Build a PC while you still can

[Blademaster91]

26 minutes ago, hishnash said:

The vast majority of PCs purchased by people are never upgraded and it is very important for the right to repair movement to not conflate upgradability with repairability.

 fully upgradable system does not mean a repairable system! These are very different things, you are not repairing your SSD when you take the NVMe drive and throw it way (along with a perfectly working SSD controller and dram package). A reparable system is a system were you can buy board level parts to replace and get the software to be able to reset the firmware on the many little controllers. In this aspect apple are in fact ahead of the industry since they provide anyone who want them the software to fully re-flash all the firmware on the modern Macs (that includes your SSD controller). so the SSD is more repairable on a Mac than on a windows machine were your really going to struggle to get the software to reset the NVMe controller and your also going to find it hard to apply that to the controller as its unlikely to just do this flashing over a USB-C port. What apple are missing is the providing of board level parts and schematics that are just as critical to repair. 

I have to doubt that claim as repair and upgrade services are still a thing, and PC manufacturers still put removable SSD's even in thin & light laptops.

When I swap out an SSD I don't expect to replace the SSD NAND chips, no SSD manufacturer is going to offer that, and I would personally trust a new M.2 SSD more than one with some new chips soldered onto it, and M.2 SSD's are becoming affordable.

And upgradeable usually comes with repairable, as being able to field service an SSD is cheaper for the OEM, and the OEM doesn't have to manufacture and stock a bunch of different motherboard configurations, instead they can just swap in a different capacity SSD.

Also while Apple says they support right to repair and offer firmware re-flashing which is really them just trying to get ahead of right to repair as they oppose it, most of their consumers aren't going to be replacing their SSD NAND chips, having a repair store do it isn't going to be very economical even if they can get ahold of the chips because Apple likes to keep board level parts out of the hands of people that want to do repairs, and Apple isn't going to do it because they would much rather you buy a whole new motherboard or push you to buy a new device with more storage.

[Luscious]

Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room here - Apple has control over BOTH the OS and the GPU/CPU. It's no accident they're getting chart topping efficiency and performance both by size and cost and from tweaking their software to benefit them. Let's not forget as well Apple's slideshows aren't exactly famous for showing honest/accurate benchmarks 

 

On a PC your OS has to play nice with the hardware and vice versa. That also means the various companies involved CANNOT control what the other does or dictate certain rules. The huge upside of that is the options and choice consumers have when selecting components for the type of system they want to build. Remember also that a pure gaming rig will probably be far different to a workstation class machine and likewise a mixed use case system or HTPC.

 

Apple's jewelry box PC is just that - a cute little novelty with components priced comparable to rare earth minerals. Sure, you can choose how much memory/storage you want, but Apple does that not because they're giving you the decision, it's because you cannot change it after. Integration that tight, even with physically swappable components, means the ability and flexibility to swap/change/upgrade is reduced if not completely gone, never mind being completely UN USER SERVICEABLE. And that push on recycling is just to benefit them  - any donated hardware just means less new raw materials Apple needs to spend $$$ on. In Tim Cook land profits are more important than the environment 

 

Apple's push here is a cash grab for one and a control measure on the other. Since they own the OS there's no longer reason for them to stick to x86. Their falling out with nVidia some years earlier was another indicator that Apple wanted things their way. Yet in the real IT space you cannot do that. Certainly not when servers, gaming PC's, office PC's, workstations and laptops all have differing hardware yet still must coexist and "connect". If every hardware and software maker tried to pull an Apple and do a complete ecosystem you would never see the light of day again with them.

 

Moving MacOS to ARM hasn't put the nail in the coffin, but they are certainly ALONE in the space now and have left paying customers both dependent and isolated. And the burden of serviceability and support on Apple's end goes up exponentially. That last part for sure will be interesting. Right now I'm rocking a 7 year old beast of a system that still performs admirably, is fully serviceable and very user upgradeable. Sure, it's cute and attractive now, but how many years before Apple's "jewelry box" ends up collecting dust because updates and support killed it??? Don't be surprised if it all starts going south after that 3 year AppleCare+ warranty expires 

[Luscious]

3 hours ago, Asbo Zapruder said:

Page me in 5-10 years when the thumbnail for this has to add clown makeup.

