Anyone here spend a bunch of money on their PCs.....but don't actually use them?

[Mister Woof]

So pretty typical of me I blow a ton of money on computer parts and systems, and I go on and on on forums and other discussions about what part is better or whatever......but the sad truth is I never even use it.

 

Take my systems for example: my Intel 8700k system is a 2017 build mostly, but 90% of it's use is web and YouTube. Sometimes I play FFXIV on it, but even then it's way overkill for that game. I've spent the most money on that system, and all in all, aside from the hotrodding aspect of it, it's grossly underutilized.

 

Take my other system, my cheap leftover parts Ryzen 1600 system. It's upstairs in my den (man cave, since we don't have a basement) connected to the cheapest Westinghouse 55" 1080p tv I could find. I use this system for 90% of my gaming. It's also got the worst graphics card in my house. But I use it the most for gaming.

 

This makes no sense.

 

But, I do it anyway.

 

Anyone else suffer from this illogical neurosis?

 

Edit: maybe this needs to be moved to off topic

[Theguywhobea]

Yeah I compulsively buy second hand PC's and then maybe use them for a few days before reselling them or giving them to family members.

 

At one point my girlfriend made me count all the laptops I had, and it was something like 12. Thankfully I have now been able to sell most of them or give them away haha

[Juular]

Same here, i've upgraded my CPU recently from i5 3470 to R7 3700X for what ? More cores lol ! But i do transcode videos for my phone sometimes tho and mine on it 24\7 for like 5$ per month lol (over electricity costs). I also have an urge to upgrade my GTX1060 to smth like RTX2070\2080 but i almost don't play modern games, all i play are mostly old-ass stuff from early 2000s.

[minibois]

Kind of.. Most of my PC usage is either:

- forum

- YouTube

- some drawing/photo manipulation?

- coding

- some gaming

 

I could have probably gotten away with a cheaper rig I kinda justified my GPU upgrade because I am getting a bit more into image upscaling and such. 

At the moment I mainly justified the GPU upgrade to do more folding@home

[Dedayog]

My PC gets a shitload of use, all around. 

 

But I have a basement full of shit I bought but don't use, tho I saved a lot of money on it all!!!

[Kilrah]

I don't need the power of my rig every day, but anytime I do it's a blessing not to be working on a slow-ass machine, so I consider it worth it.

 

 

[Mister Woof]

Just now, jstudrawa said:

My PC gets a shitload of use, all around. 

 

But I have a basement full of shit I bought but don't use, tho I saved a lot of money on it all!!!

Don't get me started on cars 

 

I had purchased a 92 Miata with the intent to go full dummy LS1 on it

 

Kept it I'm the garage for 7 years non-op never used it never did anything sold it for $500 eventually after wife bitched at me for the space.

[Juular]

1 minute ago, Plutosaurus said:

sold it for $500 eventually after wife bitched at me for the space.

That's a lot for used wife lol.

[Dedayog]

Just now, Plutosaurus said:

Don't get me started on cars 

 

I had purchased a 92 Miata with the intent to go full dummy LS1 on it

 

Kept it I'm the garage for 7 years non-op never used it never did anything sold it for $500 eventually after wife bitched at me for the space.

Oh man, that's similar to mine.

 

My old man bought a 1989 Cougar Xr7 new (full 3.8l supercharged v6, 5-speed special order), sold it to me 5 years later, I was 21.  Drove it a few years then broke something (Not sure what), so it sat.  I towed it to each house and had it covered with a car cover for years until 2 years ago I sold my house in a divorce and didn't take it with me.  March of Dimes got it for donation.

 

But thought would make over 15 years it sat and didn't move.  I get ya

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Juular said:

That's a lot for used wife lol.

Worth every penny

[St. Nick]

I have a really great 1440p, 240hz, 1 ms monitor at my desk with a Razer Huntsman, an Orbweaver Chroma and Razer Viper Ultimate... but usually when I get home from work I roll into bed and watch youtube on the wall mounted 4k 60hz TV with horrendous input lag and upscaling 1440p to 4k while I play some casual CS:GO or currently some metro or some other cinematic game on my 30 dollar logitech wireless deskset where I don't even care about my fancy refresh rate just because I don't wanna get up and sit at my desk ~_~, thus relegating my pride and joy of a desktop to a glorified HTPC.

[Gamer Schnitzel]

It honestly sounds a lot like you just need to get a life. You seem to do it because you get bored and putting computers together excites you. Try to get a hobby and try to force a minimalist mindset on yourself not buying further parts or upgrades unless you have a good reason. For example if your PC hits the Hz cap of your monitor you should not upgrade anymore.

