Even if a lot of the games I play don’t need a lot of power to get a decent fps, I appreciate the low load times.
Agreed; when you have a modern machine with a fast CPU and a PCIe 5.0 NVME, loading screens no longer exist in any game that’s at least a couple of years old.
It’s been at the point for a while where I appreciate loading screens that want a button pressed afterwards because otherwise it’s just a frustrating hint of a hint that I don’t have time to read.
My mom wanted a “laptop that wouldn’t freeze or get obsolete fast” and had a 17" screen. Had to direct her to one of Acer’s weaker gaming setups. The most demanding stuff she plays are those hidden object games that you also find on phones. Wasted potential, but she’s been happy and without a single complaint of it slowing down in 2 years
I upgraded my GPU from a perfectly slient 2070super that ran all my games. To a 6800xt which is loud as fuck. The only positive is that ive had 0 Wayland issues.
Worth it.
I mean, you can’t really overspend on a pc. If you treat ur parts right, that overspending will simply turn to a very long lasting investment into a machine that won’t be obsolete for over a decade to come.
I worked in pc sales way back, I used the exact same line that you just used to get people to spend more. “You can’t really overspend on a pc, it’s a long term investment.” Honestly it’s bullshit, you definitely overspend and you will if you’re not careful.
You can overspend by buying the wrong parts. The classic move is getting the wrong motherboard for your use case (most people don’t overclock). Another similar move is getting a flagship processor while not actually needing the extra processing power (most people are better off putting that money in their gpu).
Then there’s RGB, designer cases, fancy keyboards and all sorts of other stuff.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Wait you were serious?
Edit: people are downvoting probably because they… bought into this idea. Price per performance is a thing. These days the higher the price the more expensive the performace gets, because it prices in the premium associated with the extra budget of morons that fill a void in their life buy owning the latest whatever.
Yes price:performance is a thing, but some people are also bad with their money.
Me personally, I only ever come into enough money to build a PC once every 7-10 years, so I will build the best possible machine that money can buy, so that it lasts me as long as possible while I’m surviving on ramen.
Two years ago I built a rig 7700X and a 4090; I plan on hanging onto this machine for well into the 2030s. It’s definitely a lot easier to this with an AMD system—that’s for sure—given that they have a reputation of supporting CPU sockets for a long time.
There tends to be a correlation between quality, longevity, and price. It’s not a perfect fit but it’s definitely a thing that exists.
I built a brand new cutting edge PC for a family member in 2011. They wanted to change careers and get into IT and figured they needed the bestest fastest PC they could afford. Anyway, it worked great until they decided it was time for a new one in 2019. I got to keep the 2011 PC in exchange for some assistance with selecting components for the new build. I put in a shiny new SDD, ebayed 16GB of old RAM that was the fastest thing the motherboard could handle, and I’m still using it as my primary server / workstation / web browser / cloud backup automation controller / etc. It cost more upfront but the amount of time that 2 different people have not spent with fucking around building new PCs has more than offset that in my opinion.
So this PC is on its 3rd round of HDDs and 2nd round of RAM but that was only to boost performance, not because of a hardware failure. I haven’t lost a power supply, motherboard cap, fan motor, or USB port on it yet. That’s pretty remarkable for a 14 year old machine that’s been running 24/7. The 2019 build hasn’t had a hiccup in almost 6 years now either.
the amount of time
And how much do you value your time?
Here’s the history of my PC:
- 2010 - built PC - ~$500 - Phenom II X4 + onboard graphics
- 2015 - added GTX 960 to play games - <$300
- 2017 - replaced w/ Ryzen 1700 build - ~$800 - new mobo, CPU, RAM, PSU - kept boot drive from OG build
- 2018 - upgraded to NVMe drive - $200 - repurpose old Phenom II x4 build as NAS w/ older drive (SSD) - ~$200 (doesn’t count NAS drives)
- 2022 - upgrade CPU to 5600, GPU to 6650XT - $430
- 2024 - moved to ITX case - ~$400 - new mobo and case, kept same PSU - upgraded NAS to old 1700 CPU, better case, etc
So, in 14 years, I’ve done 5 upgrades, each of which took something like 30 min. Total spent, $2700, so <$200/year. That’s less than many pre-builts, which are often replaced after 5 years. Idk about you, but this is a really good tradeoff for time vs money.
PC gaming is a really cheap hobby as far as hobbies go. A good experience is only a few thousand dollar a decade
so many other hobbies have costs that sneak up on you too. You know what you’re getting into when you build a computer. When I first started getting into photography I learned lenses can be significantly more expensive than the actual body.
No thanks, I’ll just keep playing Morrowind on my 2009 Toshiba
Me neither, Metal Gear V was trash.
