Question Is "the writing on the wall" - the end for enthusiasts? [LTT]

[VirtualLarry]

Discussing if Apple's M1 silicon is the future of computing, and discrete CPU and GPU days are numbered.

Maybe this should go in the Apple M series silicon thread, sorry.

 

[Tech Junky]

became too small for Intel/AMD to bother with?

Considering Intel released something like 50 SKU's with ADL I don't think they care unless it costs more to produce the inventory than people are willing to pay. Bottom end SKU IIRC is running ~$60 or even less for a dual E core option for low power / IOT devices.

Back in the day building your own PC saved you a ton of money over buying a prebuilt system.

True there is some price parity between DIY and pull it out of the box.

There are some specs / options though you can't get in a white box though from a major OEM.

There needs to be a sufficient number of Gen Z coming up who want to build their own systems, or that option will become so niche it isn't worth it for the market to continue serving.

A hybrid option that comes to mind is MicroCenter where you can tell them what you want based on their in store options and they'll put it together for you.

I think there's a niche for DIY's in a business model as well where you can find custom builds on ebay / facebook / etc. that are NEW. With Fry's out of business though it's less available in each city to find the components to DI Y something but, the online resources like PCPartPicker make it easy enough to figure out for most people. Of course who knows what a Z if going to do compared to an X'er.

Lately I've seen more of this fascination to build retro boxes for DOS games around here which is a bit scary when you think about it. I see more handheld options coming out too which has a market since the 90's w/ gameboy / sega / etc.

On my recent rebuild I looked at Whitebox options as a foundation and go from there but, having some not so common requirements didn't allow for that to occur. I think the case for the general public is just buy something that lasts a couple of years and get something new when it dies is the common thought these days. OEM's are selling into it too with planned obsolescence in mind with less durable parts in place of something more sturdy.

There's always going to be that one guy though that scavenges parts from fixes to build something out of it later on.

 

[dark zero]

Actually what I can see are the following scenario path:
1. The low tier laptop parts become so strong that renders the low tier PC parts useless.
2. Low tier PC parts (Athlon, Pentium Gold, Celeron) becomes OEM exclusive
3. Atom tier parts becomes decent enough compared to Big Core tier (I am looking at you Celeron U and Mendocino), becoming good enough that makes them fully dissapears. It happens to PC tier pieces too but in a way that the Atom needs to be octa core and uses a low tier dGPU for that moment.
4. Mid tier Laptop parts are not catching up until 3 years later and the cycle repeats for them too. However since the mid tier PC parts are still needed becomes the new "low tier" parts and becomes OEM exclusive.
5. High end PC parts and enthusiast parts are still strong and has a very big niche market. Enough to save them for a while. But if the mid tier dissapears, eventually they will do, only leaving the enthusiast alive.

In few words:
- High end parts will continue to be strong for now
- Mid end parts becomes OEM exclusive in the worst, and limited in the best.
- Low end parts become OEM parts in a short term or even dissapear to leave the Atom parts there in the mid and long one.

 

[AlltheWay LeeWhy]

I think youtubers enjoy posting videos like this one that heavily monetize their algorithm.

 

[Glo.]

A lot of OEM towers are using plain DIY standards under the hood. That is the purpose of standards. To ensure things work together, and when there are already standards in place, those are what you use for cost reasons. Since it'll cost more to come up with your own. If something is lacking, it's a lot cheaper to customise something that already exists.

The boards, and soldered SOCs would be the standards around which OEMs would built their products.

The same board, everywhere: but "how you use it" is what would differentiate the OEMs, like ASUS, Gigabyte, etc.

Its like having the same board around which you can create either Tower like Trash Can Mac Pro, or design like recent Mac Mini.

In this scenario, the Motherboards would be standard mITX boards, with soldered SOCs on them with additional space for M.2 storage, RAM(unless it also woul be soldered), etc. Expansion - USB4/Thunderbolt.

Thats how I view how it would work.

And we would end up with full circle, Apple-like soldering of the hardware and limiting the amount of internal expansion options.

Intel, AMD, Nvidia, even ARM vendors. Thats how it will most likely look like for all of them.

I can only answer for myself, but the reason I got into the whole DIY/custom business was being able to get something customised to fit my needs and/or use case. OEMs are very good at providing generic Just Works™ stuff. But if you need something for a specific task, you may find their options limited in utility.

