Computer Building Too Hard to be Fun?

[FatKid68]

Looks like the "Lego for adults" mentality has gone too far with this article. 

https://www.xda-developers.com/reasons-enthusiast-pc-building-too-demanding/

[Arika]

i mean, i don't disagree with anything they said.

[8tg]

The consumer knowledge part is the only difficult part. Other than that its like learning any other hobby. And by that i mean the generally stupid wont get it regardless.

The points they make are just gripes from someone whos forcibly getting too involved in the hobby and isnt enjoying it, yet is continuing to do a bunch of niche nonsense. Just from what is written there.

The physical aspects of putting together a pc can be done by basically anyone with brute force and zero knowledge. Square peg square hole. Show someone a cpu and a motherboard and give them enough time and theyd figure out the core aspects of how a cpu goes into a motherboard and what has to be taken into consideration. Its not visually or mechanically complex at all. The same applies for 99% of a pc build, "gee i wonder where i put this object with a long metal edge connector, maybe it goes into the hole thats the same size as the edge connector?"

 

But with any kind of hobby, how much you want to get into it and how much you enjoy that part is up to you. You do not have to do anything with aesthetics, airflow, thermals, cable management, etc. You can put a pc together with zero concern for any of that and as long as the components dont actually thermal throttle its fine. 

Presenting to others the idea that the hobby is hard is just an outright lie. Its only as hard as you choose to make it. The most basic and functional form of a custom pc build is extremely easy and can be described with a short youtube video. You only get more involved if you feel you need to.

 

There are certain levels i will not pass. I do not want to custom sleeve my own cables, or make my own cables just so i dont have any cable slack and get perfect cable management in my itx build. But id do an itx build, and did, and worked with the limitations and challenges that came with. Some people will stop earlier than that, they dont want anything to do with an itx build. Some people will go even earlier than that and dont want to deal with installing an aftermarket cooler and just want the push pin intel stock cooler. Fair enough, do what youre comfortable with.

 

Nerd article written by a loser.

 

[8tg]

Its like "man, maintaining my custom supercar i built myself with high end parts and a catalogue of expensive tools over the course of several years is bullshit, all cars are bullshit, isnt that right, person who bought a toyota corolla and brings it to jiffy lube every time the dashboard says service?"

[Erioch]

I guess?

[starsmine]

The research part is a bear but there isnt a solution to that really other then just sending it blind with a build-a-pc build (which is valid), but the rest of the list is whack. 

You don't need a 4090, if you are an enthusiast an arc 750 is enough or an AMD 6700xt if you are not, both are GPUs well under 300USD. So saying pricing has become rediculous is just false outside of the crypto bubble.

looks costs money... as is anything? 
Makeup? Fashion? your kitchen? your car? Aesthetics upgrades on all of them cost significant money. or you can just roll with a stock Corolla and literally zero people will negatively judge you. Hell even lego if you want specific pieces to finish your build.

Errors are also an issue, but those are generally easier than ever with it far harder to get an error, and when you do, google exists. I do 100% sympathize with anyone learning how to troubleshoot PCs when all they want is for it to work. But you can just geek squad it like you can bring in a plumber, electrician, or contractor when doing work on your house or a mechanic for your car. (I have almost zero sympathy for people who are capable of being handy, but refuse to learn how)

This just seems click and rage bait. 
 

[Monkey Dust]

As one of this forum's grumpy old men, it is my duty to point out that you young'uns don't know how easy you have it. When I was a lad, we had to make PCs out of coal and our own tears...

 

A lot of the complaints centred around aesthetics. Firstly that's optional. Secondly, if you do decide to pursue it will cost time and money, as it does with cars, clothes, houses and loads of other things.

 

Cable management is easier than ever. Look at old case reviews, cable management was an afterthought, or really old, it was non-existent (anyone else remember tucking IDE ribbon cables behind the motherboard?). Plus no more cables for optical drives, and for a quite a lot of us now, no cables for SSDs either. Faults occur less than in the past, things setup themselves. Overclocking and fine-tuning gives such tiny gains these days, it's entirely optional.

 

I will concede GPU price inflation, that has been brutal over the past 4 years. Other than that, I's say it's no harder than 10 years ago, and a lot easier than 20 years ago.

[my name is guru iam tech]

6 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

As one of this forum's grumpy old men, it is my duty to point out that you young'uns don't know how easy you have it. When I was a lad, we had to make PCs out of coal and our own tears...

true lol

[Erioch]

3 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

As one of this forum's grumpy old men, it is my duty to point out that you young'uns don't know how easy you have it. When I was a lad, we had to make PCs out of coal and our own tears...

