Product Review: Corsair CX500 PSU

Getting a new PSU is always an interesting adventure.  First of all don’t ever skimp out on you power supply!  The PSU is like the heart of your build.  It gives power to everything and if you get a shitty one and it goes out it will most likely take some other parts with it.  So for all of us gamers if you have to get a new one ever get a quality product.

I decided to grab the Corsair CX500 for a couple reasons.  First of all Corsair is a great name in computer components and thousands of gamers trust them.  They make quality products and a reliable.  Second, I got this baby for $29.99 after a $20 MIR.

Installation was simple and easy.  Just plug in and go.  The only issue I ran into was I had to reset my CMOS on my mobo.  Which after a minute on Google, it was easy to do.  Now I’ve got enough power for my system and I don’t fear that it will blow out on me and take my whole build with it.

Here’s a pic of my build currently.

As always GL and HF DotA 2 friends,

Jahrew

First Enchantress Game!

So I’m playing DotA on a saturday night, its late I’ve more or less drank half a case of beer so I’m feeling good.  Get into a random draft and I’m second to last and we already have a Brew, Naix and Cancer Lancer so I’m lookin for a support.  With very few to choose from I decide to run with Enchantress, and boy was I glad I chose her.

So first off I have NEVER played a micro intensive hero before in practice or game, but I’ve seen Puppey play Chen enough so I thought I had a clue.  Now it helped my team played great to start but I feel like a fucking champ after the game.  Managed to go 6-2-8 and hit some good spells for the most part.  I just want to say I love this hero first off because if you can’t micro you are still very useful, and shit her ult is sweet.  Got a couple double kills in the game from that Impetus.

Well off to another DotA 2 game

GL HF Friends,

Jahrew 

Blew my PSU, Time for a New One

So I woke up this morning and went to turn my PC on and was greeted by a loud pop, a flash, and a nice shock in my hand. A PC gamers worst fear, a blown power supply.

After inspection my mobo and all other parts looked good with no burnt spots or blown capacitors. I took no time in ordering a new psu.

I decided to go with the Corsair CX 500 for a couple reasons. First of all Corsair makes great power supplies. Very trusted company and great reviews. Second the psu was on sale and had a $20 MIR bringing the total to 29.99. I have free 2-day shipping from Newegg so I hope to have my PC up and running by Tuesday night and I’ll also do a review of my new power supply. Until then I’ll enjoy catching up on this weekends DotA 2 tournaments.

GL HF friends,
Jahrew

Product Review: Razer Lycosa Keyboard

If your looking for quality gaming peripherals Razer is an excellent option.  They are a huge supporter of eSports and gaming in general.  The quality of their products is always fantastic.  I picked up my Lycosa about a year and a half ago and it hasn’t let me down.

 

First off this thing looks awesome!  I love the blue backlighting in the keys and the control panel in the top right.  Right from the start it was PnP.  I needed no drivers when using it with either Mac, PC, or Linux OS.  It is very responsive with 1ms response time.  The one downside is that it is not a mechanical keyboard but for me it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I love the Lycosa for DotA 2 because I really don’t need any Macro keys on my keyboard, I use 2, 3, 4, spacebar, and my two mouse buttons for my items.  It’s a low-profile keyboard so after long hours of gaming it doesn’t start to feel uncomfortable or painful in my wrists or forearms.

However, I would not reccomend this keyboard to someone who also plans on doing a lot of typing, like essays or something, because it is not comfortable for long durations of typing.  In the end though, its made for gaming.  I do use another keyboard when I need to do school work though.  Another cool feature is the WASD lighting option. 

 

Personally I haven’t used the WASD lighting option but I could see how it would be beneficial for FPS gaming.

Overall the Razer Lycosa is a great keyboard.  It isn’t mechanical and doesn’t have any over the top bells and whistles but its simplicity is what I love about it.  I would rate it 8.5 / 10.  I picked it up for $55 from BestBuy, I have a friend who works there, so it’s great for the price and a quality Razer product.  I would recommend this to anyone looking for a great keyboard that won’t break the bank.

 

 

 

Interesting Riot Contract.

Got this from TobiWan’s twitter.  @TobiWanDota
This is not real, it’s a joke because Riot restricted the players to only stream and support LoL while playing for Riot.

This Weekend in DotA 2

A lot is happening this weekend in the world of DotA 2.  One of my favorite tournaments is holding their Lan finals! So head on over to either twitch.tv or you can find it on many other DotA 2 websites.  The Raidcall EMSOne Lan finals is something you don’t want to miss!  Also I’ll throw up a couple links to the new DotA 2 Top 10 and Top 10 Fails of the week.  Have a fun weekend and stay safe.

GL HF,

Jahrew

JoinDOTA Top 5 Games of the Week (highly recommended)

Raidcall EMSOne Lan

Product Review: CM Storm Xornet Mouse

I recently picked up the CM Storm Xornet, as a cheaper alternative to the Razer Deathadder, and I have been surprisingly pleased with it. I was drawn to the Xornet because of the buttons on the side that a similar to the Deathadder.  The mouse is quite a bit smaller than the Deathadder though, it forces a variation of the Claw Grip.  I have fairly large hand but i really haven’t had a problem modifying my grip to a cross between Claw and Fingertip, to attain a comfortable fit.   

Like I mentioned the 2 buttons on the side are great, especially for DotA 2 as I only needed a couple macro buttons for things like blink dagger, urn, and phase boots are my main ones.  The DPI buttons are awesome, you can change from 800 to 1000 to 2000.  I am comfortable at 1000.  My mouse settings in Linux Mint are already sensitive so 2000 is a little too fast.  The ability to change DPI, however, is incredibly easy.  All the buttons and scroll wheel feel to be well made and are solid.  I haven’t had any issues in click intensive games, such as DotA, and its great for web browsing just the same.  The mouse also feature 1ms polling so it is perfect for gaming and is very responsive.  It’s an optical mouse and doesn’t “float” and the accuracy is fantastic.

