Maybe Building Your Own PC is a BAD Idea

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Don't forget having to make sure the IRQ's , or jumpers, or dip switches were set correctly.  The computer learned a lot on, from Tandy had those AND also had a bios that ran a GUI very similar to the one installed on their computers.  (All of it in ROM as the C drive so deceptively fast.) 

 

In 1990 thought not everything was as the same as you think / remember.  At that time it was still possible to buy a non Apple non PC compatible computer like an Amiga.  One had to buy the parts that would fit the computer, not buy the computer to fit the parts.  In turn the computer was bought for what it would actually do. 

In 1990, the worst a naive person could do was buy the game for the wrong model despite having the same shaped floppy disks. You couldn't actually buy parts most of the time, and what you bought was usually stripped from another machine.

 

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

You make a lot of good points but here is where things go a bit wrong  

 

This is an example of the ethos of a computer hardware enthusiast.  Not like the rank beginner / casual user like shown in this video.   Like the people who come here and ask what they can upgrade on their five year old computer they want to know what parts will fit their computer. 

So that might mean they forgo a 3070 3080 or 3090 and the best they can get is a 3060Ti.    Something comparable to a 2070 in a package that is a 1-1 replacement for a 10 series GPU.   In doing so the new person who has never upgraded a thing and won't be risking so much money on it.   It is a way to get the feet wet before going all in.  

As I said above, one does not build a car from scratch without first getting to know how to repair a car that already exist.  One does not build a airplane from a kit, and pilot it, without first having some experience with airplanes. Same with computers. 

That's the thing, people want an upgrade, they ask "what's the best upgrade I can get" and they go get it. A 3090 will not fit in pretty much everything. None of the 30xx parts will, as most of them are 2.5-3 slots wide and longer than the space in most OEM desktops, and require power that the PSU will not provide. You, at best could side-grade to another GPU that was the same tier (eg a 1650ti to a 2060 or 3060) but those aren't typically upgrades at all, where a 1650 is barely a 1080p experience, and a 3060, might only be a 1440p experience.

 

Like the Dell desktops at the office, barely fit the Quadro RTX 4000 or 3000 parts in them. Those are dell-produced GPU parts that fit with the dell cooling solution. If you replace it, the cooling shrouds and card mounts won't fit another card.

 

[Vozy]

13 hours ago, dperolio said:

Can anyone tell me what keyboard this is?

It looks rather close to a G.SKILL KM360

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

In 1990, the worst a naive person could do was buy the game for the wrong model despite having the same shaped floppy disks. You couldn't actually buy parts most of the time, and what you bought was usually stripped from another machine.

 

Uhh not so.  You could buy the parts to upgrade a computer.  A Apple ][ by modern standards was practically a bare bone system into which would had to use an add in card to add almost anything.  Same for that first IBM PC

 

As for upgrades.  The computer which was the first one I ever used was likely one of the first PC's to have what we could recognize as a motherboard with so much built in to it it could get away with just one (or on a latter model two) expansion slots.  In fact looking at this mobo, and old internal modem... in some ways it resembles a mini ITX.    I do note that the power is only a six pin connector ... predating ATX.  To add memory to this thing to get it to a whopping 1 MB would've taken adding individual ram CHIPS.  Not DIMM's ... not SIMM's ... chips. 

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

Like the Dell desktops at the office, barely fit the Quadro RTX 4000 or 3000 parts in them. Those are dell-produced GPU parts that fit with the dell cooling solution. If you replace it, the cooling shrouds and card mounts won't fit another card.

 

That's riddiculous on Dells part.  I have no idea that if people go out and buy some ... oddly shaped compact / slim desktop then expect to get a card into it that is on them. However, is that really true of pre builts in general.  Like if I were to go to best buy and grab a Ryzen 4750G based computer and when I can slap a 3070 into it ... it would not slap in? 

 

Say this one for the sake of argument. 

HP M01 F0016 6YQ85AAABA Desktop PC - Office Depot
The back of the case shows four expansion slots

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Uhh not so.  You could buy the parts to upgrade a computer.  A Apple ][ by modern standards was practically a bare bone system into which would had to use an add in card to add almost anything.  Same for that first IBM PC

Not unless you had a store that sold them. Where I lived, we had to go to the Radio Shack in the next city. And the Tandy 1000 RAM upgrade was an expansion card with individual chips on it. 

