Never quite (completely) happy with my PC purchases...

[dave_the_nerd]

Is that true? I thought you assemble desktops for a living, which is, by the way, a fun way to make money and help people to fulfill their needs.

He assembles them before he has a customer to buy them, and gleefully posts about all the great deals he finds on tiny SSDs and discontinued hardware.

It's not so much building computer to suit peoples' needs as it is building computers to build computers, and then trying to find people whose needs are met by said computer, months or years down the line.

But if I was mistaken (and you're really addicted), there's nothing wrong if you ask for some help. Sorry if I'm being a bit personal here. I see you as a good person and just want to help if I can.

Agreed. VL is good people, IMO he just has a bit of a problem.

Been there, done that, still feel the pinch w/ every email from Amazon and every time I drive past a MicroCenter. Novelty is a high.

Having a housemate helps - we're not an item or anything, but I still have to deal with something similar to "Wife Approval Factor" and can't just layer the house in desktop PCs.

 

[TeknoBug]

I love building PC's, have been doing so since the mid 90's (back in 94-95 someone in college just came to me with a 486 with Linux Slackware on it and said "you can have this" and that's where it started). I've built PCs for other people needs and even helped them with problems (old people are difficult though) and I spend my spare time mucking around with databases and Linux/BSD stuff if I'm not playing games or watching movies/TV. My wife doesn't care what I do, she's busy playing Facebook games herself half the time.

 

[tweakboy]

Great going. Now enjoy!

 

[Zstream]

Well I don't know about you, but I've built five AMD 5350's this month and they run pretty damn well. I'm happy, at $45 for both CPU and motherboard, it's hard to beat.

 

[techne]

He assembles them before he has a customer to buy them, and gleefully posts about all the great deals he finds on tiny SSDs and discontinued hardware.

It's not so much building computer to suit peoples' needs as it is building computers to build computers, and then trying to find people whose needs are met by said computer, months or years down the line.

I would say that the computers he builds will suit peoples' needs anyway; so his work is unarguably valuable. On the other hand, his business model is, say, a bit unusual.

Having a housemate helps - we're not an item or anything, but I still have to deal with something similar to "Wife Approval Factor" and can't just layer the house in desktop PCs.

I know what you mean. Not much time ago I had this urge to assemble a sweet new PC (with a i5-5675C and 16GB of RAM) for my wife, but she refused! I'll try again next year with a Zen...

 

[VirtualLarry]

VL - I think you're literally addicted to shopping (in a "needs some SSRIs or something" kind of way.)

Yes, likely.

You're basically the PC enthusiast equivalent of a hoarder.

Yes, likely.

He assembles them before he has a customer to buy them, and gleefully posts about all the great deals he finds on tiny SSDs and discontinued hardware.

It's not so much building computer to suit peoples' needs as it is building computers to build computers, and then trying to find people whose needs are met by said computer, months or years down the line.

Agreed. VL is good people, IMO he just has a bit of a problem.

Been there, done that, still feel the pinch w/ every email from Amazon and every time I drive past a MicroCenter. Novelty is a high.

Having a housemate helps - we're not an item or anything, but I still have to deal with something similar to "Wife Approval Factor" and can't just layer the house in desktop PCs.

Agreed. That's why I'm moving to mini-PCs. Too many desktops, take up too much room.

Anyways, did y'all see my update? I'm basically happy now, between my tablets, my Brix J1900 mini-PCs (for 24/7 computing), and my desktops (for VSR),

Just need to find some buyers for my G3258 rigs, my Haswell Celeron rigs, and my AM1 Sempron 3850 OCed to 1.6Ghz rigs. That would clear out some space.

 

[techne]

As a not so famous British writer from the nineteenth century would say, we are the reproductive system of the machines. They need us!

 

[XavierMace]

Agreed. That's why I'm moving to mini-PCs. Too many desktops, take up too much room.

So rather than stop hoarding you're just going to hoard smaller items. LOL.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

I don't know if anyone else feels this way.

I buy lots of different stuff, because I'm never quite satisfied with the PC parts I have. But maybe that's because I mainly play in the budget-build pool.

But then again, if I bought a 5820K, X99, DDR4, I might not be satisfied either, but I would be out a lot more money.

Maybe I'm trying to be an early-adopter of "convergence" devices. I bought the MC 7" Winbook Win8.1 tablet, and promptly hooked it up to my 1080P monitor and wireless keyboard.

But, admittedly, it's kind of an awkward fit, to use a tablet with 1GB RAM and 16GB eMMC as a desktop.

I installed Linux Mint 17.1 on my Q9300 (now downclocked to stock, because it was freezing up), and that works, for the most part, but I ran into installer bugs, still don't have swap due to a known bug, and ran into issues with my AC1200 USB wireless adapters.

So that build allows me to do some DC, which I can't really do on the tablet, for fear of it overheating.

I have some N2830-based laptops too, that I purchased before the tablets. If I had known that tablets would be available a few months later for $60 instead of $230, and I could use them as desktops, I probably wouldn't have bought the laptops.

- i had computer happiness with my c64 and amiga, then i ve lost it when i bought the best pc on the planet (486 dx2 66MHz)

- then i bought all the best parts for pc on the planet for years (still i do it now) (i remember i paid 16000$ in 1997 for only 1 machine)(i had more than 100 pcs in all those years) never happy with em


- i had some computer happiness back in the "90s" when i bought my 1st ppc mac

- i liked os x for some time, but Tiger (2005) is the last os giving happiness.


so now i still have all the best macs and pcs, and no computer happiness.
(macs are better for happiness btw: more fun in a old G4 than in 10 crappy pcs)


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edit: i forgot the actual reply:

install linux and don t play pc games

 

[TeknoBug]

PPC Macs were awesome, they went downhill once they switched to Intel x86.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

At first I wanted to say "Larry! Larry! Larry! We've been here before!" But this looks like the growth of the original thread -- not a new one.