[Guest]

I wouldn't know anything about that.

[Radium_Angel]

I bought my system (dual Xeon CPUs, 32GB RAM) for about 500$, and have put about 200$ more into it, so I consider it fair for the work I do (photography and 2 video games)

But like others here, I have too many other systems that get attention.

 

Also, 2007 Saturn Sky with 100K miles, fully functioning for sale, for you car guys 

[Kilrah]

Just now, Gamer Schnitzel said:

Try to get a hobby

Well obviously this IS his hobby already. Nothing wrong with it.

[Zando_]

Yes. I've never needed an upgrade since my 980 Ti, but I still have continually gone higher (on average), even though I still only game at 1080p. Also run HEDT for no real reason other than I like the platform and it's fun to OC. I certainly don't have a workload that needs it, I mostly game and run Discord and Firefox, lol. Just bought a streamdeck on sale too, not that I stream. It sits and reads HWinfo stats. 

[PlayStation 2]

Now that I think about it, to a large extent, my PC is a massive waste of money. I honestly could've made do easily with a Ryzen 5 1500X, but I chose to drop the cash for a 1700X because, at the time, I recorded videos very often.

I also don't need a 580 to any degree. I could've easily made do with a 1050 Ti or a 570.

[Kilrah]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Just bought a streamdeck on sale too, not that I stream.

Heh I did the exact same thing a few months ago. 

But it was just triggered by the sale, purchase was motivated by me not finding a suitable replacement for my previous keyboard that had lots of shortcut keys I used to launch my programs. Got fed up of searching and decided to just replace with the Stream Deck. Works great, and I can have pages of shortcuts now

[amdorintel]

15 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

but the sad truth is I never even use it.

that could be said for the majority of casual users that buy pc's or have them made for them.

its like a cell phone, the vast majority of purchasers never use 80% of the potential of their cell phone, but they still want the latest and greatest $2000 iphone.

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

It honestly sounds a lot like you just need to get a life.

What kind of heresy is this? Do you now know where you are? 

[St. Nick]

Welp, Guess this is why we are on the LTT forums, we, like Linus awnser 'Why?' with BECAUSE WE CAN. The very nature of the enthusiast beast lies bare here. We just enjoy the hardware. And honestly, I have my PC's open swapping parts more often then actually using them. I tweak and overclock and replace parts just because I can. I think I have at least 8 systems currently? I have never gotten rid of anything, I still have an old Pentium 3 with a vooddoo acclerator card, because it's still fun to tinker with. 

[Mister Woof]

I find this immensely amusing, because I spend probably 8 hours a day with my phone and probably the most time spent on it vs any other electronics device, but I'm too cheap to spend a lot of them (I tend to break em) and I'm using a cheap $199 Moto g6

 

Of anything warranted expense it's my phone lol

4 minutes ago, amdorintel said:

that could be said for the majority of casual users that buy pc's or have them made for them.

its like a cell phone, the vast majority of purchasers never use 80% of the potential of their cell phone, but they still want the latest and greatest $2000 iphone.

 

[amdorintel]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

What kind of heresy is this? Do you now know where you are? 

you are correct, it is a massive time waster. could be doing a million other things right now, but i am not. using about 1/100'th the potential of my pc at the moment.

 

the only good thing that comes from this, is you get various opinions on whatever you are asking, and its up to the poster to discern the truth of the matter and move on from there.

 

can ask questions, any question you want

maybe if the wikisites were easier to use and find, then forums would have a niche use scenerio because almost all questions are the same in the forums, very few are niche or special case scenerios.

[Kilrah]

I have a certain (and growing...) number of vintage computers, PDAs etc that I grab from eBay or the likes for little, then if not already restore them to fully working condition, and play with a bit for some retro vibes. Typically machines that either had some significance in PC history, rebuying/playing with stuff I was using 15-20 years ago and had sold, or getting devices I was lusting over back when they came out.

None are getting as much attention as they should, but I have fun with that, so... yep, becasue I can and have fun doing it.

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Kilrah said:

I have a certain (and growing...) number of vintage computers, PDAs etc that I grab from eBay or the likes for little, then if not already restore them to fully working condition, and play with a bit for some retro vibes. Typically machines that either had some significance in PC history, rebuying /playing with stuff I was using 20 years ago and had sold, or getting devices I was lusting over back when they came out.

None are getting as much attention as they should, but I have fun with that, so... yep, becasue I can and have fun doing it.

Do you ever watch LGR on YouTube?

 

Some interesting finds there.