Does anybody else feel like cases are dropping less frequently than they used to back in like 2016-2018 or is it just my friends and I? We’ve gone 5 straight games with out a single case drop and from what we remember back in the day there would be at least one case drop for someone every game or two. Now if I’m lucky I am getting 1 maybe 2 case drops a week!

I looked everywhere but couldn't find the rates anywhere, any help is appreciated :)

Hey, id like to ask at this point whether some people already did some work about the financial aspect of chest opening, specificially on the chances for drops of given rarities (and therefore expectation values). Best i found was this, but obviously a larger amount of data would help
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3188052
Edit: Excuse me, i meant this link http://thoughtsofamind.com/thoughts/csgo_case-drop-rates.php

What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.

Mostly play games and use tv as second monitor. Games like league and csgo will be on monitor and have the tv on at same time as secondary monitor.. More casual games on tv Then play new games that just drop like cyberpunk (just new AAA games probably better optimized games out) in 4k 60 min 120 would be best. Want to be able to play on my TV c9 and use gsync with good frame rates.

What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?

Im hoping around 2k would be enough but can go over a bit. Seen some pre builts with i-9 and 3080 going for like 2.3k +tax

When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.

Asap. If 3080 works for build then as soon as I can get a 3080.

What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)

Going to be a new computer so everything besides mouse keyboard and monitor. Will also be directly plugged in so no wifi needed.

Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?

California US. Don't think so

If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? Brands and models are appreciated.

Omen monitor. Maybe upgraded later LG C9 tv Logitech mouse Corsair keyboard

Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?

Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)

500gb ssd and 1tb plus hdd for game storage. Or ssd if it's cheap enough

What type of network connectivity do you need? (Wired and/or WiFi) If WiFi is needed and you would like to find the fastest match for your wireless router, please list any specifics.

Wired

Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?

Mid or full is pref. No color or rgb. Just black and white is fine. With good airflow and temps.

Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?

Yes

Extra info or particulars: Non stock air cooling and extra fans if possible.

So I bought my Legion 7i in early August (manufactured on 4th July) and I've been using it for almost 4 months now. I'm not an expert and this is not an in-depth review of the laptop, there are plenty of those on Youtube. As this is quite a controversial laptop, I'd just like to share some of my observations/thoughts/problems/experience with everyone. I hope this will be somewhat helpful for those who own this laptop as well as those who are looking to buy it 😊 This is quite a long post...sorry about that
Specs: Legion 7-15IMH05 (Lenovo) - Type 81YT
Intel 10750h + RTX 2070 super Max Q + 240hz 500nit 100% sRGB display No G-sync + 16G RAM at 2933MHz + 1TB WD SN730 SSD
Two things to note before you buy this laptop

About the vapour chamber cooling system that Lenovo advertised for this laptop, not every model has this. On the UK official Lenovo website they said "Vapor Chamber available only on models with Intel® Core™ i7-10875H & NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2060 and above." But mine has a weaker CPU and a better GPU and I still got the vapour chamber. So I think if your configuration has a CPU below 10875H you will need at least a 2070 Max Q for the vapour chamber. I could still be wrong though, so do some more research on this if you want to.
About the G-sync feature that Lenovo advertised for this laptop, again, not every model has this. Go to Lenovo's product specification reference website (https://psref.lenovo.com/), search for Legion 7, you will see two models: 15IMHg05 and 15IMH05. 15IMHg05 (81YU models) only has two 144hz screen options and both have G-sync. 15IMH05 (81YT models) has three screen options but none of them has G-sync (ignore the specification PDF).

So basically Lenovo has been misleading in some of their advertisement, but other than the two things above I haven't found anything else worth mentioning.
Now, onto the laptop itself.

Thermals: First thing I need to say is that I received the unit with a problem in the left fan. It made a whining noise while spinning like there's friction somewhere in the fan, but the temperatures were ok. Anyway, I contacted customer service and had the entire thermal module replaced and the noise was gone. From my experience the thermals in this laptop is not amazing but not too terrible either, it's just ok. Games I normally play are CSGO, Overwatch, Diablo 3 and Devil May Cry 5, all (except Overwatch) at highest graphics setting. When I was testing the thermals the CPU was 85-95 degrees, although it was constantly over 160fps for DMC5 and Overwatch and over 220fps for CSGO. The GPU, strangely enough, would sometimes reach 125w under performance mode, but never go above 67 degrees. If I play my games like I normally would, which is at 120fps, CPU temperature rarely goes above 90. But I still would like it to be cooler, so I applied a -110mv undervolt with Throttlestop and it dropped to about 75 degrees during gameplay. Later on, I realised that I could just apply a clock speed cap so I capped the CPU at 3.5ghz with no undervolt, then temperature dropped to 65-70 degrees. Still on 120fps with no frame drop, so I'm happy with it. Btw, idle temperature (when I'm web browsing, watching youtube and listing to itunes etc.) for CPU and GPU are about 48 and 46 degrees under all circumstances and the fans rarely even spin.

After thermal module is replaced the noise was gone and I was trying to reapplied the thermal paste. This is what I discovered, the GPU copper heat sink is laughably uneven..... Strangely enough, the GPU temperature didn't change. It's never been above 67 degrees since I bought the laptop.
The is the layout of the thermal pads. I put the blues ones there and replaced the old ones. Most of these pads are 1-2mm thick. Also, my thermal module had no pad on the PCH area.
Some guidance on the thickness (millimetre) of the thermal pads. I replaced the stock pads with Gelid Solutions GP-EXTREME and Arctic pads. Both of them are quite good but I find the Gelid ones to be just a bit softer so I used Gelid for the 2-3mm areas and Arctic (which is cheaper) for the rest. The stock pads seem to be quite thick but I don't recommend using thick pads too much, especially around CPU/GPU, because it would create a larger gap between the heatsink and the die.
Overwatch, second highest graphics setting, 120fps, CPU capped at 3.8ghz, no undervolt
Devil May Cry 5, highest graphics setting, 120fps, CPU -110mV, clock speed uncapped

Hinge: Ok, this is the problem that everyone's been talking about, here's a great video explaining everything about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQNSjhSt0gs&ab_channel=codeHusky. I think this is easily the biggest flaw of this laptop, at least in terms of hardware design. I wasn't aware of this issue when I made the purchase, and after I received the laptop I thought the hinges were quite strong. I open and close the lid multiple times every day and haven't encountered any issue with it so far. I can, however, hear some very tiny cracking sounds around the hinge area and along the entire hinge axis. But I think this is a normal phenomenon due to the assembly of plastic parts as my old Alienware has always had it. If I look closely I can indeed see the hinge being quite flimsy while I move the lid and I can clearly understand why it's behaving this way after I saw the video. Since I found out about this issue two months ago, I started to actively move the lid many more times every day just to test its durability because I want to know if my unit has this problem sooner than later. So far nothing has happened. This issue is covered by accidental damage, so I think, if you have this laptop, you don't need be too careful with the hinge, open and close it as you normally would. You'd want to find out whether your unit is faulty or not before your warranty expires. I have two years of accidental damage warranty and I will keep an eye on this issue. But I think if the hinge doesn't brake in two years, it's unlikely to ever brake in the future.
Touchpad: A lot of people have reported that there is a small gap between the top of the touchpad and the keyboard deck. If you press down on the top of the touchpad the gap becomes larger. I have this problem too. Actually, I've seen this gap on every single Legion 7i on the internet. After seeing someone disassemble the laptop I'm quite convinced that this is a poor design rather than quality control issue. I can understand that this may not look perfect and may even trigger some people's OCD, but honestly, I really don't see why people would be worried about the longevity of the touchpad or dust build up. The touchpad is very smooth and responsive and I've been using it everyday without any issue whatsoever and the gap is nothing compared to the gaps in the keyboard/keycaps, it's really nothing to worry about...
Coil whine: Some people have reported that they can hear a coil whining noise in the laptop, coming from somewhere beneath the keyboard. This is true for my case as well. After some digging online, I realised that this is more of an Intel (or maybe motherboard) problem than a laptop problem as other laptop brands running on Intel 9th/10th gen CPU have also had this issue. Even my old Alienware, running on a 4710hq has this noise XDD So for now, imo the best solution is to turn off CPU C-state in Advanced BIOS. That's what I did and it worked perfectly. Nothing else is noticeably affected by this change and the laptop is now dead quiet.
Screen: Coming from a 17 inch laptop it did take me a few days to get used to the smaller screen, but this screen is absolutely stunning. No backlight bleeding, very vibrant colours, good refresh rate. It's also quite bright, for me I usually use 50-60% brightness in daytime and about 30% in low light conditions. The response time is very good, even better with Over Drive turned on in Vantage. HOWEVER, there is a bit more ghosting with black and white contents when Over Drive is turned on for some reason... so I turn it off while doing web browsing and turn it on while gaming. Over Drive is always turned on by default, which means it's turned on after sleep or restart, which is a little annoying. Also, Something that I don't see a lot of people talk about is that you can use the Nvidia Control Panel to adjust the Digital Vibrance (under Adjust Desktop Color Settings) to make the colours even more vibrant. Imo this screen is overall on par with a Macbook retina display, maybe the retina display is a little crispier but this one is anti-glare and super smooth, which is a HUUUGE plus for me.
Colour gamut: Some 144hz screens have 100% Adobe RGB option, which is "better" than the usual 100% sRGB. HOWEVER, you need to understand that normal sRGB content (which covers the vast majority of what you see online, in applications and games) will now look oversaturated on your screen. So that's something to take into consideration. Adobe RGB is best suited for photographers and they can use software such as Photoshop to display the right colours, so this oversaturation thing wouldn't be a problem for them.
Battery: I think pretty much every 7i owner has battery life problem. This is because the Corsair iCue software drains a lot of power somehow... People have worked out a solution for this: simply disable "Corsair Service". This has worked for me. How you do it: in Windows search for Services and open it -> find "Corsair Service" and right click -> Properties -> set Startup type to Disabled. Before I disabled it I got about 2 hours of battery in normal use, after I disabled it I got almost 6.5 hours. This is with hybrid mode enabled btw. I think what this service mainly does is that it monitors the hardware usage in the laptop, e.g. CPU temp, clock speed, battery life etc. After I disabled Corsair Service, those functions in iCue stopped working. Doesn't matter, I use HWiNFO64 anyway.
Keyboard: I love this keyboard. This is my overall favourite laptop keyboard. You might find this keyboard a little small if you have big hands, because it's a 15 inch laptop and they crammed a numpad in here. Personally I love to have a numpad and my hands aren't super big so this keyboard fits me perfectly. I also reeeeally love the "FnLock" key, this allows you to use the secondary functions on the F-kays without needing to press Fn. It's such a huge quality of life improvement and needs to be widely adopted in other brands!!! In terms of key travel, my old Alienware 17R2 is still better with over 2mm of key travel because it's a much thicker machine, but the 7i isn't too bad either, it's a lot quieter and just as clicky and responsive.

My keyboard does have a little QC issue, after the keyboard light is turned off, the ENTER key and two keys next to it as well as the CapsLk and Fn key are still dimly lit. This is only visible in complete darkness.

Speakers: This laptop has really really good speakers...Although it's downward firing, it's still very loud and clear and there's plenty of base. You can also use Vantage to change Dolby audio profiles to suit different applications which I think makes a noticeable difference.
Aesthetics: The laptop looks absolutely amazing imo. It's slim, light, minimalistic and at the same time very rgb. But you can also just turn off the rgb and you have a lowkey business laptop. You can also link lighting schemes to different applications in iCue which is very handy. One annoying thing is that you always have rainbow vomit while the laptop is turning on, off, in lock screen and going to sleep. So basically whenever the laptop has power and you're not logged in, there's rainbow vomit. Unfortunately the only way to get rid of this is pressing "Fn+down" a few times to turn off all rgb.

Alienware 17R2 from 2014 & Legion 7i from 2020. I actually DIYed my Alienware by scraping off the black plastics around every single keycap to let more light come though and it's still dimmer than the 7i XD

Miscellaneous:

My CPU clock speed never goes above 4.3ghz for some reason, no matter what the temperature is.
The web cam is 720p, so it's crap. But there's a physical privacy shutter, which is a super nice idea and very handy.
The 230w power brick is smaller and lighter than others.
You can't adjust fan curve in Vantage like you can in Dragon Centre and Armoury Crate.
"Fn+space" is supposed to allow you to cycle through different rgb lighting profiles. But this only works while iCue is shut down because it only cycles through the lighting profiles native to the laptop. When iCue is present it overrides those native lighting profiles and "Fn+space" stops working.
I make the laptop go to sleep by pressing the power button. But on my unit I have to hold the button for like half a second for it to work. I don't know if this is intentional or not and I've not seen anyone else have this. It does prevent people from accidentally pressing the power button and making the laptop go to sleep though...