 

A lot of the complaints centred around aesthetics. Firstly that's optional. Secondly, if you do decide to pursue it will cost time and money, as it does with cars, clothes, houses and loads of other things.

 

Cable management is easier than ever. Look at old case reviews, cable management was an afterthought, or really old, it was non-existent (anyone else remember tucking IDE ribbon cables behind the motherboard?). Plus no more cables for optical drives, and for a quite a lot of us now, no cables for SSDs either. Faults occur less than in the past, things setup themselves. Overclocking and fine-tuning gives such tiny gains these days, it's entirely optional.

 

I will concede GPU price inflation, that has been brutal over the past 4 years. Other than that, I's say it's no harder than 10 years ago, and a lot easier than 20 years ago.

I was there, Gandalf...

 

I remember when cable management meant not blocking airflow through the case.  I remember having to make sure IRQs didn't conflict and setting jumpers for HDDs.  And no USB.  And no indicator lights for MOBO problems (just beep codes).  And Soundblaster cards.  And PhysX cards.  And ... well nothing else because there were no more slots.

[LogicalDrm]

Assembly part is still like Lego. Building is whole process, and yes, needs to be learnt. Just like you wont go to get $700 Lego set as first timer.

[cooky560]

I wouldn't call it hard, but if you've spent 1000s of dollars on something, it will certainly be scary knowing there's no help if you do something wrong. 

 

I feel the "fun" was destroyed when we started mounting $1000+ parts to each other knowing replacing them will be challenging, if not outright impossible

[Allyxxx]

I once thought Crosshair Dark Hero, Taichi motherboards and other high end boards were specially over price motherboards but now it seems like the practical mid range consumer boards cost so much now. Low end motherboards still exist, but seems like the mid range motherboards are being crammed with more heat sinks that may or may not be all that useful in some areas but done for aesthetics. I wished manufactures would have spent more and started making some components on the otherside of the motherboard like M.2 so it could be more accessible.

 

 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

OK, lets go through this one by one:

1. Research. Yes, chances are it was rather a lot easier about 10 years ago, when the Intel CPU product stack was evolving at a comparatively glacial pace and GPU's were more predictable. Then again, things were always moving up and down in complexity. Others here have already mentioned how difficulty compatibility and building in general could be in "the old days". I would also say that staying on top of all the new developments and where technology is going is part of the fun, but even for new beginners or people just looking for a PC: the internet usually has you  covered. It is true though that having nice and concise magazine articles, lists etc seems to be a thing of the past and now everything is YT or endless forum/reddit threads.
2. Aesthetics and Performance balancing. OK, this is totally a first world issue, even among first world issues. I am not that old by PC building standards, but I remember when a case made from Aluminium was exotic among all the beige boxes. This is a totally optional thing, which only became an issue because there are now just that: options! Also the option to ignore it and to put it all in a black box without a window.
3. Prices. OK, this is a more reasonable point. Yes, affordable entry and mid level hardware exists and not everything needs to be a 4080 or 4090. Sure, for the affluent enthusiast this stings, but the regular office PC or just simple gaming machine is still an option. Especially once you factor in the huge backlog of games out there, plus there are still a lot of use cases where you don't need a big GPU, anyway.
4. Cable management and airflow. Again, cable management is a first world issue that arose from higher standards and more options, not necessity or technical limitations. Airflow could be argued is more important now due to the prevalence of 200W GPUs and CPUs, though I don't think that this is a huge headache. If in doubt, add another fan or two plus a nice tower cooler.
5. Squeezing the last bit of performance out is stressful. Sure, but again you don't need to. Another point of view on this is that most hardware has become so good at pushing itself to the limit, it no longer needs much manual pushing. Probably only going to get better with AI improvements (like per core optimization or memory training) getting as good as manual overclocking. And if the improvements aren't worth it, then just don't do it. And worrying over which watercooling parts to combine with what case/mobo/memory for the perfect theme, that is not general PC building issues. That is a zeroth world problem, or whatever the next level first world problem is called.
6. Troubleshooting. Honestly, maybe it is just me but it feels this has gotten much better in the past 25 years. Nowadays most stuff keeps working or you find quick fixes on the net. I remember that a fixed part of every LAN I went to was the Win98SE CD, because at least one person or another had to reinstall their OS for unknown reasons.

Feels more like the Author lost a bit of touch with regular PC building and burned out on a hobby they made their job.

