Inspiration?

www.bit-tech.net/column/41

 

Intresting read.

Nice one

- s

 

Huh, first time I've actually read a coloum in ages and I have to agree to a certain extent. I guess as more and more companies jump on the ethuasist bandwagon it becomes harder and harder to find inspiration to mod / overclock / be a ethuasist.

 

Yep, the 'me too' attitude is pretty much a standard everywhere.

 

Thanks for the good read

 

Perhaps we have now reached that scary point where modding has become mainstream...

What do we have to do now to halfway stand out from the crowd?

Think about it. Unless you craft something of G-gnome caliber, or CNC your whole case from scratch (nice one, G69T!), or suspend your entire system in a custom-built tank of Fluorinert, have we really got anything exceptional to show? Watercooling and a few CCFLs in a non-beige, windowed case don't cut it anymore. Seen it, done it, bought the hardware...

OK, perhaps it is not about how elaborate or accomplished your mod is. Perhaps it's about individuality. But that is hard to achieve if you buy modding parts of-the-shelf. My worry is that this just kills imagination and innovation. You just build something from existing components rather than creating something truly new and unique. You just re-hash the old and familiar in varying combinations. You don't question it. Why like this? Why not another way? Why not a better, more elegant, more functional way?

I mean, we have been dangling heavy waterblocks from graphic cards for years. But how long did it take before someone came up with a GPU support bracket? Yet the idea was so simple. Hose separators, same thing. Integrated pump and rad bracket assembly, saving space and enabling you to lift the watercooling out of the case in one piece. And that is just my stuff. Let's not forget G-gnome's shower hoses (amongst many things), Piloux' new take on modding with his Half-Life case, the Hypercube...

Ironic that for our modding slogan we have to look at Apple: "Think Different".

 

Great article. It is indeed a shame that we're now perhaps too well-catered for as a community...it seems that original modding ideas (or at least those that are in reach of someone with less than inhuman powers with a CNC machine) are running out, and there's only so much tweaking you can do to a piece of hardware that's already been tweaked to the absolute limit by the manufacturer. The thrill of buying something boring and making it cool is lessened greatly when someone else can buy something that's cooler off the shelf.

As Nexxo says, there is still life left in modding, as long as we keep innovating. But in performance hardware? While there's still a place for dedication (read: repeated tweaking and benchmarking) things seem to be moving towards needing a shedload of money to do anything even close to cutting-edge overclocking. When there are people out there with triple-cascade phase-change units, what hope does Joe Normal with his block of copper have of setting records?

 

Great editorial, but i feel guilty now for commenting on the PSU review here http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=860876

Thanks for all your hard work, i'd support a Mac element in the website. I think the Mini Mac has the potential to gain a few supporters from the PC camp and increase awareness of the usefullness of Macs.

Tom

 

oh well you know, it's comertialisation... we all knew it was gonna come by some time. But I found a new thing, i've decided to hook up everything i can possibly can to my network. at the moment i've got 4 pc's hooked up to the sound system as well as the tv, i can now change the channel on my tv through my keyboard. the dvd player lives next to the sofa a long way away from the tv so that i don't have to get up. I've started writing a little app to stream audio from a database based on the likes and dislikes of whoever is in the room, web based of course. and the other day i found an old 486, it's now sitting in the hallway with a magnetic strip reader so when i leave the house all my phone calls will be routed straight to voice mail on the pc. phone calls are routed to various pc's around the house based on the callers choice, you know what i mean that anoying voice that says press one for this and two for that... lol

i have too much time on my hands lol

 

Well I've gotta say, you make some good points. Personally I think you can get out of modding what you want to and personally it's not about being different than everyone else for me.

I think not so much the new hardware is dissapointing, but the PR associated with it. News about it being released months before it hits the shelves and then a few more months before they're available in any real quantity. Processors were consistently getting faster until the end of the year and now we don't know what's going to happen. GPUs are getting faster and games are getting more eye candy but without the CPU to back it we'll get stuck. Hard drives are getting bigger but I'm still waiting for entry-level drives to become cheaper and/or much faster solid-state storage. New technologies are being rushed and we end up getting things with severe issues out to consumers.

