Any other long-time computer geeks here who became bored with computer tech?

[mikeymikec]

ATX, mATX form factors are still around which is an absurd.

What's wrong with ATX/mATX?

 

[Iron Woode]

I'm in complete agreement that PC hardware innovation has slowed greatly, but I've been tempted a few times during the pandemic to get a Ryzen 3000/5000 series to replace my Haswell setup. What I'd give to have many more cores than my i5-4690k to blast away at Handbrake ~ £475 for the platform upgrade seems a bit steep though.

I've done a few upgrades lately to my own PC (TN to IPS, DVDRW to BR writer, 1TB HDD to 4TB HDD) which were mostly necessary, and I keep putting off a PSU upgrade (I really would like something much quieter but I don't 'need' it).

I did that upgrade myself. Same cpu.

The system in my sig cost around $600 CDN not including a used video card. This will probably be the last system I make for myself. It does what I want.

 

[IronWing]

I think we're in the most interesting period for CPU/motherboard/GPU advancements in well over a decade. I replaced my system toward the end of 2019 and I wish I had been able to hold out a bit longer (my old machine died) to jump on the newer stuff. Hardware actually released is finally catching up to the new standards promised two to three years ago.

 

[shortylickens]

In addition to us getting older I'd like to point out home computer technology is not advancing as fast as it used to.
From 1980 to 1990 there were fantastic advances.
1990 to 2000 saw huge advances.
2000 to 2010 slowed down quite a bit.
And to be perfectly honest the changes between 2010 and 2020 have not exactly been mind-blowing.

SO yeah, I dont get as excited as I used to.

 

[Commodus]

I'd say it's a combination of technological change with a (likely) shift in priorities as we get older.

Diminishing returns are a reality. It used to be that a CPU or GPU released one year would be significantly faster than the one before. Intel's recent stagnation hasn't helped, but even then... modest year-on-year upgrades have been a reality for a while. And in GPUs, even a major generational update like the RTX 30 series might only make sense to some people. There's not much point to replacing an RTX 2060 if it still runs all your games well, and it probably does.

There's also the simple matter of, well, life getting in the way. When you're an unattached 20-something, it's easy to pour your time and money into technology (even if you don't have much money). But then you get a partner, a career, maybe kids... and having the fastest PC suddenly matters a lot less than spending a weekend with your family.

I'd say that's part of why I use a Mac for computing and a console for gaming. I don't want to spend my time obsessing over component upgrades or worrying about driver revisions; I want to get things done and unwind after work. It's not the cheapest solution, but it's immensely valuable if it frees me to spend more time with my fiancée.

 

[repoman0]

I go through hobby phases ... rotate between spending my money on computers and gaming, cars and/or parts and go fast parts for my existing cars, musical instruments, camera gear. Then I forget about buying stuff for a while and enjoy what I’ve put together during the last phase. Now enjoying my 5900X + 3080 overhaul that was generally enjoyable and exciting to put together and mess around with. The GPU blows away my old one (and I actually notice the upgrade), CPU not as noticeable but I know it’s fast enough to last 5-10 years with good performance.

Also agree with @Fritzo that gaming is better than ever today. They’re still making great platformers like those I played as a kid in the 90s, and other genres have advanced significantly. I just finished Ghost of Tsushima and, as a landscape photographer, was constantly wowed at the beautiful environment and lighting they crafted ... and on top of that the gameplay was far more fun and varied than slasher games of old. And racing sims with a wheel are fantastic and highly realistic today. Playing them seriously has ramped up my skill level on a real circuit in my own car ... considering track days are hundreds of dollars for maybe two hours of driving, plus consumables, practicing on an expensive PC with expensive peripherals is somehow a really great value!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I feel it's less exciting now than it was when I was newer to computers. I think it's a combination of things like computers being more "mysterious" and fun to learn about and now being more complacent but also the upgrades are less exciting I guess. My first build was an AMD 2000+ and I feel that general era of computers was the most exciting to me. I also had more spare money back then so I could splurge more often, I used to build a machine like every couple years at least. Now I find less need to upgrade and don't have as much extra money so unless I absolutely need to upgrade to function I tend to put it off. I'm more into server stuff now too, like not necessarily server hardware since that's hard to get here, but using computer hardware for server stuff. Like I would love to build a nice Threadripper based VM cluster and I get excited at the idea but reality is I don't have the money.

