2017 Hardware Thread

sygnus21 said:

You obviously missed my sense of humor :)
And as I said before, and will contine to remind... this is an enthusiast forum where people build for.... performance. Regardless of what those who think its a waste of money think. Or how many years they've been in the field

You can never tell what an enthusiast might do. I too am an enthusiast, and an IT professional. I might not be the norm around these parts though. i built my own personal desktop about 7 years ago. I built a file server on a core i3 about 3 years ago. I just built my son a computer at Christmas.

I like to build nice, quality machines. But I don't build to benchmark. I don't build to set personal records. I never go top of the line. I always stay a few notches down to save some money, knowing that even a $1,000 CPU today is going to pale in comparison to what's available in 5 years time. I don't believe you can "future-proof"...in fact I absolutely hate that word. I tend to stay towards what is necessary. For example, I don't use anything but the stock retail cooler unless I have proven it's necessary. I stick with the # of case fans my case comes with until I've proven that I actually need more cooling.

I'm not saying that my method is right or wrong, but not all enthusiasts have an unquenchable thirst to need to improve.

essenbe said:

Yes, I am a charter member of that crowd. I do used to do a new build several times a year. I have slowed way down lately. I just don't have the money any more, but I still have the desire. I haven't done a new build in 2 years now. Somewhat of a record for me. I will admit I have been looking lately, but I doubt I will build anytime soon. It's really a hard habit to break.

For people like me, need is not even a consideration. If I considered need, I would still be on my i7-3770K build, which I still have and is still running quite well.

Well, at least you aren't in denial. It's quite rare for me to build a computer because I actually "needed" it. Heck, I can practically do what I "need" on my cell phone.

CountMike said:

There's two things I don't like compromising on, PSU and cooling, also like large cases with a room to spare.

I don't want to compromise on either of these either. However, what defines a "compromise"? Here is an example.

On my son's new computer, his Core i5-6500 idles around 18C and when under full load gaming on BF4 with Max Graphic settings, he gets to around 42C. < That is with the stock Intel cooler. I know I could dump money into extra cooling for his CPU, and his case, there isn't really any need to do so. The Core Temp limit is more than 2x that number. His video card hits around 72C under full load and idles around 22C, without any extra fan control software installed from EVGA. I'm currently letting the card take care of itself.

I only like to use high quality power supplies. I stick with Corsair and Seasonic. For my son's build, we did a fully modular 750W Seasonic. His load wattage is around 275w at max. So, he's using less than 1/2 of what his power supply can handle. Sure, I could have gone much larger on the power supply, but there isn't any reason to do so.