# Did power users go extinct?



## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Seemingly popular concept in late 90s especially in computer scene, where people wanted to become masters of their machines is seemingly shrinking. You can no longer buy a decent Maximum PC magazine and magazines in general are dead. 

Here's what Maximum PC spiritual successor (of website) wrote about high performance computing scene:
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-hardware-needs-to-grow-up/#comment-jump

It's a standard criticism of current times. Also there's a wikipedia article of power users:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_user

RGB itself isn't bad, crazy designs were all rage in early 00s. Maximum PC's decline started in second half of 00s. Generally they just didn't feel like they were trying to stay maximum and they mostly remained maximum in spending money and encouraging stupid culture of overpaying for computers and gadgets for differences that nobody cares.

Once Youtube became a thing soon there appeared PC hardware Youtubers. They mostly came from hardware stores and did Youtube to promote products. Few became more investigating and more informative such as LTT. And then at around 2010 most Youtubers started to focus on higher video fidelity, distilled information, less technical videos and pretty much nobody really talks about component workings anymore. JayZ, LTT, Austin, Teksyndicate and etc barely ever are going to talk about CPU or GPU architecture. Pretty much nobody will talk what each component of each computer part does exactly (like DRAM on SSD or FPU on CPU). 

Smartphones were here since a long time ago and back then they were first of all tools. Looks, costly materials, screens barely mattered, they were mostly power user focused devices and nothing more. Now phones are exact opposites of that. Expensive, fragile and generally dumbed down. Rooting and modding scene shrunk, "minimalist" design is everywhere, functionality barely changes.

Pretty much any compute device now has to be an overglorified living room appliance, because people will be too scared away by its "user-unfriendliness". Many people are now buying Macs (Apple almost went bankrupt in 90s), because usage intensity of such device is much lower than Mac's in 90s. Using shortcuts on keyboard is becoming less and less popular. 

Software in general became bloated and less functional (Acrobat Reader 8 vs DC, both are slow, one is bigger than other and yet they do exact same thing), the culture of lightweight, streamlined and functional software like 7zip, foobar2000 is just not there anymore. 

Pretty much much everyone ignores the fact that new Radeons are pretty much DOA with awful driver problems, nearly 100C temperature and loud fans. Nobody cares anymore if computer is loud or quiet, how hot it runs (as long as in manufacturer spec). Critical thinking, doubts are just aren't there. Those were replaced with naive expectations that everything will just work somehow. 

The only remnants of older computer culture are now at best left in niches. Only some reviewers do decent reviews (TechPowerUp, Guru 3D, Tom's Hardware, Anandtech), on Youtube there's barely anyone who actually promotes such culture, written press is practically dead and digital versions are barely fine.

Not even hackers and tweakers are as good as they once were. Particularly speaking about Low Spec Gamer. Fans respect him, but he's not really knowledgeable in what he does (usually doesn't do anything more than just selecting low settings, disabling shadows, reducing resolution, while ignoring that anisotropic filtering and textures improves visual quality at no fps cost). Der8auer isn't exactly top notch specialist either, I don't think that he ever had to solder a motherboard to improve component quality for extreme overclocking.

Windows has been losing functionality since Vista, even XP itself was a slight regression from previous versions. No longer Windows require technical knowledge to use it properly, many settings are hidden and some are removed permanently.

The situation of power users is just getting worse and it seems that such culture is slowly going extinct. Even the ones, who are willing to learn more and improve their own knowledge have to look at older learning materials, often older hardware. Many are just left in complete isolation and no leads to learning more. That's a shame.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

Niches exist as you have mentioned yourself. So no, you knew the answer to your question all along and the answer is no, power users did not go extinct.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> Here's what Maximum PC spiritual successor (of website) wrote about high performance computing scene:
> https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-hardware-needs-to-grow-up/#comment-jump


I just bought a 'gaming' PC for myself.

One of the first things I noticed was that all the most expensive products are pointless flashy designs aimed at youngsters.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

HAL said:


> I just bought a 'gaming' PC for myself.
> 
> One of the first things I noticed was that all the most expensive products are pointless flashy designs aimed at youngsters.


