Re: World of Warcraft used to be under 50 GB install

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 Mon, 23 Jun 2025 06:43:59 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
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Eewww pre-builts!
Build your own and you get exactly the hardware you want.

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I'm less picky.
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Yes, if you want the ultimate gaming rig, maxed out in every area,
you're not going to get that experience from an OEM... not even from a
boutique reseller. But that sort of hardware is really only for the
sake of HAVING the hardware, and not actually because you're getting
some benefit in gameplay. And most people have neither the money, nor
time, nor expertise for putting together a computer like that.

In my case it wasn't about having the ultimate gaming rig, but maximum
utility and upgradeability for the future.

So I got a MB with 2 SSD connectors and 2 SATA, but only used one of
each for now.   Ditto the RAM with 64GB installed and room for 64 more.

I don't build a new system often, because I don't have to, I can just
add some more storage or RAM when I need more.

Also, in my own personal experience, you aren't really saving much
money by getting somebody else to do it for you either. While some
boutique PC vendors are positively predatory in their pricing <cough
cough Falcon PC cough cough>, more mid-tier boutiques are relatively
competitive in cost. Yes, it's more... but not MUCH more. The days
when you could get a far superior PC for far less money are long past;
even boutique gaming PCs are sold at the narrowest of margins these
days.

In my case, it actually cost me _more_ than one of their prebuilts, but
I got exactly the bits I wanted and with maximum upgrade potential.
Future-proofing.

<snip>

TL;DR; get what makes sense to your wallet and usage scenario. If
that's a cheap OEM, or a mid-tier boutique pre-built, or building your
own from scratch, they're all good and -thanks to how powerful our
computers have become- you'll probably have a good experience when it
comes to games.
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External HDs are ok for storage or watching movies/listening to music,
but you would not want to game from one.

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That depends on your hardware. External SSDs linked through
Thunderbolt3 ports have surprising performance. I won't go so far to
say that they can compete with the fastest internal drives, they are
definitely good enough for gaming on. Certainly they are faster than
any spinning-rust drives. If you're not rocking the fastest SSD
internally (which is probably the case for a lot of OEM devices) you
may actually see a benefit from using the external.
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Of course, a lot of PCs don't offer the fastest Thunderbolt3 ports,
and a lot of external drives tend to be slower hardware too. Don't buy
a 16TB Western Digital MyBook off of Amazon and think you can drop
"Doom Dark Ages" on it and have any sort of a good time. Your typical
USB3 port -and the old-school platter technology- will make that a
painful experience.
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But if you need some more space, your PC has Thunderbolt3 and you
bought a fast external SSD? It'll work.

Most of the external drives I see are USB based, great for backups, not
for gaming or anything else that requires serious data rates, although
as I said, music and movies work pretty well since the data flow rate
isn't that high unless you've ripped 4kUltra movies to that external HD.

Chances that a cheapish OEM Best Buy/Dell computer has a Thunderbolt3
port are, I think, minimal at best.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr