The Death Of The DIY PC Is The Death Of The PC

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I like this guy. Read this article and I think you will like him too. :D

The PC is, at its heart, a gestalt of components that come together to serve a purpose. Lose the ability to choose what goes into a PC, then a PC becomes nothing more than a black box, like a DVD player or a games console. And that's not a PC.
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I think the author has lost sight of the meaning of the words "personal computer" when used together. If its a computer that is designed for one person, as opposed to a multi-user mainframe, app server, or whatnot, then it's a personal computer. Regardless of whether you're sticking Tab A into Slot A and turning some screws or just taking it out of a box and turning it on, it's still a personal computer. Sheesh people like to stratify the things they do to get a few page views or obtain self-approval from the bobble heads who absorb, nod, and repeat.

That burger's only going to be around for a few minutes, after which you'll never see it again – hopefully! – but your PC is going to be staring you in the face for months, if not years, to come.
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And he made me think about a burger too. The meanie-head. :mad:
 
It's certainly going to disappoint a small portion of computer users, but the vast majority won't care. See: people who don't care that their cars can't be easily serviced by owners like they used to (post assembly line).

He's looking at it from a very narrow perspective. Most PCs are used as a box as purchased, aside from occasional simple upgrades like HDD or memory. Except for the smallest form factors, those two items are likely to be upgrade-able in the future too.

He just has blinders on, and makes no apologies for it in the article.
 
If I were ever unable to build and customize my own PC I will go to a laptop. No doubt. Not that Intel or anyone else cares as they would still get my money.
 
I've built all of my PCs for the last 25 years, except the first one. First was an AMD 386-40 from a local computer shop. Was a DIY, but they did it and sold it as a package.

I've never stopped building them. Shared my knowledge with at least 30 people. I'm now almost 50.
:D
 
These days I'd rather buy a laptop. Thank God for notebookcheck.
 
ol1bit said:
I've built all of my PCs for the last 25 years, except the first one. First was an AMD 386-40 from a local computer shop. Was a DIY, but they did it and sold it as a package.

I've never stopped building them. Shared my knowledge with at least 30 people. I'm now almost 50.
:D
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I've been doing it for 20 years, and I'm 31. I can feel it slipping away.:(
 
Just seems to be a better value to build myself and easier to fix if I know what's inside. I guess some people are more comfortable being at someone else's mercy.
 
im the only person ive met that builds their own computer.
everyone else, even gamers, just buys prebuilt something.

the price vs performance gap only exists at higher and higher costs, and hence, more and more towards hobbyists.
 
ol1bit said:
I've built all of my PCs for the last 25 years, except the first one. First was an AMD 386-40 from a local computer shop. Was a DIY, but they did it and sold it as a package.

I've never stopped building them. Shared my knowledge with at least 30 people. I'm now almost 50.
:D
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The dates are alittle off :p

the AMD 386-40 came out in 1992.

2013-1992 = 21 years

You built a pc 4 years before the first one ;)



I'm 32 myself and been building for about 20 years.

First pc in the house was a packard bell 286-12mhz around 1989. I remember it fondly because I was 9 and it was the first time I formatted a hard drive lol should have never left me alone with that dos book.
 
If we are ever forced to buy store bought pre built machines, I will just totally denounce technology and go live in the Ozarks somewhere, its not even worth it.
 
Krenum said:
If we are ever forced to buy store bought pre built machines, I will just totally denounce technology and go live in the Ozarks somewhere, its not even worth it.
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oh, it won't stop there

it will also have a locked down app environment and a criminal charge for rooting the thing

just watch
 
if u take into consideration how incompetent the author, or the general public, may be, its easy to see the simplification of appliances may appear as a roadblock rather than a new platform.
there's always a know-how to how-to on something :D
 
I love building my own Pc's but as I get older I do see the appeal in a "turnkey" solution. That being said we have to change with the times. In that I mean change what we tinker with. We like building Pc's due to the pride of obsessing over every part, the first boot when it works, watching what you put together work for years with minimal maintenance.

