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Xbitlabs shut down

K

kahless1979

Member
Hello,

Some of you may be familiar with Xbitlabs. It was a very popular Hardware review site just like Anandtech and used to have a huge following. Editorials overtime became few and far between. I believe a lot of this was contributed to lost add revenue because of add blockers, etc. Even though editorials haven't appeared on the site in over a year the forums were kept alive with a handful of die hard followers. Recently the site and forums were taken down. Some of the forum mods and users banded together and moved the forums over to Prophpbb. This is a paid for premium service with all the typical forum features. We wanted to let everyone know what happened just in case any past Xbitlabs people out there are wondering where their forum went. Also, all are welcome to visit the forums for stimulating conversation 😉😎

New forums can be found here:
http://xbitlabs.prophpbb.com/

Moved from P&N

AT Moderator ElFenix
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm sorry to here that. They used to have pretty comprehensive reviews.

Of the old timers it's getting so only AT, Toms, Ars, and [H] are left. 🙁
 
jana519 said:
Likely because there's nothing new or exciting to drive people to visit review sites. The desktop CPU market is completely stagnant. The GPU market is down to periodic, measured increases. The big jumps in PC tech that once drove these sites just don't exist anymore.
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Its also way easier to watch a Youtube video where Linus tells you what 90% of people actually care about. The technical details are obviously still a good thing to have but most people don't really care howit works, only that it works better.
 
Londo_Jowo said:
Not hard to believe, people don't build computers like they did from 1995 to 2010. Most utilize laptops, tablets, and/or smart phones.
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I think this is the main thing. I know in the mid 2000's I would never have dreamed of getting a computer off the shelf. Now it hardly seems worth the trouble to build one. I'm sure some of that is how my needs have changed with time but it also just doesn't seem like you gain much from putting your own together anymore.
 
Yep. My second PC was purchased from a company that did custom builds - I din't have time to do my own. I built the one after that to get street cred with the engineers I managed - it worked great. But now that my sons are grown up, I don't do pc games anymore so my last desktop was a store bought from Microcenter. It works great as well, but it's mainly used by my wife. I bought a desktop just in case I needed to replace a pieces part. Next pc will be a laptop. I can do most of what I need to with my iPhone or Fire tablet. Wife has an iPhone and a Nook.

I do remember frequenting xbitlabs back in the day; was a good site.

fskimospy said:
I think this is the main thing. I know in the mid 2000's I would never have dreamed of getting a computer off the shelf. Now it hardly seems worth the trouble to build one. I'm sure some of that is how my needs have changed with time but it also just doesn't seem like you gain much from putting your own together anymore.
Click to expand...
 
My current phone has more computing power, ram, and storage than the first PC I built.

AMD K6 686 233mhz, FIC PA-2002 motherboard, 32mb ram, 400mb harddrive, and Matrox Mistique 220 w/2mb ram.
 
Yeah it sucks that the site went bye-bye, they used to have some of the most extensive tests as well as doing some novel reviewing that literally no other site did. And their news had a tendency to predict stuff 3-6 months ahead of others, so really interesting. The news thing was what caught my eyes originally. I believe i registered on the forum sometime in -99? Don´t even recall for sure when they started up, wayback machine has its first snapshot late 2000, but i think that´s because they changed their address then. Oops, found it, site started on 29th March 1999.
So, damnit, just 2 years from making it to age 20.

One thing i appreciated about the forum there was the distinct diversity of members. Despite being a relatively small community, it managed to have people spread out just about everywhere.
 
Have to admit that I haven't visited in probably a couple years, mostly for the reasons others have posted. When I built my first PC in 1985, I spent just over $700 on parts and the cost to have it assembled would have been another $300. Nowadays it's actually cheaper to buy pre-built (largely because of Windows) unless one wants something special, like a gaming PC.

RIP to one of the great sites.
 
Sad, I remember them vividly. I still build myself, but they're more special purpose PC's now (barebones Intel NUC and other smaller form factors).
 
I remember finding their reviews through search and some where fairly technically detailed, like plots of voltage/current draw by pin for gpu cards. If anything it shows they know what they're doing.

I think there's a market however niche for that level/sort of review detail in all sorts of hw, instead of all competing for the same denominator customer base. For example, similar base power draw in sleep states for phones.
 
fskimospy said:
I think this is the main thing. I know in the mid 2000's I would never have dreamed of getting a computer off the shelf. Now it hardly seems worth the trouble to build one. I'm sure some of that is how my needs have changed with time but it also just doesn't seem like you gain much from putting your own together anymore.
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Mostly same. The last one I built is 6-7 yrs old.

Not really sure as it only gets used for kids' homework.

If build one, it certainly doesn't need to be a high end one. Not sure if I could be troubled to do it.
 
masteryoda34 said:
It's sad. People don't seem to appreciate high quality hardware reviews anymore.
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People have moved on have reading about hardware to watching the reviews on YouTube. Take it for what it is. There are some YT channels that do an excellent job reviewing technology (Linus, Unbox Therapy, Marques Brownlee). These 3 have millions of subs, many reviewers stink.

Its all social media now.
 
Londo_Jowo said:
Not hard to believe, people don't build computers like they did from 1995 to 2010. Most utilize laptops, tablets, and/or smart phones.
Click to expand...

It kinda stopped because there hasn't been a major performance increase since Sandy Bridge in 2011. Today's cutting edge CPUs are barely any faster (recent meltdown/spectre patches aren't helping), just better at power management.
 
Londo_Jowo said:
Not hard to believe, people don't build computers like they did from 1995 to 2010. Most utilize laptops, tablets, and/or smart phones.
Click to expand...
I haven't bought a big box desktop PC for myself since 1993 and there's no way that I'd buy one unless I was no longer able to assemble my own.😀 I once thought about building my own laptop but after pricing things out it was better to buy a preassembled unit.
 
fskimospy said:
I think this is the main thing. I know in the mid 2000's I would never have dreamed of getting a computer off the shelf. Now it hardly seems worth the trouble to build one. I'm sure some of that is how my needs have changed with time but it also just doesn't seem like you gain much from putting your own together anymore.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised how sad this makes me feel (I mean, not suicidal! but still a bit wistful). Change catches one by surprise, it wouldn't have occured to me back then that this, the very process of upgrading and obselecence and moving to something bigger and better that was part of being into PCs, would itself one day become a thing of the past for most.

(Granted, getting bored with computer games also took away most of the purpose of upgrading!)

I know people upgrade their phones and get new laptops, but it's really not the same sort of process.
 
Back in the days, PCs were advancing so fast, you'd build a PC and a month later have buyer remorse and start overclocking and thinking about the next build. So I remember always being on these hardware review sites. Now I just wait till a PC breaks to upgrade it.
 
fskimospy said:
I think this is the main thing. I know in the mid 2000's I would never have dreamed of getting a computer off the shelf. Now it hardly seems worth the trouble to build one. I'm sure some of that is how my needs have changed with time but it also just doesn't seem like you gain much from putting your own together anymore.
Click to expand...
I think that's the way it is for a lot us that saw our first IBM PC dual floppy drive computer in the early 80s. It was fun, and exciting. You mean I can buy all these parts from the Computer Shopper and build one of these for a lot less money with better features? I finally decided for myself, about 10 years ago that a big 17 inch desktop equivalent laptop would all I really need for my purposes and I haven't looked back.
 
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