[Allyxxx]

1 hour ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Feels more like the Author lost a bit of touch with regular PC building and burned out on a hobby they made their job.

It sucks maintaining a hard loop, it requires so much more time and effort compared to air cooling.

Adding new hardware that affects the loop creates more work.

No need to be water cooling unless you have the money and time to spend.

 

I definately know I will never use a hard loop since I find soft tubing more than enough work as it is, and I know I will never buy a water cooled GPU ever again. Just going to use the water cool junk I have now and make adapters myself if possible for new CPU mounting.

 

[Lurking]

10 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

As one of this forum's grumpy old men, it is my duty to point out that you young'uns don't know how easy you have it. When I was a lad, we had to make PCs out of coal and our own tears...

 

A lot of the complaints centred around aesthetics. Firstly that's optional. Secondly, if you do decide to pursue it will cost time and money, as it does with cars, clothes, houses and loads of other things.

 

Cable management is easier than ever. Look at old case reviews, cable management was an afterthought, or really old, it was non-existent (anyone else remember tucking IDE ribbon cables behind the motherboard?). Plus no more cables for optical drives, and for a quite a lot of us now, no cables for SSDs either. Faults occur less than in the past, things setup themselves. Overclocking and fine-tuning gives such tiny gains these days, it's entirely optional.

 

I will concede GPU price inflation, that has been brutal over the past 4 years. Other than that, I's say it's no harder than 10 years ago, and a lot easier than 20 years ago.

+1

 

With a well reviewed case, building is really easy nowadays. No more wrangling PATA cables etc. And m.2 makes it even easier. 

 

Cable management now is so easy that we make it artificially more difficult by using glass panels. If you don't need to look at the cables (and you don't NEED to), it is super easy and not an airflow restriction anymore (like PATA was)

 

And newer chips/drivers/OS in most cases are plug&play. Just get high quality components with good reviews and support, and problems will be rare. Problems really only show up with cheap hardware or immature high-performance parts (better wait a few weeks or months after the newest shiny stuff got released)

[atxcyclist]

Computers have gotten so much easier to build than they used to be. I remember putting machines together where there were jumpers and DIP switches to set things like processor voltage. Don't read one of the diagrams in a motherboard manual correctly? You bake a processor on first boot. Writing your own Autoexec file to configure hardware, having to make boot disks commonly to install early GUI OS'. Also, not having the internet available to search for answers, you had to rely on your own wits, luck, and/or the crusty dude at your local parts store.

 

 

[Dabombinable]

20 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

As one of this forum's grumpy old men, it is my duty to point out that you young'uns don't know how easy you have it. When I was a lad, we had to make PCs out of coal and our own tears...

 

A lot of the complaints centred around aesthetics. Firstly that's optional. Secondly, if you do decide to pursue it will cost time and money, as it does with cars, clothes, houses and loads of other things.

 

Cable management is easier than ever. Look at old case reviews, cable management was an afterthought, or really old, it was non-existent (anyone else remember tucking IDE ribbon cables behind the motherboard?). Plus no more cables for optical drives, and for a quite a lot of us now, no cables for SSDs either. Faults occur less than in the past, things setup themselves. Overclocking and fine-tuning gives such tiny gains these days, it's entirely optional.

 

I will concede GPU price inflation, that has been brutal over the past 4 years. Other than that, I's say it's no harder than 10 years ago, and a lot easier than 20 years ago.

Having to manually manage interrupts and DMA addresses as well as play around swapping PCI slots to find the ones that work...in a PC from 2003/2004 let alone ones from the late 90's...very time consuming just to get sound working correctly. Then there is the whole ordeal of correctly configuring a DOS environment as well. Contrast that to building a new one for myself or my sister...2 hours at most as opposed to a whole day (including installing Windows).

Got a Fractal Design Pop and my mum immediately saw how much better cases are now (got several from before 2000), new cases typically don't cut you anymore (a few brands would still be that bad however) as an added bonus.

Cables now have places to be routed instead of just being routed over the entire motherboard. My Baby AT Slot1 board is heinous with the floppy cable having to go from the back of the board to the front - obstructs a lot of air.

[maplepants]

I think this article is mostly right, but it's missing what I think is the reason *why* PC building has become harder in the last 20 years. The disappearing local PC repair shops, or their shifting focus to enterprise only.

 

Time was you could pop down to your local shop and somebody could help you pick out the parts you need for your budget and aesthetic needs.

 

You: "I'd like a beige tower and monitor please"

Shop keeper: "yes, we have many options right over here". 