One big issue now days too is the simple availability of parts. Anything new that comes out chances are good you're not able to get it even if you wanted to. I kind of have a bad feeling about the future of custom builds as it seems over the years the production and supply chains have greatly stagnated. It's a matter of time until it's no longer profitable for companies to make hardware and it will get harder and harder to get. Everything is going cloud now days.

 

[BurnItDwn]

in 1998 ....
you could spend like $800 on a high end pentium 2 400mhz
or you could spend like $200 on a Celeron 300a and overclock it to 450 or 504mhz..

In 2021, you can spend $500 on a $300 cpu due to scalpers buying up the supply and reselling them for huge margins.

 

[Ajay]

I'm still having fun -though not quite as much as in the 90's and early 2000's. Things are finally ramping up again hardware wise; though I'm annoyed at the lack of available video card released over the past six months

 

[VashHT]

Honestly I feel like it's too easy nowadays which makes it less interesting for me. I haven't had a problem in a long time, basically just put everything together and it works. When the hardest thing about building a PC is actually finding the parts to buy it's not all that exciting.

 

[digiram]

Yep.. See sig. I'm still using that same desktop pretty much.

 

[TXHokie]

I wouldn't say bored but more not having the patience to troubleshoot. I recently got interested again when trying to upgrade my system to run VR properly. Getting VR to run seamlessly with a PC seems to have a way to go apparently. I'm just not into spending hours tweaking and researching and uninstall/reinstall to get my sound back when it was working yesterday.

 

[UsandThem]

Honestly I feel like it's too easy nowadays which makes it less interesting for me. I haven't had a problem in a long time, basically just put everything together and it works. When the hardest thing about building a PC is actually finding the parts to buy it's not all that exciting.

That is dead on for me as well.

The whole mining related shortages (which first really began in 2017) might have been the beginning of me getting out of regular upgrades. The pricing and availability during the mining booms are insane. $2000 for a consumer GPU? Power supplies selling for 2X the regular MSRP? No thanks.

And I really hate how all the retailers handle the scalpers/scripts. Most places don't allow users to place orders when the item is on backorder. This would be the most fair way to ensure regular users to get a component, as the stock would go to users in the order it was placed. The retailers then could run their little algorithms to weed out people buying multiple cards with the same credit cards, addresses, etc.

Now the only way to get pretty much any video card (even low-end cards like the GTX 1050) is to be on the website the second the stock goes live, and hope you're faster than the scripts before it sells out in 5 seconds.

 

[PingSpike]

I feel like I lost interest 10 years ago. Upgrades seemed kind of pointless then already. I went all in on SSDs around then, which were a huge change but otherwise I seemed to be upgrading out of habit, not out of need or excitement. Overclocking has gone from amazing to pay to play, to a complete waste of time during the last decade.

Aside from the slowdown, there has been a steady consolidation of tech companies in the PC space. There used to be weird 3rd party motherboard chipsets, multiple competing memory standards, multiple 3D graphics companies, etc. They all slowly got bought up or gone out of business. Now there is basically: Do I buy Intel or AMD? AMD or Nvidia? Hell, it was even worse a few years since the first questions answer was pretty much always Intel. Boring. Things were a real mess back then but it sure was exciting.

My interest was revitalized in a niche: Virtualization with hardware passthrough. I also enjoy a lot of retro hardware channels since a lot of times I'd rather revisit an exciting past since there's not much interesting to do in the bland future.

A lot of stuff is designed to be a lot easier to work with now, but little of it is fun to tinker with.

The semiconductor shortage is a dark period for this hobby, I actually wonder if its going to drive a lot of people into it out of it entirely.

One thing that is better is games though. There is so much going on here. The AAA games are often bland design by committee affairs its true, but the Indy scene is huge and doing crazy things all the time.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I guess I'll be y'alls huckleberry. Not only am I not bored with it, I think it is more interesting than ever. Yeah, it isn't: dip switches, jumpers, super socket 7, IRQ assignment, etc. interesting. It is: Raspberry Pi, Asrock Desk mini, gaming on linux maturing, emulation maturing and expanding to newer platforms, tons of older high end hardware to play around with, interesting.