 

I think this certainly hits home with me. Besides not having much time at all to check personal email, much less tweak, I haven't had the desire to, either. My CPU is OC'd the most it can be. My RAM is running as fast as it can. Overclocking an AIW card is practically pointless, as the reference cooling on 'em are hardly adequate for keeping it cool at stock, and there's no room for a better assembly.

My case? It's completely organized, LCD'ed, lit up, and functional. There isn't anything more to do with it. And even one year ago, beige boxes were still very common. Going to a LAN party and flipping on the CCFL's and LED's gave a sense of satisfaction, kind've a pride thing. Not to mention you could actually see what was inside the box. Now, windowed, flashy, pre-mod cases are the norm. Even Dell, Gateway/Emachines, and Compaq/HP are making their systems flashy. I would challenge anyone to find a large PC company selling systems in a beige box.

So what's left to do? Without being a kagillionaire, there isn't much I can do. Where has all the inspiration gone?

 

There is plenty to do to remain apart from the crowd... come on, are watercooling, lights, and a window all you can come up with!?

Live life normally, and inspiration will come eventually. Don't try to look for it, you won't find it that way - you have to just stop thinking about it, and let it come on its own.

 

Nice read, Wil.

Theres a dual-spelling thing going on with the first quote - skeptical/sceptical.

*n

 

Firehed: Definately agree with you.

Modding is going mainstream and that´s not
fun for anyone because it ruins the creativity in our brains.
Still, there are modds like Orac3 that Tt and Coolermaster
can´t copy, yet
If modders want to keep it like that, we must get
our creativity to work again and make modding non-mainstream
again.
But that´s a hard thing to do , Tt,Cm and all other
companys have stuff to their hands that a lonely modder
never can lay his hands on.
So it´s the modder against the modding-industry , the acess
to money is un fair in this case , a industry can develope
anything with CNC,WaterJets and laser and get it perfect.
A modder can only rely on his creativity and try to make his
best of the situation.

Comments accepted.

 

True, but the modder has the imagination. Because we mess around with this stuff on a daily basis, we have a feel for what mod is useful, what looks good, and what people want. Big companies do not. That is why they keep basically re-hashing the same ideas: LEDs in fans, lights in (garish) cases, garishly coloured components, and basically just going bigger, faster, flashier. Rarely do you find something original or useful, like, say, the Zalman Reserator. But we break new grounds all the time.

 

good news article.... but scares me a little about the mac secction... why do not leave the things as they are? I already feel like displaced, and the section is not yet online.. the scared one....

 

Relax, dude. Change Is Good.

 

Exactly. This is why the companies will never be able to make a rig as good as a skilled modder. And this is what will keep modding from being mainstream.

 

it's not the just the imagination and the creativity the modder has, but also pride in doing something yourself, knowing that no one else in the world has the same case/hardware as you, and the knowledge that you built it, with your own hands, in your precious spare time.

I think that beats any premodded case.

and what do people think of a wi-fi enable keetle, which can respond to query's relating to temperature, water level, and other strange and wonderfull things. I think i've got a new formulating, turning the keetle on with my keyboard lol.
cofee/tea anyone?

 

I think the inspiritation has to come from the modders.
Just because modding type cases are mainstream whats the problem with making yours more unique?
This is like saying we've used all the notes - we'd better stop making music as there's nothing to do.
Dumb.

To a Mac section - err whats the point of a mac section on a modding/hardware website? Esp the mac mini as it would be bloody expensive to mod it anyway - I mean for a decent spec the things bloody pricey, the hardware is mainly proprietry as it is, so what do you have?
Shove it in a different box.
Or actually anything that you can do to a IBM PC.
Which leads me to think - why have a section for macs?
You can upgrade them like a pc to a limited extent (or at least the full desktops you can) but that comes under hardware and well modding is modding - the OS doesn't matter.

You want to do macs - do macs but they don't really need their own section do they?

Mind you traditionally the macs have no or little place in the modding scene because you buy a mac for it's looks in the first place.

Just a few thoughts