It is surprisingly difficult to buy decent hardware that doesn't light up like a goddamn christmas tree. I recently bought a mouse and had to filter out like half of the good candidates to avoid having a stupid LED on my desk. This past weekend I installed a new AMD CPU (my first AMD ever) and the stock cooler has this dumb ring light on it. The only way to disable it is to hook up the CPU fan to a USB port so it appears as a USB device and use some proprietary Windows software to turn it off. That's right, CPU fans are USB devices now! The motherboard I bought has some backlighting(?!) which thankfully you can disable in the BIOS, but that's such a waste of hardware. Almost every RAM cartridge looks like a flashy high-level dagger from an MMO.
What the fuck is with this trend? I just want a goddamn black box to sit there quietly in the corner.
They are also about as useful and "aesthetically pleasing" as the go-faster stripes on a 70's Ford Escort ;) At least on peripherals the bloody lights can usually be turned off in a bloated settings tool which always has an outrageous UI that screams "extreme gamer" too.
> The aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous to a vast majority of people
This sounds like perception bias to me. "The vast majority" of people are likely indifferent.
The amount that love it and the amount that hate it are probably about the same sizes.
Manufacturers just realized they can just target the part of the market that loves colorful stuff, charge more for it, and all groups, the lovers the haters and in between will buy it because it's the really the only stuff available. Which is the entire frustration the original post was complaining about: It's actually quite hard to find parts and cases (and even peripherals! It seems like most mechanical keyboards are light-up RGB keys nowadays) That don't have LEDs all over them.
For my new pc I got a black box. Well, mostly black box, it has a glass panel on one side, but it faces away from me. As few lighted parts as I could.
Considering how ugly and tacky many cases are, there could be a market for case cases to cover them up, though of course, they'd have to be well-ventilated also.
Silent base cases are sound dampened and have no open sides by design. There are.options for it, for the mentally challenged who buy a silent case but then want the functionality compromised.
I doubt the LEDs add more than a few cents to the BOM for these parts.
I imagine the line of thought goes something like this:
most people don't buy desktops. if they buy a desktop at all (instead of a laptop), they are probably an enthusiast. if they're building a desktop from parts, they are definitely an enthusiast. if they have a window in their case, they want blingy hardware. if they don't care about bling, they won't have a case window to begin with. QED, put LEDs on every single retail part. outside of the HN crowd, I don't think they're actually wrong.
personally I don't hate the idea of RGB LED parts, but I do hate the fact that I have three different poorly written apps that control the colors of different hardware/peripherals for the same computer. and they never all manage to remember their state after a reboot.
Yeah but when we were 16, we weren't buying this type of case off the shelf either, we were brining shitty beige box case panels into the metal shop, cutting holes in them, and screwing in plexiglass ourselves.
The whole aesthetic really does rest on a DIY aspect, off the shelf it's just obnoxious.
Not that hard IMHO. Sure, lots of the market has shifted, but e.g. many SSF options don't have a window, e.g. BeQuiet, FractalDesign and Bitfenix have window-less ones and all are IMHO in the range of "nice" (for different tastes), ...
If you look back far enough, you can see where the trend began. The infamous "beige PC." Enthusiasts wanted to not only build their own PC, but for it to be custom, and to look good. Cases could be bought with silver, black, white, even color! And with enthusiasts working hard to make the inside of their case look neat, tidy and visually appealing, windows became popular. As RGB LEDs became inexpensive and easily programmable, it became a way for users to customize their hand-built PC further. Of course OEMs want to capitalize on this.
I just don't quite understand why it's a complaint, though. Is it difficult to buy a case without a window, and set LEDs to some kind of steady state dark color? Or simply replace the stock cooler with the one that looks the way you want? The whole point is being able to pick and choose so it fits what you want. Is it really hard to buy hardware that doesn't light up? I went to Newegg.com and plenty of the CPU coolers there have no lights. And you were able to disable the motherboard lights.
I agree with you it's minor, and I admit I'm mostly just ranting (although lights on external peripherals like mice are inexcusable). But, waste annoys me. My CPU fan now has a microcontroller with USB logic on it, a bunch of LEDs and plastic light tunnels, and the requisite jacks to hook cables into, and came with two different cables I could use to control this light I don't want. What do I do with all this, just throw it away? That's a bunch of plastic and metal and manufacturing and shipping and packaging that neither I nor the planet need right now, and it's all going straight into the trash in a few years.
is it really so bad to have marginally more material on a hunk of metal you're going to throw away anyway? if you really cared, you could have bought a cpu that didn't come with a fan and a noctua cooler. they'll mail you a new socket adapter for free whenever you upgrade, so you can keep it running indefinitely.
