$350/card price premium for maybe 60 days at the most of bragging rights is a hefty price to pay. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not one of them. The worst part is that the proud owners went to the trouble of creating some really nice threads here at TPC and order backplates and waterblocks and all kinds of foofy stuff for their shiny new toys. Now all the naysayers that enjoy the "I told you so" have a nice big target to aim at.
I ordered all the parts you mentioned, and created a thread about it like you said, do I regret it? Not for a second, this is by far the most fun I've had building a rig, I actually got good advice from nice ppl in this forum like the54thvoid, 20mmraim, Hammeron, Solaris17, cadaveca, erocker, TSki and many others while building this and many other rigs, and in this particular build I was finally able to conquer my fear of creating a custom water loop for my cards.
I've been visiting this forum off and on for almost nine years, and started by asking stupid questions like how to unlock my Radeon 9200SE from 64bits to 128bits (hint: you can't
) or how to unlock my 9800Pro to an XT (it worked!) and have built multiple rigs with the help of many users and mods who have come and gone through the years.
Do I regret any single one of my hardware purchases? No, on the contrary, it's been lots of fun and I consider it my favorite hobby, I don't even work in the IT field, and yet with the help of many TPU forumites I've been able to build rigs ten years ago I would've only dreamt of, I can only hope I have given back to this community at least a small fraction of the help and advice I have received from it.
Should I feel sad that other ppl will afford the level of performance I have enjoyed for the past few months for a much lower price? Why? The more power to my fellow gamers and enthusiasts alike
When we start this hobby we know we are never truly finished building our rigs, we are in a constant state of change, and better, cheaper hardware is just around the corner. I've had lots of fun sharing this passion with many of you guys
Do you think you should make fun of me for that, sure, why not? After all this years I've learned that every time I sit in front of my monitor, I make sure I put my flame resistant suit on