 

The 286 also likewise involved individual chips, but that was a hand-me-down from a relative who lived in a big city.

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

 

As for upgrades.  The computer which was the first one I ever used was likely one of the first PC's to have what we could recognize as a motherboard with so much built in to it it could get away with just one (or on a latter model two) expansion slots.  In fact looking at this mobo, and old internal modem... in some ways it resembles a mini ITX.    I do note that the power is only a six pin connector ... predating ATX.  To add memory to this thing to get it to a whopping 1 MB would've taken adding individual ram CHIPS.  Not DIMM's ... not SIMM's ... chips. 

As I said above. The original IBM and some of their clones were 8-slot PC/XT or AT(286) chasis and they were all 8-bit slots on 8088's. The Tandy 1000 had everything onboard, where as the IBM only had the keyboard onboard. Floppy drives? IO card. Hard drives? IO card, Serial ports? IO card. CGA/EGA/VGA card, full-length card. 

 

 

Believe it or not I maxed out a 386 with all the slots (Video, Sound, Super I/O, network, Hard drive/Floppy card, SCSI card, RAM expansion card) back in the day. When the 486 came along, most of the I/O wound up on one VLB card, and the video card on the the other VLB card.

 

Like it's kinda a given now that the sound, network, usb ports, and hard drive controllers will be built onto the motherboard, freeing up what would otherwise require half the slots. But that's not good enough for me, as the cards I use take up 1 16 lane slot (spanning two slots), 1 4 lane slot (spanning two slots), 1 4 lane sot (spanning 1 slot, M2) , and 1 1 lane slot. The remaining spaces in the case are USB port headers, which is actually E-ATX sized.

 

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That's riddiculous on Dells part.  I have no idea that if people go out and buy some ... oddly shaped compact / slim desktop then expect to get a card into it that is on them. However, is that really true of pre builts in general.  Like if I were to go to best buy and grab a Ryzen 4750G based computer and when I can slap a 3070 into it ... it would not slap in? 

 

Say this one for the sake of argument. 

HP M01 F0016 6YQ85AAABA Desktop PC - Office Depot
The back of the case shows four expansion slots

That HP comes with a 180w power supply, mini-ATX AMD B550A, and supports a 65w maximum AMD Ryzen 5 3400G. It also only has two PCIe slots despite there being 4 visible.

 

 

 

[LAwLz]

This was a fun video.

Just goes to show how easy it is to build a PC. No prior experience and no instructions and she managed to do it.

[Uttamattamakin]

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

Not unless you had a store that sold them. Where I lived, we had to go to the Radio Shack in the next city. And the Tandy 1000 RAM upgrade was an expansion card with individual chips on it. 

You have forced my hand  though not all below is directed at you but for those who have misconceptions about what computer building is, and what it was.   First I must respond to the implication that I don't even know what the Ram upgrade was in my own computer. 

 

Here are the photos of the motherboard of my Tandy 1000 RL which I kept.  As you can see the ram upgrade is two sockets in which individual chips go not a card.  As far as I know this was pretty standard for a 1980's computer other than at the very high end (when a 486 DX 50 Mhz was high end).  


As you can see the ram upgrade is not on a card.   The one thing that not even God can take from a person is the time they have lived.  OK maybe a different model had a SIMM  the last model of the Tandy 1000, the RSX, did have SIMM's.     This was likely considered to be user friendly as not that long before this computer came out it was sometimes expected that end users would solder more chips to the board.   

 

Not long before that, late 70's or early 80's, home computers were often kits where one got the individual chips to solder in place themselves.  They were for hobbyist and enthusiast. 

 

Old as this was some things about it were more advanced.  On board graphics which could do 16 colors at a time when one either had monochrome or 4 colors at the consumer level.  Sound equal to the Adlib or sound blaster in quality.   Games and software were written for it and  and sold as "Tandy compatible".   Then there is having a full OS and GUI in Rom.  Which made it all deceptively fast until one had to access a disk. 

It made one not mind running an 8086 (from AMD at 10 Mhz) in 1989.    That's 8086 with no bloody 1, 2, 3, orrr 4. Thinking back on it I feel like Scotty on an episode of TNG.
 

