Building computers has become weird

[simpsonfan409]

most cases are so short that you bareley have enough space for harddrives, while SSD's and M.2's are still rather expensive. we also don't know what's going to happen to storage once the PS5 comes around.

some power supplies are longer than others, which in combination with the drive bay/PSU cover style makes it quite difficult to find the right case. we just cram the PSU and HDD's in the same little pocket and hope it all fits.

RGB has two standards and it's almost never labeled. i have bought one set of fans and one case with the wrong RGB voltage this week, neither of them mentioned the voltage in the product description. and don't even get me started on all the different software.

whenever you buy an AM4 motherboard you have to worry whether or not the bios is already updated, and if it isn't you have to deal with customer support to get an old 1st gen ryzen sent to you, and even if it is already updated you have that period of uncertainty while putting everything together.

i don't know about you, but back in the day i could just pick any component and it would just work and fit. the only thing we had to look out for was the cpu socket and the ram generation.

[Nicnac]

7 minutes ago, simpsonfan409 said:

Spoiler

 

most cases are so short that you bareley have enough space for harddrives, while SSD's and M.2's are still rather expensive. we also don't know what's going to happen to storage once the PS5 comes around.

some power supplies are longer than others, which in combination with the drive bay/PSU cover style makes it quite difficult to find the right case. we just cram the PSU and HDD's in the same little pocket and hope it all fits.

RGB has two standards and it's almost never labeled. i have bought one set of fans and one case with the wrong RGB voltage this week, neither of them mentioned the voltage in the product description. and don't even get me started on all the different software.

whenever you buy an AM4 motherboard you have to worry whether or not the bios is already updated, and if it isn't you have to deal with customer support to get an old 1st gen ryzen sent to you, and even if it is already updated you have that period of uncertainty while putting everything together.

i don't know about you, but back in the day i could just pick any component and it would just work and fit. the only thing we had to look out for was the cpu socket and the ram generation.

 

 

Most things are still the same tho. RGB was still new to me when I recently put together a friend's pc. I think i spent at least 25% of the total build time on that lol. I was hesitant about a M.2 drive at first as well but a 500gb or 1TB one is pretty decently priced these days for what it gives you. also the installation process is so much more fun than wrangling sata and power wires throughout the case lol. I think it simplifies a lot and saves a bunch of time. I have no experience with extra long psus tho...

And for the cpu compatibility part I'm just so happy how AMD has enabled us with their whole Ryzen lineup that I am gladly putting in a little extra research work for that

[simpsonfan409]

it's nice that ryzen is more compatible than intels lineup, but i've built two systems in the last month and i always felt uneasy about the bios till the pc booted.

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, simpsonfan409 said:

most cases are so short that you bareley have enough space for harddrives

"Barely have enough space?" You only need one single hard drive these days, maybe two, which just about every case on the market has room for. You can get a 2TB had drive for like $50, that's pretty massive.

 

6 minutes ago, simpsonfan409 said:

some power supplies are longer than others, which in combination with the drive bay/PSU cover style makes it quite difficult to find the right case. we just cram the PSU and HDD's in the same little pocket and hope it all fits.

Haven't really seen cases where this is a major problem, but it also doesn't have to do with the cover. A large portion of the covers in cases are also removable. If the PSU is too close to the hard drive cage, just route the cables before fully inserting the PSU. On top of that, the inordinately long PSUs are basically all modular so it's really easy to do that.

 

7 minutes ago, simpsonfan409 said:

RGB has two standards and it's almost never labeled. i have bought one set of fans and one case with the wrong RGB voltage this week, neither of them mentioned the voltage in the product description. and don't even get me started on all the different software

Yeah RGB is basically universally garbage right now.

 

8 minutes ago, simpsonfan409 said:

whenever you buy an AM4 motherboard you have to worry whether or not the bios is already updated,

Not if you buy guaranteed updated motherboards. The MAX series from MSI is basically all I recommend, or the ASRock B450M/AC, as they are 100% compatible with no question.

 

9 minutes ago, simpsonfan409 said:

back in the day i could just pick any component and it would just work and fit. the only thing we had to look out for was the cpu socket and the ram generation.

Yeah but back in the day, computers were hideous. Back in the day, you had a million clones of antec cases, you had loud ass computers, you had less versatile computers, and depending on what "day" we are back in, PC gaming wasn't even the de facto cream of the crop for gaming.

[simpsonfan409]

not much cable routing i can do about this, and i can't even fit one drive in there.

[gloop]

What case is that?

[simpsonfan409]

kolink nimbus