Build Advice Are you 'happy' with your PC?

I think as I get older (55 now), I think less and less about the PC arms race.
I recently 'rebuilt' my PC in a smaller case, ditching all the RGB and filled the case with grey on grey Noctua Redux fans (Asus Prime AP201, I recommend highly) and sidegraded to the oft. maligned RTX 4060.

For me though, I am happy with it and have no compulsion to upgrade either aesthetically or technically. (Unless one of my dream games came along and it was running at 4FPS ofc)

Are you in the camp of upgrade every so many years or are you constantly 'fiddling'?

 

I built my current PC in very early 2018 and the only upgrade I've made to it since was a new GPU (in May 2019). Haven't touched it at all since then, and don't feel any compelling reason to upgrade. It's still powerful enough for me, almost completely silent, and in a very small footprint.

In fairness, when I built it, I did go a bit higher-spec than usual - an i7, an NVMe SSD, reasonably high-end mITX motherboard and a boutique mITX case. But that was with the aim of having decent longevity so I guess it's a case of "mission accomplished"!

 

I completely agree. When I was younger and didn't have much else to spend my salary on, I was always buying at or close to the bleeding edge of tech. Nowadays, I spec for my needs, which has helped me keep the cost down considerably. I've only within the last year retired my 1080Ti for a 3080Ti as I had need for a large format 4K screen for productivity. 1440P/1080Ti looked awful on it, so needs must - but I don't generally play high refresh rate AAA's any more. I'm more strategy or adventure these days, something with a story to tell, so don't need more than 120FPS - and I'm absolutely fine with that. I game to relax now, not to get tense and p*ssed off by gamerkidz.

I still fiddle to this day, but more with aesthetics and peripherals. I value a clean, considered build (including my desk) more than a box full of several grands worth of tech with ill thought out ergonomics and style.

 

I think the interest has gone because of the twin pains of diminishing returns for your computational grunt and as the components market crapping out.

Hard to be interested when the £/frame has hardly moved, and motherboards cost what they do. I only changed my GPU because support for Vega was (rumoured to be) about to stop!

 

In a word, yes. Both of them.

I have two PCs on my desk. One is in a small four litre chassis, running a 5600G. It did have a low profile 4060 in there and I played most of my games on it, but Sprog2's 3060Ti started playing up at Uni so I put the 4060 in his rig. I still use that PC every day for browsing, youtube etc.. it's a nice little low power setup that may yet get another LP 4060.

The other rig is my main gaming PC and I only power it up when I intend to play a game - 5800X3D and RTX 3090 FE - I do all my gaming on this machine now, mainly Cyberpunk, Dark Descent and WoWS at the moment. The GPU is nearly three years old now (I think it was March 2021 when I bought it) and it's still a beast, so I really can't see me changing it anytime soon. We'll see how the GPU market looks in 2025.

 

I would be, but Windows is so fixated on "fixing" them, that I can't get them working again as fast as they f*ck them up. I'm amazed I can surf after last night's 'update'. I now have 3 high end rigs that have some form of broken audio. Earlier this week, Pud decided to delete all the analog audio ports, and instead make my monitor the default audio device...a monitor with no speakers. Last night broke turnip. -No audio, and many programs are inoperable. I may have to completely rebuild. GG is hooked to my stereo through an EXTERNAL usb dac. I was planning on getting it back on 7 before all this started. Since 10 kicked in the back door on her, it has been deleting the spdif about every three weeks.
They seem to be so bent on making their own drivers for everything, they don't realize they CAN'T. To make matters worse, they are blocking use of anything they feel is 'old', so you can't fix their f-ups. 'Cause, you know, Realtek, who have been making the exact same audio and ethernet devices since the dawn of time should really type up some new and shiny drivers.
-I could go on. My poor mouse has exploded twice this week. I can't find her little spring for the wheel. I think it went sub-orbital. [/rant]

 

I should add that I have to go into my Mom's laptop every month and delete 20-ish copies of her printer with the special windows drivers that don't work. If she want's to print something, she has to run the factory driver install .exe on the desktop.

