The Desktop PC Needs A Makeover

I sent him this email response:

Dear Mr. Kowaliski:

I read your article following a link from [H]ardOCP.com. If you really want an underpowered computer with no optical drives and a teeny motherboard with no airspace, it already exists. It's called a notebook. Plug it into a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and be happy with it if that's all you need. Let those if us who love our massive cases with overclocked Core i7's on massive mainboards with multiple PCI-e x16 slots and video cards in SLI chugging off 1000 watt PSU's keep building our machines as we see fit.

Sincerely,

The Phoenix.
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Phoenix333 said:
I sent him this email response:
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Apples to oranges. A netbook/ultrabook fills a niche for certain users that want full PC functionality and longer battery run times over a laptop. And a uATX or MiniITX system can be just as powerful as an ATX or EATX system. Look at my sig, for example. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that my system is ample enough for a good percentage of fellow members, maybe with the exception of my aging GPU. My point is, my current system is all components from the ATX system I did have, save for the case, HSF, and MoBo.
 
I agree, the "standard" PC should be pretty much what he defines.

But to argue that a 1kW PSU is "standard" now is just asinine.

There are good mATX boards and chassis that will fit two full-length dual-slot video cards. (Although going to the author's "new standard," even that would be outside the bounds of normalcy for the target.)

Your "standard" desktop PC? Nowadays? Mini ITX, SSD, optical drive (still necessary, sorry author.)
 
Dammit, hit submit too soon...

Of course, there will still be a market for full-size PCs, but just as clunky giant-brick laptops have basically disappeared except for the very rarefied highest-end of high-end gaming laptops, giant-brick desktops will also disappear except for the rarefied highest-end of high-end gaming desktops.

Yes, the suggestions may seem impossible to a large part of this crowd, but think about it - is there any legitimate reason you need a conventional full tower "desktop" for anything but ultra-high-end-gaming? (Note, I am excluding true "workstation" use, that's it's own thing where even high-end gaming rigs are a joke.)
 
wonderfield said:
Optical media is pretty unpleasant compared to solid state media ,or even mechanical hard drives. The only reason Blu-ray drives offer any value at all is due to the relatively high cost of solid state storage and due to the fact that the infrastructure for digital distribution (including consumer broadband in the U.S. and many other countries) is still largely inadequate for delivering extremely high quality video content.

If these were solved problems, hardly anyone could keep a straight face when someone around them claimed to own an optical disc drive. We only accept the relative grotesqueness and ridiculousness of optical media because it fills a certain niche for consumers at the moment.
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Isn't that sort of like supporting eliminating cars because the only reason we accept them is because they haven't perfected transporters yet?


wonderfield said:
How much space would all the data on your discs occupy on a hard disk? If you're dealing mainly with legacy stuff, then it's totally feasible that you could get away with having all of that data on a single relatively low capacity hard drive. Pulling data from discs into a disc images is certainly no big deal at all: you just need toe storage space for it.
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Well I have dvds that are 15 years old or possibly older, and every single one works as good today as the day I got them, I can't say the same any hard drive I bought 10+ years ago.


Phoenix333 said:
I sent him this email response:
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I agree, ironically I've decided that for my next build I'm going to go with one of the full sized double wide cases made by Caselabs. LOL!
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Well I have dvds that are 15 years old or possibly older, and every single one works as good today as the day I got them, I can't say the same any hard drive I bought 10+ years ago.
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You're lucky, discs that old can suffer from "DVD rot," where the foil layer starts to oxidize and makes the disc unreadable in short order. I've lost a few older DVD's this way.

The polycarbonate can also start to become brittle after being heat-cycled for a decade in DVD-ROM drives and set-top boxes. Had a few discs simply shatter taking them out of their Jewell case (and two shattered while spinning inside the player).

I still have those movies, though... they're safe and sound, backed up to hard disks.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Isn't that sort of like supporting eliminating cars because the only reason we accept them is because they haven't perfected transporters yet?
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Am I supporting eliminating optical drives? No. I'm saying that we suffer from optical media (which we all know isn't what we really want) due to various market concerns.
 
Kind of surprised how attached people are to their optical drives. Kind of reminds me of techies clinging to their floppies 10 years ago. It's an inferior technology being kept alive only by lagging content distribution systems.

I have not used an optical disc in over a year and don't see much of a reason to. I guess for the portion of the population who loves collecting movies it makes sense, but I'm the type that watches a movie once and is done with it and dont really care if it's the absolute highest quality image (as I suspect are many others). Not the much software that isn't digital these days.

It's actually quite tough to find a case with no 5.25 drive bays. Would be nice to find them.
 
nealric said:
Kind of surprised how attached people are to their optical drives. Kind of reminds me of techies clinging to their floppies 10 years ago. It's an inferior technology being kept alive only by lagging content distribution systems.

