- Joined
- Sep 17, 2014
- Messages
- 20,780 (5.97/day)
- Location
- The Washing Machine
Processor | i7 8700k 4.6Ghz @ 1.24V |
---|---|
Motherboard | AsRock Fatal1ty K6 Z370 |
Cooling | beQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 |
Memory | 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200/C16 |
Video Card(s) | ASRock RX7900XT Phantom Gaming |
Storage | Samsung 850 EVO 1TB + Samsung 830 256GB + Crucial BX100 250GB + Toshiba 1TB HDD |
Display(s) | Gigabyte G34QWC (3440x1440) |
Case | Fractal Design Define R5 |
Audio Device(s) | Harman Kardon AVR137 + 2.1 |
Power Supply | EVGA Supernova G2 750W |
Mouse | XTRFY M42 |
Keyboard | Lenovo Thinkpad Trackpoint II |
Software | W10 x64 |
Is quality hurt? No.
When it comes to the overall experience of personal computing definitely no. Back in the day you had tons of incompatibility, installation and stability problems that you needed to know about before even trying to build a rig. At the same time, that required and therefore also meant that the user had more control over everything. But control is also responsibility. Not everyone fancies that. In that sense, PC has definitely improved. Yes, we lose control over certain things (mostly advanced user territory) but the masses gain lots of quality of life features and ease of installation.
When it comes to the hardware, the same thing applies: these days you really have to be a bit stupid, clumsy, or unable to read to break your hardware. When things don't work its generally user error and only rarely an oversight in the product itself. What does happen with hardware is that while quality rises, the headroom shrinks. Back in the day components had more headroom just because there was a higher variation in quality. This applies in a big way to overclocking. Overclocking these days is in most cases a complete waste of time. Only CPUs are somewhat nice to do, but even that headroom is shrinking rapidly: look at Ryzen's OC headroom and how performance can even drop when XFR is enabled. Or look at the recent Intel gens that clock nearly to the max right out of the box. On GPU: Nvidia is doing the OC for you a little bit more, every gen. Now with scanner to dial it in automatically...
Another factor in hardware is the market is huge and demand is high, and this means there is a portion of it filled with cheap knock-offs and fake junk. That is common in every market, really, but also easy to avoid. This also applies to hardware that is overloaded with branding and marketing. You can safely say most of that falls in the same category of things to avoid, because expenses were made on nothing substantial and it means cutting cost on things that dó matter - or an inflated price.
When it comes to the overall experience of personal computing definitely no. Back in the day you had tons of incompatibility, installation and stability problems that you needed to know about before even trying to build a rig. At the same time, that required and therefore also meant that the user had more control over everything. But control is also responsibility. Not everyone fancies that. In that sense, PC has definitely improved. Yes, we lose control over certain things (mostly advanced user territory) but the masses gain lots of quality of life features and ease of installation.
When it comes to the hardware, the same thing applies: these days you really have to be a bit stupid, clumsy, or unable to read to break your hardware. When things don't work its generally user error and only rarely an oversight in the product itself. What does happen with hardware is that while quality rises, the headroom shrinks. Back in the day components had more headroom just because there was a higher variation in quality. This applies in a big way to overclocking. Overclocking these days is in most cases a complete waste of time. Only CPUs are somewhat nice to do, but even that headroom is shrinking rapidly: look at Ryzen's OC headroom and how performance can even drop when XFR is enabled. Or look at the recent Intel gens that clock nearly to the max right out of the box. On GPU: Nvidia is doing the OC for you a little bit more, every gen. Now with scanner to dial it in automatically...
Another factor in hardware is the market is huge and demand is high, and this means there is a portion of it filled with cheap knock-offs and fake junk. That is common in every market, really, but also easy to avoid. This also applies to hardware that is overloaded with branding and marketing. You can safely say most of that falls in the same category of things to avoid, because expenses were made on nothing substantial and it means cutting cost on things that dó matter - or an inflated price.