Overall I thought it was a great mouse for everyday use and for intensive gaming.  After a long period of gaming, 4+ hrs, my hand does get a little sore but that may be due to just gaming for so long.  For $20 I couldn’t pass this mouse up, got it for sale on Amazon.  I would give the mouse a 8/10.  If it had a little more weight and was a little bigger it would be perfect.  I would recommend this to other gamers as a cheap alternative.

Link to CM Storm Xornet

My Review of DotA 2

So I’ve finally gotten around to writing a review of DotA 2.  Let’s begin.

Intro:  As I’ve mentioned I began playing DotA 2 in late ’11 and haven’t stopped since.  I have played both LoL and HoN, as well as a few console MOBAs. I began playing DotA 2 on my ’09 Macbook on which I bootcamped Vista.

Gameplay:  Playing DotA 2 is very simple yet very complicated.  Your goal is to destroy the other team’s towers and eventually their Ancient (hence Defense of the Ancients).  That’s the easy part.  The complicated part is everything in between.  From understanding last-hitting to stacking neutrals.  From support to off-lane to mid to hard carry, it can very incredibly difficult to understand your role in your team.  It is incredibly difficult to get a hang of the game.  I would encourage all new players to play MANY games against bots.  Unless you want to be flamed beyond all recognition by other players for screwing up a pull, or blowing an ult, or not warding.  It gets intense.  The learning curve is one of the steepest in any game I’ve ever played, on PC or console.  In the end it is all worth it though.  What sets DotA 2 apart from LoL, in my opinion, is how dynamic each heroe’s build is every game.  One game I might build Stygian Desolater to eat through the other teams tanky carry, while the next I might build Lothar’s Shadow Blade to get in and initiate a team fight.  One game I might rush a Hand of Midas on Naix while the next game I might build Poor Man’s Shield into Drums to get early game survivability and the ability to fight early.

Graphics:  DotA 2 is by no means the most beautiful game out there.  Hell I managed to play it on my Macbook with 2GB of RAM and 2.0 GHz dual core processor.  Yet at the highest settings it does look “nice.”  At times I have found myself enjoying the graphics.  However the point of the game is not to enjoy the scenery, its to win.

Matchmaking:  DotA 2 is a simple game.  There’s no Campaign mode or special game modes like Zombies or Horde.  It’s a multiplayer game with one map and one objective.  The matchmaking system in DotA 2 may seem utterly broken at times, and I try to never play completely random games.  I recommend adding players that were good or you enjoyed playing with.  There’s nothing better than getting a 5 stack and playing some good DotA.  The feeling after hitting a Dark Seer Vacum into an Enigma Black Hole is amazing.  From chaining stuns to split pushing like a boss then having a KotL bring you right back into the team fight.  It’s quite an amazing experience.

Conclusion:  Overall DotA 2 is honestly the best game I have ever played.  I hated it the first couple times I played.  There is an insane amount of things to learn before the game starts to make sense.  I remember only being able to play 5 heroes, now I know every hero in the pool and how to build them and adapt my build according to how the game is going or who the other team has for heroes.  I honestly give DotA 2 10/10 at this time.  Being the type of game it is things may get patched and things may change so who knows what the game will look like in 3 months, 6 months, a year even.  That’s why I love the game so much, everything changes but it all stays the same.

DotA 2 and Me

As I close in on 500 games in DotA 2 and over 600 hours of play time I finally feel comfortable enough to do a thorough review of the game.  DotA 2 is by far the most complex, complicated, unforgiving, and hardest games I’ve played.  That is why I love it.  I began my journey of MOBA’s back in ’11 when I was drawn to one of the most popular games:  League of Legends.  Back then I only had my ’09 Macbook so gaming was quite interesting.  I would play LoL in a Wine wrapper because it was not yet native to OSX.  Those were to good ‘ole days playing with the trackpad, looking back I’m not quite sure how I even managed to play a single game.  Then one fateful day one of my good friends, Tstein, introduced me to the wonderful world of DotA, and I was forever changed.

At the time I got into DotA 2 it was still in closed beta and keys were not so easily attainable.  I applied, like many did, for a key but never got that glorious email.  However, Tstein was able to get me a beta key from a friend of his, and I never looked back (to LoL xp).  The first couple steps into DotA and it is easily understood that it is not like any other game.  I had a good understanding of LoL but it is nothing to how complex DotA is.  DotA 2 was easily the hardest game to learn how to play that I had ever encountered.  Now I wasn’t new to gaming or even competitive gaming.  I had played Medal of Honor:  Allied Assault, Call of Duty 2 (the best one), and Day of Defeat Source; all at the competitive level.  I own a Ps3 and Xbox 360 and a sizable stack of games for each.  Yet none of these games were able to capture my attention like DotA 2 has.  

The first few weeks of DotA 2 are quite painful.  Many times I found myself being yelled at in-game and told, “OMG NOOB UNINSTALL DOTA!!!!”  After I was able to get past that initial threshold the game was incredibly entertaining.  One of my first nights of DotA 2 I stayed up all night and played Faceless Void (who I was told was the “Hardest” Carry) against bots.  I thought I knew what I was doing, but I had no clue.

Now over 600 hours later I finally feel like I have a complete grasp on the game.  I don’t know everything but I feel knowledgeable enough to discuss it with other DotA fanatics.  I hope to use this blog to first of all do my review of DotA 2, which I will do later today, and post recording of games or anything that I feel like sharing. 

Good Luck.