I spent far too long on xbox and playstation as my son grew up. Missed a lot of good years when Phenom and the Core series started. Missed a bunch of legendary GPUs that many of you still talk of with techie reverence. Missed all the Xeon platform goodness. I enjoy building XP and win 7 systems with period correct hardware. I like experimenting with what you can get out of a desk mini. Or how capable a X79 system still is.

I also enjoy revisiting all the great games I played on console, but completely maxed out in their full glory, at much higher res.

I was very busy there for about 4 years, but C-19 put me back in retirement. This hobby is one of the things keeping me sane and mentally active. Sure as shit beats arguing politics online all day.

 

[VashHT]

That is dead on for me as well.

The whole mining related shortages (which first really began in 2017) might have been the beginning of me getting out of regular upgrades. The pricing and availability during the mining booms are insane. $2000 for a consumer GPU? Power supplies selling for 2X the regular MSRP? No thanks.

And I really hate how all the retailers handle the scalpers/scripts. Most places don't allow users to place orders when the item is on backorder. This would be the most fair way to ensure regular users to get a component, as the stock would go to users in the order it was placed. The retailers then could run their little algorithms to weed out people buying multiple cards with the same credit cards, addresses, etc.

Now the only way to get pretty much any video card (even low-end cards like the GTX 1050) is to be on the website the second the stock goes live, and hope you're faster than the scripts before it sells out in 5 seconds.

Yeah the ridiculous scalping just makes it so tedious. Honestly I've just been upgrading way less (was almost 5 years before i upgraded to my current PC) and buying parts towards the middle or end of lifecycles instead of trying to buy new series when they launch. I got a 2070 super like 6-7 months before the 3000 series launched, everyone was waiting for the new series so I got a superclocked EVGA card for less than MSRP.

 

[Viper GTS]

Oh I also forgot to add - Apple Silicon is extremely exciting. We are just seeing the beginning of an era with essentially hardware acceleration of workflows that previously required brute force x86 CPUs. I love my Threadripper machine but my Apple Silicon MacBook Pro is a performance leap the likes of which I have really never experienced save maybe my first dual socket machine (before multi-core CPUs were a thing). Yes, you can make the argument that someday there will be a new workflow/video format/something that this CPU doesn't accelerate and then performance will suck but who cares? I'm buying a laptop every year or so anyway. Oh and for my use case I charge it once every ten days. Absolutely ridiculous performance and instant responsiveness and the battery life blows my intentionally maxed out XPS (year old XPS 15, big battery, base CPU, no dGPU) laptop away. It's just phenomenal.

There is LOTS of exciting stuff going on in technology.

Viper GTS

 

[biostud]

There were a couple of years where it was all nvidia and Intel and the progressions were slowing down. With AMD returning to the high end it seems that the competition is finally driven some interesting new products. The COVID-19 and mining situation has soured the market, but profit is good for the tech companies and some of that will be used on making next generation of hardware even more exciting.
I am just happy that I am not in the market for a total upgrade here in 2021. (Although I would have like an 3080)

With the demise of SLI/CF mATX boards should be be more favorable than ATX, as it will suit most users needs at a lower cost. ITX is still a niche, and I for one would like to keep my sound card for my next upgrade.

If I didn’t have three girls below the age of 4, then I could see myself working with a Rasberry Pi or similar, but time.... (also it is really fun spending time with my kids)

I think Apple is really making some interesting hardware, and I would like to know OSX a lot better, since I work at a school were many kids have a Mac, and I would like to help them better, so maybe next time my laptop is going to be upgraded I will choose a Mac. Personally I think that Apple is the the communist China of tech industry and would never buy into their franchise, but they do make some nice products.

So why do I write all this? Because bottom line is that computer technology is my hobby, and that just can’t be helped.

 

[mindless1]

Yeah, the magic of picking and combining components then getting a bios post is gone. Last thing that briefly excited me was getting my first 4K monitor a few years ago, then first SSD before that.

Otherwise it's just maintenance. I have more cases than I know what to do with, relube fans, rebuild PSU, haven't upgraded CPU or memory in years. Could use a video card but not at these prices... don't game that much anymore, always something else that needs done instead of having long blocks of time to spend on that.

