny.

Second, it should be powerful enough to run modern PC games at resolutions up to 1920*1080. This would include a large and hot graphics card which requires cooling and a pretty deep case. I will also need a decent CPU which would require good cooling. Big tower coolers like TRUE could reach up 160mm but they could be fitted with one or two 120mm fans.

Third, it should be silent. This would include water cooling or really big coolers and several large fans at low velocity. Water cooling would have been fun but it is a bit expensive and I don’t really bother right now. Since I am no millionaire it cannot be too expensive either.

To sum up, it should be a large good looking case which looks small and has room for large coolers, large fans, long graphics cards and a couple of hard drives. Most HTPC cases are small so it is a bit of a challenge to find something which matches all these requirements. However, after searching the web for a long time I found some candidates. And the nominees are:

Antec Fusion 430 Black

This case looks great, uses two 120mm fans for cooling, the critics are great and the price is quite good (about 1200 NOK = 150€). Unfortunately, a bit too small (445mm (W) x 146mm (H) x 414mm (D)) for my planned PC.

Review:

• Bjorn3d
• Silentpcreview
• Tomshardware
• 3dGameMan (if you can call these reviews )

Antec Performance One P182

Another case from Antec. I really love this one, it costs less than 1000 NOK (125€), it is big (520mm (H) x 210mm (W) x 510mm (D)) and has a lot of space for hardware, coolers and five 120mm fans. Unfortunately it is a tower, not a desktop case. If I was looking for a pure gaming rig I would have gone for this one but since it has to fit in the living room it is a no go.

Reviews:

• Bjorn3d
• Silentpcreview

Silverstone CW02

This case is another beauty, at least in my eyes. It is quite tall (435 mm (W) x 225mm (H) x 440 mm (D)) and a large cooler should fit inside. It has quite large fans with one 120mm fan and two 92mm fans. Unfortunately it got a pretty low WAF rating, it is a bit expensive (3800 NOK = 450€) and it could be a problem to fit long graphics cards so was not a winner.

Reviews

• XtremeComputing
• 3dGameMan

Silverstone LC-20

This case has room for in total two 92mm and three 80mm fans. It is fairly large (430 mm (W) x 170 mm (H) x 430 mm (D)) but neither really large coolers nor long graphics cards would fit. It got an overall good WAF rating and the price is attractive (about 1000/1500 NOK or 125/200€ without/with the LCD ). However, there is something to it which I did not like. 80mm fans are perhaps a bit small and there is not plenty of room inside of it.

Reviews

• DevHardware
• DreamWare Computers

Lian Li PC-C32B

This is the case I selected. It is no way near flawless but it is a decent compromise. It is very deep (426mm (W) x 167mm (H) x 530mm (D)) which would allow long graphics cards, and standard ATX motherboards and power supplies to enter. It has room for two 120mm and one 80mm fans. Coolers up to 140mm should enter according a very helpful forum user at hw.no . The fans should according to some reviews be replaced with some, less nosier ones. The fact that the case is pretty deep is also somewhat of a problem because it will take a lot of space in the living room. Hopefully this will not be too much of a problem. The price was about 1700 NOK (210€). It looks great (without the rack mount handles) and it got a very good WAF rating.

I am eagerly waiting for it to arrive in the mail tomorrow or one of the next few days and I will probably post some images when I get my hands on it. Having decided on the case it only remains to decide on all the other parts of the PC …

Reviews

• XSReviews
• Visual-Hideout
• CaseUmbau (in German)

Some Case Providers

I found several other nice cases when searching for this one and I recommend you to check out the following if you are looking for a HTPC case yourself.

• 3RSystem
• Antec
• Chieftec
• Lian Li
• OrigenAE
• Silverstone
• Thermaltake
• Zalman

I found this nice Wordpress plugin by Oliver Baty which allows you to include your Xbox Live game card somewhere into your blog. I made some changes to the plugin which allows me to display my game card anywhere inside any of my entries. Now, I simply write [gamecard haugeoy] (don’t laugh at my score )

or [gamecardfull haugeoy]

anywhere in my blog entries. Please remember to use HTML mode.

You may want to download the plugin with my modifications but please don’t blame Oliver Baty for the changes I have made and remember that the plugin is provided without any warranties.

Changes to the original plugin (version 1.3 beta)
Unfortunately my webhost does not provide Curl installed so I had to modify the plugin and make it use fopen instead. I replaced some of the code. Edit: the changes were included in this post but the code was removed because it caused some problems with Wordpress