I look at my own spending behavior over the last 15 years, and recall the image of a 5-year-old in a polo-shirt, noisily stomping down the street with bent cans stuck to his shoes, a Giant Hershey Chocolate bar in his hand, chocolate drooling down his chin and all over the polo shirt.

Of course it's a matter of budget. I keep telling people that there's something called "hardware addiction," just as Hannibal Lecter ("Silence of the Lambs;" "Hannibal") had published a paper on "surgical addiction." It could use a 12-step program!!

My laptop is eight years old; I've had it for two years. Somebody gave me an Android tablet because I'd "given them stuff" -- shared the Hershey bar, so to speak. The laptop, with Win7/Win10 -- is just great for those needs.

There are three people in the house. There are five desktop computers -- two running 24/7, the others set up for sleep and hibernate.

I KNOW I'll need to replace these one at a time, sooner or later. I also KNOW that the fam-damn-ily isn't all that goo-gah for replacing their systems with NUCs or laptops. So I actually have a "five-year plan." I'll build a new computer to satisfy my curiosity (like Philly-Cheese) and replace "old stuff." The last and newest of the old goes to replace some other computer in a sort of round-robin approach -- the newer replacing the older.

But if I'm going to make a $1,500 outlay, I want it to be in a "no interest for 12 months" arrangement with the reseller, like Egg's "preferred account" or their current arrangement with Synchrony Bank. That way, I can budget my payments within that 12-month window, which would hopefully include parts for the new computer and small-change junk to enhance what I have. But it never works out quite this way, because there is ALWAYS small-change junk that one needs. All of that stuff is paid off within a month. And that makes decisions about small-change junk more deliberate, since I set monthly budgets for all my credit cards.

It's getting to the point where I might plan on building a new system for two years. I'll take a few months to build and test it. It might not go into "serious service" for six months after I pull the "checkout" string.

 

[maddogmcgee]

I recently bought a Thinkpad T42 for $40. Screen, Keyboard, Trackpad are in excellent condition. Downclocked to 600mhz, browses like a champ... awwww yeah. Feels sturdy enough to last me until 2020. After hearing stories like this I'm even more glad I didn't opt for something budget/new.

You can get a ssd equipped sandy era i5 for under 200 US. Very nice performance for web browsing.

 

[scannall]

I have to say, the last PC purchase I did for myself I've been quite happy with. At the time, I was going to build a rig. Priced out the parts and all that. Newegg had a sale going on Cyberpower PC gaming machines, that had the same parts I was going to buy anyway, for $200 less than my parts list. So I went with that.

I don't know why I bought the Squaretrade 3 year warranty. I never buy those things, but in this case it worked out. The 4890 video card failed at around the 2 year mark, so I was sent a 6870. And at the 35 month mark, the magic blue smoke escaped from my power supply. Got a Corsair 850 watt to replace it at no cost.

It has 12 gig of ram, instead of the 6 it came with. And I have jumped on the Westmere train with a 5660, overclocked to 4.2 Ghz. I do have the "New PC" bug, but if I am being honest with myself, I would just be spending a big bucket of money on something I don't actually need, as what I have does everything I need quite fast.

Perhaps building a rig or two for friends will satisfy my need to tinker, and make a few bucks to boot.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I have to say, the last PC purchase I did for myself I've been quite happy with. At the time, I was going to build a rig. Priced out the parts and all that. Newegg had a sale going on Cyberpower PC gaming machines, that had the same parts I was going to buy anyway, for $200 less than my parts list. So I went with that.

I don't know why I bought the Squaretrade 3 year warranty. I never buy those things, but in this case it worked out. The 4890 video card failed at around the 2 year mark, so I was sent a 6870. And at the 35 month mark, the magic blue smoke escaped from my power supply. Got a Corsair 850 watt to replace it at no cost.

It has 12 gig of ram, instead of the 6 it came with. And I have jumped on the Westmere train with a 5660, overclocked to 4.2 Ghz. I do have the "New PC" bug, but if I am being honest with myself, I would just be spending a big bucket of money on something I don't actually need, as what I have does everything I need quite fast.

Perhaps building a rig or two for friends will satisfy my need to tinker, and make a few bucks to boot.

Yes. The need to tinker and the need for speed. For me, the refusal to buy any OEM system or ready-made gaming rig is part old habit, part stubbornness, or simply a belief that if I build it after testing parts within the reseller-RMA window, it will just . . . be . . . . better.

There was a time when my mechanic-turned-insurance-man father suddenly started trading in his Chevy every one or two years at the dealership where he'd bought it -- his former employer. That was then, and it doesn't make sense today, but then there might be some who do it still.

You could go to the Indian Casino and expect to lose -- for fun. You could go there with a plan to card-count the 8-deck shoe -- also for fun. You could simply choose not to go to the Indian Casino.

But budgetary-control of a hardware addiction is probably not much better, but certainly not worse.

 

[Jen]

we all have addictions of one sort or another . i have many addictions some good and some bad just depends on what ones views are. for myself i like low power computers that will function for my needs. the lower the power that meets my requirements means i upgrade else i wait till there is something better.