Hi everyone, first sorry for my english.
The thing is, i'm having a very strange FPS problem with the whole CSGO game. When the BFPass came out, i did the first missions in this de_ancient map with my normal fps ~200 averagely, then out of nowhere the whole game went downhill, getting 15-30fps on the very same map, 45fps on dust2, lows and dips on every map and the gpu usage is also now completely different. I have a FX-8350 and a GTX970 with 1866 16gb ddr3 RAM... i know "a weak CPU in a cpu-biased game" but, that aside, the strange thing is... i always played normally with 50% GPU usage and very smoothly, hitting 200 fps on avg, no stutters, no lags or fps drops... (well a few smokes here and there would stress the old fella) but now GPU usage is constant 99% and VERY COLD, like idling temps. The game is horrible, stutters, lags and fps drops all the time. It is installed on a SSD too.
I went through every trick/tweak available online, even reinstalled Win10. Got nothing. To prove i'm not crazy, or you know... "bitching about some frames" as i said, i played this Ancient map on the beginning of the Broken Fang pass and it was completely normal, never felt the game lagging before, have been playing on the very same PC since 2018, when i started playing CSGO.
Another strange fact is in Feb.04.2021 a 64mb update got everything back to normal for a day, played 2 comps just fine, but the very next day we've had a ~6mb update that f-ed everything up again.
- Every game on my pc is running completely normal.
It's a shame, very disappointing and i'm slowly losing the will or joy to play this game. If anyone knows anything that could be helpful i'll be very thankful, mostly because nearly all my friends are playing CS and i'm everyday just trying to solve this to play with them.

A few things i remember doing atm... can remember more later.
- Went through many nVidia Control Panel tweaks
- Different steam launch options
- Reinstalled the game 4 times
- Reinstalled windows10 (updated it too)
- nvidia driver rollback to December20 (no result and then reupdated)
- different config.cfg/autoexec.cfg commands
- reseted all the Steam cloud saves and stored configs
- Over and underclock/voltage both GPU+CPU (hitting 4.88Ghz on CPU with no change whatsoever)
- Went through all resolutions and in-game Video configs (both high and low) with no change either (not a single frame rate change between 640x480 up to 1280x960, i play @ 4:3 all settings low btw)
- Different Task manager priority and affinity configs
- Temps are fine between 35 and 70°C CPU and 50°C on GPU at max (if ever hits that temp)

The most frustrating thing isn't having a poor performance, generally speaking, but i was playing just fine, did nothing different and the game turned to be unplayable by itself. I've seen a few cases at Steam Discussion, here on reddit and at the nvidia forums with same or similar symptoms (99% GPU usage, low fps, lags etc) happening to people with much better and newer PCs than mine too, hitting the same avg fps on specific maps and lower in general.

Well, i think that sums it up, thank you for reading this far.

Introduction

The Roccat Burst Core is a cheaper version of the better-specced Burst Pro, trading off the stock "paracord" cable, heat-treated PTFE feet, translucent top shell and PMW3381 sensor in favour of a 50% price cut. However, it does retain the new TTC optical switches, along with similar premium materials and top-notch build quality, making it a very serious competitor in the budget space.

https://preview.redd.it/oxzsu8bqw3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6aca7090f38c2986da0ffc75dff22e1771871c70
TECH SPECS:

Pixart PMW3331 optical sensor
- 8500 CPI maximum (default steps: 400/800/1200/1600/3200)
- CPI customization in steps of 100
- 35G max acceleration
- 300 IPS speed cap
~69 grams (with some cable)
"Titan Switch Optical" (TTC dust-proof)
- 100M lifespan rating
On-board memory
120mm(L) x 58mm(W) x 39mm(H)
MSRP: $30 USD

In the Box

Roccat, along with many other companies, has begun the move to more eco-friendly packaging, and this is reflected in the Burst Core. The whole box (with the exception of a recyclable sleeve surrounding the mouse) is paper and cardboard, and there's very little wasted space inside. The Core doesn't come with an extra set of feet, so the only other thing you get is the Quick Start Guide directing you to install software/register the product.

https://preview.redd.it/d2uukytmo3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5019bfaf68a64bbfd26c18a7483a85d1957f1da6
The rubber cable is folded and held together with a cable tie at the front of the mouse. This method of packaging does leave kinks throughout the whole cord, which need to be straightened before use. The feet are covered with a blue plastic covering, not a film, which is very easy to spot and remove.

Shape and Ergonomics

On the outside the Burst series seems to be inspired by the WMO, but in the hand it's actually much closer to the Steelseries Rival 3. The hump is taller and more rounded, however, and shifted slightly further back to "round out" the flat slope that the Steelseries product has at the rear - this should make it the better shape for claw and palm grippers.

Blue outline represents the Steelseries Rival 3
Like the Kain, Roccat played it very safe with the Burst's overall design. The sides are nearly completely straight and flat, with only the slightest curvature to provide some extra grip. You can effectively hold the mouse as far forwards as you'd like (for those who hate front flare-outs), and the widening at the back is also quite subtle. The lack of pronounced middle curvature means the Burst Pro initially feels a bit wider than other mice of its size, which took me a bit of getting used to.

https://preview.redd.it/8lwjpx0uq3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb83bcb25cfb825f24c61990a4ed8f0fdb257876
The mouse is fairly tall, and there should be plenty of room for fingers on either side. The side buttons are large and protrude enough to be easy to reach with a thumb-roll, and the slight inwards slant they have effectively prevents accidental actuations). I'm definitely a fan of the way Roccat designed these, much better than the G203/Rival 3's narrow slits in terms of usability.
M1 and M2 don't have aggressive comfort curves, but there's still a very shallow concavity to them. Something worth mentioning is that Roccat has ditched the "wrap-around buttons" that many mice still have, so no-one should be getting pinched there :)
The scroll wheel is decently wide, with a grippy silicone surface and protrudes at a decent height. Not much to say about them, Roccat usually nails this aspect.

https://preview.redd.it/u1iadkz0r3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9762947a5258fab9f128b932f5f010af25a6fbb9
Most of the Burst Pro materials have been carried over onto the Burst Core. The top shell has that same UV-coating which we first saw on the Kone Pure Ultra - it's a very smooth, matte finish that feels grippy even with dry hands (despite its lack of grain), and during my testing period showed no signs of wear. The sides are matte plastic, although the grip area is covered by tiny glossy hexagons. In the hand this just feels like a glossy coating with a tiny bit of texture, which could definitely be an issue for those with sweaty/greasy hands.

https://preview.redd.it/g1ncreg3r3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e735da94699899f9d78d2f88c3df0bd8fd4242a
Weight-wise, the Burst Core feels great. 69g is by no means the lowest number around for an ultralight mouse, but it's still light enough not to be a negative. From the sensor position the Burst is well-balanced, an aspect many ultralights compromise on in their attempts to shave off more grams. Slightly higher weights should always be preferred over badly shifted balance - no point in chasing headline numbers if the mouse feels horrible.

https://preview.redd.it/s4ps9fn5r3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d775d85ccba575765cdc644bd398c7e273ab2766
Overall, I'm liking the Burst's shape and design a lot. It's been a long time for me since a mouse has felt so immediately "right" in the hand, and it's evident that quite a bit of thought has been put into this mouse's creation (refreshing after the endless FK/GPW clones we've been seeing). While this opinion definitely still subjective, Roccat seems to have a winner here.

Buttons, Feet and Cable

I'll start off by saying that I definitely TTC implementation of optical switches over any LK variants I've tried (including Razer's v2). The Core's buttons feel snappy, with very pronounced, sharp tactility and plenty of rebound-force. In terms of weighting they're on the heavier side since, as with many other strongly tactile switches, the bump increases the force required to depress them. No mushiness or extra travel to speak of, but they are one of the loudest buttons you'll find on a mouse:

https://reddit.com/link/kg4cwk/video/hrqtbwmar3661/player
The side buttons stick with mechanical switches. They require little force to depress, with very thin-feeling tactile feedback and a high-pitched click. No pre-travel, but there is a small amount of post-travel. Performance-wise these are fine, but nothing special.
Roccat is using a 24-step, mechanical ALPS encoder here, which I've often said is the gold standard of scroll wheel components. As always the Titan wheel remains the best around, with smooth, light scrolling whilst maintaining clear, distinct tactile feedback on each step. Scrolling up quickly results in a looser, louder-sounding wheel, a common occurrence on many mice even though the wheel itself has no wobble.
Scroll click is well-weighted. It's stiff enough to resist any accidental actuations when scrolling, but doesn't take unreasonable effort to press either. Tactility is clear and distinct, and Roccat has improved the travel distance coming from their previous mice (Kone Pure Ultra/Owl-eye).
The mouse feet are carbon-dyed (black) PTFE. The edges are rounded, but the feet use the "hollow-point" design with raised edges and a thinner middle. This results in a faster glide at the expense of smoothness, and in this case because of the shape of the feet creating longer horizontal "ridges", vertical movement is louder and scratchier than horizontal gliding.

https://preview.redd.it/j1zx72zrr3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec33e4f96c7acf8e842e31610f3bc15a9b77da7d
Despite this the performance of the feet is still serviceable, and actually better than the stock feet you'd find from the likes of Steelseries or Logitech. After breaking them in it's a definite "pass" for Roccat, especially considering the Burst Core is a value proposition.
Cable is the Burst Core's greatest weakness. It's a rubber cable, and slightly thicker and less flexible than average. It also comes wrapped up in the box which creates several spring-like kinks along it, which need to be manually straightened before it becomes usable. In a mouse bungee the performance here is mediocre at best, and while the basic points (surface smoothness, stress relief pointed up) are done right, a paracord is recommended for anyone who intends to use this as their main rodent.

https://preview.redd.it/bue5oyzur3661.jpg?width=4160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a728235714d499184a7032a7cc6a7045dc8e50e

Performance

Sensor on the Burst Core has been downgraded to the cheaper PMW3331, but the performance decrease is negligible. It appears to be an improved version of the already-existing PMW3330, with slightly higher specs across the board. In the Pixart product stack it's roughly between the now-venerable 3310DH and the 3360, so I did expect good performance from it.
With a 65cm/360° sensitivity, I never noticed any speed-related tracking anomalies in-game (tested in CSGO, Quake Live and Diabotical). This was also corroborated during play with "tricky" surfaces like the MP510, Steelseries DeX and Artisan Raiden, confirming the 3331's good surface compatibility. Undesirable input processing (acceleration, smoothing, etc.) didn't appear to be present at the tested sensitivities.
A common fear with cheaper sensors is overly high lift-off distance, but this isn't an issue with the Burst Core. The absolute tracking cutoff (default settings) is about 2.4mm, or in RJN-speak, two DVDs. While still higher than the Burst Pro's 3381, it's nowhere near as bad as the Rival 3 or un-updated Viper Mini. The sensor position is dead centre, and aligns with the middle of the side buttons - 60mm forwards, and 60mm backwards.
Moving onto xCount plots, we see that the PMW3331 does just fine at the 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 CPI settings. It's not until 5000 CPI that we see the characteristic spike indicating the smoothing threshold. This level of smoothing appears to stay consistent all the way up to the maximum sensitivity of 8500 CPI.

Click into image for better resolution :)
The Burst Core is able to maintain a 1000hz polling rate with no issues whatsover, and as the MouseTester plot shows it's relatively stable, with dropped polls being few and far between.

https://preview.redd.it/3z8w0rra74661.jpg?width=994&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3297304f20036b99f667d0f38c8f5b7f3abe163e
The 3331 is rated for a maximum tracking speed of 300 IPS (7.62 m/s), which I don't expect to be achievable in-game by anyone. During the torture test I was only able to hit about 6.4m/s (252 IPS), which the Core's sensor handled with ease - we're definitely long gone from the days when budget sensors would spin out in use.

https://preview.redd.it/i774zz32u3661.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=8adc4eb572600522db44f3753bde0ac375c2227e
As for CPI deviation, the Burst Core had decent results all-round, with the 800 CPI setting consistently being closest to the set value. Concerningly there was also a peak in CPI deviation on the 3200 CPI setting - I'm not sure what causes this, but users of that sensitivity should be aware of it. Keep in mind that the deviation level varies between copies (and is affected by tracking surface, lift-off height, etc.).

https://preview.redd.it/wsase957u3661.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63d5257216cbe4213c0afa8ad575b8b883d4b739
Finally, the MS Paint test. At the 400, 800 and 1600 CPI steps, the sensor performs flawlessly. When pushed to 3200 CPI, however, the level of ripple/jitter becomes noticeable, and is totally unusable at 5000 CPI. This is the only caveat of an otherwise great sensor - those who use higher CPIs should steer clear.

https://preview.redd.it/znyjyl88u3661.png?width=1672&format=png&auto=webp&s=b3be7c821efc0ea6252647be8383476ea4b7aa4e
Moving away from sensor tests, the L/R test software checks the minimum click duration of the Burst Core's TTC optical switches. On a mechanical-switched mouse these results can sometimes also be indicative of the debounce delay, but since the Burst Core lacks this, the results seem to be affected by some sort of release delay. The mode is 20ms on both M1 and M2.

LMB on the left, RMB on the right
Another interesting thing to note is that the TTC opticals can indeed "bounce" the shutter, making drag clicking possible with the average "in-between" time of clicks being 60ms (well over the minimum 20ms).

https://preview.redd.it/rn8fa1ftu3661.jpg?width=277&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aed2a67a22a45b340e194f506f031415aade6922
Bump testing against a pre-25K update GPW (right key) shows the Burst Core (left key) wins consistently by 2-3ms, no doubt on account of the advantages optical switches provide. Keep in mind that this method of testing isn't 100% accurate, and while I did my best to nullify variables such as travel distance and click tensioning, this should be used as a guideline only:

https://preview.redd.it/d8oixn90v3661.jpg?width=361&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=119c6d213247fa881e604f3ee9c6fed638e64ed4
To sum up, in the technical aspect the Burst Core performs great, and I found it pretty much on par with most top mice (including the Burst Pro). For $30 USD there's not much at all to complain about as long as you don't use a sensitivity of over 3200 CPI.