That's not true. Here's a breakdown:

CPU - impossible to make it look anything other than metal slab, all performance no flash
Motherboard - high end motherboards have more PCIe lanes, thicker PCBs, better cooling, more robust VRMs, more cutomizable UEFI, more ports, better audio chipset, fail code screen, WiFi and other things. Sure, flashiness is there, but any decent mobo with flashiness also has many hardware features to make it better for tweakers and overclockers or just someone looking for more functionality.
Graphics cards - Those are flashy as heck, but further inspection tells that higher end models have quieter (cheap cards are still loud), higher diameter fans, more heatpipes, more fans, water cooling options, better VRMs, higher clock speeds out of box.
RAM - mostly just flashiness, but for extreme overclockers cooling of it might be important. Otherwise more expensive RAM usually gives XMP (or AMP aka AMD's XMP), higher clock speeds, lower latency, sometimes lower voltage.
SSD - usually not flashy, just that some are needlessly overpriced (Samsung). More expensive SSDs give you more sequential and random speed, better controller, MLC or even SLC flash, higher end interface.
Cases - yes, mostly are purely made expensive for flashiness, but some are just nice cases (Fractal's Define series, CM Silencio series, Be Quiet Base series). Anything gamery will always be obnoxious and often with shit airflow.
PSU - expensive PSUs are absolutely not needed, but they often have slightly better efficiency, hybrid mode (or are completely fanless like Silverstone Nightjar), slightly more stable electricity, modular cables, quiet fans, sleeving, more electrical protections. 
Sound card - a recent victim of RGB without substance, but now sound cards work more like DACs and can clean up processed audio, some still give EAX modes for legacy games.
Hard drives - more expensive models sadly are very secretive about their capabilities, but some have more caches, some promise longer lifespan.
Cooling - most of it is flashy bullshit, but the bigger air cooler you get the better it cools. Similar with water. Corsair is always a scam.

I don't think that manufacturers are always jacking up prices for RGB crap or gamery aesthetic. Often they put some stuff to make it different enough. But then again Asrock sometimes picks same motherboard, repaints it and sells as gaming one. There are tons of features in many products, which you may not care about or won't give you any performance benefit. Scams exist as well as just low quality products. Frankly this existed since forever. What is changing is that in past 10 years people became less critical of bad things in industry and apparently awful products don't suffer from poor sales. It would be understandable if unsuspecting customer bought something not knowing better, but then there are tons of enthusiasts that justify way too many manufacturer poor decisions. Myths also seem more rampant and widespread than ever, some are really old and awfully incorrect.

Here's a very short list of shame:
CPU - i9 9900K, anything higher end than i9 9900K. You need fire extinguisher for cooling, not cool. Celeron G4900 is also absolutely pointless part, Pentiums costs a little bit more and Athlon 3000G costs the same and performs much better. Still, Athlon 3000G or Pentium G5400 are by no means a great products. Nobody should buy a dual core CPU in 2020. AMD used to offer quad cores at this price in early 2010s. Athlon 3000G is a disgrace. Ironically it could be beaten by overclocked Athlon X4 940 at same price and same socket, ouch. Even aging Athlon II X4 models can nearly match new Zen Athlon and they only cost 10 dollars on eBay, that's a crazy good value.
Motherboard - anything with AMD X570 chipset, anything with Z390 and two EPS connectors. Chipset fans are still unwelcome feature, especially small and loud ones. And new motherboard shouldn't require two or one way too high end PSU just to run it.
Graphics card - Lots of XFXs. Asus TUF cards with 80mm fans and sunflower cooler. XFX must tone down on shrouds and Asus must get new glass prescription if they don't see what is wrong with 2 80mm fans and single small sunflower cooler.
RAM - frankly no0thing really, but RGB is getting really obnoxious and low profile RAM isn't appreciated enough.
SSD - most super cheap SSD are true data hazards, super expensive SSDs with heatsinks is just no. SSDs are really sensitive to heat, you don't want it unless losing data is fine by you. Those SSDs with heatsinks are hazards, just like super cheap ones are due to self destructive controllers.
Cases - anything with glass at front is just no. Airflow and optical drives still matter. Some of use still want a Blu-ray drive or manual fan controller or memory card reader at front. Side windows are understandable, but it would be better to have a metal panel with 200mm fan bracket and noise dampener instead.
PSU - most of them are scams anyway and don't really do anything significantly better than 40-50 Euro ones. Corsair loves to inflate their prices for no reason, some are still making time bombs.
Sound cards - very overpriced stuff and mostly aren't any better than older models or much cheaper DACs, which in fact often beat them. AE5 was nothing special, AE9 is way too costly for what it does. eVGA card underperforms for its price. 
Hard drives - generally decent market, but sadly they stopped getting cheaper for capacity, too bad. Also capacity per drive is also stuck at 14TB. There are no speed or quietness improvements either.
Cooling - there are more good and cheap air coolers, but most brands are jacking up prices. Asus apparently charges 3 times more than their coolers are worth. Corsair as usually are overpriced underperformers. Their 140 Euro cooler is still beaten by 60 Euro Scythe Ninja. Otherwise cooler market is as stagnant as hard drive market. No new players, same products, same prices.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