Just give it 3 more years - that's when all the AppleCare+ warranties will start to expire 

[Nystemy]

7 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Being able to target a much lower frequencies do to having much better IPC means apple might well end up with higher yields than you think.

Chip yield isn't affected much by frequency.

If a bit of dust lands on the chip, then that area of the chip is broken regardless of operating frequency.

 

Now, dust isn't the only thing leading to a loss of yield. Contamination, misalignments, or even simple dumb "luck" of having some feature over etch or not get deposited correctly is also a thing that can happen. Among numerous other things.

 

A larger chip has a larger risk of containing such faults. One can yield optimize by fusing off broken segments, and most chip manufacturers do use that trick, it is nothing special for an SoC.

 

7 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Yep however by being integrated the W/mm^2 is lower as you save a lot on the power draw for IO (this is a large power draw in some systems getting close to that of the compute). 

System power density and chip power density is two very different things.

 

As a trivial example.

The sun heats a 1m² area with about 1kW.
Put in a magnifying glass to shrink that down to 1 cm² and you are suddenly burning the pavement.

 

But the same applies for cooling chips.

If we have a 10 mm² chip putting out 10 watts, then we will need X amount of thermal performance in our heatsink to keep it within a given temperature.

If we instead have a 20 mm² chip putting out 20 watts, then we will actually need more than 2X the amount of thermal performance in our cooler to keep it within the same temperature. Thermal resistance is a lovely thing.

 

This is one reason AMD's threadripper and EPYC CPUs are actually surprisingly "easy" to keep cool despite their fairly huge power consumption. The multi die approach spreads out the power over a much larger area compared to a monolithic chip with the same power consumption.

And to be fair.
As far as system cooling goes, spreading out the hot components from each other is advantageous. And as long as we aren't sensitive to ns levels of latency, then we can spread out components rather far without it impacting performance. _{(and just scheduling an IO call to even an on chip accelerator in an SoC isn't particularly quick if we count ns.)}

 

Also, IO consumes fairly small amounts of power in comparison to an integrated GPU.

It is better from a thermal performance standpoint to have 2-10 W of PCIe drivers than it is to have 10's of watts worth of GPU right next to our already warm CPU. _{(Not that a GPU actually uses that much IO bandwidth as far as most real world applications go. And we still will be required to have IO for other stuff regardless.)}

[Blademaster91]

18 minutes ago, hishnash said:

All SOCs we have seen on the market these days use seperate dies for RAM and NAND so if these break you can have them repaired (if you can get the software to rest the SSD controller, note apple provide this for Macs to anyone).  Yes it requires some soldering but that is what a repair is, showing away a perfectly working SSD controller on an NVMe drive due to not having the software to reset the controller is not repairable its discarding very valuable silicon.  Repairability is not about someone who has 0 skills being able to do it blindfolded and drunk. 

Getting someone to repair a soldered on RAM or SSD is the issue, software is just one aspect which wouldn't really matter if right to repair were enforced, and I think soldering should the RAM and SSD shouldn't be a thing on desktops, there is very little excuse for it to be soldered vs a modular easily replaced part. The right to repair is about making repairs easier, not more difficult by requiring anyone that wants to fix their broken SSD or RAM to have a whole solder reflow station.

18 minutes ago, hishnash said:

As to the GPU failing or the SSD controller failing that is within the SOC this is extremely unlikely. Just like CPUs themselves do not fail these days moving these parts within the CPU in fact reduces the failure chance as it means you only need to spend money once on a good quality power management system to protect them.  Moving these bits all within the SOC will massively reduce the failure rate for a given $ BOM spend on the system. 