Build Quality

Roccat's products have a reputation for being high quality, and the Burst Core is no exception. Throughout my testing I've found nothing major to fault here; the sides are totally solid with zero flex, pressing on the bottom doesn't actuate any buttons, and nowhere on the shell can I even find the hint of a creak. Shaking the mouse in all directions yields no internal rattling at all.
There's no wobble on the main buttons either, thanks to a clever hinge design which keeps the triggers as part of the top shell. Side and CPI buttons are similarly sturdy. The only noticeable thing nearing a quality problem is the increased loudness of the wheel when scrolling up, but that's so common and so minor that it would be truly pedantic to call that a real con.
Out of the box the feet are aligned correctly and protected with the aforementioned plastic film, which prevented any scratches during shipping. While I'm still not a fan of the way the cable was wrapped, it doesn't seem to have caused any internal damage and throughout the entire testing period functioned perfectly.
The "Roccat Burst" logo was one of my main concerns with durability - printed-on logos often wear off over time, but in this case it's actually been printed sub-surface and is protected by the very durable UV surface coat. It's obviously impossible to tell for sure at this stage, but long-term durability is looking good for the Burst.

Software - Roccat Swarm

The Burst Core is effectively plug-and-play - assuming you're okay with the preset CPI settings, there's no "gotcha" which necessitates the install of their software. Should you want to tinker around though, Roccat Swarm allows you a number of customization options:

Scrolling speed
Double-click speed (not to be confused with debounce, this just controls how fast you have to click for the inputs to be considered an OS "double-click")
OS pointer speed (same as the Windows sensitivity slider, leave this on 0)
CPI settings (five steps, each controllable in increments of 100 CPI)
Button re-assignments, including several presets (media, "balanced" and "precision")
Easy-shift
RGB settings (AIMO, wave, solid, heartbeat, blinking, breathing), with speed and brightness options
Polling rate customization (125hz, 250hz, 500hz, 1000hz)
Angle snapping
RGB sleep settings
Factory reset option (changes all customizations back to default)
Ability to use up to five profiles at once, with auto-switch functionality
Macro manager
AIMO interactions with other Roccat products

To actually install Swarm, a 160 MB compressed installer has to be downloaded from Roccat's site. This will set up the core software, but in order to get any functionality out of it a mouse-specific "module" needs to be downloaded from within the application. Swarm usually detects what you've got plugged in and prompts you to update, but this doesn't always happen (in which case you need to navigate to the update panel yourself and find the necessary download).

https://preview.redd.it/bygw6e22v3661.jpg?width=1012&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e25cd43190b780222176ddd6222a9e09577b6ef9
While Swarm does offer a decent selection of features, the software itself feels fairly clunky and outdated. Swarm uses a collection of "panels" which the user can drag around and pin, but in my opinion all this does is make the experience feel disjointed and messy. Certain options (such as the polling rate settings) aren't where they intuitively should be, and there are some legacy settings (OS sensitivity, cursor trails, etc.) still lying around on the main screen. It doesn't help that the interface is nowhere near as modern and well-polished as Roccat's products are:

https://preview.redd.it/vxkgup03v3661.jpg?width=1680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7b835b95b76afce1cea1e97805006269914067d
To be fair, though, Swarm was pretty much totally stable throughout my time with it (which can't be said for many much newer mouse softwares). It never refused to launch, always closed immediately, and making/saving changes was pretty much instant. Swarm is also light on system resources - when running in the background with the interface open, my CPU usage (Ryzen 7 3700X) remained under a percent. RAM usage was about 100 MB (out of 32 GB).
So basically, despite some visual and organizational shortcomings, Swarm is still a practical and functional software tool that will do most of what you want it to do (with a bit of looking around). It also doesn't need to stick around - the Burst Core has on-board memory that (as far as I can tell) saves everything except for macros.

Conclusion

The budget space is often the most fiercely competitive of any industry, and the Burst Core is Roccat's best entry yet. It has a great safe shape, premium-feeling materials and quality, the sensor's performance holds its own against any top optical (as long as you don't go over 3200 CPI), and what's in my opinion the best optical switch implementation on the market. For $30 USD that's an enormous bang for very little buck - if the shape suits you, I'd be picking this up over the G203 Lightsync and Rival 3 for sure.
Shape and Ergonomics (subjective): 5/5, I personally really like the shape :)
Buttons, Feet and Cable: 3/5, points deducted on account of the feet and cable.
Performance: 4/5, just don't use >3200 CPI.
Build Quality (copy dependent): 4.5/5, scrolling up is louder = deduction.
Software: 2.5/5, decent enough, could use improvement.
Thanks for reading guys, feel free to ask any other questions not covered here :)

Hello Rusters, we just started with a fresh new Rust Server! ***JUST WIPED***
*** Please UP Vote this and let people see *** as the project been made with love <3 and will be improved in the future <3
If you like modded rust servers please read it ASAP!
Unfortunately at the moment there is no population on the server as the server is new, but i hope and i feel that players will enjoy playing on this server and i hope to see today atleast 15 players that would make me happy <3
If you have any ideas how we can improve our server please write your idea in our Discord.
If you liked our server dont forget to add it to favorites.
*** NOTICE *** If you going to play on our server and see a bug or error please contact OWNER ASAP in Discord server.

***|Little Info about our Server ^.^ |***

• 2x
• Max Team Size 3
• Solo | Duo | Trio
• 100 Slots
• World Size 3500
• Custom Loot Table
• Server is hosted in [EU/UK]
• Our Server IP | rust.rustlands.net:28015
• Our Website RustLands.net
• Our Discord https://discord.gg/szsgsySW8B
• Vote for our server, simply type in chat /vote and get $100 for spending it in shop.

***|Wipe|***

• Map Wipe every week on Mondays at 12:00 AM [UK Time]
• Blue Print Wipe every 2 weeks on Mondays at 12:00 AM [UK Time]

***|List of Events|***

• King Of The Hill - Show us who is the King of the Hill on the server. Climb to the highest point on the map (mountains, monuments, buildings) and stay on it until the end. You can build, but you´re not allowed to be within range of your Tool Cupboard. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• Collenction Of Resources - Your task is to collect the most resources in given time, players points are the total number of resources collected. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• Animal Hunting - In this event you have to kill the most animals, animals grant different amounts of points, 1 point for a chicken, for a wolf/boadeehorse 4 points, for a bear 10 points. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• PET Helicopter - A patrol helicopter appears in the center of the map, you must attract his attention and forcing it to shoot at you, every second the helicopter is fighting with you, you get one point, (+1 optional, if helicopter is sending missiles at you), the helicopter can simultaneously fight two players, in this case, both players will get points. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• Searching For Loot - In this event, you need to loot the most, each crate/barrel can only be looted by one player, you do not need to pick up loot, just open boxes or break barrels. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• Special Cargo - A airdrop with a special cargo will be dropped on the map, the cargo needs to be picked up and brought to a target destination, special cargo is displayed on the map as a golden airdrop, the person who picked up the cargo is displayed for everyone on the map, the target destination can be seen only by the player who picked up the cargo. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• Falling Fundations - An fun event in a special arena, all players appear on a 10x10 field of foundations, each 5 seconds, one of the foundations will fall until there is only one foundation left, if there are several players left on the last field, they get a sword and radiation begins, the player who stays alive for the longest time wins. [Rewards $50 and VIP for 7 Days]
• Dangerous Treasures - is an event that occurs once every one to two hours. The event spawns a box at a random position on the map away from all player obstructions and water. *** NOTICE *** [You will not get any rewards as it automated Event]
• Guarded Crate - Spawns custom random events at locations guarded by scientists *** NOTICE *** [You will not get any rewards as it automated Event]

***|List of what server makes esier for players gameplay|***

• Backpack - Allows players to craft Backpack.
• Better Loot - Gives players better loot.
• Crafting Controller - Allows players to craft stuff quicker.
• Furnace Splitter - Allows players to put your ores into the furnace and they will be split up into a configurable amount of stacks.
• Private Messages - Allows players to chat in a private chat.
• Quick Smelt - Allows players to smelt ores quicker.
• Recycler Speed - Allows players to recycler stuff quicker.
• Stack Size Controller. Modified stack size.

***|List of all server commands for players|***

• /Grade 1-4 (/Bgrade) - Allows players to place foundations at a specific level without having to upgrade manually (Unuseable in RaidBlock)
• /Bounty - Allows you to place bounties on other players for $/RP or for Items
• /Clan - Allows you to create a clan with your team to show a Clan tag in chat
• /DC - Allows you to link yourself between our discord & Rust server
• /FB - Allows you to place Picture frames on boxes so that you can categorize your boxes!
• /friend - Allows you to add Friends in-game (Novelty)
• /Gather - Shows our Gather rates for the server (Currently set as 2x)
• /TOD - shows current time of day / Night/Day Cycles
• /Kit - Shows available free / Paid kits (Purchase VIP Via https://RustLands.net
• /PM - Private message your friends in-game or just talk to another player! use /pm NAME to send & /r Message to reply!
• /Remove - Allows you to remove structures you placed (Unuseable in Raidblock)
• /TPR - Request to teleport to Another player (10 per day)
• /Outpost - Teleport to the outpost (10 per day)
• /Bandit - Teleport to Bandit (10 per day)
• /Home - Allows you setup a home-teleport location that you can teleport to (10 per day)
• /PR - Shows player rankings, solo & Clan - PVE & PVP
• /Sil - Allows you to place a picture on a Frame/BanneSign (example: /sil https://i.imgur.com/P8WyLhg.jpg) - Must be facing Sign (.png and .jpg only)
• /Sili - Place currently held item on a Frame/BanneSign as a picture
• /Case - CSGO Case gambling...Rust edition? Earn $ for activity & spend it via Cases!
• /S - In-Game shop, you earn $100 per 60 minutes activity, use this money to purchase items from the store!
• /Skinbox - Skin any item in your inventory to a list of over 14,000 Skins!
• /Voteday - Vote skip the Night cycle! (Who likes night anyway!)
• /Trade - Allows you to trade another player!

Sales, Battlepasses (including other naming shemes like operations) or releases can have a impact on the market, which lasts mostly just for a short amount of time.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated titles to get released. This should mean, if the game equals the expectations, that many many people will sell items to purchase it on steam.
What do you expect for the csgo market?

For people who want to cash out the amount to get cyberpunk.
For people that might want to take the opportunity to invest.

I expect that Cyberpunk 2077 has a bigger influence than recent sales.
Sales are not what they used to be. The discounts in sales mostly equal short per game discounts between the sale events (like summer or winter sale) and there are often no real suprises. Basicly steam sales are nothing really special anymore, which leads to less people selling items. The last operation had a big influence over the csgo market. For example the breakout case dropped from 28 cents (Euro) to 20 cents. The AK Redline (FT) dropped from around 12 Euro to a bit more than 10 Euro. I would rate a new operation as a higher impact, because it is directly connected to the csgo market. Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot of hype and if the game comes close, equal or even exceeds the expectations it will definitely a be on top of the steam charts for some time.
I assume that low value items and items that come close to the price of the game will see a good dip shortly before and maybe a week or two after the release. I coubt it has as much influence as a new operation.
That pushes me to the conclusion to sell items in the close future if you want to sell items for the game and that it should be a decent opportunity to invest in lower valued items like major items, cases, or high volume skins. Again the example of the breakout case, which dropped almost 30 percent because of the shattered web operation. It should definitely be a good investment opportunity if you already have cash on steam or sell now and reinvest during the release. The effect could be way smaller if you want to add fresh money, since the dip could be less powerful than just buying on 3rd party sites.

Introduction

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Hey guys, before I jump into my analysis of training methods and optimal routines for competitive gaming, I'll introduce myself briefly. Just to be clear, I don't believe achievements / citations matter much in relation to the validity of my statements, if information is logically consistent and provides empirical data / evidence in support of it's claims, then it should be viewed as valid regardless of the source's authority. However, since I know a lot of people are interested in the individual achievements of people they choose to listen to, I'll go ahead and provide that information. I'm an (ex) semi-pro counter strike player with over 7k hours in CS:GO, my peak elo fluctuated around 3.4-3.6k in 2016 on Faceit (EU) and I've played at a multitude of local lans and faceit tournaments. When a ranking system was introduced in Overwatch I climbed up to #29 WR as McCree. I've hit top 500 in Apex Legends, as well as multiple top 100 scores in Kovaak's FPS Aim Trainer. I have always stood out as a player due to raw mechanical skill, more specifically my aim. People assume that my aim got where it is now solely due to the thousands of hours I have spent playing a plethora of FPS games, and while that is true to some extent, training routines have played a large role in the progression of my skill. Everyone has a friend with thousands of hours in a game that still plays like a beginner, that's not due to genetic predisposition acting as a set-back, it's due to the fact that while they have spent time playing the game, they haven't spent enough time putting themselves in the right scenarios. Due to my experience and understanding of effective training, and the fact that I don't have as much time to play games competitively anymore but also want to involve myself in the community, I started coaching players in CS:GO in 2019, and then moved to coaching players for Apex Legends in 2020. My coaching is very heavily based around identifying the subjective needs of each individual player, and creating an aim training / daily routine personalized to cater to their lackluster skill areas. Due to the nature of Valorant as a game (gunplay / core mechanics) being very similar to CS, I believe I have a very solid understanding of how the game plays out, and can identify optimal vs. sub-optimal scenarios within it. If rank means anything to you in closed beta, I am currently immortal 2 in Valorant, and my rank has fluctuated in the D3 - Immo 3 ranking range throughout CB. With full release of the game being a week away, this post is my attempt to provide a highly analytical informative guide in the context of competitive training.