It was never about either cost or convenience. I don't think the customisation angle of being an entusiast is going anywhere anytime soon. Even if the hardware becomes ever more integrated. Remember when you needed to have a dedicated card to just communicate with a HDD? Adding a whole controller card for a CD-ROM drive? Those controllers were integrated into the chipset a very long time ago, but they used to be separate. A more recent example would be memory controllers. Those used to be on the chipset, and had -very- different performance characteristics depending on which chipset you used. (I'm looking at you VIA and SiS...)

Integration and miniaturisation is a core component in the industry. You can see it today with the various accelerators/modems/etc. being integrated into SoCs. They would have been separate chips just a few years ago.

Im not saying that DIY will go totally away.

Wherever it will be financially viable, I believe it will still exist. But the mainstream desktop, as we know now will change.

Integrated SOCs will be the entry level products. Core i3, i5, i7's, Ryzen 3, 5, 7's.

Its just that Mobile SOCs in my opinion will simply be used on wider range of products, which will effectively... save costs for AMD and Intel, since what they have to develop is Mobile parts.

I know there are a lot of holes in this picture. But computers becoming "devices" is pretty much a certain now, with the direction software is heading. So the only part of equation that we lack is hardware. And it WILL follow.

 

[NTMBK]

The boards, and soldered SOCs would be the standards around which OEMs would built their products.

The same board, everywhere: but "how you use it" is what would differentiate the OEMs, like ASUS, Gigabyte, etc.

Its like having the same board around which you can create either Tower like Trash Can Mac Pro, or design like recent Mac Mini.

In this scenario, the Motherboards would be standard mITX boards, with soldered SOCs on them with additional space for M.2 storage, RAM(unless it also woul be soldered), etc. Expansion - USB4/Thunderbolt.

Thats how I view how it would work.

And we would end up with full circle, Apple-like soldering of the hardware and limiting the amount of internal expansion options.

Intel, AMD, Nvidia, even ARM vendors. Thats how it will most likely look like for all of them.


Im not saying that DIY will go totally away.

Wherever it will be financially viable, I believe it will still exist. But the mainstream desktop, as we know now will change.

Integrated SOCs will be the entry level products. Core i3, i5, i7's, Ryzen 3, 5, 7's.

Its just that Mobile SOCs in my opinion will simply be used on wider range of products, which will effectively... save costs for AMD and Intel, since what they have to develop is Mobile parts.

I know there are a lot of holes in this picture. But computers becoming "devices" is pretty much a certain now, with the direction software is heading. So the only part of equation that we lack is hardware. And it WILL follow.

The regular non-APU Ryzen chips we use are already derived from servers, unlike the Intel chips derived from laptop chips. I think that trend will continue- strong CPUs with fast off-die IO will still be developed, just not for laptops.

 

[Glo.]

The regular non-APU Ryzen chips we use are already derived from servers, unlike the Intel chips derived from laptop chips. I think that trend will continue- strong CPUs with fast off-die IO will still be developed, just not for laptops.

IMO, DIY will move to HEDT. And yes, they will still be developed, just a bracket higher.

Current DIY will be replaced by "mainstream" PCs, that are going to be based on Mobile parts.

And yes, I don't believe that mainstream does need DIY for anything, with the direction we are heading with progress of software and hardware(accelerators).

Its just that DIY desktop is dying for Mainstream. Which we see in the sales.

 

[Doug S]

3. Atom tier parts becomes decent enough compared to Big Core tier (I am looking at you Celeron U and Mendocino), becoming good enough that makes them fully dissapears. It happens to PC tier pieces too but in a way that the Atom needs to be octa core and uses a low tier dGPU for that moment.

You do realize this is the main reason why Intel failed in the smartphone/tablet market, right? They were afraid if they created chips that were "too good" they'd get used in low end PCs, and since they had to sell them for $30 to compete with ARM SoCs that would have cut the legs out from their <$100 PC CPU market.

So they tried to foist Atom chips made not by top designers like at Apple and Qualcomm but by recent college grads. Then they further handicapped it by making it on a process that was one or two nodes out of date. To make up for how terrible they were, they offered "contra revenue" which meant in some cases OEMs were PAID to use Atom - because that was the only way they could get any design wins.

Intel failed in mobile because of market segmentation concerns, basically.

 

[AlltheWay LeeWhy]

LTT is simply TAKING your money.

And they are very happy to do just that.