The fact of the matter is that tech changes. We need to change with it. Personally I am going deeper into how it all works. When I started building (2001) Things were simpler than when I had a tandy 1000. or a pentium 166 with jumpers to overclock it. If we want to continue to tinker we need to take back a lot of the automation that has happened.

I am currently going back to school for electronic engineering and computer science because just the "IT" level stuff isnt enough for me anymore. If a videocard break, I want to be able to fix the thing instead of plunking $300-500 for a new one. If a cap explodes (admittedly not much of a problem anymore with solid state), I want to replace it. Phones/tablets, I want to take apart and see if I cant upgrade the cpu and reprogram the OS to take advantage of it. or at the very least replace parts if they break.

I think Pc's in the current state are going to be around for at least another 10 years. If anything they are going to stay do to large businesses needing to be able to swap out parts. ( though that is changing. They are getting rid of the computers in my store so we can go to ipads and just threw out the old ones. they were running core 2's!) They have also just replaced the whole tower for a fan issue. I believe it is with the warranty agreement.

things are changing guys, we dont need to hold on to our pc's in our cold dead fingers because we wouldnt change with it.
 
I've never bought a prebuilt PC. It will definitely be sad when the ability to buy cpu, motherboard, ram etc is taken away and that PCs will all be embedded non user servicable devices. That's what the industry wants, because they can make more money. Bad ram? Throw the whole thing out and buy a new one. Regret not getting the 16GB version and went with the 8GB? Need more space, throw it out buy a new one. Oh you think they're going to throw a 500GB SSD in there? LOL yeah right. They might be available but they'll cost an arm and a leg.

Let's hope the open source community gets together to come up with an alternative modular PC / architecture. Think of projects like raspberry Pi, but much larger scale. PCs now arn't even that modular anyway, a new CPU comes out, you need a new motherboard because the socket changed. There's tons of different expansion slots etc... So I do think a more open standard is in order. Hopefully we see this happen some day. If I had more electronics knowledge it would make a really fun project to work on. Not easy even for a pro though...

The big issue with all this too is companies like Microsoft will pour tons of money into also making sure the future gen "PC"'s can't run anything but their OS. There's already talks of that happening because of UEFI making it possible. It's pure BS. It sucks that technology is no longer about advancement, but about capitalism. We've reached a plateau where we don't actually need more powerful PCs, so now the industry is scrambling to force us to buy. PCs last too long and they don't like that.
 
I'm all for more integrated components if it means a performance increase!

If they standardize a bunch of stuff to make development more simple and way more optimized then I don't care if I don't get to chose what kind of system memory I buy.
 
No if you can't fucking choose with PC any more they become macs and other crap from apple
 
FalconSS said:
I love building my own Pc's but as I get older I do see the appeal in a "turnkey" solution. That being said we have to change with the times. In that I mean change what we tinker with. We like building Pc's due to the pride of obsessing over every part, the first boot when it works, watching what you put together work for years with minimal maintenance.
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Actually, they're still popular over here because they're considerably cheaper than branded PC's. The desktops being sold at the stores can also be considered 'DIY' in that they're no different and just as mismatched as one that you build youself. The people that buy these are none techies and just want a computer that they can use. May buy them in bulk for their companies. My sister actually tried out being a Dell saleswoman and i had a look at what they had in their inventory, her company was selling PC's that are almost twice the price for lower specs than the ones we had at home.
 
I was always afraid to build a PC because I was so sure I would mess up. Pulled the trigger and made a pretty great rig. Out of all my friends I only know three or four that build their PC's. The rest either use laptops or macs. I do wish more people would try it. It's a very rewarding experience.
 
The 80/20 percent rule is VERY applicable in most situations... I think in this one it's closer to 95/5 as 95%+ tend to be able to have their needs met with an OEM PC... I can't think of anyone I know of that doesn't PC game thats needs anything else for their home computing needs.

To that point... most don't need any more than an ipad/tablet in general. So much of the PC "Experience" is now so vastly web 2.0 driven and cloud stored that we aren't long for a world where what he is talking about comes true.

I am 35 years old and have built PC's since 1992 when I purchased a Cyrix 486 chip and crammed it in my ESP 386 whitebox case...