Not only that, but you wouldn't be sacrificing anything. The noctua coolers have consistently been a top scorer for both performance and noise for years. Plus, they recently have started making black fans if you aren't a fan of the brown.
Right. As a builder, the point is to be able to choose what you include and what you don't.
I'm sort of a "semi-lazy" builder who is happy to have motherboard RGB, Wraith coolers, and Sapphire lit up on my video card, because I like the lights, but wouldn't put in the effort to get them if they weren't included.
It seems to be getting harder to get motherboards without anything included, though I haven't specifically tried to shop for that. There still seems to be enough variety in cases, coolers, RAM and video cards to avoid RGB included in those components. Prior to Wraith coolers, there were always those builders who would get a crappy included cooler with their CPU and throw it in the trash to buy a proper quiet, efficient CPU cooler. Here I'm glad they are including a cooler that meets my needs, and I'm not having to shop around for a second purchase.
It sounds like the prebuilts put a lot into gaudy, visible stuff that looks good in the product photos like lots of RGB LEDs and cheap out on less visible stuff like noise levels and adequate rear I/O.
Many people are happy to save $100 in exchange for not having 8 USB ports. Or $300 to not have dual 10G Ethernet ports.
If you aren't getting "adequate rear I/O" then go looking for a prebuilt Threadripper Pro system with $700 motherboard. There will be plenty of ports. They have to do something with 128 PCIe lanes.
It's a comparison of systems provided by their makers. My understanding is that in most cases, systems provided for review or comparison are returned to the maker once the review is complete.
> How to Buy a Gaming PC in 2021 Best Gaming PCs, GPUs, and more
I clicked on this in my Feedly expecting a "how to build" guide, but it's a "how to buy" guide!
For the builders, motherboards seem to have returned to Earth, and some Ryzen 5xxx desktop CPUs are starting to show availability at MSRP. It's only GPUs that still sting (stink?), though depending on what you have now, you may be able to reuse it and wait for GPU markets to also come back to Earth.
Anecdote: Built my most recent PC two years ago with slightly aging stuff... X470 + Ryzen 2700X. Held off on video card and got that one year ago... RX 5600XT. Kind of itching to get an RX 6800 which is nearly double the performance of my card, but $290 is the most I've ever spent on a video card.
RAM and storage are both pretty good value purchases these days!
I have noticed a change in tone on ars over the last few years, but I don't think this is fair. unless you think all tech review sites exist to sell hardware (true from a certain perspective). their hardware coverage is still pretty objective and I don't notice much obvious bias.
The front page, above the fold, of Ars for me right now has:
2 articles about Tesla (1 advertises another site),
A system buying guide,
Headphone review,
Electric car review
Its all product related. Below the fold I start to find something else, like the 'how to find a covid vaccine appointment' but that is from Wired. Ars really looks like more advertising than content to me. Kinda feeling like I aged out of Ars, I'm not the target market.
for sure, I don't appreciate the sometimes breathless coverage of current events. but unless you object to the existence of buying guides entirely on a tech news site, I don't find much issue with them. it's less dry than similar articles on anandtech, but usually consistent with them and the other hardware review sites. it's definitely not like wirecutter, where I usually find myself scratching my head when I see the recommended product for a domain I'm actually familiar with.
The article understates it, but for those out of the loop, getting a current-gen GPU is basically impossible unless you want to pay 3-4X MSRP on eBay to scalpers. Buying a prebuilt like this is the only way most people can get their hands on one, since OEMs have separate supply from retail.
The GPU market is so crazy that my Nvidia card I bought 6 years ago is selling right now on Ebay for 1.5X what I paid for it.
I don't know if people are actually doing that, but it's crazy that it's plausibly possible to do so profitably.
For example, this prebuilt desktop from Maingear costs $2,500 [0]. The notable components are a AMD 5900X and Nvidia 3080. The 3080 alone has been sold for $2,000-2,500 (MSRP $699) on eBay. The 5900X has been sold for $600-700 (MSRP $549).
It looks like this is all about prebuilts, and IMO unless you are going to nitpick on $/performance and whatever case they give you, all the prebuilts are more or less interchangeable, especially if you are playing on 1080p.
