Lunar Festival, Setup of the Month, TCG Art

[chaud]

Lunar Festival
A few changes were made to Lunar Festival this year, with two faction specific pets being added and new Elders for you to visit in the Cataclysm zones. You can find a list of the Elder's locations on Wowpedia.

The new Lunar Lantern and Festival Lantern are new rewards from the Lunar Festival. The new Lunar Lantern would be the Alliance version and the Festival Lantern the Horde one. Each costs Coin of Ancestry x 50 from the vendor.

Every year the druids of Moonglade hold a celebration of their city’s great triumph over an ancient evil. During the Lunar Festival, citizens of Azeroth have the opportunity to honor their elders by celebrating their sage wisdom, sharing in magnificent feasts, and of course…shooting fireworks!

The Lunar Festival returns to Azeroth in a cascade of pyrotechnics on Sunday, January 22! With the start of a new year, elders of generations past manifest around the world to impart their wisdom upon all who would listen. Should you encounter these venerable spirits in your travels and take the time to heed their wisdom, they may even pass along tokens of their gratitude -- Coins of Ancestry, the lessons of a past age in physical form. Gather enough of these Coins of Ancestry and the Cenarion Circle will open to you their stores of celebratory fireworks, trinkets, garbs, and recipes!

The Cenarion Circle have even more cause to celebrate this year than any previous, for this year also marks the first Lunar Festival since the return of many Ancients that had fallen in battles past: Goldrinn, Malorne, Aviana, and Cenarius himself. But this celebration is muted by the eternal torment of one of their own -- Omen, blessed by the moon goddess Elune, has risen again from the depths of Moonglade’s lake. Driven mad by the Burning Legion’s tainted magics during the War of the Ancients, Elune’s blessing of immortality means that he will forever be cursed to return in his maddened state at the advent of a new year. Heroes are called to help ease this tormented Ancient’s suffering, in the hopes that perhaps next year will see him return with a clearer mind.

Lunar Festivities end Sunday, February 12.

Computers - Setup of the Month (by chaud)
Each month or every 2 months, depending on the hardware evolutions, the lovely chaud will work on a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!

This month
Hard drives remain expensive, so now is still a good time to buy a SSD, as the next generation is a while away and the current prices are fairly flat, with sales bringing the cost very close to $1 per gigabyte.

AMD's Bulldozer arrived to negative reviews, citing excessive power usage and heat output and very poor single threaded performance. The previously mentioned patches for Windows are now available and give a few percent performance increase. (Patch 1, Patch 2)

New CPUs from Intel should be arriving in early April if you aren't in a hurry to build, bringing increased performance and lower power consumption.

The new 7970 GPU from AMD has been released and can be had for ~$550 if you can find it in stock. The 7950 will be here in a matter of weeks somewhere in the low ~$400 price range. More GPUs will likely be released next month. New GPUs from Nvidia likely won't be here before early March.

Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.

Don't hesitate to post any feedback in the comments of that news post, and don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions! If you are interested in Folding@home, take a look in our team's thread.

Peripherals/Monitors

Component	Puppy	Dolphin
Monitor	ASUS VW224U 22-Inch Widescreen - $149	ASUS VW246H 24-Inch Widescreen - $200
Keyboard	Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 - $21	Cyborg V.5 - $47
Mouse	Logitech G400 - $37	Razer Deathadder - $48
Speakers	Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System - $30	Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $40
Component	Narwhal	Unicorn
Monitor	ASUS VE276Q 27-Inch - $279	HP ZR24w 24-inch (IPS Panel) - $375
Keyboard	Logitech G110 - $70	Razer BlackWidow (Backlit)- $74 ($130)
Mouse	Logitech G500 - $58	Razer Naga (Buttons on the Side) - $68
Speakers	Creative Inspire T3130 2.1 Speaker System - $45	Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $79

Puppy and Dolphin
Overclocked Puppy will outperform Dolphin when multiple threads are in use (Not WoW) and come close in most other cases.
Mix and match anything but the CPU/Motherboard combo between Puppy and Dolphin. Mix and match anything between Dolphin and Narwhal.

Component	Puppy	Dolphin
Case	NZXT GAMMA Classic - $40	NZXT GAMMA Classic - $40
Power Supply	Corsair CX500 V2 - $58	Corsair CX600 V2 - $70
CPU	AMD Phenom II X4 960T Black Edition- $115	Intel i3-2100 - $125
Heatsink	Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus - $27	Corsair Air Series A70 - $38
Motherboard	ASUS M5A97 AM3+ 970 - $116	Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 - $123
Memory	4GB PNY Optima DDR3 10600 - $25	4GB G.Skill Ripjaws F3 12800 DDR3 - $40
Graphics Card	XFX 6770 - $95	MSI 6850 or EVGA GTX 560 - $174 / $175
Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB - $120	Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $157
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23
Total	$619	$791

Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn. SSDs are always optional.

