What do you mostly use your desktop PC for? (Pick your top 3!)

[Easy Rhino]

Are you wasting your desktop PC's potential?

 

[FoulOnWhite]

probably i am

 

[Tomgang]

I will not say i am wasting my pc or pc's (i have two in the same case). I use it for different things.

I chose overclocking and performance test, gaming and photo/video editing.

But also use it for check mails, browsing, listen to music and movies with Logitech Z906 hooked to my pc's sound is great for these things as well. And of cause YouTube.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Remember, choose your top 3!

 

[ty_ger]

Where's work/production? I mean, I guess you consider it photo or video editing, but that's a weird thing to lump with design, document production, or accounting.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Where's work/production? I mean, I guess you consider it photo or video editing, but that's a weird thing to lump with design, document production, or accounting.

Sorry, impossible to capture every use...

 

[wheresmycar]

I've selected 3 for the "mostly used" but all of the listed options apply to me except programming/developing and mining.

 

[Solaris17]

we out here.

I'll hold the fort.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Are you wasting your desktop PC's potential?

Yes except when I am working and have multiple VM's running.

 

[gurusmi]

I'm a freelancer. In detail i'm a project manager for Software rollouts. A company needs 10.000 computers migrated at one weekend? They want to have their AV-System for 50.0000 PC changed or new installed? They want/need to have new Software at their 250 Servers? A medical company wants to be validaded against actual laws (FDA/EMA)? About all that they ring me up and hire me. Mostly i'm working in restricted branches like Banking, Biotech, MedTech, Pharma. At all of them one has to have special personal attitudes. Originally i do on my PC what has to be done. My primary machine is running abouut 16h a day on 7 days a week. I don't have holidays or weekends or any other free day. I sold my soul to my job and i like it. Since around 6 yrs i work in my home office. All the time before strictly onSite.

So my PC is also used massivly for Excel, Project, Word. I.e. i use for my offerings and calculations spreadsheets that have more than 1.500 lines of self developed VBA code (Macros). I'm resea5rching about changes in the laws, about the products i have to roll out etc. Lots of communication via Mail. Writing invoices, preparing things for the accountant and Tax lawyer, Tracking in a CRM,... Just a normal project office.

If i need a video of a 3D Print i generate one with OBS and my WebCam. After i shortened (timelapse??) that Video, Usually i take the video 1:1 and have to shorten from i.e. 24h downto 3 Mins. I do desingning and slicing 3D Models if needed. I scan other objects in 3D,...

 

[Caring1]

I was wasting my previous PCs potential so I downsized to one with low power and iGPU that mounts on the back of one of my monitors.
So now I have two perfectly functional computers sitting in a spare room and I'm thinking of building two more

 

[Bagerklestyne]

Does action sequencing for streamer bot count as poor mans coding ?
I mean it has variable, math, branching and stuff (rolls eyes pretending to be serious)

I the past I've seriously coded (pre pc days), hand coded html in the early web days, cryptomined, day traded (crypto and stock) and always consumed media (streaming services, local media)

I also stream so I don't know where you'd put that (social media or gaming)

 

[Fokker]

The desktop only gets used for higher end processing activities, so gaming, video, and occasionally playing with OC and benchmarks. I use laptops and tablets for daily stuff like email, browsing, video consumption, and reading ebooks.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I would say my 5950X based system was sorta going to waste although I do a lot of compression/decompression but otherwise pretty boring stuff. Rendering is infinitely faster on the gpu and I don't really do video encoding anymore which is also faster on the gpu.

Still I almost grabbed a 16 core again for my pc update just becuase lol.

 

[InVasMani]

Am I wasting it's potential absolutely. I'm sure I was wasting the potential of my last handful of PC's as well. There is always room for self improvement somewhere to found and there certainly isn't enough time in any given day to do everything you want or intend to do or even learn how to do some of those things. I think that's one thing I'm defiantly enjoying about the emerging AI era it really opens up a lot possibilities for a lot of people. Everyone wastes their hardware resources potential unless it's being 100% of the time for something productive and that never happens.

 

[AusWolf]

Are you wasting your desktop PC's potential?

Yes. 95% of my PC's time is web browsing and Youtube. Only the rest are gaming. I also have lots of spare parts on a shelf, waiting for their chance to be built-in for some testing at some point.

