Re: Strategy on the Decline

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Wed, 29 May 2024 03:36:58 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>

Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>

On 5/25/2024 4:28 PM, Lane Larson wrote:
>

It's a horror story.  Say I come up with $3200 to buy the top end
Alienware.  I bet I'd still have to deal with lots of overheating.  What
I'd like to do is break my computer over someone's head and get in the
news, where it says that my computer was too hot and drove me mad.  I
was appalled when I got this one home and Pathfinder: Wrath of the
Righteous was used to fry an egg.  When is this shit going to stop?  I
bought too many computers in the 90s just to keep up.  My parents lost
some faith in me when I liquidated my stock portfolio to buy just
another computer.  And it's still happening!

>
Don't buy pre-made gaming computers.  You end up paying 2x (or 3x if
you're talking $3200!) what you would for a better optimized system with
cooling that works. 

>
This depends.  
A local computer shop offers prebuilts that are not bad value at all.
The caveat is they have almost no upgrade path except swapping out the
video card, since they tend to have lower end motherboards and have all
the ram slots filled already.
>
You are correct if it's brand name junk like Alienware or any other big
name, you get charged $500-1000 just to have their name on it.

>
I agree.
>
My last two PCs were pre-builts. I could have -and in the past /have/-
built my own computers, but it's just easier to have somebody else do
all the work for me. Will that motherboard fit in the case? Is the
cooling sufficient? Etc.

I've still never bought a prebuilt.
The ones I looked at were cheaper than what I paid building it myself,
but they had a lower end motherboard, with only 32gb of ram and all
slots filled, also only a 500gb SSD, and it wasn't clear if another
could be added or spinning rust.   And some random case.

In the end I built it myself with a better board, 64gb of ram and room
for 64 more, 2tb SSD (and room for another SSD) and 16tb of spinning
rust, a corsair high-flow case (if it were turned off, the fans spin up
high on boot only, then quiet right down, usually inaudible during
gameplay even with 2 games running, plus browsers, etc.

But of course, the price was an issue. EVERYONE knows prebuilts are
more expensive. But you know what? Not necessarily.
>
Oh sure, there are some boutique builders. Falcon Northwest's prices
are insane (about double anybody else) and throw in a lot unnecessary
'extras' (like being delivered in a heavy wooden crate). But I've
priced the stuff from some builders, then went out and searched for
the exact same price from retailers, and you know what? The builders
were competitive; sometimes a little more, and sometimes even a little
less than what I would pay if I bought all the components separately.
>
[note: that is, of course, assuming you buy from RELIABLE retailers.

I buy brand name parts from a local computer store that's about a block
from me.   Been buying there since about '93 (first purchases were
putting together a 386 with 4MB of ram and a 1M video card, forget the
HD size, both floppy sizes 3.5 and 5.25, case and 14" monitor.)

Yes, I could find the components for a lot cheaper if I relied on EBay
or from sold by some six-letter company on Amazon Marketplace or from
AliExpress. But then you're never sure you're going to get what you're
promised, and that's just not the sort of hassle I'm interested in. So
in my pricing experiment, I stuck to more reliable - and admittedly
more expensive - sources. YMMV may vary depending on what level of
risk you're happy with.]

I have never ever bought components online, but I do realize not
everyone has a good computer store near them to go physical shopping in.

And if you're not the sort who enjoys tinkering with hardware -mixing
and matching components, figuring out how many amps your PSU /really/
needs, deciding what thermal paste is Right For You- then the value of
prebuilts absolutely skyrockets.

I don't exactly enjoy it, but have been saying since 1993, that building
a computer is about as hard as playing with LEGO.

PSU more is always better, and I tend to just leave the CPU cooling at
the default - whatever the company shipped with it.
But I don't overclock so ... I can see why some might want to play
around with that.

Old computer's Phenom II still running on the default heat sink/fan that
shipped with it, and it's been on constantly for around a decade now (I
turn off my computer(s) when I'm upgrading a part (vid usually, but
sometimes adding HD,) or when I move.

It's still going strong with a dual boot system XP/7, neither of which
has ever been reinstalled - it's amazing how stable a system can be once
you turn off all the useless cruft MS insists on installing by default.

Xocyll