Do you have niche needs/builds that people don't understand?

[Drak3]

20 hours ago, wcreek said:

My build is a bit of a niche, I have 8 cores and 16 threads but I mostly game or web browser...

[Antistatic12]

I don't like using SATA, I personally believe SATA has had a good run but it is time for change. Once I upgrade from my current builds I won't being using SATA drives again. It's isn't just about speed, but also it means less cables to manage and M.2 drives can be hard to see or hidden entirely on some Mobo's. For me it is about aesthetics and power/speed when it comes to building a PC.

I will upgrade my NAS at some point too. Hopefully something is out there from one of the big names like Synology or Qnap where I can just slot in a couple of 2TB or 4TB M.2 drives into RAID1.

[TurbulentWinds]

I don't have any particularly strange needs however my programmer father always needs his rig in laptop form. He never moves it anywhere and it is always stationary but he refuses to get a desktop workstation. Sigh, laptop with a Xeon and he still wants something better.

[iamdarkyoshi]

23 minutes ago, Antistatic12 said:

I don't like using SATA, I personally believe SATA has had a good run but it is time for change. 

It has literally been around for almost 20 years now.

 

Just today I found a socket A (socket 462) motherboard with sata.

 

34 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Oh and one more thing
I like my everything hot, loud, and power hungry.

Its strangely satisfying.

[handymanshandle]

33 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Is that a rick and morty reference? If so ew.

 

Eh I'm starting to put it to work more lol

 

 

Another niche I suppose, is I have a reasonable use for an Optical Disc Drive.

Although, for what I paid for my drive, I could've easily gotten a similar or the same model for half the price or a Blu-Ray Drive for the same price.

[tatte]

Back when optical media was still a thing, I preferred putting the optical drive to the bottom slot. It made sense from cable management sense, one IDE and power cable was enough for both the HDD and optical drive. Same ideology of clustering things together followed me in software, I had my browser's bars on the bottom (close to Windows' taskbar) until Opera just gave up and became another Chrome. Vivaldi sadly never picked up the level of usability true Opera had.

[thisforumsucksassdeletemya]

11 hours ago, Cole5 said:

Use an SSD, My laptop fires up in under 10 seconds from power off

Yeah good for you and everyone else who told me "OHMUHGOD USE AN SSD IDIOT!~!@@#!@#!" my X370 board has a 10-20 second POST time, and you have to click/key several more times to boot windows than to resume from sleep.

[tatte]

19 minutes ago, violentnumeric said:

Yeah good for you and everyone else who told me "OHMUHGOD USE AN SSD IDIOT!~!@@#!@#!" my X370 board has a 10-20 second POST time, and you have to click/key several more times to boot windows than to resume from sleep.

Enable Ultra Fast Boot and fix whatever you're pressing the keys for.

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, violentnumeric said:

Yeah good for you and everyone else who told me "OHMUHGOD USE AN SSD IDIOT!~!@@#!@#!" my X370 board has a 10-20 second POST time, and you have to click/key several more times to boot windows than to resume from sleep.

My X99 build takes 20 seconds to boot as well. Doesn't matter what it boots off of.

[light-v]

2 hours ago, violentnumeric said:

Yeah good for you and everyone else who told me "OHMUHGOD USE AN SSD IDIOT!~!@@#!@#!" my X370 board has a 10-20 second POST time, and you have to click/key several more times to boot windows than to resume from sleep.

I'm sure that's an OCD thing (it is for me at least) because very few people shut off their phone every night for example (that would be a niche on its own tho) 

[ExplosiveSloths]

I spent too much on my processor/case/power supply for my needs. I'm sure they're going to last but still kind of over-powered for my needs.

I couldn't afford the GPU I wanted at the time, so I poured all my money into my CPU/cooler/case/PSU and I'm still planning on switching the case and cooler.

 

 

I don't normally overclock but I've overclocked to 5.2Ghz.

[flibberdipper]

My biggest niches are old hardware as a whole and console-sized PCs.

[porina]

I like triggering AMD fanboys by saying (truthfully) that my i3 is faster than a comparable cooling R7. My interest area is prime number finding, and Intel FPUs are still far stronger than AMD ones. I don't use Prime95 itself, but the behaviour of the software I use is the same. Prime95 stable isn't something my systems endure for a bit, it is what they run 24/7.

[thisforumsucksassdeletemya]

10 hours ago, tatte said:

Enable Ultra Fast Boot and fix whatever you're pressing the keys for.

Sorry not how it works.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Not directly related to PCs, but whenever I buy an album, I need to have it in CD form.

 

Back to PCs, I can't use anything less than 8Gb of memory. I prefer full-size ATX motherboards to smaller boards due to support for things I will likely never need(such as more GPUs and drives). I also require at least a semi-modular power supply.

 

A bit of an odd one, but in Windows 7 I like to have my taskbar at the top of my screen.

[Albd]

I have a pretty mixed workload I work in electronic structure prediction(Chemistry) and I simulate everything for school/work and I even run stuff on the cluster (cedar) that Linus did a video on a little while ago. Currently each run that I have of a chemical structure requires anywhere from 38 GB of RAM to 256 GB, and 32 Cores and will take 5 plus days of 24 hr use(I usually need to run 100 plus of these at a time), that's one of the reasons I have been super interested in some of the extremely high core and RAM counts that Linus has been showing up on the channel. Anyway yeah some of the stuff I can run on my home computer, some I can run on a old server I bought(thank god power is included in my rent) most I have to use server time for(we have a Canada wide compute governing agency called Compute Canada, that I have to beg,borrow and steal time from). Anyway yeah I wish I could GPU accelerate what I do with all the wild stuff coming out in that market but I am pretty CPU and RAM bound for large chemical systems. Plus I use Linux I guess that is a bit niche here at least.

