Is it just me that hates modern computers?

[kaiju_wars]

3 minutes ago, Vexenar said:

I for one really miss the times when you could open a side panel and were welcomed by a gurgling rainbow of colors that were completely mis-matched. 
At a certain point me and some friends would paint our cables to make a sort of color theme out of the PCs (with mixed results naturally). 

Looking back it was horrible with paint flaking off the cables but at the time to me at least it looked amazing. 

I wouldn't dare make something like that these days because I've become too accustomed to making something aesthetically pleasing, but the early 2000s were the shit. 

My friend had a PC I helped him build with parts found for stupid cheap.  His GPU had no backplate, but a red PCB, the MOBO was a blue PCB, RAM was green PCB, but it still performed well for the price he paid.  It was fun to look at, like he got an amazing bang for buck.  Wasn't uniform at all, but it still was neat and interesting to look at with how it turned out.

[Vexenar]

2 minutes ago, kaiju_wars said:

My friend had a PC I helped him build with parts found for stupid cheap.  His GPU had no backplate, but a red PCB, the MOBO was a blue PCB, RAM was green PCB, but it still performed well for the price he paid.  It was fun to look at, like he got an amazing bang for buck.  Wasn't uniform at all, but it still was neat and interesting to look at with how it turned out.

I still have some old boards and components lying aroung that have interesting colors from previous builds I did.
The left one is a Intel board with a 2600K and the left one an AMD one with a Athlon II, you can tell that at a certain point board manufacturers started being more uniform with the Intel one. 

Think I still have an old Pentium II or IV lying around that has the painted cables, but I'd have to check. 

[RetroSwim]

It's just you.

 

That said, I was in on the case modding craze of the early 00's. There was a cottage industry slowly popping up around both practical and aesthetic "stuff" to make your PC case your own. But it was all very rudimentary. Your Dremel was your swiss army knife. You bought watercooling parts from either auto wreckers, or brands nobody had ever heard of. Your lighting came from auto parts stores. Your case windows involved big steel cutting jobs, weird dificult-to-obtain rubber extrusion, and custom-order acrylic/polycarbonate sheets. And yet with all the difficulty, and none of the established practice, people created true masterpieces. Almost every mod was unique and inspiring.

 

People still do it, of course. But the market is now saturated with commoditised cookie-cutter aesthetics, that people seem to enjoy. It's superficially frustrating, after the hard-yakka I put in back in the day, to see how easy it is for even not-computer-people to achieve lighting schemes and effects that we could only dream of back then. Purely in a grumbly old man "they don't know how easy they have it!" kind of way.

 

But it's awesome that the hobby is accessible to so many more people now. I wouldn't begrudge anybody their fun.

 

I love the old stuff too man, maybe a bit too much, but "hating" modern computers, especially for the reasons stated, is just wasted energy. Go focus it on setting up a BBS or something  

[digitalscream]

On 8/8/2023 at 3:15 AM, Erioch said:

How far back are we going?  Did you really enjoy dicking around with jumpers and dealing with IRQ conflicts?

 

I love building computer but, honestly, a half-trained monkey can build one that's way more stable than what we used to build.

 

Built my first watercooled PC back in 2003.  It was like mad max out there.

Exactly. Computers are waaaay easier to put together now than they ever have been. More choices, and far less opportunity to screw the pooch.

 

I mean, how many of us from the Old Times accidentally discovered overclocking by getting the jumper diagram upside down, followed shortly after by releasing the magic smoke?

 

If you don't like the case options, make your own (that's what I've done for all mine, just because there was nothing that fit my requirements). If you don't like RGB, you've got options. If you're not bothered about cable management...don't. Custom watercooling is, largely, an aesthetic issue rather than a cooling performance one, so...go for it, or don't.

 

And, for the record, modern cases aren't that heavy. My first PC was an IBM PS/2, and I'm pretty sure you could make a significant hole in the planet if you dropped it out of a window.

[Godiwa]

many of the new cases are just eyesores... and the whole plexi/glas show that started... hard to find a decent airflow case now that doesn't have "windows"... but I also like the more unique styles... take the ancient iMac G3 desktop... it was so different, colorful and an "art piece" of it's own... instead of just a huge beige box... sadly I never got to own one of em (I was close though)

Right now I have the Torrent Nano with solid side panels aka NO glass... it's nice but it is HUGE... would love a mini pc with "similar" design but tiny... (think slightly bigger than the Asrock Deskmini) with a front fan or two (probably 80mm would make most sense) but with actually good airflow... many of the mini pc's have horrible cooling... the performance from the tiny pcs are quite good  and would solve 95% of what I need a pc from except the few times I game... which could be solved by a GMK external GPU if normal mini pc's had the new connection they use (pretty much just a 4lane pci-e connection instead of the usual usb-c/thunderbolt

just wish case manufacturers would make cool cases with less "gamer" over them... the "see your hardware and be blinded by a billion LEDs" are a fad and a bad one at that..

[caraboose]

I think RGB is tacky. In my own opinion. I know a lot of people who love it, and that I'm the odd duck out. 
What do I do? I don't use RGB when building lol. 

[Johnny Memonic]

1. Such cases are just an option. There's more than enough cases for everyone's liking and requirements to choose from.
2. Cable management is also an option. If you don't care for it, just don't do it.
3. RGB lighting is, again, an option.
4. Custom water cooling systems are an option, except maybe for some extreme / enthusiast cases when it comes to over-the-top overclocking.
5. I think considering just how large these latest graphics cards can be, I think they've outgrown the form factor and ability to cool them well enough.

 

But yeah, PCs don't have to be enshittified with gamer crap at all. I seriously hope people don't think they literally need all the decorative extras.

 

Honestly, our (gaming) PCs these days are hard to compare to our PC towers of the olden days. Like damn, my smartwatch out-specs my first PC from the early 90s in every single way.

[fartmuncher69_420]

I remember needing to set the cylinders as well as the master/slave on hard drives. The cases now have cool little clips and are absolutely much less of a pain to work with. They've definitely gotten easier, if anything.