What you really need to consider, and where this Ars guide falls short, is on the vendor's support after you buy. Although I did not find an easy summary screen while scrubbing through the video and I am too lazy to compile one myself, the gulf between good and bad is is almost absurd. Definitely check out Linus Tech Tip's video where they buy a prebuilt system from a variety of vendors and put their support agents through a live fire support call for a routine shipping issue (memory falling out of the slot). Also quite telling is that this is the second time they have done it, and not many of the vendors have bothered to improve their process from the first go around.
It is a sad reflection of 2020 that the Ars Technica system guide is a review of three mainstream prebuilt systems. I looked into the Lenovo, HP, and Dell systems, each of which have showed up on deal sites recently with an RTX 3070, 3080, or 3090. Here are some things I found:
One review claimed that the HP Omen has some kind of RAM serial number check in the BIOS: even if you buy the exact brand and model of HyperX Fury RAM, it will run slower, unless you buy it from HP. Generally, the HP Omen 25L and 30L were both knocked for loud/inadequate cooling. There are also complaints about difficulty canceling orders after discovering long shipping times that were not adequately disclosed at order time.
I didn't research the Alienware Aurora as much as the other two, but I did find some complaints about loud/inadequate cooling.
The Lenovo Legion Tower 7i looked really good. Decent design with adequate cooling. Shipping times are reasonable, because they only seem to list configurations that they actually have. If there is a complaint, it's that their configurations are fixed. You can't configure the RAM or storage. I didn't find as much detail on the 5i, but it seems reasonable within its limits (e.g., doesn't seem to be available with RTX 3080).
I also looked at prebuilts from CyberPower, iBuyPower, Corsair, Falcon Northwest, Origin, and others. I presume that their build quality is superior and/or less proprietary, which is generally reflected in their price.
I gave up on building my own this time around, and bought an MSI Trident X that happened to show up in stock one evening at Adorama. Its 1TB SSD came partitioned strangely (split into two big partitions with a recovery partition in between them), but MSI has a video on YouTube demonstrating how to fix that using Partition Assistant. I've only had it a few days, but I'm impressed that they squeezed a 10700K and RTX 3080 into a box significantly smaller and quieter than my home-built Ivy Bridge with a GTX 1060. I was able to add a 2TB M.2 with no trouble, and there's even room for 2.5" drive or two.
33 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] threadWhat the fuck is with this trend? I just want a goddamn black box to sit there quietly in the corner.
The aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous to a vast majority of people, myself included.
Especially the average person is going to look at the one with lights and the one without and assume the one with lights is automatically ‘better’.
It helps sales, it helps jack up prices.
You can see it in the dark clearly.
It looks more interesting on a live stream, something very important these days.
They’re programmable, and can be a fun way to express your personality.
These are just a few reasons this is a trend. :)
This sounds like perception bias to me. "The vast majority" of people are likely indifferent.
The amount that love it and the amount that hate it are probably about the same sizes.
Manufacturers just realized they can just target the part of the market that loves colorful stuff, charge more for it, and all groups, the lovers the haters and in between will buy it because it's the really the only stuff available. Which is the entire frustration the original post was complaining about: It's actually quite hard to find parts and cases (and even peripherals! It seems like most mechanical keyboards are light-up RGB keys nowadays) That don't have LEDs all over them.
Considering how ugly and tacky many cases are, there could be a market for case cases to cover them up, though of course, they'd have to be well-ventilated also.
I imagine the line of thought goes something like this:
most people don't buy desktops. if they buy a desktop at all (instead of a laptop), they are probably an enthusiast. if they're building a desktop from parts, they are definitely an enthusiast. if they have a window in their case, they want blingy hardware. if they don't care about bling, they won't have a case window to begin with. QED, put LEDs on every single retail part. outside of the HN crowd, I don't think they're actually wrong.
personally I don't hate the idea of RGB LED parts, but I do hate the fact that I have three different poorly written apps that control the colors of different hardware/peripherals for the same computer. and they never all manage to remember their state after a reboot.
I guess the demographic that buys PC parts these days is gamers that are into this stuff (as I was when I was 16, anyone remember cold cathodes?).
The vast majority of non-gamer computer buyers buy systems (or laptops) from Dell & co.
The whole aesthetic really does rest on a DIY aspect, off the shelf it's just obnoxious.
I just don't quite understand why it's a complaint, though. Is it difficult to buy a case without a window, and set LEDs to some kind of steady state dark color? Or simply replace the stock cooler with the one that looks the way you want? The whole point is being able to pick and choose so it fits what you want. Is it really hard to buy hardware that doesn't light up? I went to Newegg.com and plenty of the CPU coolers there have no lights. And you were able to disable the motherboard lights.
