Re: Strategy on the Decline

On 5/30/2024 12:44 AM, JAB wrote:

On 29/05/2024 14:59, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

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.
>
But of course, the price was an issue. EVERYONE knows prebuilts are
more expensive. But you know what? Not necessarily.

 I haven't bought a pre-built for over twenty years but I think the price margins between them and DIY just aren't the same as before and also now there's lot's of companies that will allow you to pick pretty much the parts you want. That was previously one of the big draws for me.
 I did cheat a little bit with my last upgrade though as I had RAM + CPU pre-installed because installing the CPU is the one bit I never liked doing.

Technically the CPU was never difficult since I've been doing it. Really that was the crap heatsink and fan they came with with horrible plastic spear like things that are supposed to twist into place but never seem to requiring such force that you end up bending the motherboard, that and futzing with the thermal paste.
The now available cheap tower heatsink and fan was easy to install and had a perfect thermal paste square already applied to it.  (except they sent two of the wrong bracket the first time, they sent me the right one though fairly quickly, but it did delay me putting the computer together a few days - I had bought on amazon.) The current cheap tower heatsinks are outperfomring water cooling as well.  I'm really amazed at how great these things are and how cheap compared to previous solutions.
To Lane, if you're having heat issues, getting a tower heatsink & fan if you don't have one and have the room in your case I'd strongly suggest trying that out, or even changing the case to accommodate one, it's just that good.  It could be the video card though, I try to check and avoid higher voltage cards and get one that uses less power so it's not as prone to overheating.  Or could just be bad flow in the case.  You probably want to run something that monitors heat like "Core Temp" so you can see what is overheating.
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