I have not used an optical disc in over a year and don't see much of a reason to. I guess for the portion of the population who loves collecting movies it makes sense, but I'm the type that watches a movie once and is done with it and dont really care if it's the absolute highest quality image (as I suspect are many others). Not the much software that isn't digital these days.

It's actually quite tough to find a case with no 5.25 drive bays. Would be nice to find them.
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Those of us that spend money on a good home theater system still rely on blu-ray or blu-ray quality rips. Because the alternative sucks.
 
Why is it always that half the people who write for tech sites have no idea what they're talking about?
 
Megalith said:
Why is it always that half the people who write for tech sites have no idea what they're talking about?
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To be honest, what hes talking about has been the norm for everyday computers for ... well ever haha.

But comparing these things to enthusiast products (that push computing all the way to the lowest common denominator) is dumb as they arent everyday computer products.

While we could use newer standards on computers, refine things to lower power increase productivity, etc. it isnt worth the money to rewrite the standard pc layout.
 
Like I said, a relic of the content distribution system. With a decent network connection, it is possible to stream and/or download blue ray quality content, it's just that the current providers (Netflix, Amazon iTunes) don't yet offer that quality. They will.
 
nealric said:
Like I said, a relic of the content distribution system. With a decent network connection, it is possible to stream and/or download blue ray quality content, it's just that the current providers (Netflix, Amazon iTunes) don't yet offer that quality. They will.
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I honestly believe we would of bad this by now, but bandwidth caps have held that off for a while. I still buy blu rays, even though I would much rather stream.
 
Yawn. As many others have said, this option already exists from a multitude of companies.

How about we just stop making engines above 400hp. Or Amps above 200 watts per channel. I don't need them, so surely everyone else doesn't either.

Douchenozzle............
 
jflail2 said:
Yawn. As many others have said, this option already exists from a multitude of companies.

How about we just stop making engines above 400hp. Or Amps above 200 watts per channel. I don't need them, so surely everyone else doesn't either.

Douchenozzle............
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Same thing could be said about guns. And yeah, I stick to my full form factor. ;)
 
And that ban was lifted in 2010. Nice to stay current.
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Wow, they lifted that ban? And they didn't even tell US Army NETCOM where I currently work. :rolleyes:
 
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Unknown-One said:
The Fractal Design Node 304 is a Mini ITX case that can handle the GTX 780, GTX Titan, GTX 690, HD 7970, or HD 7990.

It can also take full-size ATX power supplies and has enough room for 6 hard disks and either a tower-style CPU heatsink or an integrated water cooling kit like the Corsair H90.

Very easy to put a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a GTX 690 in there... Mini-ITX SLI system :D
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Heh, just ran across a build very similar to what I described:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1372265/build-pics-node-304-gtx-titan-h90

ASRock z77e-ITX mini-itx motherboard
Intel Core i7 3770K CPU
Corsair H90 CPU cooler
Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3-1866 ram
Nvidia GTX Titan GPU
Intel 525 mSATA 240GB SSD
Silverstone Strider Gold ST65F-G 650W PSU

all crammed inside a Fractal Design Node 304 case :eek:
 
But my DVD's, Blu Rays, and games that are on optical media need an optical drive, not to mention the really old games that need DOSbox.

I put an mATX in my nephews system, and that runs like a champ, but it entirely depends on what you want in the system, a lot of his points are pointless though, and I clean the laptop exhaust and intake every couple of months, along with the main PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and the WiiU
 
Support for legacy media needs to stick around. Just because YOU might not need an optical drive doesn't mean that no one does. I tend to try to keep working legacy media readers around, because i run across data on legacy media that there IS NO OTHER WAY TO GET THAT DATA.

If at least a few of us don't keep working legacy media readers alive, then we are losing the ability to read certain types of data, and that means that data is lost forever. And that's a bad thing.

Just like the original media of the Apollo missions. They still had the media (well it was lost but they found it), but they didn't have a working means of reading it. Luckily they found no working units and managed to fix them well enough to get the data back. Imagine if that data had been lost, it would have been tragic.

In short, support your legacy media! :p
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Those of us that spend money on a good home theater system still rely on blu-ray or blu-ray quality rips. Because the alternative sucks.
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Amen.
I had a 1100 watt 5.1 surround sound setup with the big screen tv for ages, before that, 500 watt 4x channel (before 5.1 came along, it was 5.1).
Still big into big sound.
Cheap rips are ok if you're wearing headphones or have a set of 2.1 speakers, but if you're going 5.1 or 7.1 you need disks.
 