 

[..0]

Are you wasting your desktop PC's potential?

i am, not. i regularly use all my 64gb of ram, or all my 24gb of vram.
i hit cpu bottlenecks or gpu bottlenecks.
amazing what a powerful pc can do.
a bit of Blender and a few games and i use all my pc.
even watching movies need more power, i upscale my movies or tv shows to 120 or 240fps, need all the gpu power i can give it for that.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Gaming, anime and video editing, in this order. Not that I do much of #3, it's clipping of #1.

Yep, wasting my rig something unreal. Just need a better GPU to keep up with #1 in the coming years.

 

[Sithaer]

Gaming/Web browsing,Youtube is what I mainly do on my PC and also watch movies/series on it.
Dunno if I'm wasting it or not since this is what I've always done on my PC. 'I do push the limits of my GPU with demanding games sometimes so at least thats not wasted'

 

[Bill_Bright]

@Easy Rhino - Gee whiz, Dude!

You are one the more prolific posters and valued contributor on this site, obviously spending a significant amount of time everyday (on average) here at TPU - perhaps volunteering more of your free time at other support forums too.

Then you post a survey in this tech support forum, asking what users use their PC for and don't even list "Participating in Forums" as one of the options!?!? !

Please do NOT suggest "working the forums", that is, volunteering one's free time to help posters with their technical issues/questions falls under social media. It does not. That would be like saying flipping burgers at McDonald's is a social event because you deal with customers.

@Solaris17 (3.80/day), @Caring1 (3.78/day), @AusWolf (5.18/day!!!), @Dr. Dro (3.95/day) and others clearly spend a significant part of their computing time performing forum related tasks.

Even myself, I probably spend an average of 3 hours of my computing time reading posts and researching answers then writing replies everyday and my average here is just 1.83.

My computer runs my life. My calendar keeps track of my appointments, reminds me of upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. It tells me when to pay my bills, how much I owe, then my computer lets me pay them. It keeps track of all my contacts (friends, family, businesses, health, insurance, and more). I have over 600 music CDs, 600+ LPs, 300+ DVD and Blu-ray movies, a decent coin collection and more I keep in spreadsheets for inventories (for me and for insurance purposes).

Obviously, you could not include every category in your survey, but clearly there are some better options much more deserving of being listed.

Millions of people still work from home. So "Work" is an obvious option. And millions of people use their computers for "School" too. You didn't even put "Other" in your survey.

I use my computer 5 - 6 hours every day for, in order:

1. "Working" the forums,​

2. "Essential" personal and head of household duties,​

3. "Discretionary" personal stuff such as personal emails, listening to music (while doing 1 and 2), and keeping Amazon in business.​

Are you wasting your desktop PC's potential?

Of course! We all are! Frankly, at least for those who might be reading this here at TPU, most of our computers are more than we really need. Technically, unless our computer resources are maxed at 100% utilization, 24/7/365 folding/searching for a cure for cancer, ET, or some other "productive" activity, its maximum potential is going to waste. Even most gaming activities leave many computing resources idle much of the time.

We humans are odd creatures. Who needs a 80 inch TV in their living room? A big V8 engine in their family car?

 

[dirtyferret]

Sorry, impossible to capture every use...

I would say office app productions like word, spreadsheets, power point would be a big for a lot of people

 

[Solaris17]

@Solaris17 (3.80/day), @Caring1 (3.78/day), @AusWolf (5.18/day!!!), @Dr. Dro (3.95/day) and others clearly spend a significant part of their computing time performing forum related tasks.

That’s a terrible metric that used to be in the 20s I don’t spend any time posting on the forums anymore.

 

[Bill_Bright]

That’s a terrible metric that used to be in the 20s I don’t spend any time posting on the forums anymore.

For sure, it is not the best metric. But it does clearly (IMO) show that you do spend a significant amount of time here. Maybe not actually "posting" but certainly lurking and reading and, perhaps as a mod, doing mod tasks like babysitting us posters.

 

[Carillon]

I had to waste 2 picks on web browsing and watching movies, those two should be consolidated into one option as porn

 

[Easy Rhino]

This isn't meant to be anything serious. More of a conversation starter and perhaps eye opener. Maybe next year I will do a similar poll and add a few suggestions.