My little brother is autistic and plays old school Runeescape on a the craziest rig. Massive 4k ultra wide monitor. The best GPU on the market waiting for the next new GPU to come out. Has the best possible internet package.
This anecdote brings me a lot of joy for some reason haha.
All that and hes still going to lose his hardcore to a jagex server DC.
I have a 7 year old desktop PC that 3 of the memory slot is dead. So I can only run a 8gb single memory slot.
It has a GTX 2070 and I’m still able to run 90% of the games I want to play.
Forza 5, Split Fiction, BeamNG(this one is def maxing it out).
Maybe I’ll just buy a used motherboard, haha
Oh brother 8gb of singe rank memory is killing whatever CPU you got. The amount of stutters it must produce is killing me from around the world
Windows, on 8GB, can function with around 1.5GB. If your game only uses 6GB, which most games from a few years ago can do at medium settings, you can actually run that game.
Yes but only 1 stick runs significantly slower and with more stutters than 2 sticks. Same way 2 sticks with SR will run slower than 2 stick of DR
To allow the memory capacitors to recharge between actions there are delays or “timings” set for each type of action, row and bank. Having more available banks will make sure the controller only has to use the short delays set instead of the repeat action long delays.
There is a big difference between being able to start a game and not kneecapping your CPU.
only 1 stick runs significantly slower
Eh, I think that’s overhyped. It does matter, but mostly for CPU-bound tasks. If you are CPU bound, you could maybe see 15-20% FPS uplift (quite hype), but if not, it’ll be a lot smaller difference.
Definitely prefer dual channel over single channel, but IMO it’s not worth buying a new mobo just to get dual channel RAM.
It can be more than 100% in 1% and .1% lows, which is more important than the 20% avg fps. And 20% is basically a cpu upgrade And since its most likely 8gb SR ddr4 its actually 1 rank vs 2x dual rank which can be a bigger difference. A single DR 16gb stick wouldn’t be as bad.
Sure, if you’re hitting CPU limits. The more CPU headroom you have, the less impact the memory has.
It helps when I run nothing besides the game and shut down all other processes.
The only real trouble I have is with beamng.drive
I mean sure but. I’d be surprised if you wpuldn’t see a difference between 1 stick of 8 and 2 sticks of 8. Me going 16gb RAM to 32gb RAM was one of the most noticable upgrades I have done. Similar amount of change from going 1080p to 1440p of my monitor.
You just convinced me to get a newish motherboard lol thanks
Why bother with new games when you can play old games on max settings and/or mod the ever-loving crap out of them?
The purpose of fancy PCs is to run Minecraft with shaders and a bunch of mods
only 1000 to play vrchat with a friendly group of masturbating
Building the computer was the hobby. The games are incidental to the former
At least they’re playing good games and having a good time though
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
Some of my favorites from back in the day are just so dated by this point that the nostalgia isnt cutting it. Modern games dont hit the same, old games dont play right…
It has become a sort of tradition for me to play some sort of game that really doesn’t need the performance as the first game on any new computer I get.
It’s so satisfying to see mangohud jumping into the hundreds of FPS while knowing the game is cranking the highest quality image fidelity it is capable of. It’s like taking an apartment dog to a park and releasing the leash. Run baby, run as fast as you can.
Dwarf Fortress (old style ASCII mode) is a good one after buying a new graphics card.
It’s me, but I haven’t saved up enough yet. Even after having seen this, and understanding it, I still want it. ;-;
I put away $10 a week and do this every 8 years. I don’t even notice $10 a week missing. I don’t care if it’s over kill or wasteful at that point. Probably would have just wasted it anyway.
I also spend the whole 8 years making up random builds that I know will be obsolete by the time I actually buy it.
Yeah this is the easy way to do it. My bank even makes it super-easy to spin up separate savings accounts with just a few clicks and then create auto-transfers.
Right now I instead of a set dollar value have it set to transfer 1% of my checking balance into such an account. Usually that’s about $10-20 at a time 1-4 times a week depending on what I’m saving up for. The nice thing about doing percentages is if I’ve spent less than usual in the last couple of weeks it will transfer more, and if we made more/larger purchases it will transfer less
Alternative perspective: build a solid mid-range PC and keep it updated. Over those same 8 years, you’ll spend like half and have a PC that keeps up w/ the latest games, just upgrade when it’s getting poor performance.
I’ve been slowly upgrading my PC since 2010 and have spent about $3k, though I didn’t do any gaming the first 5 years. I just upgrade one or two components as they become bottlenecks, and today I’m running a 6650XT w/ Ryzen 5600 CPU, and performance is pretty good for everything I care about (roughly PS5/XBox Series X perf I think).
You’re not wrong, I just can’t be bothered. I like to just treat it like a console where it’s just a one and done new one every X years.