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Due to the lengthy nature of such an analytical post, I am providing a table of contents in order to make the post a bit easier to navigate.

What makes a training routine effective?
Finding the right mouse for YOU.
Your setup matters.
Low vs. High sensitivity, what should you use?
How to effectively train your aim.
Get rid of bad habits.
The importance of sleep + nutrition.
Coaching info + Link to my Discord server.

1) What makes a training routine effective?

Whether you're attempting to learn how to ride a bike, how to play better tennis, or trying to perfect your click timing in overwatch, there are always behavioral patterns you can follow which will increase your rate of improvement. While gaming isn't a sport in traditional context, there are still physical aspects to it which can largely impact your performance. While you won't be relying on full body motion during a game of Valorant for example, you're still going to be moving your Arm in response to the visual stimuli being displayed on your screen. Obviously playing more of a game will lead to inevitable mechanical improvement, but depending on the skill level you're trying to achieve, simply "playing more" might not be enough to get you there. The problem with just playing more of a game in relation to optimal improvement, is that you're not focusing on specific aspects and therefore, you're failing to identify individual problems in your gameplay.
In order to improve at optimal rates, you need to establish a training routine that you consistently abide to. I do offer individual coaching services which I will provide information for in the final section of this post, but I will not attempt to create a universal format for game training as it would be sub-optimal at best. In my experience training routines are most effective when personalized to the individual needs of the player, I could be coaching two people of similar rank on the same game and give them vastly different routines to follow, simply due to the fact that people are different, someone may be a top aimer and have 0 gamesense while someone else may have amazing gamesense and lackluster aim. The key to proper training is specificity and consistensy, in order to be effective in your training you must narrow down the aspects of your gameplay that need to be prioritized for improvement and then build a daily routine around that which you will habitualize as part of your weekly schedule. Something to note is that your daily training shouldn't surpass the time frame of 50-70 minutes as your brain will not retain information effectively past that amount of continuous activity. The best method to assess skill level in a game and spot issues in gamesense or anything game-specific is to go over unedited gameplay recordings and scrutinize the footage until what needs to be worked on is made clear; The best method to assess raw aim regardless of a specific game is to have someone play through a map selection on Kovaak's which includes both Click Timing and Tracking oriented challenges and assess their median score values.
Different games require different types of mechanical skill, while Apex might be tracking oriented like AFPS titles, CS and Valorant rely mostly on holding 90 degree horizontal angles and click timing. In order to retain information / knowledge proper nutrition and a substantial amount of sleep are both extremely important factors and I will be going more in-depth on the reasoning later on in section 8. In conclusion, if you want to train effectively: 1) Analyze your gameplay (preferably with someone experienced) and spot the main issues 2) Create a routine that lasts ~60 minutes and addresses your key issues 3) stay consistent with your routine (don't skip days, train on the same time every day) 4) eat & sleep properly... This should go without saying but you'd be surprised at the amount of people who fail to do either of those things.

2) Finding the right mouse.

When it comes to FPS games, having a mouse which can accurately translate your arm movements into mouse movements in your game is of extreme importance, and as I mentioned in my previous guide, is constantly undervalued by the casual gaming community. There is a common gaming myth that I am certain everyone regardless of the genre of games they play has heard which is that if your mouse works without blatant issues then it does it's job. Such misconceptions are usually passed on by casual gamers that don't support spending $60+ for a quality gaming mouse, but unfortunately such statements are false, which is why you will never see any streamer or competitive player using a 10$ laptop mouse. It would be pretty useless and unfair for me to tell you to go out and spend $60+ on a mouse without providing a logical explanation as to why you should, so let's go over the reasons you need a quality mouse, as well as what makes a good gaming mouse good, and how to find the mouse that suits you best.
First things first, why do you need a good gaming mouse? It's pretty simple, when playing PC games, but FPS games in particular, you want your mouse movements to be fast and accurate, and in order to achieve that you need to have a quality mouse, if you try a 180 degree flick on an outdated laptop mouse you will quickly realise the mouse loses track through the movement and is therefore inaccurate and even if it didn't lose track, the built in acceleration would make the movement of the mouse inaccurate relative to the movement of your arm. If you tried something similar as the previous example with tracking a target you will quickly realise the movement isn't perfectly smooth, along with the fact that such mice have delay, which means your reaction time will be slower as a result. Gaming mice offer precision sensors which will track your movement accurately with no delay or acceleration, this is very important as it will maximise your in-game precision by properly mirroring your arm movements as opposed to a generic mouse, not only that, but training with a mouse that is inconsistent in movement will hinder your ability to train your aim as it will mess with your muscle (procedural) memory. Gaming mice also tend to offer much more comfortable ergonomic shapes which will give you a better grip, fit your hand better, and also allow you to go on extended gaming sessions without your hand feeling cramped / tired. It is important that you choose a mouse that has a flawless optical sensor (laser sensors are inaccurate), most modern gaming mice offer flawless sensors, but be sure to check before you buy your gaming mouse; Any 33XX sensor will work flawlessly, with the best sensors in the category being the 3360 and the 3366 along with the Logitech HERO sensor which is a low-power version of the 3360. Now, while precise sensors may be important what is even more important is finding a mouse that fits your hand well, this will depend on two things, one being your hand size, and the other being your grip style. I have created a guide (guide within a guide, nice) to help you measure your hand correctly, as well as understand grip styles.
Hand measurement guide:
In order to measure your hands for the purpose of finding a mouse you will want to measure two things, one is the length of your hand, like so:

https://preview.redd.it/0690tnpaoa151.png?width=316&format=png&auto=webp&s=37383e5792a493762f8b8c7a03cb9621cfce8c53

The other is the width of your hand, like so:

not my hand btw!

Once you have figured out the dimensions of your hand, the format in which mice are presented is L x W. I personally have large hands at 21.5x11 cm, I've been using the Zowie EC2-B Divina for the past year and I am very pleased with it as the shape and texture is ideal for me, being an improved DA shape with a 3360 sensor. The most important aspect of the dimensions in terms of determining which mouse is ideal is the length of your hand.
After you have determined your hand size, you need to find out what grip style you use. There are three types of mouse grips, first we have the palm grip, then the claw grip, and finally the fingertip grip. Here is an image showing each grip.

https://preview.redd.it/fwd2q49coa151.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=fae3eae4be95f9bdffc69bda5142c21992579d7c
Once you have the 'L x W' dimensions of your hand and have figured out what grip style you use, click on this link and you will be presented with a range of options for mice depending on your hand size and grip style. The recommendations have been put together by RocketJumpNinja himself, for those of you unfamiliar with who he is, he is a Quake player and marginally the best competitive mouse reviewer out there and I would trust him blindly for anything mouse related. Once you have found 1-2 mice you are interested in you can check his mouse reviews on YT for more detailed information on each mouse. Having tested a multitude of mice myself, I would say my favourites have been the Deathadder Elite, Zowie EC2-A and EC2-B series due to their ergonomic designs, and the G305 and GPW due to their flawless wireless capabilities.

3) Your setup matters.

It would be great for everyone to have an even playing field, and for me to be able to genuinely tell you that your setup doesn't matter in the context of your gaming performance, unfortunately I would simply be lying to you. Yes, it is true that your raw skill is more important than the setup you have, but if you have a setup that limits you from exceeding your current skillcap then it is acting as a handicap and needs to change. Since having a good setup is something that is purely based on buying better equipment / hardware, I will keep this section short. To me the most important parts of any setup are the mouse, the monitor, and the mousepad, in that order. If you don't have a mouse that fits well in your hand, and suits your grip style ( claw grip, fingertip grip, palm grip ) then you won't be able to reach the peak of your potential raw aim. Once again, do NOT copy the pros here, they do not have the same hand size as you, and them being able to land 10 headshots in a row using the logitech G Pro doesn't mean that you will too.
Some recommendations I have for mice are: Zowie EC series ( I personally use an EC2-B Divina ) Zowie Divina S series ( If you preffer ambidextrous mice ) Deathadder Elite ( gets a lot of hate but the shape is great / quality not the best ) Logitech G Pro ( hands down the best wireless mouse out there if you have medium / small hands ) After mice comes your monitor, this is pretty simple, you want a monitor that is 144hz + as you will only be able to see as much FPS on screen as your monitor's HZ value. This is crucial to avoid choppy gameplay and improve your tracking and reaction time, in games like CS or Valorant where reacting quickly to an enemy peeking you is the difference between winning or losing a round, this is especially important. 144hz monitors are not too expensive anymore, being able to get a decent BenQ monitor for around 200 euros (XL2411P). Finally, you want to have a large enough mousepad to accomodate your mouse movements, large enough that you don't stumble across the problem of having to lift your mouse to readjust or reach the end of the pad too often.

4) Low vs. High sensitivity, what should you use?

I won't go too in-depth on this part of the post, as sensitivity is mostly subjective, although I highly recommend playing on sensitivities in the range of 35-55 cm/360 @ 400 DPI for games like CS or Valorant. In general, the range of effective sensitivities varies depending on the aspect of aim.sensitivities in the range of 22-32 cm/360 are what's mostly used by pros for highly aim reliant (and mostly tracking reliant) games such as Quake or Diabotical, while for click timing oriented games that don't require large mouse movements such as CSGO or Valorant, sensitivities that pros use are usually 35+ cm/360. The most popular sensitivity used by professional players in CSGO is 51 cm/360, or 2 in-game sens @ 400 DPI, and I would suggest that people stick to a sensitivity near that for Valorant, the a 51 cm/360 sens in valorant would be 0.63 in-game @ 400 DPI. Since DPI fluctuates between players, a good way to compare sensitivities is by using e-dpi values, which is your in-game sensitivity multiplied by your DPI, 51 cm/360 or 0.63 in Valorant @ 400 DPI, gives us a value of 252.
I highly recommend that for a game like Valorant, people stick to the range of 200-300 e-dpi, as such 5v5 comp fps games aren't as "aim reliant" but mostly rely on your ability to maintain good crosshair placement and hold angles, which are both benefited by lower sensitivities. Now, you may ask why 70-80% of active pros in CSGO still use 400 DPI when 800 DPI is technically "better", the answer to that is quite simple. 400 DPI is less accurate in tracking fine movements while 800 DPI is more accurate in that matter, in theory picking up on fine movement may seem like a good thing, but realistically nobody has a perfectly steady hand and in a game like Valorant where you need to maintain consistent head-level crosshair placement at all times, you want to minimize involuntary movements / jitter, as much as possible. One thing to take note of, is that if you're playing above 1080p as a resolution (you shouldn't be due to input lag / lower FPS anyway) 400 DPI may result in pixel skipping and you might need to move up to 800 DPI.

5) How to effectively train your aim.

In my opinion Valorant training shouldn't be aim oriented as it's not a game which requires aim in the sense that an AFPS like quake would require aim, training should be more oriented towards learning how to adapt to in-game situations optimally but aim is also an important factor in any FPS, and something highly transferable from game to game. For Valorant gunplay practice I would recommend playing CSDM in CSGO community servers, all you have to do is find a free-for-all community server to play on, preferably a headshot only server. The reason I'm recommending CSDM as a part of your Valorant training routine is because the gunplay is highly similar between the two games, and it will teach you proper crosshair placement and effective angle peeking which are two of the most important aspects when it comes to gunplay / aim in both Valorant and CS. If you want to train your aim in a more complete manner that will transfer to any game you play regardless of FPS sub-genre then a daily routine on Kovaak's FPS aim trainer is the way to go. If you're choosing to go with the Kovaak route, it's important that you find a balance of Click Timing vs. Tracking oriented scenarios in the aim trainer. An example of a pretty basic 60 minute routine that contains both CT and Tracking scenarios could be:
Tracking
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> Tile Frenzy 180 tracking 300prct - 10 minutes / Thin aiming long invincible - 10 minutes
> Close Fast Strafes Easy - 10 minutes
> PatTarget Switch - 10 minutes

Click Timing
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> pistol strafe gallery - 10 minutes
> bounce 180 - 10 minutes
> 1wall 6targets TE - 10 minutes

6) Get rid of bad habits.

