What is going on with desktop PCs these days?

[poofyhairguy]

Threads like this make me feel like a weirdo. I have more "desktop pcs" at home running than I have ever had in my life.

-Two desktop PCs are my 24/7 Unraid servers.

-Two desktops are HTPCs that play content from those servers in a way that no set-top-box can (MadVR+decent GPU= better picture quality than $500 Blu Ray players).

-Three desktops sitting around mining ethereum all day

-My main gaming rig hooked to a tv

-My actual thing I call a desktop which is a hackintosh hooked to a monitor

 

[Anubis]

Threads like this make me feel like a weirdo. I have more "desktop pcs" at home running than I have ever had in my life.

lol you aren't alone

main gaming PC
2nd upstairs PC
Downstairs PC cause fuck walking back upstairs
HTPC
backup PC that does a lot of nothing
PC connected to the NAS
the NAS itelf is like a PC

2 laptops that run most of the time as well. 1 normal one and 1 ultrabook

 

[Kaido]

3 things:

1. Shrinking tech
2. Modular tech
3. "Good enough" performance

The latest Samsung 960 Pro NVMe drive is 3,600 MB/s. 16 gigs of RAM is like $80. You can buy a 128-gig RAM kit for your desktop if you really want to. Desktop Intel chips are available with up to 10 cores now. Heck, I just built a box with parts off Amazon that has two 22-core Xeon chips & half a terabyte of RAM. It's like cell phones...when your system boots up so quickly & everything launches instantly, what more do you want? The exceptions being CPU/GPU-intensive activities like DCC, gaming, or crunching, of course.

You can get a tiny little Intel NUC for a few hundred bucks now that you can max out with a 4TB SSD, 32 gigs of RAM, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.1c ports, etc. So it's not like you're sacrificing to go small or go to a laptop anymore. And stuff is going modular now too...I've done some projects with the Razer eGPU dock, which is still pretty dang pricey ($500), but you can plug it into a mini computer like a NUC & have a full-blown GPU:

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-core

Which you don't necessarily even need anymore because they shrunk the GPU's too! Zotac has the EN1060, EN1070, and EN1080 (1080 is water-cooled!), which is smaller-than-a-shoebox cubes that house the new GTX graphics cards. HP has the Z2 Mini G3 coming out this month in the same form factor, albeit with an optional Xeon CPU, up to 32 gigs of RAM, a 2GB Quadro GPU, and support for up to six (6) monitors. They sell a turnkey version for $1,599 with a Win7 Pro & Win10 upgrade license with 16 gigs of RAM & a 512gb NVMe drive. You don't need a giant tower or a huge amount of money to do modeling or pro-level work anymore.

A have a couple different computers-on-a-stick (first-gen Atom & second-gen X5), which are about the size of a Fire Stick or Roku Stick, but run an entire copy of desktop Windows. Things are getting insanely tiny! Kaby Lake has shrunk those to the point where the whole computer is now the size of a pack of baseball cards & requires a dock for ports because it's so small thanks to 14nm CPU's, SSD's with no moving parts, etc.

In short, the game has changed because technology has progressed. You can buy a laptop at Best Buy for $249 these days, and while the mechanical HDD is slow, you can swap it out for a cheap SSD & get fantastic performance because even a basic Celeron chip is pretty speedy these days (because it's just a dual-core, non-turbo, non-hyperthreaded Core chip). Stuff is relatively cheap & small compared to past computers & it's only going to get better & better. Dell just announced an 8K LCD monitor. The new OLED television sets from LG are so thin you have to mount them on a wall. Best Buy today, right now, is selling a 55" Sharp LED TV with Roku built-in for $349 shipped.

Desktops will probably never go away because there will always be groups of people who need customizable power (engineers, gamers, etc.), but it's not that big of a deal anymore, financially or performance-wise. Makes me a little sad because I loved my days of building machines & tinkering with them, but boy is the new stuff sure nice! I've got a few dozen NUC's sitting on my desk to roll out tomorrow...thanks to my new USB 3.0 mSATA adapter, I can clone over the master image in under 2 minutes. I don't have to lug a big tower out. All of the monitors are 28" LED 1080p sets & are super thin & light. Tech is amazing these days!