The Low Spec Gamer went on Computerphile, it was pretty weird.









HAL said:


> I just bought a 'gaming' PC for myself.
> 
> One of the first things I noticed was that all the most expensive products are pointless flashy designs aimed at youngsters.


My younger cousin desperately wanted a gaming PC. My Aunt and Uncle only wanted to give him a laptop for school related purposes. I pretty much disagreed with that anyway because middle school only involves trivial computer use like logging into a homework website to do multiple choice questions, any existing computer they had would do fine. But for some reason there was some idealized sense that "you need a computer" going into school but the reality hasn't really changed much since I went to school a decade ago.

But anyway, he did end up getting both. But he asked me "is this one good?" Frankly, I don't really care about LED gaming PCs with glass covers. But ultimately I think he mainly wanted to know if it was good at playing games. Sure it was. He also bought the annoying clickly keyboard, gaming mouse and headset. I don't think he knows anything about computer parts, but I feel like he was motivated by friends using PCs to game who were likely motivated by the entire PC Master Race trend.

We didn't really have blockbuster games when I was a kid. We had nostalgic Star Wars and Jurassic Park games dated to early 2000s and the computer couldn't do much else. Besides playing games, the computer largely an information tool. Wikipedia was the GOAT of websites. Now people get computers just to play games, savages.

Sometimes I regret my major choice because people keep asking me about computers. I screwed up by picking a skill with too much demand.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

Grandmaster Yoda said:


> The Low Spec Gamer went on Computerphile, it was pretty weird.


Still doesn't really change the fact that he doesn't much about what game settings do and to which specific GPU part, thus he sometimes end up making games look like ass needlessly.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> HAL said:
> 
> 
> > I just bought a 'gaming' PC for myself.
> ...


Sorry, you're right.

What I meant was, the most overtly advertised.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Grandmaster Yoda said:


> We didn't really have blockbuster games when I was a kid. We had nostalgic Star Wars and Jurassic Park games dated to early 2000s and the computer couldn't do much else.


Yeah, it was basically just games and you installed them on your PC, and it would probably work because the creators were often just advanced programming enthusiasts working from their own home computer. The whole blockbuster/AAA thing is a bad but probably inevitable evolution, we now have 'Hollywood' style games companies which can throw millions into a game, while the rest is mostly indie productions which are never anywhere near as big. It just feels shite, a bit like how some of the biggest TV shows are total shit, the only reason they survive is because they're made by industry behemoths with giant advertising budgets.

Back in the 'good old days', say late 90s/early 2000s was when there was any real grassroots feeling to games. One of the last genuine gaming companies I know of is Croteam, who made Serious Sam in 2001. They started in their friend's garage and wrote a game engine specifically to suit the type of game they wanted to make. 

Really interesting little success story here:






Now success is largely about $$$ thrown on advertising budgets.


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

The red spirit said:


> Still doesn't really change the fact that he doesn't much about what game settings do and to which specific GPU part, thus he sometimes end up making games look like ass needlessly.


That's what made it weird. Well not that exactly. But the fact that he was basically droning on about configuration files for 15 minutes on a YouTube channel that will teach you how computers work at the theoretical level.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

HAL said:


> Sorry, you're right.
> 
> What I meant was, the most overtly advertised.


