New Bass Video!

[jay4321]

I was unaware of it as well. Seems to me that was happening during the "overclocking" craze at the time, which I never really bought into.

Not a craze, it's been a thing for at least 25 years since I got into it. If anything the concept of overclocking is relatively tame today and more like a common/expected feature on now found even on a lot of non-enthusiast gear. It's morphed into a thing that serves to let some manufacturers get away with advertising speeds that not all of the units can achieve. I don't know if general awareness of it increased suddenly at some point but I haven't seen anything change. Really it's been the same story every gen for 15+ years.

Now back in my early PC days which started with the 386, that was something else. I distinctly remember the 1st Pentium also, the cheap $190 version could do 50%+ clock speed by overclocking and would match the expensive high end $550 job with basically no drama at all on stock equipment. You definitely felt that extra power on a slow machine like they were (and the saved money)! But now, they're pushed so hot already. There's always some room but most of the small gains tend to require more and more cooling and supporting hardware that can help, of course at customer expense. I get the hobby end of it but by 2010 or so I kind of went the other way, trying to manage noise, maximize stability, and try to get more value where I can. No real point in chasing that extra 5% or whatever in most cases.

I mean people are overclocking mice these days

 

[stratamania]

These days I am not that sure building a desktop machine is even worth it with today's specs etc. Some gamers and enthusiast builds you see are an easy way to blow a lot of cash for performance that many are not using.

I swore off desktops for several years but eventually came back for my home studio and office and am so glad I did. You can get an incredibly powerful and responsive system for not all that much money, and put the muscle right where you need it, and with quality components that tend to come with much longer warranties. My recording/playing setup has two interfaces, 2 powered audio monitors, a widescreen monitor, a Komplete keyboard, a Furman unit power all hooked up. Then in excess of 1TB worth of sounds libraries and things in storage. I'm not looking to hook up a notebook twice a day and certainly not with comparable horsepower/storage at the cost.

As for gamers, that's kind of a separate beast. If someone feels they "need" to play AAA titles on high resolution and on high-ultra settings...yeah, there's just a huge premium for that. For everyone else a very modest video card will do the trick, and often enough none at all - any typical display or dual-monitor setup can be handled by integrated graphics for everyday use.

I initially built mine with 9 components, and that includes the case, aftermarket CPU fan, a Windows license, and a fantastic huge display. I did add an "upper-tier but not insane" video card shortly after deciding I wanted to aim for a 6-year run with the system. I do play some games on rare occasion and don't mind eye candy.

Strangely enough when I got out of desktop PCs around 5 years ago, the idea was that my laptop would fill all the gaps pretty well. Now, the notebook got squeezed out by my phone and desktop.

Indeed. I am not saying there is no use case for ever building a desktop machine. Just that at one time if you did so maxing out the specs made sense but that nowadays a performant machine can be made or bought with less than the maximum specs and for a lot of people getting the maximum specs would be overkill rather than meeting actual need. So we are probably on the same page.