The solder balls crack on a GPU even if its a separate die near the CPU or SOC, and thermal management doesn't completely solve it, in laptops anyway as the heating and cooling cycles can eventually cause the solder to crack. Putting the GPU and chipset on the the CPU SOC is good for the company, but obviously not good for the consumer as they lose all the capability of having a serviceable and upgradable system.

I don't care for anything to be soldered if it doesn't need to be, which is why I would rather build a desktop PC than have the compromises that come with a NUC sized gaming PC or a gaming laptop. I would rather enjoy the modularity of a DIY PC I can customize as I like, and upgrade later on, and repair as I need to, and sell off parts instead of throwing away a whole system.

 

 

[hishnash]

3 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

When I swap out an SSD I don't expect to replace the SSD NAND chips, no SSD manufacturer is going to offer that, and I would personally trust a new M.2 SSD more than one with some new chips soldered onto it, and M.2 SSD's are becoming affordable.

Yep that is upgradable but not repairable. 

 

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

And upgradeable usually comes with repairable.

Quite the opposite, upgradability encourages discarding it means people will not bother putting in the effort to repair or even asking for tools to repair.  
 

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Also while Apple says they support right to repair and offer firmware re-flashing which is really them just trying to get ahead of right to repair as they oppose it

Apple have offered firmware re-flashine going back many many years before this movement was a thing. the reason they offer it is that it means you cant hard brick an apple device, you can always re-flash the firmware back to a safe point even if the firmware flashing fails this means if they ship a broken os update that skews up a new firmware version (it happens to all vendors at some point) users can receive from this without apple needing to replace everyone's hardware (saving apple lots of $).  Apple is not opposed to people repairing things they just will not make hardware design changes to make this easier, and the core of right to repair is not asking for any hardware design changes. 
 

8 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

having a repair store do it isn't going to be very economical

In fact since raw NAND dies are very cheep (most of the cost of your NVMe drive is the controller and dram) getting get repair shop to replace your ssd NAND dies is not going to cost much more than replacing a similar speed NVMe ssd.  The job is not at all that complex a task as NAND dies do not have that many pins so it is not like removing a cpu or GPU from a BGA socket.
 

9 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

even if they can get ahold of the chips

These are just standard NAND dies anyone can buy for parts like this apple do not want to use custom dies as by using standard parts they can source from many vendors to ensure they keep supply high. The SSD controllers in apples M* chips are in fact able to address NAND controllers from all 3 major vendors, they have gone out there way to ensure they can source these parts from anyone so that they are not stuck if a given factory has a supply issue... (happens quite offering it seems in this space). 
 

12 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Apple isn't going to do it because they would much rather you buy a whole new motherboard or push you to buy a new device with more storage.

Apple really do not care if you upgrade your device down the road.  If apple wanted to push people to ugprade they would just not provide software updates for as long as they do, this image that the PC master rase has of apple always wanting to force users to buy more hardware every day is completely false most Mac users use Macs for a much longer time than PC master racer use their PCs.  The majority Mac laptops will see more than 5 years of continues use before being retrained and apple want this to happen it creates customers that like the platform, like the software, are more likly when they do upgrade many years later to buy apple again, to buy apple for other use cases (iPads, iPhones, AirPods etc) and to also buy apple services (App Store, Apple Music etc). 

 

[ExpiredPancake]

I find it strange that Laptops weren't mentioned, which would really be the place that something like this would make sense. The M1/2 Macbooks are already the benchmark for thin and light ultrabooks in terms of both performance AND battery life. Why do I care if my desktop draws 3x less power if I end up spending 3x more due to proprietary parts and a shortened life, vs, Laptops, where repairability has been going away anyways, this would make total sense. I really wish the Windows on ARM ecosystem gets better in the future.. or maybe even the chromebook linux compatibility layer? 

[hishnash]

1 minute ago, Blademaster91 said:

and I think soldering should the RAM and SSD shouldn't be a thing on desktops,

Soory this is what GPU vendors have been doing for many many years, im sure someone did at some point make a GPU with socketed memory but that is very uncommon. 

