Anyone else find custom PC's boring now?

[KarateHottie93]

Quick Edit: Before you freak out...I've been on here since 2014 lol. I've been building PC's since 2010. Compared to then, it's definitely way harder to make a unique build at the highest end. Remember when TT got hate for "copying" Case Labs and Fractal? Nobody has their own design style anymore.

 

Every damn thing looks the same as everything else in it's price point. TG, minimalistic, RGB, blah blah blah.

 

Case shopping used to be so fun and now it's just bleh. Shopping for a motherboard used to be fun with different feature sets, heatsink designs and so on. Now everything on a given chip set is the same with a different I/O shield. Fortunately I stick to Asus WS boards but shit is just boring.

 

Fractal gets to make high end plain looking cases. In Win gets to make tempered glass cases. SilverStone gets to make plain looking aluminum cases. Thermaltake and BitFenix get to make cheap cases that look expensive but break easily. Everyone else...go back to being exciting! Hell even Raidmax makes plain boxes these days.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Motherboards aren't as bad as you say they are.

Asrock Taichi boards are kind of the polar opposite of MSI Gaming boards.

 

Finding good looking cases can be hard, but they definitely exist.

 

There is still diversity in the feature sets on motherboards. Most Intel boards have Thunderbolt 3 firmware updates available, AMD boards do not. Lower end boards do not support SLI. Some boards don't even support multiple GPUs. Some don't have M.2. Some don't have NVMe support.

[KarateHottie93]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Motherboards aren't as bad as you say they are.

Asrock Taichi boards are kind of the polar opposite of MSI Gaming boards.

 

Finding good looking cases can be hard, but they definitely exist.

 

There is still diversity in the feature sets on motherboards. Most Intel boards have Thunderbolt 3 firmware updates available, AMD boards do not. Lower end boards do not support SLI. Some boards don't even support multiple GPUs. Some don't have M.2. Some don't have NVMe support.

I said everything on "a given chipset" is the same.

 

It was a blanket statement but individual features/selling points are few and far between compared to what they used to be.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, KarateHottie93 said:

I said on "a given chipset" is the same.

Missed that. Comes down to aesthetics and form factor, then.

[KarateHottie93]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Missed that. Comes down to aesthetics and form factor, then.

Yeah lol that's all I meant. Before everything had a giant plastic I/O shield and RBG, you used to often see actual features added to sell a board.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, KarateHottie93 said:

Yeah lol that's all I meant. Before everything had a giant plastic I/O shield and RBG, you used to often see actual features added to sell a board.

Software can also be a selling point, even though most of that isn't good anyway. There's also UEFI, I like the UEFI layouts of some boards more than others.

 

Some companies have an extra "DIMM" slot that can be used to expand storage or other things.

[ManuelNigrito]

my cases unique alwayhs, i put a style into it

[PlayStation 2]

I'm incredibly sick of what I'll call "the generic 'parents' money' build", which'll usually consist of a Ryzen 5 2600, an RTX 2060 and whatever RGB bullshit of the day is popular.

I'm absolutely in love with some more out of the box and inconspicuous rigs. My rig pretty much looks exactly what you'd expect: very fucking messy, but it still kicks ass for what it's worth.

[KarateHottie93]

1 minute ago, James Evens said:

Time for you to get into modding. Personally I prefer notebook modding since it is space constraint but PC gives you more freedom.

 

Lol I love modding, I truly do. I'm just upset cause I'm getting into PC building again and it's so sad compared to what it was in the early 2010's.

 

I'm glad we live in an era where a $150 AiO can cool my CPU as good as a $600 custom loop would have in 2011. That's truly amazing.

 

I love that mid tier GPU's keep getting closer and closer to their high end counterparts in single card performance, instead of vice versa.

 

Aesthetically though...Dmitry from HardwareCanucks didn't help by pushing that minimalistic design down everyone's throats.

[ManuelNigrito]

for an example

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

10 minutes ago, KarateHottie93 said:

Lol I love modding, I truly do. I'm just upset cause I'm getting into PC building again and it's so sad compared to what it was in the early 2010's.

You know, X58(LGA 1366) is still a relevant platform, and it's pretty dirt cheap by now.

[Allmykidsareblack]

I honestly don't care about the looks of my pc, its hard being a father of 2.

[ManuelNigrito]

2 minutes ago, Allmykidsareblack said:

I honestly don't care about the looks of my pc, its hard being a father of 2.

it dont matter to me if you pc black or whatever color like mine, as long as you enjoy it and you know you put the time in place to make it for your family

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

41 minutes ago, KarateHottie93 said:

Yeah lol that's all I meant. Before everything had a giant plastic I/O shield and RBG, you used to often see actual features added to sell a board.

What's an "actual feature"? Because there are a lot of things that still separate high-end boards from lower end ones that aren't purely cosmetic.

[ManuelNigrito]

steel caps and ecu spreader

[KarateHottie93]

48 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

You know, X58(LGA 1366) is still a relevant platform, and it's pretty dirt cheap by now.

Haha I've been thinking of rebuilding my old 2600K with SLI 780 Ti's and my 8350 with CFX 290X's from back in the day. They are still great performers for anything I do by today's standards.

 

Most expensive parts would be the mobos though. A P8P67 WS Revolution Rev. 3.0 is not a cheap board used these days.