I debated whether or not to post this in the hardware thread but decided to put it here because these are just some general thoughts I have on PC hardware right now.
So I built a mostly full new PC in the last couple of weeks. Unlike in the past, this time around I did not really enjoy the process, and on reflection I'm a little sad about that. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older, or if it's because of my physical/mental condition, or just the general state of the economy and the computer hardware market in particular. Probably a combination of all those factors.
There was a time when building a new PC was exciting. I loved reading reviews and comparing all the various components I'd consider buying. Shopping around for the best deals. Technology moved fast enough that you could always learn something about new components (at a high level) between builds every few years. And when you got the components, assembling the PC was fun as well. I've watched as assembling a PC has become easier (almost idiot proof) over the years because smart designers make it almost impossible to mess things up. This is a big deal even though I'm sure it's still kind of daunting for people who are new to this hobby. If you're old enough, you might remember AGP slots that were the predecessor to PCI-E slots we have today. Installing GPUs in AGP slots used to be a nightmare because they were really tight and you had to really struggle to slot them in. About 20 years ago I broke a brand new GeForce 2 because I lost the fight against an AGP slot. Nowadays there is no way to fuck it up. Even PC cases have been (over?)designed to make things so simple. You can disassemble so many parts to make it easier to install different types of components or reconfigure your setup. Everything is thoughtfully designed to make your life easier.
This time around I really struggled to make up my mind for almost every component. The decisions seemed to mirror so many real life decisions where you have to consider tradeoffs and compromises and generally the prices of everything seemed inflated. I did end up putting together a fairly high end machine but the prices of everything still bothered me. I'd been wanting to upgrade for a few months but I held off to wait for the Zen4/AM5 release. When that did happen, I spent about a month going back and forth on whether to buy that or go with Intel. Once the CPU was decided, choosing a motherboard was like walking into a minefield because of how stupidly expensive they've gotten. Motherboards that cost less sometimes have substantial compromises and you really need to get into the weeds to make sure you're not missing something you need. Even expensive motherboards skimp on SATA ports as if that's some sort of obsolete technology. DDR5 RAM is expensive. Nothing needs to be said about GPU prices. And all these new components are power hungry and run hot so you need a high capacity PSU (expensive) and high quality cooling (expensive). And GPUs are getting physically huge so you need a large cabinet (expensive). In short, everything was expensive to buy, including the new NVME SSDs I had to get because of there not being enough SATA ports on my motherboard of choice.
And then the assembly. I had to get someone to come to my place and help me build it because I was not physically able to do it myself. And I made a silly mistake while building it so after taking 7 hours to assemble, the PC wouldn't boot. After troubleshooting for a couple of hours, the guy had to leave because it was late and couldn't come back until 2 days later. So for 2 days I was stressed out about what had gone wrong because I was not able to troubleshoot it or fix it myself. I only figured out my mistake while chatting with
derExperte who asked me if I had done something quite obvious and I was like "Wait, what?"
Anyway now that it's built I'm quite happy with it. It's very powerful and it's nice to see huge fps numbers in the couple of games I'm playing. But you know how you go back and download heavy older games when you get new hardware to see how they run? Portal RTX. Witcher 3 RTX. Star Citizen. Flight Simulator. For one reason or another I don't feel like getting any of them. Weird.
One last thought. I was using Windows 10 on my old PC and never upgraded to 11. I figured with the new build I'd finally start 11 since I would have to install a fresh OS. So anyway, I know I'm a year late, but damn Win 11 sucks. I'm sure a lot of folks who have been using it for a while will have gotten used to it by now and think it's not that bad, but god damn it makes a horrible first impression.
Anyway sorry about this long and aimless rant about PC hardware. Just sort of got carried away with it.
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