[hishnash]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

The right to repair is about making repairs easier, not more difficult by requiring anyone that wants to fix their broken SSD or RAM to have a whole solder reflow station.

Right to repair is not about change product design to make things easier it is about changing the post product handling to make repair possible. It is about getting detailed schematics, and board level parts and software tools to reset firmware. 

[NomBread]

[Blademaster91]

18 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Apple's jewelry box PC is just that - a cute little novelty with components priced comparable to rare earth minerals. Sure, you can choose how much memory/storage you want, but Apple does that not because they're giving you the decision, it's because you cannot change it after. Integration that tight, even with physically swappable components, means the ability and flexibility to swap/change/upgrade is reduced if not completely gone, never mind being completely UN USER SERVICEABLE. And that push on recycling is just to benefit them  - any donated hardware just means less new raw materials Apple needs to spend $$$ on. In Tim Cook land profits are more important than the environment

I personally don't consider Apple's ARM systems to be a PC, since they cannot boot an OS of choice, they're more of a proprietary workstation than anything else.

And what upsets me with how tight their integration is, the mac studio has removable SSD's, but Apple doesn't even want you opening the device as they hide the screws.

18 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Moving MacOS to ARM hasn't put the nail in the coffin, but they are certainly ALONE in the space now and have left paying customers both dependent and isolated. And the burden of serviceability and support on Apple's end goes up exponentially. That last part for sure will be interesting. Right now I'm rocking a 7 year old beast of a system that still performs admirably, is fully serviceable and very user upgradeable. Sure, it's cute and attractive now, but how many years before Apple's "jewelry box" ends up collecting dust because updates and support killed it??? Don't be surprised if it all starts going south after that 3 year AppleCare+ warranty expires

I wouldn't be surprised if they support ARM Macs for 5 years, the same as their phones, but their consumers usually upgrade every year to have the latest shiny phone. Apple seems to be killing off their Intel based Macs as quickly as possible, MacOS 13 kills off support for 2016 macs, while I can take a PC from 2016, upgrade the ram if needed and put Windows 11 on it.

[hishnash]

17 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Don't be surprised if it all starts going south after that 3 year AppleCare+ warranty expires

AppleCare+ by the way is now a subscription that you can continue to pay for for well beyond the 3 years. 

[hishnash]

1 minute ago, Blademaster91 said:

since they cannot boot an OS of choice,

No it can, in fact the people working on M1 for linux consider the M1 to be a more open platform than any x86 cpu (all to do with how much close source code needs to run for it to boot). You can boot linux without any of apples code running in the cpu there is no extra hidden cpu provided micro os tuning at ring -3, linux is the only thing running on the cpu want the boot loader hands over to linux. (no UEFI runtime running either). And the Cpu can set the MMU page tables for all the other hardware parts so even if they load closed source driver bundles (that apple provide you) you can be sure that they can only read/write and communicate based not he rules you set out in the linux kernel.
 

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

but Apple doesn't even want you opening the device as they hide the screws.

We all know the reason for this is legal compliance you cant endurance users to open up and put fingers into a bare power supply. If it was easy to open it would not have passed EU electrify safety certification, not sure about the US rules but I expect they are the same when it comes to high capacity/voltage caps being exposed to consumer fingers. 
 

6 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Apple seems to be killing off their Intel based Macs as quickly as possible

They re still shipping security updates for all of these devices you just cant run new macOS features on them. The cut-off in fact in this case is not the cpu it is the gpu, the devices they are dropping are all the devices that cant support Metal3 (and already do not support metal 2.4) 
 

[Gravarty]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

The death of desktop computers has been announced multiple times in the last few decades and yet here they still are. It's been a bit of a niche since the early 2000s but a strong niche nonetheless. It's possible we'll see parts be more integrated as we've seen with math coprocessors but I don't think the desktop is anywhere near dead yet.

