I’m a little irritated lately at the attitude on system builds and upgrades among OCN threads. Lately, it seems, forum members recommend parts for a system builder based solely on their own opinions and not taking into consideration what the builder actually wants from their system. These are some examples of what I mean:
1. A user was looking to buy a 1440 x 900 monitor. He put in the specs and price range he was looking for and made it quite clear that he was looking for this specific resolution, and NOT a 1920x1080 monitor or bigger. Nonetheless, multiple users berated him for his “foolish” choice. As they said, a “proper” monitor is at least 1920 resolution. The user pushed back and reiterated that he wanted a 1440 x 900 monitor, and no matter how many ways he said it, people kept telling him he needed a $200 1920x1080 IPS monitor when he was looking to casually game.
2. A user has a 1680 x 1050 monitor and a Phenom X2 with an Nvidia 8800 GT. He was looking for a good GPU upgrade because things weren’t quite playing as smooth as he would have liked on his monitor. He said he had a $110 budget and wanted to play all games on medium for the next year or so. Those who posted in the forum piled on comment after comment telling the buyer he needed a “proper” GPU in his system, and that he should “stretch” his budget to $160-170 to buy a Radeon 7850. The user said that simply wasn’t an option with his budget. Nonetheless, people continued to tell him to get a 7850 (a few even suggested saving for a 7950!)
3. This one if for myself. I am an amateur video editor, and I do most of my video shoots at weddings and other events like that. It comes off the camera as massive AVI files that need compressing. I like to keep the original videos though, so I needed more storage. My editing computer has a 500GB HDD, and I was looking to buy four 1TB external USB 3.0 drives to put into two pairs of Windows software RAID 1. Nonetheless, when I described my plan, it was met with ridicule and I was told that I needed a “proper” RAID setup. Instead of the $250 I was planning on spending on external drives, I was recommended a “proper” NAS RAID setup with HDDs that cost $600! That is so far out of my budget that I just couldn’t even touch it. I went with my gut and got the externals, and they’ve been serving me very VERY well since.
4. This last one is short. A user wanted to build a gaming computer and his CPU budget was $100. Everyone and their mother was telling him to get in his car, drive an hour to Microcenter, and expand his budget magically by $70 to buy a 2500k. That’s foolish.
Look, I understand that we’re on an enthusiast forum. Most of us want to see users buy the best and crank the settings up for a truly amazing experience. And that’s great, and I respect that. It is an enthusiast forum, after all. But we need to realistically ask what the expectations of the user are before recommending hardware. If they say that they want to max every game at 120fps on a 2560 monitor, then that’s the time to break out the dual or tri Keplers or GCN cards. But a user who wants to play on non-enthusiast settings should not be recommended enthusiast grade hardware unless the price is just THAT incredible.
Bottom line: Stay within the given budget and look at what they want to do with the system BEFORE forming an opinion. Thank you.
1. A user was looking to buy a 1440 x 900 monitor. He put in the specs and price range he was looking for and made it quite clear that he was looking for this specific resolution, and NOT a 1920x1080 monitor or bigger. Nonetheless, multiple users berated him for his “foolish” choice. As they said, a “proper” monitor is at least 1920 resolution. The user pushed back and reiterated that he wanted a 1440 x 900 monitor, and no matter how many ways he said it, people kept telling him he needed a $200 1920x1080 IPS monitor when he was looking to casually game.
2. A user has a 1680 x 1050 monitor and a Phenom X2 with an Nvidia 8800 GT. He was looking for a good GPU upgrade because things weren’t quite playing as smooth as he would have liked on his monitor. He said he had a $110 budget and wanted to play all games on medium for the next year or so. Those who posted in the forum piled on comment after comment telling the buyer he needed a “proper” GPU in his system, and that he should “stretch” his budget to $160-170 to buy a Radeon 7850. The user said that simply wasn’t an option with his budget. Nonetheless, people continued to tell him to get a 7850 (a few even suggested saving for a 7950!)
3. This one if for myself. I am an amateur video editor, and I do most of my video shoots at weddings and other events like that. It comes off the camera as massive AVI files that need compressing. I like to keep the original videos though, so I needed more storage. My editing computer has a 500GB HDD, and I was looking to buy four 1TB external USB 3.0 drives to put into two pairs of Windows software RAID 1. Nonetheless, when I described my plan, it was met with ridicule and I was told that I needed a “proper” RAID setup. Instead of the $250 I was planning on spending on external drives, I was recommended a “proper” NAS RAID setup with HDDs that cost $600! That is so far out of my budget that I just couldn’t even touch it. I went with my gut and got the externals, and they’ve been serving me very VERY well since.
4. This last one is short. A user wanted to build a gaming computer and his CPU budget was $100. Everyone and their mother was telling him to get in his car, drive an hour to Microcenter, and expand his budget magically by $70 to buy a 2500k. That’s foolish.
Look, I understand that we’re on an enthusiast forum. Most of us want to see users buy the best and crank the settings up for a truly amazing experience. And that’s great, and I respect that. It is an enthusiast forum, after all. But we need to realistically ask what the expectations of the user are before recommending hardware. If they say that they want to max every game at 120fps on a 2560 monitor, then that’s the time to break out the dual or tri Keplers or GCN cards. But a user who wants to play on non-enthusiast settings should not be recommended enthusiast grade hardware unless the price is just THAT incredible.
Bottom line: Stay within the given budget and look at what they want to do with the system BEFORE forming an opinion. Thank you.
The Spanish Inquisition
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The Spanish Inquisition
(15 items) |