If you decide against using your own brain, and jump on the nearest bandwagon, every smarter individual on this planet will extract money from you on a daily basis.

Stand up, SAY NO and use your own brain!

 

[sandorski]

Oh no, the Ad Revenue!

 

[AlltheWay LeeWhy]

Oh no, the Ad Revenue!

And you actually think the video is something more than that?

 

[VirtualLarry]

And you actually think the video is something more than that?

I think that Anthony brings up a salient point, that the industry push for SoCs and commodification of PCs, may push our DIY "niche" (that many of us enthusiasts, quite frankly, take for granted that they will always be available on the market) into a sort of dying-off no-mans land, when every "mainstream Joe" just has some sort of mini-Mac with "fully integrated" silicon on his desk.

Remember, it largely is the everyday Joe Six pack PCs that pay for the R&D to fund this hobby. (Other than the very recent crypto windfall that the GPU makers were able to cash in on.)

Edit: Maybe @Kaido can clue us in to the current state of the industry. I hear he deploys plenty of mini-PCs to small business clients.

 

[sandorski]

And you actually think the video is something more than that?

Not sure why it matters. People got to eat.

 

[AlltheWay LeeWhy]

I think that Anthony brings up a salient point, that the industry push for SoCs and commodification of PCs, may push our DIY "niche" (that many of us enthusiasts, quite frankly, take for granted that they will always be available on the market) into a sort of dying-off no-mans land, when every "mainstream Joe" just has some sort of mini-Mac with "fully integrated" silicon on his desk.

Remember, it largely is the everyday Joe Six pack PCs that pay for the R&D to fund this hobby. (Other than the very recent crypto windfall that the GPU makers were able to cash in on.)

Edit: Maybe @Kaido can clue us in to the current state of the industry. I hear he deploys plenty of mini-PCs to small business clients.

Well placed fine and great gent. I'm only a humble screenwriter and could work well in either the MAC or PC environment.

Yet, I do so LOVE the PC and all it's interchangeable ultra-high speed componentry.

 

[aigomorla]

Nah, ill always build a pc....
Even if i have to gut 3 (dell / Lenovo / HP) pc's together and frankenstien them, i will always build my custom PC.

Hell even my debug station i use to test gpu's, has both nvidia and amd card sitting together, tangoing peacefully for now.

 

[DrMrLordX]

tangoing peacefully for now.

The peanut gallery demands warfare. A duel at dawn with uh. Um. Whatever it is that dGPUs use to kill one another.

 

[mikeford]

DIY radically shrank starting about 10 years ago, will it die, not too likely, but the bulk of the world will be using SFF or smaller, few or no options, factory assembled boxes that never get opened.

 

[coercitiv]

I think that Anthony brings up a salient point, that the industry push for SoCs and commodification of PCs, may push our DIY "niche" (that many of us enthusiasts, quite frankly, take for granted that they will always be available on the market) into a sort of dying-off no-mans land, when every "mainstream Joe" just has some sort of mini-Mac with "fully integrated" silicon on his desk.

The cheap & integrated mini-Mac and mini-PC have existed for many years now, with all the performance needed for office and media consumption. Mainstream Joe is already rocking an AIO, SFF system, hybrid laptop or mobile.

The part that's left is productivity and gaming, and here's the one aspect the video avoids talking about: the $4000 price tag on the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra, or $2000 for the M1 Max. Last year I spent no more than $1000 to upgrade my PC to 12700K & 64GB of RAM while choosing to keep the existing GPU / PSU / SSDs / cooling. Now imagine having to spend $2600 even if all I want is 64GB of RAM, or $4800 for 128GB. Because "fully integrated". And remember: the main reason enthusiast DIY is supposed to die out is higher cost over integrated solutions.

Enjoying the paradox already?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In this scenario, the Motherboards would be standard mITX boards, with soldered SOCs on them with additional space for M.2 storage, RAM(unless it also woul be soldered), etc. Expansion - USB4/Thunderbolt.

Thats how I view how it would work.

I do not think that is too far off the mark. A lot of expansion devices is already external USB/Thunderbolt. USB4 will only add to that. It's plenty fast for almost any kind of controller you can think of.

Most people are already using phones and tablets rather then full fledged PC. Now most do have a PC, but that tend to be a cheap laptop rather then a traditional tower PC.

Wherever it will be financially viable, I believe it will still exist. But the mainstream desktop, as we know now will change.