It's actually very interesting how Apple has already tried this and failed miserably. Steve Jobs' last "vision" was that iPads and iPhones would completely replace the classic computer (PC/Mac) and he was okay with the "silent death" of the Mac product line. The 2013 Mac Pro was a clear sign of that. The MacBook Air hasn't received any hardware revisions in years, and even the MacBook Pro got absolutely ruined with the butterfly keyboard and touch bar.. But after the community started to get really angry about it and Jony Ive left, i think they finally understood that the classic desktop computer is far from death and is needed more than ever before. 

The only thing that absolutely s*cks is the lack of upgradeability, but this has also been adressed in this video. 

I wish Apple would offer a service like they did in the 80/90's where you could send in your current Mac and have the logic board replaced without having to buy the "same machine" again. I guess we will never get upgradeable RAM on future M2/etc devices, but the ability to replace the SSD would still be feasible.

 

[Blademaster91]

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Yep that is upgradable but not repairable. 

It definitely is a repair if my PC no longer boots and replacing the SSD fixes it lol.

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Quite the opposite, upgradability encourages discarding it means people will not bother putting in the effort to repair or even asking for tools to repair.  

Having upgradability doesn't have to mean throwing away the old parts, with DIY PC parts the old ones can easily be repurposed for other things, like an office system or a home server.

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Apple have offered firmware re-flashine going back many many years before this movement was a thing. the reason they offer it is that it means you cant hard brick an apple device, you can always re-flash the firmware back to a safe point even if the firmware flashing fails this means if they ship a broken os update that skews up a new firmware version (it happens to all vendors at some point) users can receive from this without apple needing to replace everyone's hardware (saving apple lots of $).  Apple is not opposed to people repairing things they just will not make hardware design changes to make this easier, and the core of right to repair is not asking for any hardware design changes. 

If firmware re-flashing is supposed to be make replacing and SSD NAND die easier, it isn't a thing most apple consumers are doing, they're probably taking it into the apple store and the person is going to quote the customer for a new motherboard, apple makes a lot more profit replacing a motherboard than replacing a single part.

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

In fact since raw NAND dies are very cheep (most of the cost of your NVMe drive is the controller and dram) getting get repair shop to replace your ssd NAND dies is not going to cost much more than replacing a similar speed NVMe ssd.  The job is not at all that complex a task as NAND dies do not have that many pins so it is not like removing a cpu or GPU from a BGA socket.

NAND dies can be had cheaply, but again getting a store to do work on a $4000 mac with soldered components is the issue, having the skills to correctly reflow the solder balls on a BGA chip is a lot more of a task than removing a screw from an M.2 drive or removing a stick of RAM.

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

These are just standard NAND dies anyone can buy for parts like this apple do not want to use custom dies as by using standard parts they can source from many vendors to ensure they keep supply high. The SSD controllers in apples M* chips are in fact able to address NAND controllers from all 3 major vendors, they have gone out there way to ensure they can source these parts from anyone so that they are not stuck if a given factory has a supply issue... (happens quite offering it seems in this space). 

Getting the correct NAND die would be the issue, as well as supply chain issues, its much easier to get an entire M.2 SSD than a NAND die, and I think the 13" M2 macbook pro 256GB is clear evidence of apple not being able to get enough chips, so the base config has a ridiculously slow SSD for a $1300 laptop.

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Apple really do not care if you upgrade your device down the road.  If apple wanted to push people to ugprade they would just not provide software updates for as long as they do, this image that the PC master rase has of apple always wanting to force users to buy more hardware every day is completely false most Mac users use Macs for a much longer time than PC master racer use their PCs.  The majority Mac laptops will see more than 5 years of continues use before being retrained and apple want this to happen it creates customers that like the platform, like the software, are more likly when they do upgrade many years later to buy apple again, to buy apple for other use cases (iPads, iPhones, AirPods etc) and to also buy apple services (App Store, Apple Music etc). 

Apple would care though, and you'd probably lose your AppleCare warranty if a non-approved shop opened the device and soldered in more storage.