The key word is redesign, and I more or less agree with the author. Think about it, part of the reason for a big case is cabling, and we still have a ancient ATX connector plus another 8 pin connector located at different parts of the mobo, then there are those USB connectors, SATA connectors, AUDIO connectors all around the board, seriously? Case connector? WTF?

There should be exactly one power cord to the mobo. Change the PCIe slot to also supply power to cards that sits on it. Those PCI power connectors always go to video card, and the first video card always sits on the first PCIe slot.

Case connector should also be one cable. In fact, it should be one USB like cable that automatically connects as people sits the mobo. Once connected, all buttons, lights, USBs, and drives work.

There is no need to seperate data cable from power cable anymore, we have USB devices that does both at the same time on a thin cable, so why are we still stuck with multiple power cables and multiple sata cables?

If these can be done, then we no longer need a big case as there are no cables to block airflow.
 
So what we are saying here is M-ATX for 99% of the worlds computers users and bigger stuff for the other 1% to spend their weekends reducing the latency on their 2133Mhz ram and run benchmarks on all day.

Well I'm fine with that, I've grown out of benchmarking.
 
serious said:
The key word is redesign, and I more or less agree with the author. Think about it, part of the reason for a big case is cabling, and we still have a ancient ATX connector plus another 8 pin connector located at different parts of the mobo, then there are those USB connectors, SATA connectors, AUDIO connectors all around the board, seriously? Case connector? WTF?

There should be exactly one power cord to the mobo. Change the PCIe slot to also supply power to cards that sits on it. Those PCI power connectors always go to video card, and the first video card always sits on the first PCIe slot.

Case connector should also be one cable. In fact, it should be one USB like cable that automatically connects as people sits the mobo. Once connected, all buttons, lights, USBs, and drives work.

There is no need to seperate data cable from power cable anymore, we have USB devices that does both at the same time on a thin cable, so why are we still stuck with multiple power cables and multiple sata cables?

If these can be done, then we no longer need a big case as there are no cables to block airflow.
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I'm with you there. This should have all happend at least 15 years ago. Plus put some of the crap on the motherboard on the other side so we don't have to see it.
 
This was his reply to my email:

Dear The Phoenix,



Yes, I noticed the news post and discussion thread over at [H]ardOCP. I'm surprised so many users seem to think that anything smaller than ATX is unfit for enthusiasts and "power users." In fact, it's entirely possible to build a microATX machine with dual graphics cards, an overclocked Core i7, and a 1000W PSU. Many microATX motherboards have multiple PCI Express x16 slots, and cases like the Corsair 350D are built to accommodate multi-GPU rigs.


However, if you read my blog post carefully, you'll see that my suggestions were aimed at the average PC gamer—not at enthusiasts who make use of the ATX form factor's full potential. In fact, my blog post clearly states, "We can keep ATX around for workstations and extreme quad-GPU rigs."


I'm sorry if I hurt your sensibilities as a PC enthusiast. Despite what you might have read at [H]ardOCP, though, that wasn't my intention.


Best regards,


Cyril
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I love the "Dear The Phoenix" part. :D

I do understand what he's saying to a point, but the one major point that I disagree with is the "average PC gamer" bit. I've yet to know an "average PC gamer". Every PC gamer I know has different hardware and it varies massively from one to the next. A "middle-of-the-road" gaming PC is one that will do everything mediocre and excel at nothing. There IS no "one-size fits all" gaming rig. If you want "one-size fits all" you buy a console. If you want to customize for the kinds of games you play, you buy a PC and upgrade it or you build one.
 
nealric said:
Like I said, a relic of the content distribution system. With a decent network connection, it is possible to stream and/or download blue ray quality content, it's just that the current providers (Netflix, Amazon iTunes) don't yet offer that quality. They will.
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But I don't want to sign up to Netflix and stream anything. I buy my movies in a box and collect them. Have no desire to have tons of HDD space wasted on movies.
 
Tons of HDD space?

*looks over at the 3TB drive in his server that contains 900 movies, with room to spare.*

One hard disk? :p
 
Unknown-One said:
If we're just talking about DVD movies here... once you rip them and compress to h.264, it's very easy to fit thousands onto a single 2TB drive.
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I don't want lower quality compressed movies. I don't want to spend the time ripping them either. If this is the future then count me out. Hollywood isn't going to see a penny from me.
 
Bad article. Desktop PCs often need to be big. You just can't fit much power into a laptop. You can, but then it is not mobile, more expensive, loud and probably still full of compromises.

If you don't need power and want something small there are some decent laptops at Costco for $600-700. If you need even less power, get a tablet.

But the desktop still has its place - accommodating powerful components while being easy to upgrade.
 
serious said:
The key word is redesign, and I more or less agree with the author. Think about it, part of the reason for a big case is cabling, and we still have a ancient ATX connector plus another 8 pin connector located at different parts of the mobo, then there are those USB connectors, SATA connectors, AUDIO connectors all around the board, seriously? Case connector? WTF?