As a final note to this in-depth guide, I want to mention mistakes many people habitually make. There are two types of these bad habits, one being physical habits, and one being ingame habits. The physical bad habits you need to be aware of are: Posture, Chair to desk height, and Monitor position. Bad posture can cause neck / back strain and improper blood flow which will not only affect your gameplay negatively, but also your health, so for god's sake, don't sit on your chair leaning 90 degrees forward like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I mentioned Chair to desk height because many people play with their chair too high relative to their desks, or too low relative to their desks. Ideally, you want your forearm to be able to comfortably rest flat upon your desk while holding your mouse, without the elbow hovering into oblivion or dropping below desk height. The final point on physical bad habits is monitor position, I won't explain this one in depth as it is pretty straight forward, you want your monitor at the right height and distance so that you can see the entirety of the screen without the image being distorted due to the tilt / angle.
In terms of ingame bad habits there are TONS so I'll just stick to the ones specific to Valorant for this post. The first point being poor crosshair placement. For those of you with no experience in games like CS or maybe even games like R6, crosshair placement won't be something you have perfected, most games aren't low TTK (time to kill) enough for crosshair placement to be as important as it is in the aforementioned games, therefore people don't need to worry too much about the position of their crosshair while moving around the map. In Valorant, good crosshair placement is the most important aspect of aiming, and the deciding factor in how a gunfight goes while peeking or getting peeked. Due to the fact that this game is very similar to CSGO in TTK, you will want to make a habit of constantly keeping your crosshair at head level, it doesn't matter if you're expecting someone to peek at the given moment, make a habit of always keeping your crosshair at a position where an enemy player model's head would be in the hypothetical scenario that they peeked that angle.
Another bad habit is shooting while moving, it may seem straightforward to most people, but I see people do this all the time. DON'T shoot while moving unless you're counter-strafing and single firing (counter strafing is the act of shooting mid-directional change to reset the inaccuracy factor). In CSGO you can spray while crouch-walking and maintain accuracy, in this game however, even while holding down the control key your bullets will go all over the place, so don't move while spraying unless close enough to the target that you can sacrifice some spread accuracy. Another bad habit that I see quite often in VODs I review, is people being too predictable. Stop pushing the same exact angle every round, or playing the same exact spot on defense every round, or using your abilities in the same exact way every round. This doesn't mean that if you're a B player on defense you should rotate to A next round, it just means you should try to mix it up between rounds so that the enemy team can't just prefire or ability spam the location you played last round for a free kill. Something similar to this is peeking the same angle multiple times, if you try to go for a kill while peeking and miss your shots, don't peek the same exact angle a second later as you'll simply get one-tapped by any half-decent player.
Another bad habit I see too often even in higher ranks (diamond / immortal) is people over-rotating, this is a big one. Let's say you're playing B on split, you still have mid control, and your team just got a kill or two in A main but you don't have clear info on the rest of the team, do NOT leave B to go defend A, this is called over-rotating, and I have lost far too many rounds due to teammates doing this. Only rotate when you have enough information on the enemies' positions to be able to leave the site you're holding with 0% chance of the enemy team pushing it while you're off it. Finally, I want to mention economy mismanagement real quick. If you lost the first round, regardless of if you got the spike planted or not, you never want to force-buy second round, unless you have AFK teammate compensation, or somehow everyone got a kill each + the plant, you don't want to buy. Make sure you have at least 1600 credits remaining after buying up during the 2nd round's buy phase.
That's all, and oh, quick complaint, If your teammate has spent the past 20 seconds flanking around the enemy team, don't just stomp past him like an elephant and alert the entirety of the enemy team to his position. Dick move.

7) The importance of sleep + nutrition.

There are plenty of training routines out there which focus on gaming, but very few of them highlight the importance of proper nutrition and sleep. Before I jump into explaining why exactly nutrition and sleep (especially sleep) are so important in retaining information, let's talk a bit about exercise since I've seen it discussed in this sub the past few days. You don't need to be hitting the gym daily in order to see a positive influence on your in-game performance, nor will you notice one in general, but it is a fact that physical exercise can lead to a temporary boost in neuroplasticity, which is an active change in your brain physiology due to synaptic growth that plays a large role in learning new things. A decent amount of cardio pre-training will increase blood flow to your brain and release certain proteins which have been found to boost synaptic growth.
Here is an article which explains this in-depth:
https://elifesciences.org/articles/45920
The article contains a lot of scientific terminology, but it's still decently comprehendable for those of you with an advanced vocabulary in English.
I won't go too in-depth about nutrition, as it's a pretty straight forward concept. The human brain needs to be "fed" properly in order to function at an optimal state, this doesn't just mean eating enough, but also eating healthy. You need to maintain a balanced diet in order allow your brain to function at it's peak, protein intake is especially important, a poor / incomplete diet can very often lead to lack of focus, which is very evidently an important factor when it comes to processing / retaining information, meaning you should never be hungry while training. Other than base nutritional values, make sure you don't have any vitamin defficencies, and take care of them through supplement consumption in the case that you do.
Here is an article which discusses the impact proper nutrition has on learning.
http://www.educationalneuroscience.org.uk/resources/neuromyth-or-neurofact/diet-makes-a-difference-to-learning/
Now for the most important aspect of all, sleep. Sleeping patterns have one of the biggest influences on learning in regards to the ability to retain information, and proper sleep is very often disregarded by people. Sleep deprivation can lead to a plethora of problems which will negatively impact both your learning process during training and your actual gameplay during the day. Sleep-deprivation, just like poor nutrition, can lead to an inability to focus, which will impact your training / gaming for obvious reasons. Sleep deprivation will also keep your brain from resting properly, meaning that your exhausted neural synapses will not be able to function properly, failing to coordinate information. This means that information being processed at the time being won't be absorbed properly (think of an old sponge that has lost its properties) AND your brain won't be able to access prior-knowledge, meaning you function at suboptimal levels mechanically as well. In a more psychological aspect, your mood may also be affected by lack of proper sleep (and nutrition) which can lead to a lack of motivation amongst other things which will negatively impact your game training. If you don't sleep long enough, your brain won't go into the REM stages necessary to retain knowledge, the main aspect affected by this is procedural memory, why is this important? For those of you that aren't aware, muscle memory is a type of procedural memory, and muscle memory is something directly linked to your mechanical performance in-game, so yes, improper sleeping patterns will actually lead to poor decision making, poor aim, a bad mood, and your training during that day will go to waste.
here is an article explaining some of my aforementioned points:
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/learning-memory
I understand that most of you won't want to read through a lengthy article, so here's one of the most important excerpts:
In conclusion, if you want your daily training to be absorbed properly, and your in-game decision making and mechanics to perform at an optimal level, eat and sleep properly. If you don't care about playing Valorant at a competitive level, still, eat and sleep properly. No really, It's important.

8) Coaching info + Link to my Discord server.

I won't say much here, as this is meant to be an informative post and not a shameless plug, but I am currently providing coaching for CSGO / Apex legends / Valorant. My coaching method works as follows: I go over unedited gameplay recordings live with the player, I analytically break down the flaws in their gameplay, whether mechanical or game-specific, then I create a daily routine catered to the player's individual needs in relation to improvements that need to be made. The routine always includes a daily Kovaak's routine that combined CT / Tracking scenarios and lasts on average ~60 minutes. If anyone is interested in my services, or simply wants to talk to me about anything game-related, feel free to join my discord server here:
- https://discord.gg/Kwm8zT7
New twitter : https://mobile.twitter.com/Twix_v2

Hi, so I recently upgraded almost every component of my nearly 10-year-old PC and I’ve been loving it until recently. After changing my system fan from a very old ThermalTake one that came with my old case to a newer beQuiet one, I experienced a noticeable drop in performance on CS:GO and a few other games, which is weird considering that it’s literally just a system fan that I changed up. I never changed it back since it’s really weird that it’d be the issue.
It persisted even after I changed up the chassis entirely which came with entirely new fans, so I’m thinking that the issue is with the motherboard somehow? It’s pretty much the only thing I touched when I changed the original fan, and when I was transferring the components to the new chassis, I basically already reseated every component except the processor.
The weird thing about this is that the lower framerate shouldn’t matter since it’s still constantly above my refresh rate, right? The problem is, even if the numbers in CSGO and Valorant stay above 200 FPS, Valorant feels like I’m playing on 60hz everytime and seeing enemies stops the game for like a second or two while CSGO feels smooth most of the time but it occasionally skips a few frames, noticeable when I see enemies.
Anyway I’d like some suggestions on how to troubleshoot this as I honestly have no clue now. I’ll give a simple list of issues, solutions I’ve tried, and my full specs below.
TL;DR issues:

CS:GO drop in performance = From high constant 400-500 FPS on certain maps to only 200-300 with very noticeable skips in frames even if the framerate doesn’t go down.

What I tried - Change up my settings (I’ve always played on all low settings except for shadow, didn’t help), limit fps to 240 (didn’t help), disable fullscreen optimization and other launch option things (didn’t work)

Valorant drop in performance = Constantly feels like I’m playing on a 60hz monitor, pauses for a second or two whenever I encounter an enemy. Makes the game unplayable since I always lose duels even when I shouldn’t.

What I tried - Disable fullscreen optimizations, limit fps to 144, change all graphics settings to low, none of which helped.

Aim Lab FPS drop = Went from 1000 FPS to constant ~250 FPS. Doesn’t feel as smooth as before.

What I tried - Pretty much nothing except fiddle around with graphics settings, nothing helped.
Additional problems: I always had a weird drop in frames (even before this issue) whenever I was recording Aim Lab using Shadowplay or even simply streaming on Discord to my friends. Haven't really tried recording a live game, but I'm already experiencing issues without any streaming/recording stuff on-going, so I'm not really sure which would be the issue on this one.
Solutions I've tried (hardware-focused):

Used DDU to remove old GPU drivers and used both GeForce Experience and manual downloading to ensure the latest drivers are downloaded
Used my GPU's one-button OC feature to help boost performance up
Reseated components (basically what I did while transferring my components to my new chassis)

None of these worked.
Solutions I've YET to try:

Reinstall the games that I'm having issues with.
Compare the performance on a more GPU-intensive game (particularly RDR2)
Swap the GPU
Update BIOS
The last resort, reformat the drive/re-install Windows.

My specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 (running XMP profile 1)
GPU: Colorful iGame RTX 2070 Super Vulcan X OC
PSU: Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 750W
RAM: HyperX Fury RGB 8GBx2 3200mHz
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-M2 MAX
SSD: Corsair Force 120GB
HDD: 2TB Western Digital and 2TB Samsung
Chassis: Tecware Forge S

Additional info:
My drives are pretty much the only ones that came from the original build back in 2010 or so. The PSU was the most recent component I had (2015/2016) until everything else got replaced starting this August.

Also less than 24 hours before the case drop rates are released.
This'll be interesting.
http://www.csgo.com.cn/

Troubleshooting Help:

What is your parts list? Consider formatting your parts list.
i7-6700k oc to 4.4ghz with an AIO
GTX 980ti Stock Cooler bumped up by 200mhz
Describe your problem. List any error messages and symptoms. Be descriptive.
When playing all games, I will be playing normally with very high frames but will get random stutters. I've had afterburner open on a second monitor while playing and have noticed that these correlate with a reduction in GPU usage at the same time. I have increase power limit and the voltage in afterburner, as well as ensured the fan speed is set at 90% but the problems persist.
List anything you've done in attempt to diagnose or fix the problem.
I have seen some answers regarding the CPU being a bottleneck but I don't think this is a case as I ran unigine valley benchmark which is a GPU based benchmark and the problem still occured in this, where the frame rate remained high but the usage dropped and this resulted in a stutter in the benchmark.
Post relevant photos of build/parts here.
N/a
Provide any additional details you wish below.
This happens even in very easy to run games like league of legends and CSGO but I have been testing this mostly in COD:Black Ops Cold War, running it at 1080p on a 1440p display on low-medium and getting 100+ fps, but this is pointless if I am getting stutters regardless.
Any help is appreciated

Hi! I'm looking to upgrade my PC and I need your advice/help on my selected CPU/Mobo/RAM combo and GPU.
The goal of my upgrade is to play CSGO at 144fps on a 1080p monitor on medium settings and Dota2 at least 60fps with a budget of <600 USD. I hardly play the latest AAA games or do heavy video encoding so I don't need a monster GPU or a million cores.
Below I provide my current rig (it's a shocker, I know) and my planned upgrade. I want confirmation if my planned upgrade will reach a constant 144fps on CSGO with medium settings?
Current rig (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VPXbkX):

CPU: i3-2120 3.3 Ghz 2 cores/4 threads
Cooler: stock cooler
Mobo: Intel DH61WWB3 mATX LGA1155
RAM: Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333 Mhz CL9
Storage:
- Kingston A400 960GB SSD (for OS + CSGO)
- Seagate BarraCuda 1TB HDD (for storage etc)
GPU: MSI GTX 750 Ti 2GB Twin Frozr
Case: Zalman Z1 ATX Mid Tower Case
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64bit
PSU: Cooler Master 650 watt (RS-650-PCAR-E3) (very old and dodge tho)
Monitors:
- Primary: LG 24" 144Hz 1ms with Freesync (LGE24GL600F) (already bought)
- Secondary: LG 24" 75Hz

With this rig I manage an average of 60fps but it drops severely to 20-40 during engagements on 1080p lowest settings. Not. Cool.
Planned upgrade (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TnVRz7):

CPU: i3-10100 3.6 Ghz 4 cores/8 threads
Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 (not sure if cooler is needed?)
Mobo: Asus Prime B460M-A LGA1200
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3600 Mhz CL18
Storage: No upgrade.
GPU: PowerColor Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB
Case: No upgrade.
OS: No upgrade.
PSU: Corsair CX 550w (I think I need a new PSU to be safe).
Monitor: Already upgraded.