Here are lots of black boxes to pick from: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007583%20600006506
It could have just been a dumb DC brush motor.
I'm sort of a "semi-lazy" builder who is happy to have motherboard RGB, Wraith coolers, and Sapphire lit up on my video card, because I like the lights, but wouldn't put in the effort to get them if they weren't included.
It seems to be getting harder to get motherboards without anything included, though I haven't specifically tried to shop for that. There still seems to be enough variety in cases, coolers, RAM and video cards to avoid RGB included in those components. Prior to Wraith coolers, there were always those builders who would get a crappy included cooler with their CPU and throw it in the trash to buy a proper quiet, efficient CPU cooler. Here I'm glad they are including a cooler that meets my needs, and I'm not having to shop around for a second purchase.
If you aren't getting "adequate rear I/O" then go looking for a prebuilt Threadripper Pro system with $700 motherboard. There will be plenty of ports. They have to do something with 128 PCIe lanes.
> How to Buy a Gaming PC in 2021 Best Gaming PCs, GPUs, and more
I clicked on this in my Feedly expecting a "how to build" guide, but it's a "how to buy" guide!
For the builders, motherboards seem to have returned to Earth, and some Ryzen 5xxx desktop CPUs are starting to show availability at MSRP. It's only GPUs that still sting (stink?), though depending on what you have now, you may be able to reuse it and wait for GPU markets to also come back to Earth.
Anecdote: Built my most recent PC two years ago with slightly aging stuff... X470 + Ryzen 2700X. Held off on video card and got that one year ago... RX 5600XT. Kind of itching to get an RX 6800 which is nearly double the performance of my card, but $290 is the most I've ever spent on a video card.
RAM and storage are both pretty good value purchases these days!
You can't build these systems because you almost can't find these GPU's.
Its all product related. Below the fold I start to find something else, like the 'how to find a covid vaccine appointment' but that is from Wired. Ars really looks like more advertising than content to me. Kinda feeling like I aged out of Ars, I'm not the target market.
The GPU market is so crazy that my Nvidia card I bought 6 years ago is selling right now on Ebay for 1.5X what I paid for it.
What has the world come to?
For example, this prebuilt desktop from Maingear costs $2,500 [0]. The notable components are a AMD 5900X and Nvidia 3080. The 3080 alone has been sold for $2,000-2,500 (MSRP $699) on eBay. The 5900X has been sold for $600-700 (MSRP $549).
[0]: https://maingear.com/product/vybe-stage-4-amd/
What you really need to consider, and where this Ars guide falls short, is on the vendor's support after you buy. Although I did not find an easy summary screen while scrubbing through the video and I am too lazy to compile one myself, the gulf between good and bad is is almost absurd. Definitely check out Linus Tech Tip's video where they buy a prebuilt system from a variety of vendors and put their support agents through a live fire support call for a routine shipping issue (memory falling out of the slot). Also quite telling is that this is the second time they have done it, and not many of the vendors have bothered to improve their process from the first go around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ViO0ETvfEc
One review claimed that the HP Omen has some kind of RAM serial number check in the BIOS: even if you buy the exact brand and model of HyperX Fury RAM, it will run slower, unless you buy it from HP. Generally, the HP Omen 25L and 30L were both knocked for loud/inadequate cooling. There are also complaints about difficulty canceling orders after discovering long shipping times that were not adequately disclosed at order time.
I didn't research the Alienware Aurora as much as the other two, but I did find some complaints about loud/inadequate cooling.
The Lenovo Legion Tower 7i looked really good. Decent design with adequate cooling. Shipping times are reasonable, because they only seem to list configurations that they actually have. If there is a complaint, it's that their configurations are fixed. You can't configure the RAM or storage. I didn't find as much detail on the 5i, but it seems reasonable within its limits (e.g., doesn't seem to be available with RTX 3080).
I also looked at prebuilts from CyberPower, iBuyPower, Corsair, Falcon Northwest, Origin, and others. I presume that their build quality is superior and/or less proprietary, which is generally reflected in their price.
I gave up on building my own this time around, and bought an MSI Trident X that happened to show up in stock one evening at Adorama. Its 1TB SSD came partitioned strangely (split into two big partitions with a recovery partition in between them), but MSI has a video on YouTube demonstrating how to fix that using Partition Assistant. I've only had it a few days, but I'm impressed that they squeezed a 10700K and RTX 3080 into a box significantly smaller and quieter than my home-built Ivy Bridge with a GTX 1060. I was able to add a 2TB M.2 with no trouble, and there's even room for 2.5" drive or two.