That's really true, some ads are nearly scams. The worst ads are of motherboards and GPUs. When you see sub 50 dollar motherboard with 4+2 phase naked VRMs boasting "DDR4 3200MHz", "Superb performance", "optimized cooling", "Ultrafast transfer speed", "stable power supply" and "ASUS Prime is the next evolution of the ASUS motherboard", "empowering everyone to enjoy the benefits of customization and tuning, and the driving force behind the development of Prime is to make advanced enthusiast controls easily accessible — maximizing performance, stability and compatibility for the very best DIY PC experiences". From reading all that stuff you would be tempted to think that it's something actually cool and nice. Meanwhile the reality is that it's just bottom of the barrel board with massive vDroop, limited UEFI, no overclocking capabilities, likely throttling VRMs nearly always running at 100C, which is very far from "very best DIY PC experience". 

Here's a link to that specific board:
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-A320M-C-R2-0/

They even dare to claim that this board supports Ryzen 9 3950X. Which is... while technically correct, (I remember AMD trying to discontinue A320 chipset and lock it out of Ryzen 3rd gen) is really misleading due to the fact that there's no way that this board will work well with that CPU. It will barely work at best. 

And then there's AMD:
https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-550

Card in question is RX 550. The lowest end RX 5xx series card, which isn't really enough for 1080p gaming nowadays. And yet:
"Transform Your PC into a Gaming Machine"
"High Performance Gaming at your Desk"

They sort of provided some benchmark results of several games. It is supposed to blow Intel HD 530 and R7 250 out of water. And yet resolution and settings were not mentioned. Maybe they tested it at 800x600 low or maybe they tested it at 4k ultra. A buyer wouldn't know, but would expect some kind of solid gaming experience. Misleading marketing at its best, they also dare to say that Athlon 3000G is good for gaming. At least they said that only with eSport titles and at 720p, but what is "smooth" is unclear. 30 fps or more? 

In the past there were some really outrageous claims of computer hardware makers. Just like now, no matter what a pile of poo they make they gonna advertise low end part nearly as much as high end one. I think that 3D accelerator era was the worst in terms of misleading advertisements. Also a decent PC back then used to cost at least 1000 dollars, so they rob you off more money than today. Imagine buying a 3D accelerator only to find that it cannot display any 2D, cannot play back MP2 videos (what DVDs used), it actually deccelerates 3D, cannot display textures properly, doesn't use supported API and your whole game library is just 20 games, is missing some fundamental 3D features, drivers are completely broken. Even the best of the best had some problems, they weren't really avoidable.

Motherboards also used to be a minefield. The used to be many makers of chipset. You pick the wrong one and you suffer. You could actually pick one with incorrect FSB speed, wrong AGP speed, wrong socket for same generation CPU (Athlon 64 had socket 754, socket 939, socket 940 support and I think it even had S1G1 socket for laptops), you may buy a board with CPU slot instead of CPU socket, a board without any AGP at all. You had to really know what you were buying when you wanted a blazing fast Pentium III machine.

And while we have RGB and AIOs now plus stupid gamery aesthetic, let's not forget how cool machines looked in 2003:





Then you wanted Thermaltake Xaser, colored fans, cold cathodes, acrylic window, lots of UV, LanParty board with UV and bright PCB, your power supply didn't have a sleeve so you put cables in rubber pipes or bright plastic spirals, you also wanted radioactive metal cut out on your window, 5.25" fan controller, VU meter and maybe even a cigarette lighter, better yet if PC had painted flames, translucent LED fans that could burn out your eyeballs and impair your hearing. Color matching wasn't a thing, because more colors, mean more status on interwebz. If you were on crazier side of PC building community you picked up used car radiator, went to aquarium shop for water pump, spent weekend crafting CPU block, then put everything in place, put some rubber tubes, zip tied them and you had a kickass machine. For maximum street cred you ran 4 WD Raptor hard drives (they ran at 10k rpms), all connected to full ATX LanParty board, you had top of the line Athlon XP and overclocked it past 3GHz, you bought ATi Radeon 9700 Pro and hacked its BIOS to unlock it to ATi Radeon 9800 Pro performance levels, soldered a volt mod, bought Arctic Slicencer and cranked up clock speeds to the moon. The sound card was must, Audigy 2ZS it was. You had DVD drive, floppy drive for multimedia capabilities. Power supply with name "PC Power and Cooling". Likely you even bought a separate internet card and even a WiFi card. Your RAM also had red letters that lighted up. This baby would cost you more than 5000 dollars, probably had more lights than your local disco, sounded louder than F-14 TOMCAT jet (which you most likely had parked in your driveway) and looked like something designed by guy Fieri. But did it all mattered to you? Nah, because such rig let you get a glimpse at near SSD speeds in 2003, explore Athlon 64 performance and enjoy the speed of ATi X800 XT PE a year earlier. 

