bcavanaugh suggested: "What about the EVGA GTX 960 Graphics Cards?: Well, Truth Be Known, I actually tried to force the GTX 970, something I normally would never do, but I wanted so badly to use it. In doing so I actually broke in half that piece from the board that was obstructing the 970's proper installation and ultimately broke off the entire piece. There is now also a loose white wire. I have looked everywhere and have zero clue where it is supposed to connect.
The Acer no longer functions and the online large retailer was out of stock. ATM the only thing it's good for is to recharge my electronic cigarettes and vape pens :-)
I am handicapped and heavily dependent on the net for ordering grocery deliveries and other necessities, and paying bills, and other critically important things. It is dangerous for me to be without a PC for more than a day. It was Sunday and the only store I am able to get to is a local store of a national retail chain. The highest end "gaming rig" they sell is an ASUS ROG G20AJ-B09. It does have a good processor. 4th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-4790 processor, 16GB Ram (upgradeable to 32GB) and a GTX 760 with 2GB ram.
ASUS has the most absurd warranty limitation on earth for a gaming rig on the GR 20 series. If you open the case, even just to blow dust off of the fans, the ASUS One Year Warranty is automatically voided. They have caught a lot of flack about it. I believe that the reason for it is that because the ROG GR 20s are so tiny, that they are uniquely and tightly packed inside. So for a year, I'm stuck with the GTX 760. But for the games I play most often it is gives me more than adequate frame rates at high quality settings.
Hopefully one day I will be able to get my Predator repaired, but it is my understanding that it uses a mother board that is uncommon, has a weird plug, is difficult to find, and relatively expensive. I feel like a complete idiot. I currently use it to recharge my electronic cigarettes and vape pens:-)
I'm fairly happy with the ROG, but my purchase of it was totally insane. During the past month I had purchased, exchanged, or gotten a refund on three other ROG GR 20's. The first came with a dead-on-arrival Nvidia GTX 760. The store I bought it at has a 30 day replacement policy on ASUS products (I don't actually know if it applies to all their sales) and because I bought it during Christmas Time they had an extended refund policy, so I had time to wait for a replacement. The ROG GR 20 Model that has the pre-installed GTX 760 also has an on board Intel HD4600 GPU you can access through a separate HDMI Port that was surprisingly adequate, so I could afford the time to wait for a replacement.
Got the replacement and guess what? It also arrived with a dead-on-arrival Nvidia GTX 760. Within a day the hard drive froze so I was afraid I would not be able to return it because I not had the chance to securely wipe my personal financial and other data. Luckily, for some reason, the next day I was able to restart the hard drive and do a refresh and was able to wipe the drive and get a refund.
I then bought a low end model of the GTX ROG GR 20 series so I would at least have something. This one had a GTX 750. It actually worked FOR SEVEN HOURS and then then the electrical system totally blew out. I still have it cuz I was not able to wipe the drive myself. Luckily it was not an expensive machine and it is a small price to pay for the peace of mind keeping it gives me.
So buying another ASUS G20AJ-B09 was a totally insane purchase for me. But everything on this one actually works and it's more than fast enough for me ATM. I am very happy with it's performance and features, I just hope it keeps on working as well as it is today :-)
BTW: The people at the store I was buying my ROGs were wonderful and helpful. Never gave me any problems with refunds or exchanges and even offered to wipe my drives, but I would not trust anyone with the data that was on them. Perhaps they were so nice to me because they felt sorry for me because I have a handicap, but I don't think that was the reason. They seemed sincere. I do not know if EVGA allows you to mention the name of a large chain-store even though the chain now sells EVGA products in it's stores, but it's name begins with a "B" and every Sunday they run a new weekly ad :-) For many years they did not sell high-end anything PC-related in their stores, but that has now changed. It's where I got my EVGA 970 and they also had the OC version on their shelves, They are also now selling the latest new hi-end gaming peripherals in their stores as well as the ROGs, which very few peeps had issues with and about which nearly all their on-line customer reviews were 5 star.
Sorry for wasting your time if you got to this point :-)
If you did, thank you for taking the time to read it , and once again thanks to all those who tried to help me.
post edited by rawar - 2015/02/05 14:29:54