If it wasn't for my gaming PC to play my last PC game I'll probably ever play: Diablo III and my file server that I BARELY use any more because most of the stuff is in the cloud... Most of my own computing is performed via Ipads and tablets and I find it less of a headache at a MUCH cheaper rate... even if I have to replace the thing every 2-3 years.
 
ol1bit said:
I've built all of my PCs for the last 25 years, except the first one. First was an AMD 386-40 from a local computer shop. Was a DIY, but they did it and sold it as a package.

I've never stopped building them. Shared my knowledge with at least 30 people. I'm now almost 50.
:D
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My experience is very similar. My buddy helped me put my first system together in 93. It was a 386sx16. After a year, Doom came out (or hit my perception) and I couldn't run it on my machine. I scoured Computer Shopper (remember when it was HUGE?) and bought a prebuilt from some vendor. It was a 486SLC-2 66 machine using an IBM CPU. That experience soured me from ever buying prebuilt again. Been building my own since 96 and would never again buy a prebuilt. In order to offer a better price, vendors have to cut corners. I can build a better PC that I can have pride in and support myself. If I build correctly, I can keep the case, power supply, etc and just swap out certain components to keep the system going for years (such as I've done in my main rig for a long time now).

Like you, I've turned many people onto the DIY path and all of them are quite happy with this way of doing things. I think building your own gives you greater insight into computing in general. Not everyone will want to do it and that's fine. Just makes those of us who do more [H]ardcore :D
 
pxc said:
It's certainly going to disappoint a small portion of computer users, but the vast majority won't care. See: people who don't care that their cars can't be easily serviced by owners like they used to (post assembly line).

He's looking at it from a very narrow perspective. Most PCs are used as a box as purchased, aside from occasional simple upgrades like HDD or memory. Except for the smallest form factors, those two items are likely to be upgrade-able in the future too.

He just has blinders on, and makes no apologies for it in the article.
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And why should he ;) , Basically consoles are PC everything is a PC you NAS is a PC and so on. The uses being limited by company A or B depending on market strategy.

We don't have to care about it or love it or give in to the marker of bigger numbers.
Is this just a knee jerk reaction towards Haswell integrated mainboard+CPU.

I've built dozens of PCs, and each one of these has outlasted any brand-name PC I've bought, and by a comfortable amount. After the initial build and testing I get several years of happy computing out of the system before it's time to repair or upgrade something.
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Yes you are a good boy :)

Sorry im sure the author was begging for this ;) .
 
BUilt my first machine in 94 and have never bought a pre-built for myself, bought 1 for my mother. But before plugging it in changed the PSU and GPU haha.

For me, everything is bang for the buck, so I do own and console game as well (dunno about next gen) but I build my own PC.

the ONLY pre-built PC I ever wanted was a Voodoo, used to teach their assembly guys oragami to maximize cable management. I'd still KILL to just get a Voodoo case to stick my crap in.

~Rich
 
I see a lot of folks that go into a PC shop and buy a bog standard PC and then call me because it wont play little Mikey's games very well.

I go investigate and as usual I find the following -

BIg Brand off the shelf box with 300W grey box PSU, 3GB of ram, Intel graphics, dual core, 500GB HDD and custom motherboard/case so kibosh any real upgrades.

Sometimes the CPU will be a good one (ohhh looks good on the spec list) but surrounded with the crappy other parts its never going to shine.

So the best I can do is maybe up the ram and slot in the best GPU that doesn't need extra power. It's a tough call to get folks to invest $45 in a slightly better PSU for their 6 month old PC.But then again in that bizarre case chances are it wouldn't fit anyway.

That works okay for a while but the kid gets older and the games ramp up in power. So sometimes I get a call and I get to build a proper machine for the kid.

Pretty rare though.

Most folks want laptops or just machines that can browse the web and rip iTunes to. If that's all they want then I will buyt in prebuilts for them. No point wasting my time speccing up that sort of thing.

As for me? Well I've only ever bought one PC, that was my first and since then I've built the rest but really I don't need a custom box. My needs have been surpassed by off the shelf stuff.

To me those mega top end 5Ghz OC Intel i7 boxes with water-cooling, neons and dragons on the case just look like computing dinosaurs before the meteor struck.

