One of the things I hate most about modern society, and there are lots of things, is how cheap everything is. I don’t mean inexpensive obviously as everything costs more but even as prices go up, quality is going down. I mentioned this previously about the lawn mower debacle and it is true about so many things.
Clearly I spend a lot of time at my computer so it is something I invest in. When we first moved to Indiana over ten years ago, I treated myself to a new computer for gaming after mostly using boomer-tier Dell desktops. I decided to get an Alienware gaming rig which at the time was a little over a grand, a princely sum compared to the $500 desktops I was using. Long story short, it was a piece of shit. I had to call tech support to even get it started right out of the box, pulling it apart and reseating the mother board among other nonsense and I ended up spending a lot of time subsequently dealing with tech support. After that I just bought a few cheap computers that would puke after a couple of years, I would pass them on to the kids and get a new junk Dell.
Until about five years ago on Prime Day in July of 2017 when I splurged and bought a Cyberpower PC desktop. I dropped about $1500 on the thing which made me cringe at the time but I was sick of having to keep moving stuff from one computer to another after they fell apart. It had a 2 terrabyte secondary hard drive, 16 gb of RAM, Intel i7, NVidia 8 gb video card. It was sweet.
Fast forward five years. The thing still ran like a champ, always booted up, could run whatever I wanted, it didn’t matter how many tabs I had open or other programs it ate it up. It was getting older but still working great and amortized out over five years it was only $300/year which is about what I was paying for garbage desktops. My youngest son (who is 16! holy crap) needed a new computer so me being me my proposal was that rather than him spending his own money I would give him current computer and get a new one for me from Cyberpower PC. Win all around.
Instead of buying a pre-built machine, I custom ordered this one.
Significantly souped up. 32 gigs of RAM. 3 terabytes of memory on two hard drives. 12 gb GeForce video card. Liquid cooled. It even comes with a little remote control so I can change the colors on the case, and that was super important.
As much time as I spend on my computer, I like having a nice one and I don’t mind spending the money if the quality matches the price. I do mind spending a bunch of money and still getting junk. I fully expect to get many years of service from this bad boy. No one is compensating me to say that thus far Cyberpower PC makes rigs that are worth the money.
Now I can spread my right-wing extremism online with even more speed and style!
That’s a slick build!
I too fell victim to the Alienware hype a couple years ago. It’s still soldiering on, as I can’t afford to replace it. But never have I had so many issues with a PC as I’ve had with that one.
I’ll have to keep Cyberpower in mind for my next one.
It's always nice having a new box, isn't it?
Speaking of sons, I've been fortunate in that my son has been a bit-head since his early teens, and makes his living in software engineering now. For the last twenty years or so, any time I felt that the desktop needed freshening-up, I'd just ask him to build me a new one and reimburse him for the parts. He knows what sort of user I am, so he doesn't build me a gaming screamer of the sort he uses (you, too, sounds like); he builds me a budget box that's maybe one generation behind the leading edge, so it's cheap and still feels superfast to me. He apparently picks the components well and assembles them correctly, as I have yet to have a hardware problem of any sort. In some ways, that boy is a joy and comfort to his old man in my declining years.
I should have known better once Alienware was bought by Dell that they would turn to shit
Buying the components and installing them yourself means getting a better machine almost all of the time, same is probably true with firearms for that matter.
I also got shafted with Dell's trash, but the worst part was their third-world tech 'support'.
After being stung twice I vowed to use smoke signals before forking over another dime to those turds.
I inherited my youngest son's custom build, which is still going strong after 8 years – with a few upgrades of course.
Will probably build one myself, with his help, along with some real nice rifle platforms. He's a former gunner's mate and very happy to finally be out of the shit show!!
Nice looking.
I used to build all ours until my son got old enough, now he does it. My last one lasted since Oblivion came out the first time. It just died last year. Both sons have great gaming pc.
What games do you play?
The rig I built about 8 years ago is still going strong. I'm not much of a AAA gamer anymore so most of the less demanding indie stuff I play now still runs fine. Key point was ditching windows and switching to linux, as windows just keeps getting worse over the years and the only decent versions aren't supported anymore.
I learned my mistake the first time I tried to buy a prebuilt desktop then put in some upgrades. They cheaped out so much on the PSU that most gpu cards just wouldn't work. I eventually did find something that worked, but after that I always built my desktops from parts with some extra margin in the PSU for upgraded video cards. I want to build a new box but right now video cards are so expensive so I'm just gonna keep the old rig running.
Nice rig….my suggestion is to install ubuntu linux on it, then create windows 10 vm using boxes…..just allocate ram and drive space for it, assuming you need a windows machine for work, like i do as an IT guy, i need to have win10 to run certain apps and such….
Then slam an other drive into it for image based backups, and send data files off to b2 backblaze or another quality offsite vendor….
I just built (with the help if my sons computer friend in all honesty) a Digital Audio Work Station (DAW) .
Damn thing is Insanely Fast and Powerful.
Asus Tuf Gaming Z-690 Motherboard
I9 12900k processor
1TB NVMe M2ssd
4 TB of SSD storage in 3 seperate Drives
64GB RAM – f4-4000c18d-32gvk
Thunderbolt 4
Silent Cooling (Big Ass Ninja radiator with silent fans)
Windows 10 64 pro (Needed for DAW software)
I’ll add a Good 3-6 gig video card later (not really a huge deal for audio)
Building it was Easy (I was a Audio Engineer for 20 plus years anyway(Live and Studio), so that part was easy)
It was dealing with Bios Tweaking and the Software, Driver(S) (proper updating of drivers) Installing etc that I needed his buddy for.
I have plans for this with whats coming.
To say It’s Amazing what one can do with a DAW from the Audio Perspective, is a HUGE understatement.
Any who, enjoy!
With my Alienware trash I spent most of the time talking to guys in Central America. They tried but damn they were dumb
Lots of strategy stuff like Civilization, some shooters (I still play HALO all the time) and some RPGs like Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption. I am downloading Elden Ring because everyone raves about it
A few cheap parts eff up the whole thing
Geezus that is a tank
I would love to run linux but I have no idea how to do it
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