I hope to achieve 144fps in CSGO with the above setup. Will the above rig reach that goal?
Reasons behind my choice:
For the CPU/Mobo, I chose Intel over AMD since Ryzen 3rd generation is currently out of stock and/or overpriced in comparison to Intel (Amazon). Ryzen 2nd gen also have low turbo clock speeds and I think CSGO appreciates a higher clock speed. The i3-10100 seems like a good value CPU at 4 cores/8 threads with a base clock of 3.6Ghz. It's turbo speed is rated "up to" 4.3 Ghz but reports indicate real speeds of 4.1 Ghz but does this require overclocking? Not sure if the mobo will support overclocking/turbo clocking? i3-10100 supports DDR4-2666 RAM, so not sure if 3600Mhz is overkill or not? I've chosen 3600Mhz since it is currently cheaper than the 3200Mhz equivalent and more future proof than 2666??
CSGO favours a good CPU to reach high framerates and I think the i3-10100 will be sufficient for my budget? I think the cooler might be overkill since many reviews report a low temperature even under heavy load.
For the GPU, I've opted AMD over Nvidia as I have already bought the 144Hz monitor which has freesync. Not sure if Nvidia is compatible with freesync monitors. The RX 5500 XT seems to fit right into my budget and is a value upgrade from my current GFX card (+233% effective speed) but will it be sufficient to handle CSGO (and Dota2) at say medium-high settings?
Again the purpose of this post is to obtain confirmation if my planned upgrade will reach a constant 144fps on CSGO with medium settings? If not, please suggest alternatives, thank you.
I look forward to everyone's feedback and advice <3

Prelude

I was reading a post a couple hours ago, written by none other than Universe himself, who was making the deeply unpopular argument that people should stop harassing GrandGrant, which struck me as a particularly courageous act. I personally think his reasoning was pretty weak and I doubted he was going to change any minds, but there was a guy standing firm with his convictions despite knowing full well that he was going to be crucified by the reddit and twitter mobs. Pretty impressive stuff for a public figure in a video game community.
Anyways, it kind of made me start to think about how I would put together a thread defending Grant. I've been pretty tired of seeing the "literal rapist" descriptor being thrown around, but never had the balls to actually act on that feeling, knowing full well how it would be received by the community. Seeing Universe put his reputation on the line made me think about things a little clearer. Grant's life has been completely ruined by these allegations, regardless of whose fault that is, and the least he deserves as an American citizen is representation at his own trial, because that's what Reddit is these days, a trial where we're the judge and jury.
Couple things before I begin for real. I'm the kind of guy who hates to talk, but loves to write. So please at least try to read the whole thing before calling me a rape apologist, or NA trash, or whatever insult you're already typing up. Second, like Universe, I doubt I'm actually going to change anyone's mind about Grant. Instead, I hope that at least one of you will learn to do some critical thinking before throwing around insults that can literally destroy a man's life. And finally, I have no idea if the things I'm about to type are correct, but even if I'm 100% accurate, I still think Grant being kicked out of the DotA scene is necessary. Here we go.

Clearing The Non-Sequiturs

This is the easy part. As soon as the rape allegations were posted by Wicked, Grant was already guilty in the public eye. Why? Because he harassed the caster LlamaDownUnder, leading to an apparent restraining order. Furthermore, he used to be notorious for posting all sorts of offensive garbage on the NAdota forums. And finally, he was also accused of aggressively holding the hand of cofactorstrudel at an afterparty. All three of those things were fresh on everyone's mind when the bombshell was dropped. And just like that, Grant was a rapist.
Well, as I'm sure many of you are aware deep down inside, none of those previously mentioned incidents have anything to do with a rape allegation. They likely mean he should be kicked out of the scene, definitely mean he's an asshole, but definitely don't mean he's a man capable of rape. They are quite simply unrelated in any meaningful way. End of story.

The Drugging Charge

Frankly this one is pretty easy to dismiss as well if you use a little bit of critical thinking. My very first thought upon reading the accuser's charge was that this did not pass the sniff test. And to some people's credit, I've even seen a few folks on Reddit daring to show doubt that any drugging occured. Good on you, both for using your brain, and for speaking out. The 99% most likely answer to this accusation isn't that Grant drugged her, but that she simply got blackout drunk.
To begin with, the accuser was a 21 year old girl as per her own post. She began the account of the drinking with the following:

Someone pulled out a fifth of blueberry vodka and we started taking shots. We each took a few...

After taking a few shots of vodka, they all went out to the bar where they began drinking more. She remembers drinking even more vodka at this first bar:

It was a pretty cute little cocktail place with few people there, and I ordered a whiskey mule...

After this her memory fades, but further accounts of the night suggest that they went to additional bars and kept drinking.
Now, I understand that everyone handles alcohol differently, but as someone who has done an astonishing amount of drinking in my life, and who has gotten blackout drunk more times than I care to admit, I would be shocked if a girl of her age could do three shots of vodka before going out to the bars to drink, and not end up blackout drunk. Not only is she unlikely to have developed any sense of pacing at that age, but her tolerance would also very likely be low, especially as a woman.
Her account of waking up completely disoriented, feeling sick to her stomach, not knowing where she was or what had happened, is also perfectly consistent with being blackout drunk. I remember clearly how jarring it was the first couple times I ever got blackout drunk, waking next to a strange person, not remember where I was or how I got there. I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for a girl of her age. It does not surprise me in the slightest that the panic and terror of it all continues to haunt her. Just one of many reasons why alcohol is a fucking terrible drug to abuse.
And for a final note, as she finds out later that day, she actually spent many hours out drinking with her friends after the blackout began, and also played Super Smash at a friend's house. Date rape drugs will usually incapacitate you to where such activity would simply be impossible, whereas it is very possible to continue on after becoming blackout drunk. Oh the stories I've heard regarding my own lost memories.
Since she herself admits to not knowing if she was drugged, and simply insinuates it, I think the simplest answer is also likely the correct one. Occam's Razor is famous for a reason. She was not drugged.

The Hard Part

Here's where things get very difficult. Her account of waking up involves being in bed with two men, one of which being Grant, and most importantly her pants and underwear were pulled down her legs, which is pretty damning in and of itself. She does however note that she was on her period, and still had her tampon in. She deduces from the tampon that this means they did not have sex, and I tend to agree with that thinking. I'm not sure how to put this delicately, but men do not want anything to do with a girl's period. Like, ever. The idea that Grant would have pulled the tampon out, had sex with her during her period, and then put it back in is probably the most unlikely concept in this entire story. I would rate the odds of that happening at approximately .01%, especially for a guy like Grant whom I'm assuming was not terribly sexually experienced. Furthermore, she almost certainly would have noticed blood on the sheets she was lying on top of.
And while I'm aware that Grant was allegedly bragging on stream while drunk about having sex with her, that is unfortunately a pretty common failing in men. Even Zyori, whose name I'm bringing up with the greatest reluctance because I think he's a genuinely good guy and fully innocent himself, also went around and lied about sex to his friends. Grant was an established asshole, and that's exactly the kind of thing he would have done. So in conclusion, no sex occurred.
THAT BEING SAID, she still woke up with her underwear down, and that suggests some type of sexual activity occurred while she was mentally incapacitated, which still likely constitutes an assault of some kind. I think it's pretty damn safe to assume that even though no sex happened, they were fooling around to some degree or another. Sure, there are more innocent explanations for why her pants would be down, but they're also much less likely. Some type of sexual conduct almost certainly occurred, which does not look good for Grant.
And yet, by all accounts she had been active all night long, and had recently been playing Super Smash before coming back to Grant's room, which suggests a somewhat high degree of lucidity. Furthermore, I'm sure Grant himself was in a similar state of drunkenness after having drank from 6pm to 3 or 4am, as per the TwitLonger account. So the most likely case here is that two semi- functional but drunk people fooled around a bit before passing out. Grant will get the blame for this because he's the male, and he deserves it for sure. But hanging a rape charge on him for what was almost certainly just drunken fooling around? That sounds pretty harsh to me. I think a little bit of nuance is allowed under the circumstances.
Keep in mind, this is just what I see as the most likely scenario based on her account. Since we haven't heard Grant's side of the story, it's very plausible that something very different happened that would completely exonerate him.
Also bear in mind that the CSGO community just had their own equally serious scandal where a caster HenryG was accused by his ex-girlfriend of rape, complete with photo evidence. The two days he took to respond fueled all the speculation that he was, in fact, a rapist. Turns out that it was almost certainly complete bullshit, and he had thankfully saved text messages proving such.
But back to Grant's story...

If Grant were innocent, he would have spoken out by now

Heard this one a lot. I mean, a LOT. Where to begin on that one...
For starters, I can think of many reasons why he wouldn't have spoken out by now, prime among them being that he's talking to a lawyer about how to address a rape charge, which would be rather wise. Or maybe he knows that in a he-said-she-said situation like this one, nothing he says will sway public opinion. I think a cursory glance at the gallows already set up outside the window here in our little reddit clubhouse suggests that this would be correct. Also, regardless of the reason, silence certainly does not mean guilt.
Any way you look at it, it took the accuser six years to put out an anonymous rape charge on twitter. I'll give Grant at least three before I'm willing to string him up.
So there you have it folks. I, a real human being, just authored a defense on behalf of Grant Harris, which to my eyes feels pretty compelling. There's certainly no proof either way, but that's what happens in unsubstantiated charges like this one.
And if it turns out that the worst of the implications are true, and he really did sexually abuse this girl, then fuck him. Hope he ends up in jail. And refunds me my time typing up this post. But from my standpoint, even based off of her account only, that doesn't seem very likely. So please, maybe lay off the "literal rapist" thing at least for another day? You might be saving the life of an innocent man.
(Edit: I meant to mention this, but forgot to put it in. I do not think that the accuser is lying with her post. In fact, I truly believe she wholeheartedly believes everything she said. However, I do not believe that automatically makes Grant a rapist)
As an aside before I close out, I can only imagine how fucked up the formatting of this post will be. Hopefully I can smooth it out before you get around to reading it. (Edit: Holy shit it actually came out pretty good!)

To start I want to say that I was sent the Shuriken 2 for free to test and review, I was not paid to write this.
Pictures of the Scythe Shuriken 2
I’m comparing the Scythe Shuriken 2 to my EVGA 120mm clc AIO. While I have recently re-applied thermal paste to the waterblock this cooler has been in constant use for about 2 years so there is some degradation to consider between the coolers. All of my testing was done on my main PC which includes:

Ryzen 1800x @ 3.9Ghz
2x16GB TridentZ @ 3200Mhz
Asus ROG Strix B450-i Gaming
GTX 1070 FTW on water using a NZXT G12 bracket
InWin A1 case

Tests	Evga 120mm AIO	Scythe Shuriken 2
CPU Idle temps	48-53c	44c
Ram temps @ CPU Idle	48c	38c
cinebench r20 round 1 at 3.9Ghz	90c	92c
score	3587	DNF
cinebench r20 round 2 at 3.9Ghz	93c	93c
score	DNF	DNF
cinebench r15 round 1 at 3.9Ghz	89c	84c
score	1522	1610
cinebench r15 round 2 at 3.9Ghz	91	89c
score	1519	1622
Heaven Benchmark for 20 minutes	64-72c	61-68c
GTA 5 Benchmark	77-80c	67c
CSGO for 20 minutes	80c	62-65c

To start, my idle temps with the 120mm aio were around 50c and my ram modules were showing 48c. With the Scythe Shuriken 2 my cpu idled at 44c and my ram was at 38c.
I wanted to test this cooler in a real world scenario which included running cinebench as well as Heaven Benchmark because I play around with some mild overclocking but also getting the best performance I can while gaming because that is the main use for my PC. With the 1800x at 3.9Ghz, I ran cinebench r20 twice as well as r15 twice.
I ran Heaven Benchmark for about 20 minutes to get the waterloop to fully heat soak and to compare I ran it again for about 20 minutes seeing how the Scythe did in comparison. The 120mm aio on the CPU fluctuated between 64c to 72c, and the scythe cooler fluctuated between 61c and 68c.
While I have not had extensive time to play any games with this cooler installed, my initial tests were the GTA 5 benchmark as well as playing CSGO for about 20 minutes. During the GTA 5 benchmark my frame rates averaged about the same across both coolers however my temperature dropped about 10c with the scythe cooler, maxing out at about 67c. In CSGO, my CPU was hitting about 80c with the 120mm aio and dropped quite a but down to 62c to 65c with the scythe shuriken 2.
For such a small cooler I was very impressed to see these numbers, especially against an aio. The cooler is very clean and has extremely easy mounting, using the AMD stock backplate. While my testing wasn’t very extensive I look forward to seeing how this cooler performs over time and especially with longer gaming sessions and with rendering videos while I learn more about using Adobe Premiere Pro. While the Scythe Shuriken 2 can be a bit loud at times under load, I would definitely recommend this cooler for SFF PCs with it’s max height at 58mm and PWM 92mm fan.

What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.
Gaming. A good mix from CSGO to MW, looking to continue to consider AAA titles going forward in high quality and good framerate. I am using a 1920x1200 monitor with 60Hz refresh rate.
Post a draft of your potential build here (specific parts please). Consider formatting your parts list. Don't ask to be spoonfed a build (read the rules!).
PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	$199.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard	ASRock B550M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	Purchased For $101.40
Memory	*Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	$74.98 @ Newegg
Storage	Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	Purchased For $176.13
Video Card	*PNY GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition Video Card	$549.94 @ Office Depot
Case	Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case	Purchased For $93.92
Power Supply	Super Flower Leadex III ARGB 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	Purchased For $138.76
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1335.12
	*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-29 12:55 EDT-0400

Provide any additional details you wish below.
As is probably the big question here, should I pursue the 3070? Obviously, pricing for 2070S is around $500-$600, so a 3070 at the same price is a no-brainer. But, I expect the 2070S to drop to ~$400 or below with upcoming sales and AMD's release. So as it stands, is the 3070 overkill for my current use? I'm on the fence about this one right now and going back and forth.