On borrowed time.
 
daglesj said:
To me those mega top end 5Ghz OC Intel i7 boxes with water-cooling, neons and dragons on the case just look like computing dinosaurs before the meteor struck.

On borrowed time.
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I agree with everything you said (as I've been there in all of them) up until this.

The super high end PC market is not dying out, yes, with consoles becoming more powerful it is becoming a much smaller niche market, but dying is not something I would say at all.

People keep saying mobile gaming is the future, I haven't gamed on a mobile platform since my GameGear, if anything mobile gaming is a gateway gaming platform, my wife got hooked on casuals on facebook, then the 360, now she's wanting a PC like mine.

If it was dying (and I know this happened a while ago) why did Dell buy out Alienware? Why did HP buy out Voodoo? And I have no idea what happened to Falcon NW!

So extremely limited niche? Yeah, I can see that, until HW prices come down and console gamers A) realize how much cheaper PC games are, and B) can get the same quality of online experience without running 12 different programs (I.E. Steam needs VOIP, Partys, and the like) it's going to stay niche.

But not dead.

~Rich
 
I've been building pc's since 1995. Started with a Cyrix Pentium 100 class processor.
It was nowhere near the power of the intel Pentium 100, did some Lightwave render tests with my brothers Pentium 100 vs my Cyrix, then sold the Cyrix the next day and built an intel based machine.
The Pentium 200mmx was the most expensive processor I've ever bought, $525 ( I did purchase a Warp Engine for my Amiga 3000 for $1400, Motorola 68040 40mhz based accelerator card, but returned it since it didn't fit, only worked in the Amiga 4000 and 3000T)
 
I normally build my own, simply more value that way. Ocassionaly when Dell was being heavily subsided by Intel I would pick up Dell system if it was dramatically less then what I could make it for, but normally regretted it slightly. I have a Dell Pentium Pro and a 400SC. Everything before was built, everything after built. Excluding notebooks, pdas, tablets and the like. The Dell systems always ran a little hotter then I would like, but both overclocked reasonably. 233 for the Pentium Pro and 3.2 for the 400sc P4. They were always a little noisy for my tastes, but I enjoyed the savings.

I think the long-term goal is for the software vendors to gain more control. This way they can "motivate" migrations as they see fit. Where as now they have this problem that people can hold on to software for as long as they like. Hardware vendors on the other hand want to refuse software updates to force consumers to buy new hardware sooner. Basically look at the smartphone market, that is where they would like to go...closed boxes you buy. The question is who will have the power.
 
That's_Corporate said:
I'm all for more integrated components if it means a performance increase!

If they standardize a bunch of stuff to make development more simple and way more optimized then I don't care if I don't get to chose what kind of system memory I buy.
Click to expand...

I think it would be the opposite. A $1,000 PC would be something like an Atom with 2GB of ram and 32GB SSD. Everything embedded so you can actually change anything. No expansion slots, maybe 2 USB ports for keyboard/mouse, and that's it. Then you can buy the "64GB" edition and it would have a Core i5, 4GB of ram and 64GB SSD, for like $1,500. By the time you get into anything with like 8GB of ram you'd be paying multiple grand. They'll do it because they can.

Look at how servers are priced, if you go on Dell's site or what not. The base server will be around $1,500 but minute you start to add ram or disk space you are getting raped through the ass, because, they can.

That's another thing, servers at home? Forget it, only huge cloud corporations will be able to buy servers because custom servers like Supermicro will no longer be available, and server hardware will be very proprietary and subscription based, where each component requires a license that has to be renewed etc and will be extremly expensive, like in the 100's of thousands. One of the goals of this movement is to also force us to use the cloud, and subscription services. It's also another way they can track us, but that's just a bonus.

Things are going to get ugly, if this movement of killing the PC continues. I just hope I'm wrong on all my speculating, but from a business standpoint it makes sense, and these companies arn't in to satisfy our wants, they're in to make money.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Look at how servers are priced, if you go on Dell's site or what not. The base server will be around $1,500 but minute you start to add ram or disk space you are getting raped through the ass, because, they can.
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The reason the prices rack up steeply when you buy server kit from Dell etc. is because part of the increased cost is to cover warranty/insurance/liability for disk fails, data loss etc.