 

[BoomerD]

Boring, yes. Kinda nice in a way, easy on the checkbook. Btw what is a checkbook anyway?

ROFL... We have a couple of bills that stubbornly refuse any kind of on-line payment or auto-pay options...and we are forced to write a check.

I agree though about "easy on the checkbook." I remember in the late 90's when a decent Pentium III system (Dell, Micron, Gateway) would set you back $3500 easy. Even building one yourself would be $2500 or more...

 

[MtnMan]

Short answer: YES!

I entered the computer world probably before many here were born. I was hired by a major computer company when I got out of the Navy in 1969. They weren't looking for people that majored in computers, as there virtually wasn't any. The company was hiring people with electronics training. So my career was in computer rooms taking care of small to gargantuan mainframes.

Even so, the first computer in the home was in 1978 (under the guise of a birthday present for my 5-year-old daughter). It was an Atari 400, and it went through a number of 'enhancements' after that, all things I had to adapt to make work. Yea, my daughter actually got to play games on it. If you need a program to actually "do" something, you had to write it yourself, in Basic.

The first "PC" I brought home, in 1988, was through an employee purchase plan. A 386DX, 640K, CGA, 40MB drive, and 5 1/4" floppy. Dos 3.3, and all for the deal of $2,557.80 (I still have the purchase agreement). In today's dollars that would be almost $6 grand. These were fun, and it also went through some upgrades.

Built many from scratch, piecing together stuff, also setup family with PC's, including a kid in college, in the early 90's when that wasn't common.

I still 'service' family devices, replace failing hard drives, cracked laptop screens, dying keyboards, etc. As for purchases, I've gone cheap for desktops, found some good deals on referbs, i5 and i7 processors, 1TB drives, for $200 to $300. The latest laptops have been Sam's or Costco sales, or even a floor demo from Sam's.

Today, I'd rather "use it" then "mess with it", though I appreciate that when they need "messing with" arises I can. For the average person computer problems must a real PIA when they have no clue what to do. And some call me.. arrrg!

In closing.... the pay was good, the work interesting, and I retired from the company at age 55, so there is that.

 

[MrSquished]

Yep. Same here. Rarely keep up with PC tech these days. Honestly after getting to some good SSD's, a nice CPU, 32GB ram, it's all diminishing returns from here.

Since I switched to gaming on consoles a few years back, I don't have to get involved in the ridiculous GPU market either - add all that up and it's an occasional upgrade maybe every 4-5 years for a part. With Smart TV's and Roku's picking up the slack for entertainment and most of my media consumption being streaming, there really is no hardware to maintain on the media tip either.

 

[Meghan54]

Used to play with PC's....began, much like MtnMan, way back in the late '70's. First I built was early '80's....8088 cpu.

Still remember DOS 2.2 upgrade coming out to much anticipation, then 2.25. Rewritting the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make sure you didn't run out of low level memory, etc.

Fast forward to today...I've built pc's in the back of a car, being driven down the interstate. Parts just fall into place...no chips on the motherboard to put in/take out for cache config/expansion, no dip switches to get set correctly.

 

[MtnMan]

Used to play with PC's....began, much like MtnMan, way back in the late '70's. First I built was early '80's....8088 cpu.

Still remember DOS 2.2 upgrade coming out to much anticipation, then 2.25. Rewritting the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make sure you didn't run out of low level memory, etc.

Fast forward to today...I've built pc's in the back of a car, being driven down the interstate. Parts just fall into place...no chips on the motherboard to put in/take out for cache config/expansion, no dip switches to get set correctly.

The fun of setting IRQ, base memory, and DMA with jumpers or DIP switches. Adding the first SoundBlaster card.

 

[mindless1]

Even so, the first computer in the home was in 1978 (under the guise of a birthday present for my 5-year-old daughter). It was an Atari 400, and it went through a number of 'enhancements' after that, all things I had to adapt to make work. Yea, my daughter actually got to play games on it. If you need a program to actually "do" something, you had to write it yourself, in Basic.

Not for long. Had an Atari 800, and there were owner groups trading programs. Mostly games but everything really.

I had an emulator cartridge, so cart games were ripped to files loaded from floppy and traded, and studying that code, along with an Atari Basic book, was my first experience with programming.