I always understood part of the appeal of building your own being that you could go PC of Theseus on it and upgrade parts gradually over time, rather than having to drop $1,500-$2,000 all in one go.
The appeal of it to me was that I could optimize for price and performance, and not pay a stupid extra fee/markup that basically amounted to them putting it together for me. I don’t know if the places you order parts from now have slowly sneaked a few dollars here, a few dollars there until the prices are equivalent to the old fees, but at the time it was incredibly cheaper.
Yeah admittedly building still largely has the best price to performance ratio. This is why I have never been able to bring myself to buy a gaming laptop even though I really want one. Too many compromises for too high of a price.
Depending on what the next Steam Machine is like, and how it’s priced, I still might build my own again. I would only get the former if they price it really competitively. But if it’s too much, I might hold off on buying a new system all together until something breaks with all these price raises.
I always understood part of the appeal of building your own being that you could go PC of Theseus on it and upgrade parts gradually over time, rather than having to drop $1,500-$2,000 all in one go.
This is what I do. The only parts left from the original build are a pair of 2TB HDDs installed back when it was a Win7 system.
For me, it’s the way better warranty. Granted, most of these companies aren’t what they used to be.
The appeal of it to me was that I could optimize for price and performance, and not pay a stupid extra fee/markup that basically amounted to them putting it together for me. I don’t know if the places you order parts from now have slowly sneaked a few dollars here, a few dollars there until the prices are equivalent to the old fees, but at the time it was incredibly cheaper.
Yeah admittedly building still largely has the best price to performance ratio. This is why I have never been able to bring myself to buy a gaming laptop even though I really want one. Too many compromises for too high of a price.
Depending on what the next Steam Machine is like, and how it’s priced, I still might build my own again. I would only get the former if they price it really competitively. But if it’s too much, I might hold off on buying a new system all together until something breaks with all these price raises.
But aren’t there a lot of compatibility issues when trying to upgrade?
I wonder of the motivations were different, that could be mitigated with diffent engineering priorities.