But let's get back to topic. I don't really mind all those crazier, more obnoxious aesthetics. They have their own place, but it seems that people who shell out a good money PC only care about how it looks. There's barely such thing left as matching your own machine. By that I mean being an user of top notch computer knowledge, caring about performance the most, understanding your machine perfectly. Now it's more like "yeah I just spent some dollars, numbers are high, will replace it after 2 years". That's pretty much the whole PC culture nowadays. I haven't really seen people trying to mod GPU BIOS (except miners), doing simple volt mods, doing some soldering on brand new hardware. These were more or less normal in enthusiast crowds back in 2006. 

CPU overclocking now is mostly raise multiplier, add volts and run Prime95. Barely anyone knows what LLC is, what offsets do, what is AVX speed, what NB speed increase does and etc. 

Not so much curiosity there is left in deep hardware examination, where each part of GPU is explained in depth. That 3D rendering consists of:









and actually even more steps. I haven't seen anyone talking about ROPs, TMUs, fillrates, and other GPU specs. 

The real push to seek for more knowledge and mastery of computing is slowly fading away. There are no new materials talking about such topics. Old forums are fading away and computer magazine archives don't have every issue of every magazine.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

I always check out jonnyguru PSU reviews before I purchase a new PSU. They are probably the best at what they do, I recommend checking them out.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

leftover crack said:


> I always check out jonnyguru PSU reviews before I purchase a new PSU. They are probably the best at what they do, I recommend checking them out.


I'm not a fan of him. I think that he is more of PSU elitist, rather than adequate tester and fault checker. By his logic you would want the top of the top power supply, meanwhile a lower end unit is totally fine. I personally see nothing wrong with more affordable models. For my most recent build I bought Thermaltake Litepower 450 for just 32 Euros (around 35 dollars). And that build has:
AMD Athlon X4 845 (There was Athlon X4 870K before and before that just A6 7400K with integrated graphics)
AMD RX 580
2 sticks of DDR3 (2x4gb)
One sata SSD and one HDD
3 120mm fans
WiFi adapter

PSU calc shows that such rig could use 429 watts under maximum load. However the reality is that such numbers are absolutely unrealistic. Only once I managed to reach 420 watts with heavily overclocked AMD FX 6300, RX 580 while running OCCT and Furmark at the same time. I highly doubt that such load could be considered in any way realistic. So I knew that Athlon PC will eat 200 watts at most. 450 watt PSU looked safe for such computer. It's been a year and everything is fine. PSU doesn't even get hot or loud.

The takeaway here? PSUs overtime got seriously more capable and reliable. A cheap PSU can be a good one. Back in the day PSUs weren't usually tested as much, they didn't have as many safety features, their efficiency was poor, cooling as also not as good (they often had 80mm fans). Now power supplies have to be better tested, meet some efficiency standards to sell (like 80+ bronze), nearly all of them have 120mm fans, have some essential safety mechanisms (Litepower 450 has OCP, OVP, SCP), meet international safety standards. Most of PSUs are tested a lot before they reach customers and it's highly unlikely that you will get a real hazard.

If you want to find a good cheap PSU you should get it from reputable brand, check out table data especially at 12 volts, check what safety protections it has, avoid ones without any 6 pin connector, at least 2 year warranty, look for 80+ certification. If you do that and PSU meets this criteria, then it's likely a decent PSU. Obviously, finding a review would be awesome, but often that is simply impossible. 

I have also modified my other PSU. Which is in my main PC and it's FSP 700-50ARN. Another cheap unit for what it offers. I think it was below 60 Euros and it supplies 700 watts, has 80+ silver rating. Bought it because reviews were good for it. So what did I mod? It was a fan. I swapped stock Yate Loon fan to Arctic (F12 PWM?) fan to reduce noise output. The problem was that PSU fan had a different 2 pin connector and fan had standard computer 4 pin connector. So cutting, soldering and isolating had to be done. The mod worked and now fan is spinning at much slower speed. I only did it, because I knew that this unit is running cold and nothing really heats up in it. Also components of this PSU can survive quite toasty temps (85C I think). This PSU has survived at least 4 years by now and is working fine also it was good enough to for overclocking FX 6300 to 5.288GHz. Most of the time isn't even used to 30% of its full capacity.