Component	Narwhal	Unicorn
Case	Cooler Master HAF 912 - $66	Cooler Master HAF932 - $143
Power Supply	Corsair 650TX V2 - $90	Corsair 750HX (7 Year Warranty) - $144
CPU	Intel i5-2500k - $230	Intel i7-2600k - $320
Heatsink	Thermaltake Frio - $55	Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $88
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 - $160	ASUS Z68 P8Z68-V PRO - $205
Memory	4GB G.Skill Ripjaws F3 12800 DDR3 - $40	8GB G.Skill DDR3 12800 - $54
Graphics Card	XFX 6950 1GB OR EVGA GTX 560 Ti- $220/ $230	XFX 6970 2GB OR EVGA GTX 570 - $325 / $360
Hard Drive	Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $157	Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $157
SSD	Crucial 128 GB m4 (Review) - $180 OR Corsair Force Series GT 120 GB - $180	Intel 510 Series 120 GB (Review) - $275 OR OCZ 120 GB Vertex 3 (Review) - $165
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23
Total	$1041 - $1231	$1624 - $1769

Trading Card Game Art Gallery Update
The Trading Card game art gallery has been updated with ten new pieces.

[Agallochh]

Can't wait to get home and finish my Lunar Festival achievements

[Deleted]

Yea Second Comment!

[Zatheyll]

Eww, now I have to go back and get that pet. :P I thought I was done with this holiday.

[toddless]

Yea First Comment!

fail

it should be noted that if you saved coins from last year, you can still use them! I got my lamp. yay.

also, the lamp is BOE, so you can sell it.

[Editos]

sweet DD

[hiragana]

that abomination is sexy

[Barazanala]

DOH deleted all of my coin of ancestry a week ago to make bank space >.>

[Gavan]

Second level set up still doesn't make any sense... BTW bias opinion and not an Intel fan boi to make these........

[Dasn]

fuck this fucking world event

[Nerraw]

It should be noted that the pets aren't bound to you. Which means you can trade/sell them to others, even through the neutral AH.

[The Last DJ]

I feel really bad for any lowbies collecting coins for the pets/clothes. It seems that the redesigning of several towns/zones has placed the Elders in way more precarious spots for cross-faction collection. Hell, the Razor Hill/Vendetta Point Elders are standing almost right beside the Flight Master, and what with everything spawning level 85 guards ... eeeesh. Fortunately I've already got the title on my druid from last year, so if I do anything it'll be half-heartedly grinding coins for a lantern ... that I'll be saving for my pandas. (What? Don't judge me!) To add: holy shit that female night elf TCG artwork is badaaaaaass. Finally, a correct portrayal of dem crazy Amazonian warrior-wimmenz.

[sawier]

why horde gets the ugly one

[Hamumu]

I just want to throw a shout-out to Chaud... Seems like whenever I see the Build of the Month posted it's all just people bitching about what's wrong with it. Well, I just built my own computer from scratch for the first time, mostly relying on Chaud's list (and doing a little googling to verify compatibilities - don't get tall memory chips if you get that MASSIVE Noctua cooler!), and once I actually got the memory chips seated right, it's up and running and WoW is 100-200FPS at ultra settings instead of 13FPS at low settings. And this was probably the cheapest computer I've ever had. I'll be building more in the future for sure, and this is a great resource. Thanks!

[Pancha]

Any possibility for the "Unicorn" setup to be SLI?

[chaud]

Any possibility for the "Unicorn" setup to be SLI?

You can do Crossfire or SLI, but generally you are better off buying just one card to start with. Anything more is overkill for most people.

I just want to throw a shout-out to Chaud...

Thanks!

[sunnyjim222]

On the Puppy setup the graphics card says it requires a 650W power supply but the one included in the setup only has 500w? am I missing something?

[chaud]

On the Puppy setup the graphics card says it requires a 650W power supply but the one included in the setup only has 500w? am I missing something?

They are vastly overstating the requirements. The total draw for that system would be less than 300W. (The 6770 is the same card as the 5770 in the below charts)

[FaerieDragon]

Gather enough of these Coins of Ancestry and the Cenarion Circle will open to you their stores of celebratory fireworks, trinkets, garbs, and recipes!

What trinket?

[Sorcereria]

People doing this kind of setups are horrid. Z68 motherboard for i3-2100... instead of cheaper H61/H67 one. Monitors without comment. Look for Dell U2312M or Dell U2412M