As for what I had in that ISA slot. 

 

 

That blazing fast 2400 baud modem.  Notice it is an expansion card.  I had expected a modem to be an acoustic coupler like the one seen in War Games.  Never could hack NORAD. 

 

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

The 286 also likewise involved individual chips, but that was a hand-me-down from a relative who lived in a big city.

As I said above. The original IBM and some of their clones were 8-slot PC/XT or AT(286) chasis and they were all 8-bit slots on 8088's. The Tandy 1000 had everything onboard, where as the IBM only had the keyboard onboard. Floppy drives? IO card. Hard drives? IO card, Serial ports? IO card. CGA/EGA/VGA card, full-length card. 

Well I live in Chicago.  So yeah.   There was a radio shack in every shopping mall and even some mini malls.   Before the internet, in a smaller town, and before fast shipping services like Fed EX it had to be hard. 

 

 

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Believe it or not I maxed out a 386 with all the slots (Video, Sound, Super I/O, network, Hard drive/Floppy card, SCSI card, RAM expansion card) back in the day. When the 486 came along, most of the I/O wound up on one VLB card, and the video card on the the other VLB card.

 

As you can see from the above a 386 was not in the cards for me.  I went from the above right to a 486 Tandy Sensation II (Which was replaced by a nearly identical computer from them the 3200)  One of the first to have a CD Rom drive. 

 

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

Like it's kinda a given now that the sound, network, usb ports, and hard drive controllers will be built onto the motherboard, freeing up what would otherwise require half the slots. But that's not good enough for me, as the cards I use take up 1 16 lane slot (spanning two slots), 1 4 lane slot (spanning two slots), 1 4 lane sot (spanning 1 slot, M2) , and 1 1 lane slot. The remaining spaces in the case are USB port headers, which is actually E-ATX sized.

The bolded there is part of what I am saying.  People like you and me are not average.  The average computer user is really just better off buying a computer and upgrading it latter to whatever that computer is able to upgrade to.  

 

Think about what games most people play even?  How many people are playing MS FS  or Cyberpunk?  How many people are running high end science packages?  How many people are streaming out to audiences?   

 

We are  enthusiast or hobbyist whose value to companies line AMD or Nvidia isn't really our sales.  Our real value is that we influence others around us.  At the high end of that are people like Linus, either Linus, and his company/ operating system.   (Depending on the Linus).  At the lower end... I'll bet you are someone people you know ask for advice about computers.    That then influences what other people we know buy.  

 

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

That HP comes with a 180w power supply, mini-ATX AMD B550A, and supports a 65w maximum AMD Ryzen 5 3400G.

It also only has two PCIe slots despite there being 4 visible.

Which means that any of the AMD APU's will be drop in upgrades.  That computer could take a Ryzen 5700g when it comes out.  An 8C 16T beast with graphics.  

Then it can also take every bit of a meaty cooler on something like a 3060 or 3060ti.  Which for most people would be enough to run Linux as a host and Windows as a gaming guest or just have a very good experience for many MANY years in one OS. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

You have forced my hand  though not all below is directed at you but for those who have misconceptions about what computer building is, and what it was.   First I must respond to the implication that I don't even know what the Ram upgrade was in my own computer. 

 

Here are the photos of the motherboard of my Tandy 1000 RL which I kept.  As you can see the ram upgrade is two sockets in which individual chips go not a card.  As far as I know this was pretty standard for a 1980's computer other than at the very high end (when a 486 DX 50 Mhz was high end).  

 

 

This is the Tandy 1000 Memory Plus card, this is what you add to the original Tandy 1000 to bring it to 640K. That is what my Tandy 1000 had because otherwise nothing not designed for it/pcjr would be able to run on it.

 

There was no modem, no hard drive. I've seen models with a hard drive on an ISA card.

 

This is what the Tandy 1000 HD (a model with a factory hard drive, which the controller card was in the top slot shown) had:

 

Both the 1000/1000A and 1000HD are essentially the same machine with different factory installed parts (such as the hard drive and ram.)

 

Back to the point, things like this is why people have no idea IF they can upgrade the computer. Because they see models with a bunch of different numbers, that have no relevance to how they perform or can be used for.