 

Strange how some have so many problems and others have none. I think the more software programmes and connected devices you have, the more chance you run into issues.
I have windows 11 and can't remember the last time something went wrong to the level you are mentioning.
That said, all I really have installed is steam with a couple of games, couple of tech tools and am quite anal about keeping the machine 'tidy' using Hibit, spyware cleaner, spyware cleaner, clearing temp etc
I also only have a mouse and printer plugged in with a Bluetooth keyboard.

 

One of the best bits about running Linux is the ability to "pin" the version of any program, library or driver.
And no forced reboots whatsoever!

 

Yup I find it odd too. I have win 11 on everything now, zero issues.

Happy with my machines whether laptop, handheld PC, desktop or high power desktop, all do what they where built to do.

Only one I have less satisfaction with is the non windows stuff like my NAS but that is because I an doing stuff with software I do fully understand the nuts and bolts of and am running many VMs etc, each time I want to add a new feature etc, it's a ball ache, probably should have done it with something pre baked from the likes of QNAP/Synology where they have done the heavy lifting.

Perhaps I will try that next year.

 

For ease of use and reliability, you can't really top Synology IMO. They're so expensive though! QNAP used to be a slightly cheaper option but have now upped their game and prices to match...

 

Completely agree. You can be surprised that you can still play everything on modest systems if you manage your own expectations! I remember back in the very late 90's when i couldnt afford ... well nothing really yet still had the best time PC gaming. I think that still stands firm today.

 

I enjoy the tinkering and upgrade process, so I've never gone bleeding edge and just had lots of incremental upgrades. I've never upgraded specifically for a game, but I have held off playing games (looking at you CP2077) for ages knowing I'll upgrade at some future point to scratch an itch and have a better playing experience. As long as it posts, I'm always happy with it.

Re Win11, I'm still convinced that "upgrade" bricked my 3070ti. It was running perfectly fine and stable on win10. Soon as I upgraded nothing but hard locks and artifacts unless I massively reduced clocks. Re flashing the cards BIOS helped the clock issue, but anything over 75% power use, or any ray tracing, still locks it up.

 

Look on the bright side - Win12 drops next summer!

 

A new layer of veneer over the dilapidated shack? Whee! It probably requires a touch screen and deletes your keyboard.

 

i am 43 and in the still fiddling camp, my pc was so stable then i got the itch to tray a gen 5 ssd..... my troubles started when i cloned windows to the new disk wiped everything and did a clean install of win 11, damn thing is still crashing on the odd day.

 

The whole reason I got into custom watercooling was to curb my want to tinker with my PC, and these days upgrades can take weeks, because finding energy after work! So I do a upgrade every 4 years or so, I just got for the highest performance toys I can afford each time.

Luckily my work allows me a lot of creative outlet, as a Hardware Enginnering Lead I'm not only tinkering with stuff, I'm defining, designing and inventing it too! Like the chassis I just made, which is one of the smallest and lightest you can get (1kg chassis weight, 11 litres volume), and I'll have a lot more of that next year!

Compounding that, there's basically nothing left to tinker with on modern systems. CPU's and GPU's are often at max clocks out of the box, and the high energy prices aren't worth the extra performance you can squeeze from them. Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have the price/performance scale so tightly nailed down that there is no real compition any more, you just see what you can afford for your budget and buy that. There's no fun to be had with tweaking BIOS settings now. Its sad, but I think the days of enthusiast custom PC build are over, its all just Lego now...

 

Woah, woah,woah. You don't get to drop in a "oh, I built a chassis" and follow up with "Imma tell ya later"!! We need moar now damnit!

Yeah, I get as much satisfaction from undervolting as a did when overclocking. I kinda miss the days of a twin loop in a massive chassis - four radiators, and a dozen fans locked at 5v - dead quiet at full load. But it was a ball-ache tweaking the system and upgrades were a royal PITA.

 

Ha! You'll have to wait till it launches and isn't under my NDA! And you won't be able to get your hands on it, it'll be part of our camera system, and those are 6 figure prices...

 

Happy? Yes and No I guess is the answer. Like Pete I went water cooling to help curb the itch to tinker. It was never really necessary and just can’t afford to do that these days. But it could always be better

My motherboard is now coming up 4 years old so I’m starting to plan my next build and slowly acquiring bits for it. But my current one does almost everything I need it so, so it’s a case of upgrading because I’m chasing those last few frames at 4k with settings turned up and not because I really need to.