Also you're forgetting all the hype Apple does every year with new Macs, which is wanting to force users to buy new hardware every year,  and they're dropping support for Intel based Macs very quickly. The image isn't coming from the PCMR crowd, I don't like PCMR myself as its pushed companies into making RGB cases and components the majority. However it isn't difficult to see that Apple wants to their users to buy new instead of getting it repaired with plenty of news articles and videos reporting on the exorbitant amount apple usually charges for repairs, or refuses to repair because they blame damage on the customer.

36 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Soory this is what GPU vendors have been doing for many many years, im sure someone did at some point make a GPU with socketed memory but that is very uncommon. 

Now you're taking my post out of context, I said if it isn't necessary, with GPU's it is because of how GDDR memory works.

35 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Right to repair is not about change product design to make things easier it is about changing the post product handling to make repair possible. It is about getting detailed schematics, and board level parts and software tools to reset firmware. 

Making repairs easier would be in the best interest of the company, and it would save them costs, detailed schematics and board level parts should be a minimum requirement IMO.

[NomBread]

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

It definitely is a repair if my PC no longer boots and replacing the SSD fixes it lol.

Having upgradability doesn't have to mean throwing away the old parts, with DIY PC parts the old ones can easily be repurposed for other things, like an office system or a home server.

If firmware re-flashing is supposed to be make replacing and SSD NAND die easier, it isn't a thing most apple consumers are doing, they're probably taking it into the apple store and the person is going to quote the customer for a new motherboard, apple makes a lot more profit replacing a motherboard than replacing a single part.

NAND dies can be had cheaply, but again getting a store to do work on a $4000 mac with soldered components is the issue, having the skills to correctly reflow the solder balls on a BGA chip is a lot more of a task than removing a screw from an M.2 drive or removing a stick of RAM.

Getting the correct NAND die would be the issue, as well as supply chain issues, its much easier to get an entire M.2 SSD than a NAND die, and I think the 13" M2 macbook pro 256GB is clear evidence of apple not being able to get enough chips, so the base config has a ridiculously slow SSD for a $1300 laptop.

Apple would care though, and you'd probably lose your AppleCare warranty if a non-approved shop opened the device and soldered in more storage.

Also you're forgetting all the hype Apple does every year with new Macs, which is wanting to force users to buy new hardware every year,  and they're dropping support for Intel based Macs very quickly. The image isn't coming from the PCMR crowd, I don't like PCMR myself as its pushed the PC DIY into making RGB cases and components the majority. However it isn't difficult to see that Apple wants to their users to buy new instead of getting it repaired with plenty of news articles and videos reporting on the exorbitant amount apple usually charges for repairs, or refuses to repair because they blame damage on the customer.

Now you're taking my post out of context, I said if it isn't necessary, with GPU's it is because of how GDDR memory works.

Making repairs easier would be in the best interest of the company, and it would save them costs, detailed schematics and board level parts should be a minimum requirement IMO.

This is why talking to someone in the apple ecosystem is impossible they refuse to listen or try to spin the conversation in another direction.  Not every apple user is like this and calls them out.

[Dracarris]

42 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

but their consumers usually upgrade every year to have the latest shiny phone.

Source, dude trust me?

[Luscious]

59 minutes ago, hishnash said:

AppleCare+ by the way is now a subscription that you can continue to pay for for well beyond the 3 years. 

I was not aware of that. But being a subscription that has it's own issues - Apple can jack up the price at any time, or worse, decide to end coverage or change it's coverage terms. Never EVER get sucked into a subscription.

[hishnash]

8 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Apple can jack up the price at any time, or worse, decide to end coverage or change it's coverage terms. Never EVER get sucked into a subscription.

You can pre-pay for as many years as you want, the subscription is there if you want to extend your coverage beyond the time you pre-payed for.  

[T8z5h3]

I don't think your far off.

how I see it going down is NVIDIA just not releasing a new GPU to the "public" unless you sign up to Geforce Now.

then NVIDIA can sell Think clients to the masses running ARM and the back end is High end Computers running "Pro" level cards.

or the back end is a Arm CPU running a version of Intel Phi.