 

Sierra AGI titles required 256K and had video drivers for Tandy graphics, Sierra SCI titles with 16 colors required 512K.

 

How would you know what was in your system. Tandy graphics, EGA and CGA all had the same 15-pin connector, but weren't the same. 

 

Compare to today where games and applications requirements are completely disconnected from reality. A 1.2Ghz vs a 5.2 Ghz CPU do not perform the same, yet both are being sold. 8GB RAM vs 128GB System ram. 2GB vs 20GB GPU memory. What does a game realistically need?

 

Well it depends on your computer screen. If you have a TN panel that does 1080p60, do you really need any GPU higher than a nvidia x60 part?

 

Hard drive/SSD size, or RAM size? This is still a question people legitimately ask. People just see big numbers and think it's better.

 

Should you build your own PC? If you know what you're doing. Should you upgrade a prebuilt? No, usually a prebuilt is "fine tuned" for the hardware it ships with and upgrading one part in it, can only ever be cross-graded, otherwise you have to start replacing more parts, throwing out everything. (eg that 180w PSU with the 65w cpu)

 

You're not going to buy a prebuilt with the intention of upgrading it later. You're going to buy a prebuilt for what you needs are "now", and throw it away in 2 years if your needs change. 

[Uttamattamakin]

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

This is the Tandy 1000 Memory Plus card, this is what you add to the original Tandy 1000 to bring it to 640K. That is what my Tandy 1000 had because otherwise nothing not designed for it/pcjr would be able to run on it.

 

There was no modem, no hard drive. I've seen models with a hard drive on an ISA card.

 

This is what the Tandy 1000 HD (a model with a factory hard drive, which the controller card was in the top slot shown) had:

 

Both the 1000/1000A and 1000HD are essentially the same machine with different factory installed parts (such as the hard drive and ram.)

 

Back to the point, things like this is why people have no idea IF they can upgrade the computer. Because they see models with a bunch of different numbers, that have no relevance to how they perform or can be used for.

 

So we are both right we were talking about different models. 

 

The memory card you show there looks a lot like an 8 bit ISA card but knowing how much the early models were not very PC compatible at all they were probably very different. 

 

The computer I was working with had everything built into the board. 

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Should you build your own PC? If you know what you're doing. Should you upgrade a prebuilt? No, usually a prebuilt is "fine tuned" for the hardware it ships with and upgrading one part in it, can only ever be cross-graded, otherwise you have to start replacing more parts, throwing out everything. (eg that 180w PSU with the 65w cpu)

 

You're not going to buy a prebuilt with the intention of upgrading it later. You're going to buy a prebuilt for what you needs are "now", and throw it away in 2 years if your needs change. 

I'll just agree to disagree.  I've bought and upgraded pre built PC's before.  Lots of people do it.  It is 10x easier than building a computer for a beginner.  Even if that means one is limited in choice. 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

 

So we are both right we were talking about different models. 

 

The memory card you show there looks a lot like an 8 bit ISA card but knowing how much the early models were not very PC compatible at all they were probably very different. 

Oddly enough the one I acquired for the 386 brought it up to 12MB from 4MB, but the memory test literately went from going "tick.tick.tick" to "tick.tick.tick..tick..tick..tick..tick..", like the memory test at boot would slow in half. Because of course the ISA bus is slow and 4x slower than the CPU itself

 

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The computer I was working with had everything built into the board. 

I believe you. But again, just like current all-in-one's like MacMini's and HTPC systems, these are not standard configurations, and upgrading the parts to things that were not designed for it, will likely break it.

 

Like, the only reason CPU's being soldered to a PCB ever make sense are in these tiny systems because upgrading it will compromise the cooling.

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I'll just agree to disagree.  I've bought and upgraded pre built PC's before.  Lots of people do it.  It is 10x easier than building a computer for a beginner.  Even if that means one is limited in choice. 

I don't bother upgrading prebuilds, get a laptop if you need a prebuilt unit, it will last longer for the price.

 

There are prebuilds you can buy that you can upgrade, but they come from SI's that are not OEM's (eg not Dell, Lenovo, HP) , like BOXX where you could buy all those parts separately at a higher cost.