It's all in the small print.
 
My desktop that I'm using is my first dekstop that I put together. I spent like, $800 on it, and took me 6 hours to put it together. That includes the time to unbox the parts, put it all in the case, take it all back out, rebox the motherboard and processor and return it to the store because they were DOA.

I've had issues with my computer, and so far I've had to replace the motherboard twice and the hard drive died on me, and I need to replace my OS drive (got my eyes on a cheap SSD), and I can't tell you how much I've been kicking myself for the crappy video card choices I've made and the cheap CPU I got, but I enjoy it. It's a simple black box with a blue light bar on the front, but I've never enjoyed being obstantatious anyways. If I ever get to the point where I have tens of thousands of dollars to burn, I'm going to still keep the case and put in the best parts I can get my hands on. Nothing would piss off my opponents in a LAN party or competition than to be schooled by some guy with an unsassuming black box.
 
111 said:
I've been doing it for 20 years, and I'm 31. I can feel it slipping away.:(
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So am I, although I'm 34. but you know what, more and more I suggest people get notebooks or pcs from OEMs, instead of suggesting assembling them (the exception when it is a gaming or high powered PC). For non-enthusiasts, OEM, with their warranties and services are a much better option for them.
 
if the do it your self pc dies so will hard ocp since it caters primarily to pc builders with reviews of the things we use . I don't ssee this happening though
 
Will be a sad day should it ever come to the point where I have to order a pre-built POS.
 
daglesj said:
I see a lot of folks that go into a PC shop and buy a bog standard PC and then call me because it wont play little Mikey's games very well.

I go investigate and as usual I find the following -

BIg Brand off the shelf box with 300W grey box PSU, 3GB of ram, Intel graphics, dual core, 500GB HDD and custom motherboard/case so kibosh any real upgrades.

Sometimes the CPU will be a good one (ohhh looks good on the spec list) but surrounded with the crappy other parts its never going to shine.

So the best I can do is maybe up the ram and slot in the best GPU that doesn't need extra power. It's a tough call to get folks to invest $45 in a slightly better PSU for their 6 month old PC.But then again in that bizarre case chances are it wouldn't fit anyway.

That works okay for a while but the kid gets older and the games ramp up in power. So sometimes I get a call and I get to build a proper machine for the kid.
Click to expand...
A lot of times this happens, and my solution is more aggressive. Like this one time a guy wanted me to fix his Dell Desktop PC. It's a pretty standard ATX case, except it has enough differences to make it not compatible with a new ATX motherboard. The motherboard was shot, and Dell wants like $300 for a replacement. So I told him, we can do better.

First, we got a new case that I had him choose. Nothing expensive, but he liked it, and that's important. Second, we got a motherboard compatible with his CPU, but DDR2 memory went the way of the dinosaur, so we got new DDR3 memory. Finally, any old GPU that was $50, cause it would have been faster then his on board. Yea, the other motherboard didn't have the option for a graphics card.

End result, we ended up rebuilding his PC for less then $300, and made it better. We pretty much trashed the Dell case and power supply, since they were junk.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I think it would be the opposite. A $1,000 PC would be something like an Atom with 2GB of ram and 32GB SSD. Everything embedded so you can actually change anything. No expansion slots, maybe 2 USB ports for keyboard/mouse, and that's it. Then you can buy the "64GB" edition and it would have a Core i5, 4GB of ram and 64GB SSD, for like $1,500. By the time you get into anything with like 8GB of ram you'd be paying multiple grand. They'll do it because they can.
Click to expand...

Well, I disagree.

It's becoming clear that the biggest gains to be had are not going to come from packing more transistors into chips, but from reducing the latency between which these components talk to one another. Think about the gains we've seen in SLI/Crossfire scaling as an example. Sony is also betting on this with their integrated PS4 architecture with shared, quick memory.

There's no doubt in my mind that lower spec'd but more highly integrated systems can perform better than higher spec'd and discrete systems. Who cares about clockspeed numbers of individual components when they perform worse than a more integrated counterpart?
 
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