 

with tech like PC Over IP and vmware Vsphere the switch would happen fast with FOMO driving it.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

Now you're taking my post out of context, I said if it isn't necessary, with GPU's it is because of how GDDR memory works.

GPUs use GDDR for the bandwidth.  And a SOC with a powerful gpu within it needs that bandwidth. 

[Zberg]

I would happily buy the a mini all in one PC that I could easily take from place to place.  Of course, the GPU would have to be on par or outperform the current top gen GPU's available.  And I would need to be able to easily swap out and upgrade storage/RAM at minimum.  

 

I build a top of the line PC when I do upgrade, because then all I need to do in the future for the next console generation is throw in a new GPU, potentially more RAM, and faster storage if its a quality of life upgrade.  Though likely just the GPU.

 

If the GPU was at least on par with the best available, I could feel safe for next console gen knowing id probably be fine.  Buying a 3090ti right now would probably make it so you are safe for next console gen.  But these integrated processors are not that capable.  They are fine for productivity tasks but despite apples slideshows, they are not on par with actual top of the line GPU's, and that means next gen console you will have to buy the next gen all in one PC.  Which would make most people go...ya ill just get consoles then?

 

edit:  My current home PC I upgraded from a 2080, to 2080ti, to 3090.  3 Different upgrades.  Same PC.  Each time selling the used cards on ebay.  So I recouped the cost, and no E-waste.  What if I wanted the graphical upgrades but was dealing with all-in-one console/PC's?  Either I lose tons of money reselling the entire thing on ebay, (with the inconvenience of set up each time) or just buy a new one (if ballin) and create e-waste. 

 

I am all for the option of these kind of PC's.  But the apple studio rendition is no bueno IMO.  Too disposable 

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

It definitely is a repair if my PC no longer boots and replacing the SSD fixes it lol.

yep but you did not repair your SSD you replaced it.  

And the fact is most M.2 SSDs cant be repaired and the reason they cant be repaired is that the software tooling needed to re-int the controller is no possible to get.  

Right to repair is not right to replace! Throwing away perfectly working costly hardware it is about being able to (if you want to) pay a skilled engineer to repairs that are physically possible today but otherwise limited due to software or schematics or parts being restricted.  

And conflating right to repair with right to upgrade makes it trivial for lobby groups to have it thrown out as they can then show what would happen if you legally forced everything to always be modular based on a un-moving standard open standard.  Upgradability is a feature that has trade-offs not a right. 

 Right to repair is something that should be a right is does not aim to in any way restrict how you design the product just how you treat people with the physical skills/tools and experience to repair it afterwords. If you want a law to pass you need to focus on this aspect:
* a law could compel companies to share schematics (would need other laws that mean there supplies cant consider info in schematics to be under NDA).

* a law could compel companies to make parts that are not community (caps etc) accessible for purchase at ok markups

* a law could compel companies to provide software tools to reset/reconfigure/calibrate the chips.

All of these can be complied with without making the produce worse in any way.

But trying to correctly write a law that comes you to use DDR socketed memory or M.2 socketed SSDs has a big downside in that it would make products worse in other aspects so will be trivial to block in the legal process, Apple could just turn up and show off a phone with a large DDR expansion slot and explain how the memory slot draws more power than the cpu itself and you have 1h of battery due to not having enough space.  No law maker would vote for a law that compelled companies to do this as they know most users do not want this.

 

[hishnash]

2 minutes ago, Zberg said:

RAM at minimum.  

Do you say the same for your current VRAM? I don't think there is a GPU on the market today that has swappable VRAM. 

[kumicota]

51 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Do you say the same for your current VRAM? I don't think there is a GPU on the market today that has swappable VRAM. 

I like how this thread ended up being about whataboutism only.

 

Person 1: For me the minimum is X.

Person 2: Do you say the same about Y?