Welcome back to the subseries of posts called “It’s Good but It Sucks!”
The idea here is simple. When you look at a product, it’s good and usable. But when you start to look at external factors, your enthusiasm for it diminishes greatly, leading you to not get it. And worse, it actually makes it you look like a fool for doing so. Meaning… It sucks!
This second chapter will be about new PC components in general. Let’s get to it.
Preface
I build computers, I love building computers, in fact. I’ve mentioned it before. And because I like building them, I try to keep up with all the technology to make sure I get the best bang for my buck. But in some cases, they could turn into real traps.
RGB Lights
RGB sucks. We could just move over to something else but I really can’t express how much it sucks. It has unnecessary complexity into building a system, and it costs more than normal parts. All for what, a few extra lights inside your system? Is the computer that important that you have to look at it all the time? It sucks.
The problem with it however is that it’s added to everything to make it seem more worthwhile, as they charge more for it. I’ve dealt with RGB before, never again.
GPUs and Their Pricing
You think that the pricing of GPUs haven’t sucked until now? They have, they always have sucked. A GTX Titan launched at 1000 USD in 2013. The GTX Titan Z (with two GPUs inside one entire assembly) was 3000 USD! People say “where are the cheap GPUs?” but they were never ever cheap. Sure, they are a little silly now but they were never good.
Speaking of GPUs, most of them suck. Unless you got a light-weight champion like a R9 270X or something, most of them were pretty bad, bargain bin territory. Sure, it was cheap, but it sucked. Speaking of cheap…
Cheap Products
Cheap products in PC hardware are at best a waste of money and at worst a fire hazard. PSUs in particular are a product that I always try to make people buy an expensive one because a cheap one will be most certainly a fire hazard.
But it’s not PSUs. Motherboard, RAM, SSDs, HDDs, GPUs. The low end can be absolutely lousy with the quality. You can spend like 100 USD on a CPU, sure, but a 200USD CPU will run circles around it, and it’s not really that expensive. Sure, it’s 100% more money you’ll spend but it’s not just 100% more performance, it’s probably something close to 400%.
A side note: I don’t mean ‘good products for cheap’, like discounted things. I mean ‘cheaply made products sold for cheap’, really low end stuff that shouldn’t exist.
Enthusiast-Level Hardware
On the other side of the fence, Enthusiast-level hardware is pointless and usually a large waste of time. Remember the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090? These two were very comparable, with the 3090 being about 20% faster. Impressive. Until you look at their pricing. Even if you count the 1000USD average retail price of the 3080, it still makes the 1600USD 3090 look bad. And it gets worse if you use the actual MSRP for the 3080, 700USD. This means that the 3090 is 20% faster but costs over 100% more. Some saving you’re doing there…
And it’s like across the board. The margins go much smaller in terms of price to performance the higher the stack you go. Save yourself the trouble and get something in the middle to save up money and your sanity.
SFF / Mini PCs
Speaking of saving up money and sanity, how about SFF (Small Form Factor) or Mini PCs? I love how they look, but I hate how pricey they are. It’s quite astonishing.
The key takeaway is that they are small and have more problems than solutions. Sure, they don’t take a lot of space, but that also works against them because less space means less airflow. Smaller parts cost most more because they need to be developed with less space to work with, adding complexity.
Shame they are so expensive, I’d love to own one for the novelty.
Closing Words
I’ll have to find another thing to complain about, probably streaming services or something. We’ll see.