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I used to be a PC enthusiast. I was swapping out parts several times per year for benchmarking, building cheap rigs for overclocking, etc.
I built an I7 3770K rig back in 2013. 32 GB RAM. SSD. Added an 850 Pro and GTX 960 to it. I started to havre various fans, an HDD, and other wear/tear parts fail close together of the last few weeks.
The guts of the system are fine. I accidentally tore the USB front connector ribbon when building the rig, rendering that inoperable. The 960 sucks as a gaming card. I put a front USB 3.0 plate to connect drives to the MB. That worked fine.
I needed a new CPU fan. I bought a Coolmaster fan. It had insufficient nuts to mount it. A cat knocked the rest of the mounting hardware on my desk across the floor. The stock Intel fan is on its last legs. The case is all to pieces. It is a salvage operation from the drives, junk the case, and sell the CPU/RAM/MB at this point.
I haven't played a high end PC game in years. I have a PS4 Pro and an XBOX One X that can do better than my PC could. I had dual monitors, including a 4K monitor. Massive tower. Total mess of cabling.
I ponied up for the top end off the shelf iMac today. Monitor is a hell of a lot better than the $400 Samsung 4K I had from Costco. The graphics are tons better. The processor is probably a small upgrade (7600K vs 3770K OC). I can tell the Fusion drive is not as fast as the 850 Pro, but the iMac is so high quality otherwise I don't mind.
I have a separate case and PSU at my parents' house. I may rebuild on that, but it won't be a high end gaming build.
Hardware has seemed to go slowly along over the last decade. Are you an enthusiast anymore?
I’ve been building PCs for 30 years and am at the point where I think twice about building now. I just put together a dual Xeon server, but that’s more due to getting cheap parts than building cutting edge.
When I started everything was socketed including RAM chips which had to be populated one at a time. If something failed you diagnosed the problem and repaired it. Now most things are soldered and disposable.
My first build was a 386 system in 1991 after using ready-built systems for a few years (1984).. I even made a career out of computers. But the last thing I built was a HTPC from an Intel NUC about 4 years ago. Computers just don't hold my interest anymore, and the internet is one small step behind.
In days gone by I had a full rack stuffed with networking gear and servers (used for getting my certifications), but I've never really been into gaming. Zork I was about the high point in my gaming history. :P
I did my last desktop build about 5 years ago, and have no desire to upgrade. Intel processors haven't speeded up that much, and my old system is by no means sluggish. The only thing I'd get from a new MOBO is M2 connections, and I really don't need the extra speed. I can still boot in about 15 seconds, which for me is plenty fast.
Water cooling? no thanks. I don't overclock. More RAM? My 16 GB is plenty for what I do. Quad channel? for what? If a video is going to take a while to render, I do something else.
My last PC was built by me about 7 years ago and it was a budget build back then. I looked at building a new one and everything seemed fine from the processor, HD, memory perspective, but then I got to the prices of some video cards and said "nope". Seeing GTX 1080 video cards ranging from 500-1000 is just nuts and just not worth it to me to build a new PC.
I haven't built a custom machine in years, so I'm a bit out of the loop in terms of top graphics cards and such. I would love to build a custom system just to keep my skills sharp, but it's not necessarily a cost effective way to have a computer. Now that I'm getting into a bit more video editing, I wouldn't mind building a beefier system for stuff like that, but then again, most of the video editing stuff I'd rather do on a MAC anyway.
Not at all excited.
When I bought my first Windows machine in 1997, Intel processors were doubling in speed every 18-24 months. So, I bought and/or built a new machine fairly often. Building was fun. I also built some for friends.
Then, in 2005, I switched back to the Mac. Got excited about form factors, speed, screens, etc. Bought new machines every 2.5 years.
But, for the last 5 years, not much has happened, from my perspective, so now I buy a new machine every 5 years.
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