 

[Svnla]

In other news, PC shipment world wide is down again, 5 years in a row - http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/11/g...in-q4-2016-fifth-consecutive-year-of-decline/

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Hm Intel's gonna do their "tick" next year right. I wonder if I should just put up with my first gen i7 til then.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I can't imagine coding on a laptop keyboard and a touch pad. Yuck. I really hope this is not the way things are going.

It takes some serious getting used to and serious anger management at first.
Running a schematic design or pcb design program that is written for windows on a mac laptop(parallels) with a touch pad and limited keyboard (compared to a windows keyboard) is no fun.
I tried it for fun and stopped real quick.

But when connecting a normal usb mouse and usb windows keyboard, everything is fine.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I would also become very sad if everything i do on the desktop pc, have to do on a laptop or tablet. Unless that laptop can be docked wireless and that the docking station provides with a normal keyboard and mouse and multiple monitors. Which is already possible. I have seen that apple does have some nifty trick where you can just swipe/slide your pdf from your laptop to your telephone and to your tablet. I would like to see that happen on windows as well, i do not know if it is already possible.. It is all possible over wifi. Only the software is needed and a system that is totally secure. No executable scripts or executables unless specific user approval is given. Only unscripted and unexecutable media should swipe from one machine to the other. A mouse or a touchscreen should not matter.

But yeah, a life without my desktop would seem empty with current technology. I have seen the huge bulky heavy laptops that have the gaming performance of a desktop with huge power supply bricks that are able to provide over 300W of power. It is as if the laptop is a desktop. And extremely expensive in comparison to a (home build) desktop.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's the funny thing too, they try to get rid of workstations, then they have to make compromises to try to bring back the workstation feel. You end up with a "portable" super expensive computer system.

 

[Kaido]

That's the funny thing too, they try to get rid of workstations, then they have to make compromises to try to bring back the workstation feel. You end up with a "portable" super expensive computer system.

That's the funny thing with NUC's...the power supply is external (laptop-style brick in the middle of the power cord), then you have a couple video cables for dual monitors, USB to your printer, USB receiver for wireless keyboard & mouse, Ethernet, etc. It ends up just being a big mess of wires that gets barfed out from the tiny computer

 

[pmv]

I'm very glad the pace of upgrading has slowed so much. Because time passes faster when you get older anyway, so it sort-of cancels out. I don't miss the days of feeling my PC 'obsoleting' as soon as I had it up and running.

 

[Thump553]

Desktops have been dying commercially for roughly five years or so-look at the weekly Staples, Best Buy, etc. ads or the Hot Deals sections of any major deal board. A desktop on sale is unusual these days.

Personally I use only desktops or my phone. I've replaced too many laptops for my kids when they were growing up-it seems like every laptop is built for an 18-24 month life before the heat kills something vital. I use mainly three desktops-my office, my home office and a game box/music server system at home.

Some news for laptop fans-average users are going away form them too, going to phones for their browsing, facebook and games.

 

[PingviN]

Since hardware caught up with software, there hasn't been a lot of reasons to upgrade. Games used to push the envelope every couple of years and make hardware upgrades worthwhile, but with last gen consoles hanging around forever and when we finally go "next gen" it's really "low-end, current gen", games are stuck looking and playing like 2010.

Maybe this year will get developers to actually try again. But probably not.

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[Arcadio]

I got:
A main desktop PC with dual monitors running win10
A secondary desktop PC running Linux
A media center pc in the living room
A Nostalgia xp PC with some old games

 

[jman19]

You don't see an issue with losing total control over your computing experience and having all your stuff on someone else's computer? Or having to use crappy interfaces to do any kind of content creation? Nothing beats a standard computer with proper keyboard and mouse, and locally (within your own house) stored data. They will have to pry that from my cold dead hands. I will completely switch hobbies if it ever comes to a point where having a personal computer is no longer a thing.

