The motherboard in my 7-year-old laptop, the main computer at my apartment (where I spend a little over half of my time), has started to die on me. The downside of this is that I have to spend the money to build a new computer now. The upside of this is that I get to build a new computer now!

Since I'm not going to bother with a laptop of this size (15") again, I'm building a computer that will actually allow me to play games and do CAD homework. This new one will really be very similar to the gaming computer I built for myself at my parents' house (where I spend the other part of my time) about three years ago. It still plays any game I throw at it on high or ultra high video settings, and has never so much as stuttered doing anything else, so I'm sure this new computer will be more than powerful enough for the time being. Later on I'll add a second monitor (very, very soon), upgrade the GPU, and double the RAM.

PCPartPicker part list

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For $252.29)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (Purchased For $31.24)
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.SNIPER H6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (Purchased For $109.99)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $50.99)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $89.99)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $94.99)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $121.49)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card (Purchased For $110.50)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $70.00)
Power Supply: Rosewill 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $73.98)
Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $58.95)
Monitor: Acer S220HQLAbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor (Purchased For $99.99)
Other: Rosewill 2-Port USB 3.0 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub eSATA Multi-In-1 Internal Card Reader with USB 3.0 Connector (Purchased For $24.99)
Total: $1189.39
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-03 17:29 EDT-0400

My dad is going to cut a window in the side panel of the case very similar to the windowed side panel you used to be able to buy for it (which I have in my gaming computer at home), and I'm going to have the case painted, though I haven't decided whether to choose green or the same color blue my other case is. Everything has been ordered and should arrive this week, but I'll have to wait until the case is finished to actually build the computer.

Questions and comments are welcome! I know the community isn't very large yet, but I thought I'd post this here in case it might give a future builder ideas.

I'm not familiar with the language of business, so perhaps a study on this has been posted online and I just couldn't find it. This is something I thought of today and wondered if anyone has related data.

Do measures taken by stores to prevent theft, such as the devices to lock products to the rack, end up driving away a significant number of potential customers as well? In Walmart, for example, if I see that a relatively inexpensive item in the electronics department is locked to the rack and requires an employee's assistance and possibly the requirement of paying for the item separately from my other purchases, I find myself much more likely to just buy it on Amazon. Not only am I likely to find that the product costs less on Amazon, the five minutes it takes me to order the product seems preferable to the half hour I'll spend waiting for an overworked employee to be able to assist me. Of course there is the shipping time to consider, but assuming I'm not in dire need of the product right at that instant, I'll still usually choose to order it online.

I tried to consider some circumstances that might take place and imagined myself in both the role of a potential customer and a potential thief looking at the same relatively inexpensive type of product that is offered from a variety of brands at a variety of prices. The most popular brand is obviously seen as the greatest target for thieves, so it is locked to the rack. The other brands, both slightly cheaper and slightly more expensive than the popular brand, are not locked. If, as a potential customer, I specifically intend to buy the most popular brand and find it locked to the rack, I end up leaving the store without buying any of the product. If I'm the potential thief, however, and I really want one of that product, I'm probably going to target one of the other brands instead.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this or know if this situation has been studied? I'm curious as to whether the prevented thefts far out-value the potentially prevented sales, or vice versa. This is almost a topic for /t/showerthoughts, but I thought perhaps I might find some knowledgeable opinions or data by asking here. (If this is an entirely unacceptable place for this discussion, please let me know and I'll try to find a more appropriate place.)

Yes, if you've come from /r/psp this will look familiar. I consider it one of my better contributions to the PSP community, so I figured I'd post it here as well.

I see a lot of posts about where to buy batteries online, and no one ever really seems to have a better answer than "try your luck with eBay." I didn't ever have a better answer, either. I've never had much luck with buying PSP batteries online. I didn't buy my first PSP until ~2013 or so, which was already too late to get OEM batteries. The first batteries I bought on eBay were all duds, and the batteries thrown in with another PSP I bought later were duds, too. I decided to try one more time, and this time I got lucky!

Link

Either this seller knows how to store batteries, or his supplier does. Both batteries arrived with ~40% charge, and neither were swelled. Both charge perfectly and were recognized the second I popped them into a PSP.

These particular batteries are 2000/3000 only, but I will say that because they're very, very slightly larger than OEM batteries (meaning they fit a tiny bit more snugly) I can use them in my 1000 even though they don't fill the entire battery compartment. That may just be a quirk of the two I received, though (a quirk I'm thankful for!).

So if you're ever in the market for a new PSP battery, consider giving this guy's batteries a shot. Maybe I just got lucky and the two I ordered were his only working batteries, but I can definitely say that I've had more luck with this seller's batteries than any other I've tried.

I've mentioned this a couple of times so far, but this seems like the ideal place to put it.

My main complaint about Snapzu so far is about the subscription limit. I'm sure there's a good reason to have this in place, I probably just don't see it yet. However, if the intention of the site is to promote activity, I see this having the opposite effect. With the smaller userbase and less clutter, the official tribes look more interesting than many of the equivalent subreddits, and I would like to subscribe to many of them. In addition, I would also like to subscribe to the emerging tribes that many of the new members are bringing over from reddit, even if they're only just emerging and may not have any snaps yet. I want these tribes to succeed and I want to be active in them, but the subscription limit means I can't subscribe to them all.