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Wish I had this around to read for inspiration a few months ago. I recently upgraded my PC, and for the first time in 20 years of owning desktop PCs, bought a p

by chrbr 6y ago

Wish I had this around to read for inspiration a few months ago. I recently upgraded my PC, and for the first time in 20 years of owning desktop PCs, bought a prebuilt one specifically because of size and aesthetic concerns. I wanted a top-of-the-line gaming rig that ran quietly and took up a minimal amount of desktop space for my home office/"battlestation" [1]. Maybe I gave up too quickly, and maybe I've gotten too old for this shit, but I couldn't find anything that fit the bill without spending a lot of time on custom watercooling setups. I wonder how loud Atwood's rig is here. I went with a Corsair One i165 [2] and love it so far - runs whisper-quiet no matter what I'm doing, and is small enough to easily fit on the desk. We'll see in a couple of years if I'm kicking myself over lack of upgradeability, but I'd hope its specs last me a long time. Side note: it's kinda hard to find nice-but-not-gaudy components these days, I feel. Not a big fan of the RGB craze as I get older (although 16-year-old-me would have loved it). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/battlestations/comments/f4fk3h/dualsystem_loft_art_battlestation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/battlestations/comments/f4fk3h/dual... [2] https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Systems/CORSAIR-ONE/CORSAIR-ONE-GAMING-PC/p/CS-9020005-NA https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Systems/CO...

jmt_ 6y ago
Typically one of the main arguments against pre-built machines are that you can build a similarly specced machine for less. But the time and effort it takes to do so may not be practical for every situation, so really you're paying more to have something up and running much faster and (ideally) without the headaches of troubleshooting hardware. Plus, I agree that a lot of the components one would buy to build a similar setup are covered in XTREME GAMER RGB aesthetics and is really unpleasant to me. It can be difficult to find a high performance laptop that doesn't look like this, especially if you need a nice GPU in it. I'm saying all of this because I don't think some hardcore build-a-PC people truly understand the business/general value of (good, not cheap) pre-built machines. When one needs a performant machine asap to work when, say, they're existing machine suddenly dies, they do not have the time to assemble a PC usually. Why do you think that Corsair will be difficult to upgrade? Genuinely curious, maybe the size of the case will impose limitations? Looks like there's only two RAM slots (ITX board?) so that might also be an upgrade issue?
- chrbr 6y ago
  Yep, I'm assuming the heavily-engineered case is going to cause problems for just trying to plop in whatever I want - even if I can cram it in, I wouldn't want to introduce heat issues that they've designed around. Maybe towards the end of its life I'll crack it open and see how I can hack at it, though!
- psyho 6y ago
  Corsair One comes with a custom AIO cooler for its GPU. For me, the most often upgraded component in a gaming PC is the GPU, since you need a new one every two generations in order to keep up with the latest games. If you are the type of person that likes to play games on high/ultra settings, you will probably regret not being able to upgrade the GPU in your otherwise excellent computer.

by chrbr 6y ago

jmt_ 6y ago

Typically one of the main arguments against pre-built machines are that you can build a similarly specced machine for less. But the time and effort it takes to do so may not be practical for every situation, so really you're paying more to have something up and running much faster and (ideally) without the headaches of troubleshooting hardware. Plus, I agree that a lot of the components one would buy to build a similar setup are covered in XTREME GAMER RGB aesthetics and is really unpleasant to me. It can be difficult to find a high performance laptop that doesn't look like this, especially if you need a nice GPU in it. I'm saying all of this because I don't think some hardcore build-a-PC people truly understand the business/general value of (good, not cheap) pre-built machines. When one needs a performant machine asap to work when, say, they're existing machine suddenly dies, they do not have the time to assemble a PC usually. Why do you think that Corsair will be difficult to upgrade? Genuinely curious, maybe the size of the case will impose limitations? Looks like there's only two RAM slots (ITX board?) so that might also be an upgrade issue?

chrbr 6y ago
Yep, I'm assuming the heavily-engineered case is going to cause problems for just trying to plop in whatever I want - even if I can cram it in, I wouldn't want to introduce heat issues that they've designed around. Maybe towards the end of its life I'll crack it open and see how I can hack at it, though!
psyho 6y ago
Corsair One comes with a custom AIO cooler for its GPU. For me, the most often upgraded component in a gaming PC is the GPU, since you need a new one every two generations in order to keep up with the latest games. If you are the type of person that likes to play games on high/ultra settings, you will probably regret not being able to upgrade the GPU in your otherwise excellent computer.