4 ms·

Very impressive specs... Curious to see how soon it will be possible to build your own machine with the same capabilities.

gtaylor 13y ago
Unless I'm misunderstanding something, you could already blow this thing away at its price point by building your own. It wouldn't be as pretty looking, but you could do better (if specs are the primary concern).
- jfb 13y ago
  This is certainly true; but I wonder for how much longer it will be -- it doesn't seem that economics really favor the build it yourself model nearly as much as they used to.
  - gtaylor 13y ago
    I guess I haven't ran into this. I've been able to re-use some of my components through different incarnations of this desktop, and it's saved me a ton of money. For example, I don't need to upgrade my entire desktop to upgrade my video card. I can toss something nasty in there, and even if my motherboard doesn't support the latest and greatest PCIe spec, my next one will. Ditto for SATA. I've got a ton of mileage out of my case, as well. Spent a little more to get something nice, and ended up liking it so much that I've held on to it for close to five years now. Ditto for my modular power supply.
    - jfb 13y ago
      It is very nice; the model of 'everything is soldered down' is really annoying wherever you find it (my BMW, my Mac, &c.) But I think that the difference in cost between standard expandable hardware and custom stuff is shrinking really rapidly, meaning that designers can now do more things with e.g. thermals or layout that are not feasible using PC style standard hardware. The age of swapping out parts is coming to a close, I fear.
      - gte910h 13y ago
        Yeah, internal interchangeability without a soldering iron is coming at a real cost these days. External buses are faster than ever though, so many things go quite quickly through those for expansion capability.
      - gtaylor 13y ago
        > The age of swapping out parts is coming to a close, I fear. Wat? TigerDirect, NewEgg, Amazon, and many others have something to say about that. This stuff is cheaper than it EVER has been. Want a bunch of RAM? Get it for under $100. Want a decent 500 GB hard drive? Under $100. Decent processor? Under $100. Decent motherboard? Under $100. Or are you talking about swapping parts out of pre-assembled computers?

gtaylor 13y ago

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, you could already blow this thing away at its price point by building your own. It wouldn't be as pretty looking, but you could do better (if specs are the primary concern).

jfb 13y ago
This is certainly true; but I wonder for how much longer it will be -- it doesn't seem that economics really favor the build it yourself model nearly as much as they used to.
- gtaylor 13y ago
  I guess I haven't ran into this. I've been able to re-use some of my components through different incarnations of this desktop, and it's saved me a ton of money. For example, I don't need to upgrade my entire desktop to upgrade my video card. I can toss something nasty in there, and even if my motherboard doesn't support the latest and greatest PCIe spec, my next one will. Ditto for SATA. I've got a ton of mileage out of my case, as well. Spent a little more to get something nice, and ended up liking it so much that I've held on to it for close to five years now. Ditto for my modular power supply.
  - jfb 13y ago
    It is very nice; the model of 'everything is soldered down' is really annoying wherever you find it (my BMW, my Mac, &c.) But I think that the difference in cost between standard expandable hardware and custom stuff is shrinking really rapidly, meaning that designers can now do more things with e.g. thermals or layout that are not feasible using PC style standard hardware. The age of swapping out parts is coming to a close, I fear.
    - gte910h 13y ago
      Yeah, internal interchangeability without a soldering iron is coming at a real cost these days. External buses are faster than ever though, so many things go quite quickly through those for expansion capability.
    - gtaylor 13y ago
      > The age of swapping out parts is coming to a close, I fear. Wat? TigerDirect, NewEgg, Amazon, and many others have something to say about that. This stuff is cheaper than it EVER has been. Want a bunch of RAM? Get it for under $100. Want a decent 500 GB hard drive? Under $100. Decent processor? Under $100. Decent motherboard? Under $100. Or are you talking about swapping parts out of pre-assembled computers?