There's just nothing wrong with cheaper power supplies, if you know what you are buying. Yet sites like jonnyGURU and a few others are often saying that lower end power supplies are almost hazards and that you are asking for setting your house on fire. They are simply promoting a culture of needless overspending. Because you know an 80 dollar Corsair is just an entry level unit. yet the reality is that most PSUs that are running in office PCs or are pushed out by OEMs are often sub 30 dollar ones without some actually relevant safety features and they run for nearly decade just fine. Ironically that Jonny dude went to work for Corsair. A reputable company, but also somewhat infamous for fucking up in some seriously spectacular ways (explosive VS and CX series units in the past). I don't think that I could trust him very much.


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## varikvalefor (Nov 11, 2019)

Although we are rare, we still exist. According to my experience, a lot of us use IRC and e-mail, as opposed to social media, for communication, anyway; this might explain the extreme lack of visible power users.

For the record, almost no well-written software demands that it is run on a "high-end" workstation; many "software engineers" have simply become accustomed to powerful machines and have forgotten concepts like the UNIX philosophy and putting love into one's creations. *All computer programs should be designed for very low-end machines.*

I shall periodically return and edit this response.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

varikvalefor said:


> Although we are rare, we still exist. According to my experience, a lot of us use IRC and e-mail, as opposed to social media, for communication, anyway; this might explain the extreme lack of visible power users.


I wouldn't be so sure. IRC is a pretty dead thing at this point. There are still some places good for someone like us. TechPowerUp is decent, Tom's still release some great reviews, Anandtech is still okay. There's pretty recent Computer Power User magazine, which is really cool. Basically whole Internet Archive is a gold mine (mags, software).



varikvalefor said:


> For the record, almost no well-written software demands that it is run on a "high-end" workstation; many "software engineers" have simply become accustomed to powerful machines and have forgotten concepts like the UNIX philosophy and putting love into one's creations. *All computer programs should be designed for very low-end machines.*


That's why I run 7zip, foobar2000, SumatraPDF, VLC, qBittorrent, Handbrake, sometimes Pale Moon. The worst software that I have on my machine is Office 365. It's really huge, consumes significant amount of RAM and can load CPU. It really annoys me when people like Linus says that older machines would be just fine running some Office tasks or browsing web. So untrue, Office can bring down even a respectable machine to its knees due to its massive bloat. Modern web is also very CPU heavy, RAM heavy and even GPU heavy. It's pretty much the most demanding task that anyone does everyday. Especially if you want to watch Youtube at 1440p. Many cards still don't have any hardware decoding for that resolution and whatever codec YT is using (VP9, I guess). Meaning that machine could be capable of playing blurays without any problem, but struggle to play a Youtube video. Even recent AMD RX 5xx series cards don't have any hardware acceleration for Youtube above 1080p. And the struggle is real. My AMD FX 6300 can play 1440p video, but 1440p at 60 fps is just too much. What a horrible design it is.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

The red spirit said:


> Obviously, finding a review would be awesome, but often that is simply impossible.


Uhm, I literally recommended a website that does PSU reviews to which you wrote a 6 paragraph response. Never have I ever bought a power supply without reading a jonnyguru article about it first, you don't have to get some recommended pick of theirs, just analyze the data provided and pick up the one you're comfortable with. 

I've got a feeling that you've never read a jonnyguru review before. That's fine, I don't have any hard feelings about that, it's not my purchase decision. My money will always be on a seasonic.


Also I love how this thread is about the scarcity of power users (lets forget that power users are inherently a niche demographic for a second) and yet you're yapping on about PSU elitism! Are you serious?


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

leftover crack said:


> I've got a feeling that you've never read a jonnyguru review before. That's fine, I don't have any hard feelings about that, it's not my purchase decision. My money will always be on a seasonic.


I did in the past, but he often reviews just something that I would never buy.



leftover crack said:


> Also I love how this thread is about the scarcity of power users (lets forget that power users are inherently a niche demographic for a second) and yet you're yapping on about PSU elitism! Are you serious?