Introduction

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Hey guys, before I jump into my analysis of training methods and optimal routines for competitive gaming, I'll introduce myself briefly. Just to be clear, I don't believe achievements / citations matter much in relation to the validity of my statements, if information is logically consistent and provides empirical data / evidence in support of it's claims, then it should be viewed as valid regardless of the source's authority. However, since I know a lot of people are interested in the individual achievements of people they choose to listen to, I'll go ahead and provide that information. I'm an (ex) semi-pro counter strike player with over 7k hours in CS:GO, my peak elo fluctuated around 3.4-3.6k in 2016 on Faceit (EU) and I've played at a multitude of local lans and faceit tournaments. When a ranking system was introduced in Overwatch I climbed up to #29 WR as McCree. I've hit top 500 in Apex Legends, as well as multiple top 100 scores in Kovaak's FPS Aim Trainer. I have always stood out as a player due to raw mechanical skill, more specifically my aim. People assume that my aim got where it is now solely due to the thousands of hours I have spent playing a plethora of FPS games, and while that is true to some extent, training routines have played a large role in the progression of my skill. Everyone has a friend with thousands of hours in a game that still plays like a beginner, that's not due to genetic predisposition acting as a set-back, it's due to the fact that while they have spent time playing the game, they haven't spent enough time putting themselves in the right scenarios. Due to my experience and understanding of effective training, and the fact that I don't have as much time to play games competitively anymore but also want to involve myself in the community, I started coaching players in CS:GO in 2019, and then moved to coaching players for Apex Legends in 2020. My coaching is very heavily based around identifying the subjective needs of each individual player, and creating an aim training / daily routine personalized to cater to their lackluster skill areas. Due to the nature of Valorant as a game (gunplay / core mechanics) being very similar to CS, I believe I have a very solid understanding of how the game plays out, and can identify optimal vs. sub-optimal scenarios within it. If rank means anything to you in closed beta, I am currently immortal 2 in Valorant, and my rank has fluctuated in the D3 - Valorant ranking range throughout CB. With full release of the game being a week away, this post is my attempt to provide a highly analytical informative guide in the context of competitive training.

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Due to the lengthy nature of such an analytical post, I am providing a table of contents in order to make the post a bit easier to navigate.
1) What makes a training routine effective?
2) Finding the right mouse for YOU.
3) Your setup matters.
4) Low vs. High sensitivity, what should you use?
5) How to effectively train your aim.
6) Get rid of bad habits.
8) The importance of sleep + nutrition.
9) Coaching info + Link to my Discord server.

1) What makes a training routine effective?

Whether you're attempting to learn how to ride a bike, how to play better tennis, or trying to perfect your click timing in overwatch, there are always behavioral patterns you can follow which will increase your rate of improvement. While gaming isn't a sport in traditional context, there are still physical aspects to it which can largely impact your performance. While you won't be relying on full body motion during a game of Valorant for example, you're still going to be moving your Arm in response to the visual stimuli being displayed on your screen. Obviously playing more of a game will lead to inevitable mechanical improvement, but depending on the skill level you're trying to achieve, simply "playing more" might not be enough to get you there. The problem with just playing more of a game in relation to optimal improvement, is that you're not focusing on specific aspects and therefore, you're failing to identify individual problems in your gameplay. In order to improve at optimal rates, you need to establish a training routine that you consistently abide to. I do offer individual coaching services which I will provide information for in the final section of this post, but I will not attempt to create a universal format for game training as it would be sub-optimal at best. In my experience training routines are most effective when personalized to the individual needs of the player, I could be coaching two people of similar rank on the same game and give them vastly different routines to follow, simply due to the fact that people are different, someone may be a top aimer and have 0 gamesense while someone else may have amazing gamesense and lackluster aim. The key to proper training is specificity and consistensy, in order to be effective in your training you must narrow down the aspects of your gameplay that need to be prioritized for improvement and then build a daily routine around that which you will habitualize as part of your weekly schedule. Something to note is that your daily training shouldn't surpass the time frame of 50-70 minutes as your brain will not retain information effectively past that amount of continuous activity. The best method to assess skill level in a game and spot issues in gamesense or anything game-specific is to go over unedited gameplay recordings and scrutinize the footage until what needs to be worked on is made clear; The best method to assess raw aim regardless of a specific game is to have someone play through a map selection on Kovaak's which includes both Click Timing and Tracking oriented challenges and assess their median score values. Different games require different types of mechanical skill, while Apex might be tracking oriented like AFPS titles, CS and Valorant rely mostly on holding 90 degree horizontal angles and click timing. In order to retain information / knowledge proper nutrition and a substantial amount of sleep are both extremely important factors and I will be going more in-depth on the reasoning later on in section 8. In conclusion, if you want to train effectively: 1) Analyze your gameplay (preferably with someone experienced) and spot the main issues 2) Create a routine that lasts ~60 minutes and addresses your key issues 3) stay consistent with your routine (don't skip days, train on the same time every day) 4) eat & sleep properly... This should go without saying but you'd be surprised at the amount of people who fail to do either of those things.

2) Finding the right mouse.

When it comes to FPS games, having a mouse which can accurately translate your arm movements into mouse movements in your game is of extreme importance, and as I mentioned in my previous guide, is constantly undervalued by the casual gaming community. There is a common gaming myth that I am certain everyone regardless of the genre of games they play has heard which is that if your mouse works without blatant issues then it does it's job. Such misconceptions are usually passed on by casual gamers that don't support spending $60+ for a quality gaming mouse, but unfortunately such statements are false, which is why you will never see any streamer or competitive player using a 10$ laptop mouse. It would be pretty useless and unfair for me to tell you to go out and spend $60+ on a mouse without providing a logical explanation as to why you should, so let's go over the reasons you need a quality mouse, as well as what makes a good gaming mouse good, and how to find the mouse that suits you best. First things first, why do you need a good gaming mouse? It's pretty simple, when playing PC games, but FPS games in particular, you want your mouse movements to be fast and accurate, and in order to achieve that you need to have a quality mouse, if you try a 180 degree flick on an outdated laptop mouse you will quickly realise the mouse loses track through the movement and is therefore inaccurate and even if it didn't lose track, the built in acceleration would make the movement of the mouse inaccurate relative to the movement of your arm. If you tried something similar as the previous example with tracking a target you will quickly realise the movement isn't perfectly smooth, along with the fact that such mice have delay, which means your reaction time will be slower as a result. Gaming mice offer precision sensors which will track your movement accurately with no delay or acceleration, this is very important as it will maximise your in-game precision by properly mirroring your arm movements as opposed to a generic mouse, not only that, but training with a mouse that is inconsistent in movement will hinder your ability to train your aim as it will mess with your muscle (procedural) memory. Gaming mice also tend to offer much more comfortable ergonomic shapes which will give you a better grip, fit your hand better, and also allow you to go on extended gaming sessions without your hand feeling cramped / tired. It is important that you choose a mouse that has a flawless optical sensor (laser sensors are inaccurate), most modern gaming mice offer flawless sensors, but be sure to check before you buy your gaming mouse; Any 33XX sensor will work flawlessly, with the best sensors in the category being the 3360 and the 3366 along with the Logitech HERO sensor which is a low-power version of the 3360. Now, while precise sensors may be important what is even more important is finding a mouse that fits your hand well, this will depend on two things, one being your hand size, and the other being your grip style. I have created a guide (guide within a guide, nice) to help you measure your hand correctly, as well as understand grip styles.
Hand measurement guide:
In order to measure your hands for the purpose of finding a mouse you will want to measure two things, one is the length of your hand, like so:

https://preview.redd.it/13boyygx43151.png?width=316&format=png&auto=webp&s=d5dcd90605eb1a3ee11aa24cbd40b8857ab6b37f
The other is the width of your hand, like so:

not my hand btw

Once you have figure out the dimensions of your hand, the format in which mice are presented is L x W. I personally have large hands at 21.5x11 cm, I've been using the Zowie EC2-B Divina for the past year and I am very pleased with it as the shape and texture is ideal for me, being an improved DA shape with a 3360 sensor. The most important aspect of the dimensions in terms of determining which mouse is ideal is the length of your hand.
After you have determined your hand size, you need to find out what grip style you use. There are three types of mouse grips, first we have the palm grip, then the claw grip, and finally the fingertip grip. Here is an image showing each grip.

https://preview.redd.it/oe2sd7w553151.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d8b9e4f2f03f498c1a27b658347bfa994611de8
Once you have the 'L x W' dimensions of your hand and have figured out what grip style you use, click on this link and you will be presented with a range of options for mice depending on your hand size and grip style. The recommendations have been put together by RocketJumpNinja himself, for those of you unfamiliar with who he is, he is a Quake player and marginally the best competitive mouse reviewer out there and I would trust him blindly for anything mouse related. Once you have found 1-2 mice you are interested in you can check his mouse reviews on YT for more detailed information on each mouse. Having tested a multitude of mice myself, I would say my favourites have been the Deathadder Elite, Zowie EC2-A and EC2-B series due to their ergonomic designs, and the G305 and GPW due to their flawless wireless capabilities.

3) Your setup matters.

It would be great for everyone to have an even playing field, and for me to be able to genuinely tell you that your setup doesn't matter in the context of your gaming performance, unfortunately I would simply be lying to you. Yes, it is true that your raw skill is more important than the setup you have, but if you have a setup that limits you from exceeding your current skillcap then it is acting as a handicap and needs to change. Since having a good setup is something that is purely based on buying better equipment / hardware, I will keep this section short. To me the most important parts of any setup are the mouse, the monitor, and the mousepad, in that order. If you don't have a mouse that fits well in your hand, and suits your grip style ( claw grip, fingertip grip, palm grip ) then you won't be able to reach the peak of your potential raw aim. Once again, do NOT copy the pros here, they do not have the same hand size as you, and them being able to land 10 headshots in a row using the logitech G Pro doesn't mean that you will too. Some recommendations I have for mice are: Zowie EC series ( I personally use an EC2-B Divina ) Zowie Divina S series ( If you preffer ambidextrous mice ) Deathadder Elite ( gets a lot of hate but the shape is great / quality not the best ) Logitech G Pro ( hands down the best wireless mouse out there if you have medium / small hands ) After mice comes your monitor, this is pretty simple, you want a monitor that is 144hz + as you will only be able to see as much FPS on screen as your monitor's HZ value. This is crucial to avoid choppy gameplay and improve your tracking and reaction time, in games like CS or Valorant where reacting quickly to an enemy peeking you is the difference between winning or losing a round, this is especially important. 144hz monitors are not too expensive anymore, being able to get a decent BenQ monitor for around 200 euros (XL2411P). Finally, you want to have a large enough mousepad to accomodate your mouse movements, large enough that you don't stumble across the problem of having to lift your mouse to readjust or reach the end of the pad too often.

4) Low vs. High sensitivity, what should you use?

I won't go too in-depth on this part of the post, as sensitivity is mostly subjective, although I highly recommend playing on sensitivities in the range of 35-55 cm/360 @ 400 DPI for games like CS or Valorant. In general, the range of effective sensitivities varies depending on the aspect of aim. sensitivities in the range of 22-32 cm/360 are what's mostly used by pros for highly aim reliant (and mostly tracking reliant) games such as Quake or Diabotical, while for click timing oriented games that don't require large mouse movements such as CSGO or Valorant, sensitivities that pros use are usually 35+ cm/360. The most popular sensitivity used by professional players in CSGO is 51 cm/360, or 2 in-game sens @ 400 DPI, and I would suggest that people stick to a sensitivity near that for Valorant, the a 51 cm/360 sens in valorant would be 0.63 in-game @ 400 DPI. Since DPI fluctuates between players, a good way to compare sensitivities is by using e-dpi values, which is your in-game sensitivity multiplied by your DPI, 51 cm/360 or 0.63 in Valorant @ 400 DPI, gives us a value of 252. I highly recommend that for a game like Valorant, people stick to the range of 200-300 e-dpi, as such 5v5 comp fps games aren't as "aim reliant" but mostly rely on your ability to maintain good crosshair placement and hold angles, which are both benefited by lower sensitivities. Now, you may ask why 70-80% of active pros in CSGO still use 400 DPI when 800 DPI is technically "better", the answer to that is quite simple. 400 DPI is less accurate in tracking fine movements while 800 DPI is more accurate in that matter, in theory picking up on fine movement may seem like a good thing, but realistically nobody has a perfectly steady hand and in a game like Valorant where you need to maintain consistent head-level crosshair placement at all times, you want to minimize involuntary movements / jitter, as much as possible.

5) How to effectively train your aim.

6) Get rid of bad habits.