There should be exactly one power cord to the mobo. Change the PCIe slot to also supply power to cards that sits on it. Those PCI power connectors always go to video card, and the first video card always sits on the first PCIe slot.

Case connector should also be one cable. In fact, it should be one USB like cable that automatically connects as people sits the mobo. Once connected, all buttons, lights, USBs, and drives work.

There is no need to seperate data cable from power cable anymore, we have USB devices that does both at the same time on a thin cable, so why are we still stuck with multiple power cables and multiple sata cables?

If these can be done, then we no longer need a big case as there are no cables to block airflow.
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Agreed with changing the cables/plugs. Don't agree with the rest of the article.
 
Flogger23m said:
Bad article. Desktop PCs often need to be big. You just can't fit much power into a laptop. You can, but then it is not mobile, more expensive, loud and probably still full of compromises.

If you don't need power and want something small there are some decent laptops at Costco for $600-700. If you need even less power, get a tablet.

But the desktop still has its place - accommodating powerful components while being easy to upgrade.
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Uhhhh, before calling the article op-ed "bad" I'd go (re)read it....

The OP article's point was that even getting something "powerful" does not require full ATX motherboards or even mid-towers anymore. You can get all the power you'll ever need from mainline desktop hardware like LGA1155 and a single GPU. And put quite simply outside the enthusiast 0.5% who post on [H]/OCN/eVGA/etc. almost no one uses expansion bays, 1kW PSUs, or PCI expansion cards. Even among enthusiasts practically no one has multiple GPUs.

Put simply computers sell as fashion/design statements...and the desktop PC has been stuck in the Antec 900-2 case design paradigm for no good reason for way too long. There really isn't a good reason to stick with ATX as the norm for desktops. With boards today like the Asus Gene mATX and ITX you can get everything you get out of an ATX board in a smaller form factor, and you seldom compromise on anything.
 
Didn't read the article but A TON of people live with just an iPad these days. It's safe to say most people won't miss the extra 3 pcie slots on a full sized ATX board. Hell, I've even moved to a mATX board recently and can't say that I miss my old rig. My server, on the other hand, will probably stay ATX just for the hdd's.
 
Skripka said:
Uhhhh, before calling the article op-ed "bad" I'd go (re)read it....

The OP article's point was that even getting something "powerful" does not require full ATX motherboards or even mid-towers anymore. You can get all the power you'll ever need from mainline desktop hardware like LGA1155 and a single GPU. And put quite simply outside the enthusiast 0.5% who post on [H]/OCN/eVGA/etc. almost no one uses expansion bays, 1kW PSUs, or PCI expansion cards. Even among enthusiasts practically no one has multiple GPUs.

Put simply computers sell as fashion/design statements...and the desktop PC has been stuck in the Antec 900-2 case design paradigm for no good reason for way too long. There really isn't a good reason to stick with ATX as the norm for desktops. With boards today like the Asus Gene mATX and ITX you can get everything you get out of an ATX board in a smaller form factor, and you seldom compromise on anything.
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Small form factor tends to = loud and a pain to work in. Even my Corsair 550D does not have enough room at the top for me to quickly remove/install a CPU heatsink.

Noise is an important factor for me as well. Some laptops and small form factor PCs are screaming loud when put on load. I find that extremely annoying.
 
Pleb said:
WTF should I have to spend money on a HDD to store shitty compressed movies? :confused:
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Shitty compressed? I don't compress any of my movies past the point where it's transparent.

h.264 video, original AC3 or DTS audio, commentary in AAC, subtitle tracks, all in an MKV wrapper. Higher quality than any scene group releases.
 
HAHAHAHA what a gawd dam fuckin' idiot. And for the record, my mid-tower is jam-packed. I got no fuckin' free space. Next PC build I gotta finally move up to a full-tower. I can't even fit in a graphics card that is longer than 9.5".
 
I do not like the trend that I have seen over the last couple of years. I used to refuse to say that desktops would die out but I am really afraid that will happen. Fewer places are selling desktops and those that do have fewer to choose from. I think Best Buy had some the last time I was there but it was like they were hidden over in a corner that no one goes to. Even weak powered notebooks used to be expensive and were a novelty item. Now when someone goes to buy a computer they want a notebook or a tablet. Most average computer users that I know had a den or some computer room they had their PC in. Now everyone wants to sit on their couch and surf. If the average HP and Dell desktop goes away then the high end stuff eventually will too. Companies can't keep making money off just selling to us. Something needs to bring back the desktop but I don't think it will happen. I never believed that consoles would kill off PC gaming, but I do think it could happen if desktops get killed off.
 
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