/rant on
I used to love building machines, but now I hate touching them. I just want to take a sledge hammer to the case and HULK SMASH.... maybe getting old but I think its mainly parts themselves that have been really getting on my nerves lately.
I've gone through a number of HSFs lately, for Intel and Amd that are such a pain and impossible to install that I've cut numerous fingers. Those crappy plastic pins never all work, one or two always break or won't stay down. AMD ones that take a million pounds of pressure to put on and then you don't know if you've crushed the processor or damaged the board. Ones that take backplates that require you to pull the whole board out to take off. There all 2 feet tall with razor sharp fins. I HATE THEM ALL... with a passion.
Cases that are all cheaply made even when you spend a $100 plus on them. They have sharp edges, no room whatsoever to manuver a hand around and fans all over the place with wires all over the place. Many try and be cute with their screwless bays, but put a slight nudge on a drive and it pushes right through.
It just seems that for the last 10+ years PC's have skyrocketed in performance but gone backwards in overall ease of building. Much of it comes from how much your willing to spend. My CM Stacker 830 is a great piece of machinery, but you should haven't spend that kind of money for a good case. I build machines for pretty much anyone in my family, and many friends. Most of the time I foot the bill for family machines and none of them are power gamers or users, so there is no need to spend a ton on enthusiast parts. But there is no difference in the PC Parts market between low end user and low end cheaply made POS parts. Many parts are just DOA, have tons of compatibility problems, etc... I know if I spent $1000+ instead of $2-300 I wouldn't have anywhere near the problems, but hell I'm being as nice as I can footing the bill for $300 as it is. My days of building quick, well performing budget machines is over and the days of buying a cheap Dell that will be a slow dead piece of junk after a year or two is here.
/rant off
I used to love building machines, but now I hate touching them. I just want to take a sledge hammer to the case and HULK SMASH.... maybe getting old but I think its mainly parts themselves that have been really getting on my nerves lately.
I've gone through a number of HSFs lately, for Intel and Amd that are such a pain and impossible to install that I've cut numerous fingers. Those crappy plastic pins never all work, one or two always break or won't stay down. AMD ones that take a million pounds of pressure to put on and then you don't know if you've crushed the processor or damaged the board. Ones that take backplates that require you to pull the whole board out to take off. There all 2 feet tall with razor sharp fins. I HATE THEM ALL... with a passion.
Cases that are all cheaply made even when you spend a $100 plus on them. They have sharp edges, no room whatsoever to manuver a hand around and fans all over the place with wires all over the place. Many try and be cute with their screwless bays, but put a slight nudge on a drive and it pushes right through.
It just seems that for the last 10+ years PC's have skyrocketed in performance but gone backwards in overall ease of building. Much of it comes from how much your willing to spend. My CM Stacker 830 is a great piece of machinery, but you should haven't spend that kind of money for a good case. I build machines for pretty much anyone in my family, and many friends. Most of the time I foot the bill for family machines and none of them are power gamers or users, so there is no need to spend a ton on enthusiast parts. But there is no difference in the PC Parts market between low end user and low end cheaply made POS parts. Many parts are just DOA, have tons of compatibility problems, etc... I know if I spent $1000+ instead of $2-300 I wouldn't have anywhere near the problems, but hell I'm being as nice as I can footing the bill for $300 as it is. My days of building quick, well performing budget machines is over and the days of buying a cheap Dell that will be a slow dead piece of junk after a year or two is here.
/rant off