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From: Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Strategy on the Decline
Date: Wed, 29 May 2024 21:30:51 -0400
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Wed, 29 May 2024 03:36:58 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>>Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
>>the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>>
>>>On 5/25/2024 4:28 PM, Lane Larson wrote:
>>>
>>>> It's a horror story.  Say I come up with $3200 to buy the top end 
>>>> Alienware.  I bet I'd still have to deal with lots of overheating.  What 
>>>> I'd like to do is break my computer over someone's head and get in the 
>>>> news, where it says that my computer was too hot and drove me mad.  I 
>>>> was appalled when I got this one home and Pathfinder: Wrath of the 
>>>> Righteous was used to fry an egg.  When is this shit going to stop?  I 
>>>> bought too many computers in the 90s just to keep up.  My parents lost 
>>>> some faith in me when I liquidated my stock portfolio to buy just 
>>>> another computer.  And it's still happening!
>>>
>>>Don't buy pre-made gaming computers.  You end up paying 2x (or 3x if 
>>>you're talking $3200!) what you would for a better optimized system with 
>>>cooling that works.  
>>
>>This depends.   
>>A local computer shop offers prebuilts that are not bad value at all.
>>The caveat is they have almost no upgrade path except swapping out the
>>video card, since they tend to have lower end motherboards and have all
>>the ram slots filled already.
>>
>>You are correct if it's brand name junk like Alienware or any other big
>>name, you get charged $500-1000 just to have their name on it.
>
>I agree.
>
>My last two PCs were pre-builts. I could have -and in the past /have/-
>built my own computers, but it's just easier to have somebody else do
>all the work for me. Will that motherboard fit in the case? Is the
>cooling sufficient? Etc. 

I've still never bought a prebuilt.
The ones I looked at were cheaper than what I paid building it myself,
but they had a lower end motherboard, with only 32gb of ram and all
slots filled, also only a 500gb SSD, and it wasn't clear if another
could be added or spinning rust.   And some random case.

In the end I built it myself with a better board, 64gb of ram and room
for 64 more, 2tb SSD (and room for another SSD) and 16tb of spinning
rust, a corsair high-flow case (if it were turned off, the fans spin up
high on boot only, then quiet right down, usually inaudible during
gameplay even with 2 games running, plus browsers, etc.

>But of course, the price was an issue. EVERYONE knows prebuilts are
>more expensive. But you know what? Not necessarily.
>
>Oh sure, there are some boutique builders. Falcon Northwest's prices
>are insane (about double anybody else) and throw in a lot unnecessary
>'extras' (like being delivered in a heavy wooden crate). But I've
>priced the stuff from some builders, then went out and searched for
>the exact same price from retailers, and you know what? The builders
>were competitive; sometimes a little more, and sometimes even a little
>less than what I would pay if I bought all the components separately.
>
>[note: that is, of course, assuming you buy from RELIABLE retailers.

I buy brand name parts from a local computer store that's about a block
from me.   Been buying there since about '93 (first purchases were
putting together a 386 with 4MB of ram and a 1M video card, forget the
HD size, both floppy sizes 3.5 and 5.25, case and 14" monitor.)

>Yes, I could find the components for a lot cheaper if I relied on EBay
>or from sold by some six-letter company on Amazon Marketplace or from
>AliExpress. But then you're never sure you're going to get what you're
>promised, and that's just not the sort of hassle I'm interested in. So
>in my pricing experiment, I stuck to more reliable - and admittedly
>more expensive - sources. YMMV may vary depending on what level of
>risk you're happy with.]

I have never ever bought components online, but I do realize not
everyone has a good computer store near them to go physical shopping in.

>And if you're not the sort who enjoys tinkering with hardware -mixing
>and matching components, figuring out how many amps your PSU /really/
>needs, deciding what thermal paste is Right For You- then the value of
>prebuilts absolutely skyrockets.

I don't exactly enjoy it, but have been saying since 1993, that building
a computer is about as hard as playing with LEGO.

PSU more is always better, and I tend to just leave the CPU cooling at
the default - whatever the company shipped with it.
But I don't overclock so ... I can see why some might want to play
around with that.

Old computer's Phenom II still running on the default heat sink/fan that
shipped with it, and it's been on constantly for around a decade now (I
turn off my computer(s) when I'm upgrading a part (vid usually, but
sometimes adding HD,) or when I move.

It's still going strong with a dual boot system XP/7, neither of which
has ever been reinstalled - it's amazing how stable a system can be once
you turn off all the useless cruft MS insists on installing by default.

Xocyll