Integrated SOCs will be the entry level products. Core i3, i5, i7's, Ryzen 3, 5, 7's.

Its just that Mobile SOCs in my opinion will simply be used on wider range of products, which will effectively... save costs for AMD and Intel, since what they have to develop is Mobile parts.

I'd argue that has already happened. Intels desktop CPUs since Sandy Bridge have been more-or-less the same platform as on mobile. Except for HEDT, Intels offerings have been mobile-on-desktop since. The only exception would be the IGP-less Ryzens. Those are derived from server hardware rather then mobile. The Ryzens with an IGP are the exact same as the mobile variety.

 

[bigboxes]

DIY radically shrank starting about 10 years ago, will it die, not too likely, but the bulk of the world will be using SFF or smaller, few or no options, factory assembled boxes that never get opened.

For sure. It's been that way for some time. Consumers just want to check their email and surf the net. They can do so from a device held in their hand (smartphone/tablet). It's why I vacated the custom builder role. Mainstream people didn't want to pay for the support when they could just buy another appliance. It would be my recommendation for all non-gamers that just wanted a device to connect them to the world. You already have seen Microsoft, Apple and Google provide online storage and SaaS as their business going forward. I don't see it killing off DIY, but as many have said ITT, if you're going to continue building your own, you're going to have to move to a higher level or it just won't be worth it. I suppose there will always be those that have too much money, but maintstream is where the sales are at.

 

[Tech Junky]

It's all about price points and profits @bigboxes

When the hell did people start accepting paying over $1000 for a phone? If you consider just that alone it tells you where the money is going. Both Apple and Samsung are making a killing of the sheeple. Tech nerds tend to look for the specs of the network side or the cpu / gpu / 120hz screens / longer battery life / hyper charging at 50W+

6.7" screen isn't enough to feel comfortable when needing to manage complicated transactions though that require a bit more attention. Lack of screen real estate causes people to miss the details a site might hide off to the side or further down on the page.

My priority is Laptop / phone / server for use daily. I bought a barebones laptop with 12700K/3060 and added onto it from drives and wifi to the 4K120 screen. Server is running as multiple devices from router to NAS to DVR and other functions but, switch the HDMI input and it's a normal computer as well. Phone is just handy when waiting for something or use as a hotspot when needed i.e. car data use for the MMI / Maps / Music.

One thing you'll notice is that tech never goes away 100%... people still use ODDs when USB has taken over in most cases for a good 10 years now or more. Companies still use tape for backups, Zip drives are still being sold, and others you can think of are still probably being produced in limited quantities. Dial up modems are still in use as out of band connections to enterprise routers.

 

[Shmee]

I think modularity is important. Not just for gaming, but in general. It is much better to be able to customize and repair with ease.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Anyone used to a PC who thinks M1 is amazing should buy one and report back after a month of using it if it enabled them to completely ignore their PC build. If yes, they never needed the PC in the first place.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

When the hell did people start accepting paying over $1000 for a phone?

When it became a status symbol. It's not just a phone.

Me? Everybody may laugh, but I get by just fine on my Nokia 3.4. I don't see any reason to "upgrade" from it as it handles all my limited needs. Heck, it may even get Android 12 eventually. Only "downside" is the slightly mediocre camera.

 

[tomatosummit]

How many times has pc diy died in the past decade?
Once for every time a new laptop gpu was released, once for each time a new computer form factor is revealed and once for everytime apple does literally anything.
The diy market has shown to be pretty stubborn, these days firms have realised new marketing techniques, such as youtube influencers and putting rgb lights on everything to broaden their target markets and perhaps there's just a contraction going on from that market push and the end of lockdowns.

As much as I despise the atx standard today it's going to stick around while oems refuse to improve things to maintain margins and if those parts are being produced for oems then there will never be anything stopping asus and the like from sticking a brightly coloured sticker on the product and marketing it to us.
If a SOC needs to have memory soldered on nearby then the next socket is much bigger with the memory on package but I don't think that's something oems will like, being able to have competative product costs for memory, storage, graphics and even motherboard plus all the little bits is how they function.
Only apple has the clout to strongarm their suppliers and create custom systems because they have a fairly captive market who will buy what they tell them to.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Only apple has the clout to strongarm their suppliers and create custom systems because they have a fairly captive market who will buy what they tell them to.

That's the keyword. Something that Applers refuse to acknowledge. PC users have more freedom. We can switch between AMD/Intel/Nvidia as our heart desires.