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

 

A bit of an odd one, but in Windows 7 I like to have my taskbar at the top of my screen

Vista has to be on either the left or right, XP was top, 7 is top on laptops, bottom or left on desktops.

 

8 and 10 were weird times for Drak3's taskbars.

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I prefer full-size ATX motherboards to smaller boards due to support for things I will likely never need(such as more GPUs and drives)

My current build couldn't exist with less than an ATX, 2 GPUs and an addon USB card. Might rebuilt it to be 3 GPUs and a custom case or desk/wall mounted.

[Ithanul]

On 3/29/2018 at 7:57 PM, ARikozuM said:

Small fan + small heatsink is worse than large heatsink with no fan. People don't want unnecessary noise, but then choose the wimpiest heatsink with a quiet fan when they could buy a larger heatsink for equal, but passive, cooling. 

 

Hot-swap for data that you can use at multiple PC's such as a Steam library or movie collection. 

Mmmmm, hot-swap, I love me some hot-swap bays.

 

My PCs with GPUs that do F@H and BOINC probably confuse even some of the others across forum boards considering most of my GPUs hardly see any or no gaming at all.

 

On 3/29/2018 at 8:35 PM, KenjiUmino said:

see ... that is the same problem i have. i know dell made some nice 16:10 monitors with IPS panels and built in usb hub.

 

16:10 monitors are nice.  I have a Dell one.  I love it.  At 32 inches it dwarfs my other monitors.  Well, my 24HD Cintiq wins out on weight and space eating though. 

 

I also have a bad case hoarding habit.  I have ITX, mATX, ATX, bench, and big arse cases.  Why?  I like options.

7 hours ago, porina said:

I like triggering AMD fanboys by saying (truthfully) that my i3 is faster than a comparable cooling R7. My interest area is prime number finding, and Intel FPUs are still far stronger than AMD ones. I don't use Prime95 itself, but the behaviour of the software I use is the same. Prime95 stable isn't something my systems endure for a bit, it is what they run 24/7.

PrimeGrid goodness?

PrimeGrid toasty toasty. 

[it_dont_work]

I still usually use and require optical drives for work. So I still have atleast one in my systems, next system might end up using an external one though.

[Darkman]

11 hours ago, tmcclelland455 said:

My biggest niches are old hardware as a whole and console-sized PCs.

I've had the longest itch to build a computer in an old console shell...

Also My main rig doesn't have a purpose for an optical drive but my second rig does as it is my Plex server so I need something to read my movies and TV shows so I can put them on the server. I have one double-sided taped to the back side panel so I just have to unscrew it and lean it against my wall.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I really want to see standard cases (not server chassis) that have lots of drive mounts (like 2 stacks or 15-20 drives - for example for a NAS build.

 

 

 

Also, I'd like to see NON-server (i.e. standard compatible-with-ATX-mobo / consumer) cases that can support motherboards like these.

 

   

 

The case would hopefully have enough 3.5" HDD bays to make full use of LSI 9211-8i cards populating every single PCIe slot, except maybe 1 having a basic GPU with HDMI or DisplayPort output, like the PCIe x1 Zotac GT 710.  (Or are there any PCI cards that have HDMI output? Or a way to use a monitor that ONLY supports HDMI or DP (no DVI or VGA) with those boards, assuming said board did NOT support IPMI?)

 

Although, budget limitations(*) would mean that even these motherboards would be quite a stretch.

 

 

 

I was thinking of a possible general case concept - what about something like a dual-chamber case, like the concept of the Lian Li O11 or Corsair Air x40?  One side would have the motherboard and its directly-connected components (as well as a few fans), and the other side would have the PSU, drive bays, and (if not on the mobo side) PCIe risers and watercooling radiator support.   I wonder if a manufacturer could theoretically take a standard enthusiast-motherboard case, widen it to have the extra chamber, relocate the drive cages to the other side, and extend the motherboard mounting to support quad-socket motherboards, or something like that?  

(*) (in spoiler)

Spoiler

 

I'm hoping to sometime build a NAS that supports at least 64GB RAM (preferably 128-192+ GB), at least 16 SATA 6Gb/s HDDs (with >2TB support - via combo of on-board SATA/SAS ports and LSI 9211-8i cards; preferably at least 8 on-board + 3 PCIe x8 slots), etc. --- with everything combined (except the storage) costing less than a single 6TB or 8TB HGST Deskstar NAS HDD.  Another possible option is LGA1151, as I do have an i3-6100, but the cheapest semi-reasonable build I've come up with so far, using a FD Define R5, ASRock E3V5 WS, 4GB RAM, Zotac GT 710 PCIe x1, etc, is about 2-3x my budget or so.

The purpose for the NAS would pretty much only be for backups.  I wouldn't be expecting to use it as a real-time remote-access media server.  I don't care if it only scores 3 in Cinebench or 20 in Ice Storm, so long as it's still good enough for backup duty.

 

 

I'm guessing my "niche", if you want to call it that, would be needing more storage than most normal consumers, right? (Of course some servers/businesses/etc probably have many TIMES what I have.)

[Bhav]

On 30/03/2018 at 12:42 AM, light-v said:

I think non tech people in general don't understand us techies as we're pretty niche already 

'Lol why don't you just get a console?'

 

'You play games on a PC? You mean old games then?'

 

- Certain individuals that I really should have murdered.

[kelvinhall05]

Don't buy what you're not gonna use. I see people spending thousands of dollars on a rig to play vanilla Minecraft.

[Guest]

My weirdest rig was:

An Intel Core i3 4340

32 Gigabytes of DDR3

2 Terabytes of HDD

500 Gigabytes of SSD

OpenIndiana

 

It was used as a Virtual Machine test beds to stress test different distros (it's a long story).