 

The motherboards were also a lot less crowded with heat syncs and other coolers back then. It was easier to see slots and have them described to you. Add the smaller GPUs to the equation and now you've just removed a lot of the pain points from this article.

 

So yeah, it's hard to build a PC. The "building a PC is easy" advice is held over from a time when that was really true. And that was true because PC buyers could get what they needed from a local shop where a good rep could get you from "Is the monitor the PC or this weird box?" to gaming without you ever reading anything about teraflops. 

[starsmine]

45 minutes ago, maplepants said:

I think this article is mostly right, but it's missing what I think is the reason *why* PC building has become harder in the last 20 years. The disappearing local PC repair shops, or their shifting focus to enterprise only.

 

Time was you could pop down to your local shop and somebody could help you pick out the parts you need for your budget and aesthetic needs.

 

You: "I'd like a beige tower and monitor please"

Shop keeper: "yes, we have many options right over here". 

 

The motherboards were also a lot less crowded with heat syncs and other coolers back then. It was easier to see slots and have them described to you. Add the smaller GPUs to the equation and now you've just removed a lot of the pain points from this article.

 

So yeah, it's hard to build a PC. The "building a PC is easy" advice is held over from a time when that was really true. And that was true because PC buyers could get what they needed from a local shop where a good rep could get you from "Is the monitor the PC or this weird box?" to gaming without you ever reading anything about teraflops. 

The actual act of building the PC is easier than ever with the improvements to cases, modular PSU, m.2 and outside of niche cases, only one expansion card, lack of 5.25-inch bays, and lack of IDE/PATA, and lack of jumpers to configure, and cooler mounts being far more user friendly.

 

Front panel is the only hard part anymore that are from the past way of doing things. 

Microcenter if you have one near you in NA will build it with you in a corner of the store if you want, Circuit city didn't do that. Best Buy doesn't do that. 
 

[Issac Zachary]

Does the writer know about PC Part Picker?

[Issac Zachary]

5 hours ago, maplepants said:

I think this article is mostly right, but it's missing what I think is the reason *why* PC building has become harder in the last 20 years. The disappearing local PC repair shops, or their shifting focus to enterprise only.

This I miss. I miss this with most everything. Everything is moving to online. Three weeks later you get the part... and it's the wrong part... send back, rinse and repeat. No friendly faces to talk to. No one to get opinions from, except online, where you don't see or really know anyone. Are they smiling as they type those opinions, or screaming like it's the end of the world?

 

Like when I got a graphics card in and then realized it was longer than the mother board and didn't fit in the case... Since when were graphics cards so long? But with some enginuity, I removed a rack for 3 3.5" drives and the card fit.

[Daniel Zero]

I pretty much disagree with everything in the article with the exception of certain parts (GPUs) being too expensive.  I have been building PCs for longer than that dude has been alive and I still feel like a kid in a candy store.  if I did not love it, I would stop doing it, and there is no shame in that if that is how he feels.  Researching, trouble-shooting, rebuilding, failing, doing it again, all fun for me, even after all this time.  My favorite thing is to get a shipment of parts delivered and have my wife ask me, "You're not going to put that together tonight are you?"  Cracks me up every time!

[DeerDK]

Meh, its a hobby. And a part of the hobby is tinkering with it and getting frustrated about it so one can share these stories with likeminded who can laugh together over the pain of having to redo the cable management for a 3'rd time due to forgetting that one SATA drive with all the old movies on.

 

My thoughs on their points:

1. it takes too long - PC building is done because its fun/interesting. Its the same to tell a fly-fisher that they could get a perfectly good fish from the supermarket. Missing the core point of a hobby.

2. Balancing aesthetics and performance. I mean, sure, but a Gaming setup rarely has a high WAF in the first place. I have personally made a stealth build, and what exactly is the writer expecting? A Mac setup as seen in promo materials?

3. Too expensive. Yes and no. If one wants the top shelf components, sure, but see point one. We are not being complete rationel about the time and money we are investing here. Also, cheaper options are plentiful.

4. Never satisfied with cables and airflow. See my point about tinkering. 

5. Squeezing every bit of performance out is stressful - okay, if that is your goal, yeah i can see that. But it sounds like the writer needs to get their priorities straight. Can't excel in every aspect - Looks, price, ease of use, performance. Not limited to PC building.

6. Troubleshooting is a timesink - Yes and no, again, it sound like the writer wants to toptune their machine while at the same time not putting in the tinker time. I don't wanna troubleshoot all the time, so i don't try to run on the bleeding egde. See point 5 about setting priorities straight.