This whole cloud thing only facilitates government spying and removes your basic control of data. No freaking way I want to submit to that.

Forget the cloud crap, having more options than being glued to a giant desktop is a good thing. If you want one, you can still have one of course. Nothing is stopping you from creating content on a desktop with a KB and mouse.

Anyway, was inevitable for a "lighter" option to happen. Not every company wants to have their own server farms, nor should they need to.

The real thing murdering desktops is that the need for higher end systems has diminished - most people don't need anything close to a modern rig to get what they want out of a computer.

 

[MrSquished]

I can't imagine coding on a laptop keyboard and a touch pad. Yuck. I really hope this is not the way things are going.

I have my desktop and will for a while to come - I just refreshed it a year ago to the rig in my sig. I'll probably upgrade the vid card in another year. The nice mid-tower doesn't take up much space and sits comfortably next to my decent sized desk. One big thing it does over my laptop is hold many hard drives - besides the SSD I have 5 other drives. I like redundancy for a lot data. So because of that I will likely have a desktop for a long time to come.

But if it wasn't for that, what's wrong with docking stations? You can have a laptop and still use a full size KB and mouse + monitor if you prefer over touchpad and laptop keyboard (I do as well). Why is that not an option for you?

 

[dullard]

That's the funny thing with NUC's...the power supply is external (laptop-style brick in the middle of the power cord), then you have a couple video cables for dual monitors, USB to your printer, USB receiver for wireless keyboard & mouse, Ethernet, etc. It ends up just being a big mess of wires that gets barfed out from the tiny computer

In many use cases, who cares how many wires are sticking out, when all you need is a small computer.

Mount it behind the monitor if you don't need any access to it:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/all-in-one-pc.2472993/#post-38225122

Or stick it in the gap between the monitor and the desk if you do need access:
http://www.unbox.ph/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Intel-NUC-06.jpg

The wires are all out of the way behind the monitor/TV so you never have to see them or worry about them. All that matters is that you finally have a small enough computer to fit into those locations.

For me, I have a TV spot over my fireplace (deep enough to fit a lot of equipment). I filled that hole with a TV and stuck all the equipment behind the TV. But, I needed access to a computer to put in the DVDs, SD cards, etc. So, a NUC fit perfectly in the 2" gap under the monitor. That way my infrared wireless devices can interact with the NUC, I can pop in a Blu-ray, or the whole party can look at the photos that were just taken on the SD card. Wires don't matter because the TV blocks them all. But something less than 2" tall was all that did matter.

 

[ElFenix]

Although, I really thought that Intel would cut down their product line to only one or two chips, sell them directly to mobo makers to solder onto boards, and then sell "soft CPU DLC upgrades", that would "unlock" the features of the CPU on your mobo, using micro-code. (Want HyperThreading? $50. Want two more cores? $100. Want AVX/AVX2? $25. etc.)

Iirc Intel did that for a while. I doubt the OEMs liked it much as they'd rather sell you the quad-core upgrade themselves for $200.

 

[Carson Dyle]

That's the funny thing with NUC's...the power supply is external (laptop-style brick in the middle of the power cord), then you have a couple video cables for dual monitors, USB to your printer, USB receiver for wireless keyboard & mouse, Ethernet, etc. It ends up just being a big mess of wires that gets barfed out from the tiny computer

Maybe a valid point about the wall wart, but any of the other cables will exist no matter the size of the PC. My keyboard/mouse wireless receiver plugs into a USB port with no cables and is about the size of a penny.

 

[JEDI]

There's a thousand posts here about how you don't need to upgrade your last-gen PC.

last gen?

still using my 2010 amd quad core phenom II (3ghz)

 

[yhelothar]

Desktops seem hugely underappreciated these days, even by people in the tech sector that have high computing demands. I even see machine learning engineers primarily using a laptop nowadays. These are tasks that require a tremendous amount of processing power and yet people who do it professionally, full-time use laptops.