As a final note to this in-depth guide, I want to mention mistakes many people habitually make. There are two types of these bad habits, one being physical habits, and one being ingame habits. The physical bad habits you need to be aware of are: Posture, Chair to desk height, and Monitor position. Bad posture can cause neck / back strain and improper blood flow which will not only affect your gameplay negatively, but also your health, so for god's sake, don't sit on your chair leaning 90 degrees forward like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I mentioned Chair to desk height because many people play with their chair too high relative to their desks, or too low relative to their desks. Ideally, you want your forearm to be able to comfortably rest flat upon your desk while holding your mouse, without the elbow hovering into oblivion or dropping below desk height. The final point on physical bad habits is monitor position, I won't explain this one in depth as it is pretty straight forward, you want your monitor at the right height and distance so that you can see the entirety of the screen without the image being distorted due to the tilt / angle. In terms of ingame bad habits there are TONS so I'll just stick to the ones specific to Valorant for this post. The first point being poor crosshair placement. For those of you with no experience in games like CS or maybe even games like R6, crosshair placement won't be something you have perfected, most games aren't low TTK (time to kill) enough for crosshair placement to be as important as it is in the aforementioned games, therefore people don't need to worry too much about the position of their crosshair while moving around the map. In Valorant, good crosshair placement is the most important aspect of aiming, and the deciding factor in how a gunfight goes while peeking or getting peeked. Due to the fact that this game is very similar to CSGO in TTK, you will want to make a habit of constantly keeping your crosshair at head level, it doesn't matter if you're expecting someone to peek at the given moment, make a habit of always keeping your crosshair at a position where an enemy player model's head would be in the hypothetical scenario that they peeked that angle. Another bad habit is shooting while moving, it may seem straightforward to most people, but I see people do this all the time. DON'T shoot while moving unless you're counter-strafing and single firing (counter strafing is the act of shooting mid-directional change to reset the inaccuracy factor). In CSGO you can spray while crouch-walking and maintain accuracy, in this game however, even while holding down the control key your bullets will go all over the place, so don't move while spraying unless close enough to the target that you can sacrifice some spread accuracy. Another bad habit that I see quite often in VODs I review, is people being too predictable. Stop pushing the same exact angle every round, or playing the same exact spot on defense every round, or using your abilities in the same exact way every round. This doesn't mean that if you're a B player on defense you should rotate to A next round, it just means you should try to mix it up between rounds so that the enemy team can't just prefire or ability spam the location you played last round for a free kill. Something similar to this is peeking the same angle multiple times, if you try to go for a kill while peeking and miss your shots, don't peek the same exact angle a second later as you'll simply get one-tapped by any half-decent player. Another bad habit I see too often even in higher ranks (diamond / immortal) is people over-rotating, this is a big one. Let's say you're playing B on split, you still have mid control, and your team just got a kill or two in A main but you don't have clear info on the rest of the team, do NOT leave B to go defend A, this is called over-rotating, and I have lost far too many rounds due to teammates doing this. Only rotate when you have enough information on the enemies' positions to be able to leave the site you're holding with 0% chance of the enemy team pushing it while you're off it. Finally, I want to mention economy mismanagement real quick. If you lost the first round, regardless of if you got the spike planted or not, you never want to force-buy second round, unless you have AFK teammate compensation, or somehow everyone got a kill each + the plant, you don't want to buy. Make sure you have at least 1600 credits remaining after buying up during the 2nd round's buy phase. That's all, and oh, quick complaint, If your teammate has spent the past 20 seconds flanking around the enemy team, don't just stomp past him like an elephant and alert the entirety of the enemy team to his position. Dick move.

8) The importance of sleep + nutrition.

There are plenty of training routines out there which focus on gaming, but very few of them highlight the importance of proper nutrition and sleep. Before I jump into explaining why exactly nutrition and sleep (especially sleep) are so important in retaining information, let's talk a bit about exercise since I've seen it discussed in this sub the past few days. You don't need to be hitting the gym daily in order to see a positive influence on your in-game performance, nor will you notice one in general, but it is a fact that physical exercise can lead to a temporary boost in neuroplasticity, which is an active change in your brain physiology due to synaptic growth that plays a large role in learning new things. A decent amount of cardio pre-training will increase blood flow to your brain and release certain proteins which have been found to boost synaptic growth.
Here is an article which explains this in-depth:
https://elifesciences.org/articles/45920
The article contains a lot of scientific terminology, but it's still decently comprehendable for those of you with an advanced vocabulary in English.
I won't go too in-depth about nutrition, as it's a pretty straight forward concept. The human brain needs to be "fed" properly in order to function at an optimal state, this doesn't just mean eating enough, but also eating healthy. You need to maintain a balanced diet in order allow your brain to function at it's peak, protein intake is especially important, a poor / incomplete diet can very often lead to lack of focus, which is very evidently an important factor when it comes to processing / retaining information, meaning you should never be hungry while training. Other than base nutritional values, make sure you don't have any vitamin defficencies, and take care of them through supplement consumption in the case that you do.
Here is an article which discusses the impact proper nutrition has on learning.
http://www.educationalneuroscience.org.uk/resources/neuromyth-or-neurofact/diet-makes-a-difference-to-learning/
Now for the most important aspect of all, sleep. Sleeping patterns have one of the biggest influences on learning in regards to the ability to retain information, and proper sleep is very often disregarded by people. Sleep deprivation can lead to a plethora of problems which will negatively impact both your learning process during training and your actual gameplay during the day. Sleep-deprivation, just like poor nutrition, can lead to an inability to focus, which will impact your training / gaming for obvious reasons. Sleep deprivation will also keep your brain from resting properly, meaning that your exhausted neural synapses will not be able to function properly, failing to coordinate information. This means that information being processed at the time being won't be absorbed properly (think of an old sponge that has lost its properties) AND your brain won't be able to access prior-knowledge, meaning you function at suboptimal levels mechanically as well. In a more psychological aspect, your mood may also be affected by lack of proper sleep (and nutrition) which can lead to a lack of motivation amongst other things which will negatively impact your game training. If you don't sleep long enough, your brain won't go into the REM stages necessary to retain knowledge, the main aspect affected by this is procedural memory, why is this important? For those of you that aren't aware, muscle memory is a type of procedural memory, and muscle memory is something directly linked to your mechanical performance in-game, so yes, improper sleeping patterns will actually lead to poor decision making, poor aim, a bad mood, and your training during that day will go to waste.
here is an article explaining some of my aforementioned points:
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/learning-memory
I understand that most of you won't want to read through a lengthy article, so here's one of the most important excerpts:
muscle memory = procedural memory
In conclusion, if you want your daily training to be absorbed properly, and your in-game decision making and mechanics to perform at an optimal level, eat and sleep properly. If you don't care about playing Valorant at a competitive level, still, eat and sleep properly. No really, It's important.

9) Coaching info + Link to my Discord server.

Let me thank you in advance, Anything helps and sorry for the long post.
Recently, I have been playing a lot of Valorant and I have experienced a constant fps drop of around 50%(100 - 150) with fps uncapped. Although it is not bad, I was getting 250 - 300 fps and now the monitor looks chunky with that frame rate. This is also the case for other games, such as League and CSGO. I looked into OCCT and task manager and found no signs of a CPU bottleneck as usage was around 25 - 50% and temperature looked good. https://prnt.sc/txdg80 < This is OCCT monitoring my Valorant session and the usage only went up at the end when I exited to the menu.
Another problem that I have is that my computer randomly restarts during gameplay. I don't know if these problems are related or not, but my first random shut down appeared a few days before the problem I mentioned above. When that happens in Valorant, my game crashes and the screen turns off (GPU provides no signal). However, my mouse, keyboard, and power button lights are still on and the fans after the crash spin harder than they were before, so the computer is still on in a way. The PC can also do a total crash and restarts itself, I have no idea why that happens sometimes.
I have run some tests using the OCCT tool and found some clues that may help you guys. I ran the GPU test yesterday day and it was fine for the 5 minutes then I stopped it. Usage got up to 100% and temp was constant around 85-90. But today I ran twice and both times it crashed in 30 seconds. Only the screen turned off as mentioned above. I have also run the PSU test yesterday (GPU and CPU pushed to 100%) and also within 30 seconds the screen turned off.
So I speculate that either my PSU or GPU is going bad. What are your thoughts?
my system specs:
R5 2600x, rx 580, 2x8 DDR4 3000, Gigabyte B450m Ds3h, Corsair CX 550w Bronze, 480gb SSD

Extra info(Hope this helps):
One of my GPU fans fell off, but I replaced the plastic collar and it works fine now. I got a new Dlink USB wifi adapter a few days before this happened. The adapter is working nicely. I am using an unactivated version of windows 10, heard this only limits personalization. Today, I have upgraded the bios version to the newest F51 and the problem still exists.

EDIT: I FIXED THE STUTTERING!!! FINALLY!! What I did that removed all stuttering was a combination of things so bare with me here: a fresh install of windows, unplugged the USB 3.0 connector from my motherboard, set my XMP profile to on and chose the "XMP 2" option in ASUS bios, changed my fps limit on my 165hz monitor from 162 to 163 in Nvidia control panel under "Max framerate" (this seemed to be a more stable limit for some bizarre reason), completely uninstalled MSI Afterburner and Rivatuner as these introduced stuttering for me, and I also disabled all background apps in settings. The difference is night and day. Been dealing with stuttering for 4 months on my new 2k dollar pc and I can FINALLY enjoy it! There is literally 0 stutter now. PLEASE, if my situation is similar to yours, try out these steps. Please lmk if they helped you!
I am experiencing stuttering / frame time spikes in every game I play. I have spent days trying to diagnose what could be causing them but to no success. This same problem was happening on my old PC that I fully upgraded 2 weeks ago and the issue is still occurring. PLEASE if you have any input/suggestions let me know because I am losing my mind over this issue.
MY SPECS:

-i7 9700k (not OC)
-EVGA Geforce RTX 2080ti XC Hybrid (not OC)
-Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 32GB DDR4 3200mhz
-ASUS Prime Z390-A
-Corsair RMX 750x WATT PSU
-Samsung 970 EVO 500gb M.2 SSD
-6TB WD Blue 5400RPM HDD-1TB WD BLUE 7200RPM HDD-TP Link TL-WDN4800 PCIe Wifi Adapter
-Primary Monitor: ASUS PG279Q (1440p 165hz Gsync)
-Secondary Monitor: ASUS VG248QG (1080p, 165hz, Gsync)

MY SITUATION:
In every game I play there are frame time spikes which cause my fps to drop slightly. These spikes + small fps drops result in a very noticeable stutter. I cap my fps at 162 because that is what the Blur Buster G SYNC Guide Recommends: (https://blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-settings/14/) ------ In my case, since I have a 165hz monitor, I set my fps cap at 162 (3fps below displays maximum refresh rate) and I also Enabled V Sync in NVIDIA Control Panel and Disabled it in games. I use Rivatuner to cap the fps. During games my framerate will be at 162 yet randomly will drop very slightly to sometimes 161, 160, 159 fps, etc and the stutter is very noticeable. I noticed that these frame stutters happen more often for example when I am moving around the map in CSGO rather than just standing still. My rig is very capable so these frame drops in CSGO make zero sense. These frame time spikes occur in both online/offline games.
Here is an example of what I'm experiencing: This is a 5 minute play session of CSGO. As I said, the frame rate only drops about 1-5 frames yet the stutter is very noticeable. Notice how the frame rate drops are in sync with the frame-time spikes. (You might have to zoom in to see the small dips in frames)
https://preview.redd.it/im0jd3s3tp551.png?width=1258&format=png&auto=webp&s=d881d87ebc6100119b657b63bf7324a702b107fa
HERES ACTUAL GAME FOOTAGE:
This footage does not capture the actual stutters as I see them, maybe this is something related to my issue?
This issue was happening to me before I upgraded my PC 2 weeks ago, and for some bizarre reason is still occurring. I swapped every single component CPU, GPU, MOBO, SSD, PSU). The only part I did not change is my Wifi Adapter but I wanted to make sure so I removed it from PC, played games in offline mode, and stutters still occur so cant be the issue.
WHAT I'VE DONE:

SWAPPED EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT IN MY PC (GPU, CPU, MOBO)
Reinstalled Windows Multiple Times (Even on New SSD)
Reinstalled GPU drivers (Used DDU for clean install without Geforce Experience)
-Updated Bios/ MOBO Drivers (Audio/LAN/Chipset)
-Disabled All In-Game Overlays
-XMP On/Off - No difference
-Closed all unessessary background processes
-Turned on High Performance Power Plan in Windows
-Turned on Prefer max performance in NVCP
-Messed with every combination of Enabling/Disabling Gsync and Vsync - stutter still occurs in any configuration
-Tried capping fps at lower values (144, 120, 60) - stutter still occurs
-Disabled HPET
-Disabled C States
-Disabled Speed Step/ Disabled Speed Shift
-Created an Empty Standby List Task that runs every 5 mins
-Tested on Other 165hz monitor - no difference
-Used different Display port - no diff
-Turned game settings all low - no effect
-Play games in Offline mode - no effect
-Ran Memtest86 - no errors found
-Disabled Game DVR
-Plugged PC into different wall outlet in case this is somehow a power issue. Had no effect.

NOTES:

Temperatures are all normal
I have bench marked GPU, CPU and both are performing normally
No overclocks
I have searched countless other forums about this issue, none had a fix
There has got to be some underlying cause for this, it can't just be a random occurrence. So PLEASE, if you have ANY and I mean ANY sort of advice, guidance, etc please let me know.

Thanks

CSGOCASES.COM ☀️EZ WİN - EZ MONEY☀️ Case

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[D] Influence of Cyberpunk 2077 release on the market

An in-depth guide to improving in Valorant.

Introduction

Contents

1) What makes a training routine effective?

2) Finding the right mouse.

3) Your setup matters.

4) Low vs. High sensitivity, what should you use?

5) How to effectively train your aim.

6) Get rid of bad habits.

7) The importance of sleep + nutrition.

8) Coaching info + Link to my Discord server.

Sudden drop in performance on decent/good PC

Less than 24 houra before Chinese CS:GO is released.

GPU usage drops causing stutters in all games

Troubleshooting Help:

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Prelude

Clearing The Non-Sequiturs

The Drugging Charge

The Hard Part

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Scythe Shuriken 2 Review

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An actually in-depth analysis of optimal training habits.

Introduction

Contents

1) What makes a training routine effective?

2) Finding the right mouse.

3) Your setup matters.

4) Low vs. High sensitivity, what should you use?

5) How to effectively train your aim.

6) Get rid of bad habits.

8) The importance of sleep + nutrition.

9) Coaching info + Link to my Discord server.

PC randomly restarts while gaming and 50-60% GPU usage in game with no signs of a bottleneck.

Frametime Spikes/Stutters/FPS Drops In All Games - PLEASE HELP

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Fresh New Modded Rust Server! Read it ASAP! * JUST WIPED*