Yes, I am. Like I said before it's not about splurging money on hardware, it's just about understanding hardware. Thus leading to more informed buying decisions, thus getting most from your money, thus getting the most reasonable stuff from your money. Then everything is in tiers. Certain people enjoy low end hardware, others mid range, others high end and then there are people going completely overkill. 

BTW who said that I am one of power users? I'm still learning and just wish there was a culture of that, as well as information given in easily digestible bits instead of talking like CS textbook.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

The red spirit said:


> Like I said before it's not about splurging money on hardware, it's just about understanding hardware. Thus leading to more informed buying decisions, thus getting most from your money, thus getting the most reasonable stuff from your money. Then everything is in tiers. Certain people enjoy low end hardware, others mid range, others high end and then there are people going completely overkill.


 Of course, you don't need to spend needless amounts of money on hardware. I only referenced jonnyguru because he gives very detailed reviews that I have a hard time of understanding, but I try to get a power supply with a jonnyguru review so that I could make sure that it will run reliably, i.e. not fail the hot box test. That to me is a low level power user move. If you're a high tier power user you could modify an average power supply with better components to make it run smoother, which is what you have done yourself I think you mentioned that. Good on you.



> BTW who said that I am one of power users? I'm still learning and just wish there was a culture of that, as well as information given in easily digestible bits instead of talking like CS textbook.


There's plenty of resources, you'll get the hang of it. Perhaps it's a good idea to start with resources from the 80's and 90's, getting a firm grasp on the basics of computing? Older PC's weren't as complex, this must be a good way of getting started. I never tried doing that so it's just an idea.


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## The red spirit (Sep 29, 2015)

leftover crack said:


> Of course, you don't need to spend needless amounts of money on hardware. I only referenced jonnyguru because he gives very detailed reviews that I have a hard time of understanding, but I try to get a power supply with a jonnyguru review so that I could make sure that it will run reliably, i.e. not fail the hot box test. That to me is a low level power user move. If you're a high tier power user you could modify an average power supply with better components to make it run smoother, which is what you have done yourself I think you mentioned that. Good on you.


Besides Jonny, there are many others who decently review power supplies. I really don't care who exactly reviews them as long as there is some value in review.

I only mentioned swapping fan to make PSU quieter, I haven't touched other components (or well... I did, getting some capacitor discharge was weird)




leftover crack said:


> There's plenty of resources, you'll get the hang of it. Perhaps it's a good idea to start with resources from the 80's and 90's, getting a firm grasp on the basics of computing? Older PC's weren't as complex, this must be a good way of getting started. I never tried doing that so it's just an idea.


Except not really, finding PC of such vintage is a financial disaster. Late 90s PC is doable, but getting a machine from 80s is totally not. There's not a single machine that old on local market and on eBay they are as expensive as new computers. Plus you have to deal with heavily degraded components. If something dies, there are nearly no parts. Even early 00s PC can become very expensive once you start replacing parts (which will happen). 

80s computers often had completely different architectures thus they have nothing similar to "IBM compatibles". I find reading older press about computers adequate for now. BTW I wrote about my adventures with legacy hardware (mostly to only get discouraged with component reliability and pretty much forgetting about project until I can waste money like no tomorrow):
https://www.personalitycafe.com/science-technology/1160874-athlonium-64-a.html


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## Alice Alipheese (Aug 16, 2019)

Gamer nexus gets super into stuff quite a bit. Also level1techs with wendell is damn good. for those that are super into PC stuff. He is by far a PC master.


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## leftover crack (May 12, 2013)

The red spirit said:


> https://www.personalitycafe.com/science-technology/1160874-athlonium-64-a.html


:heart: athlon 64 
i still keep one in a ring box. It doesn't quite fit in it but the last time I checked it only had a few slightly bent pins so it's doing rather well :') I don't know why it found itself in there, perhaps the old 2007 HP desktop it was in had a bad PSU? maybe it was the motherboard but I kept the CPU. Oh no actually I think it went something like this: I tampered with the machine and the cpu fried itself or whatever my dad took it in to get it repaired it got the new athlon chip that im still holding on to and a new psu and case yes and then after a few more years it failed again but I had my laptop by then so it was fine c: 2007-2013 me would be shook I was 100% a desktop kid well probably because I only had my desktop and it was all mine eventually anyway but im definitely more partial to laptops now that I've lost my interest in gaming I actually had a desktop gaming pc too but i rarely ever actually played games on it! why the heck would I need a desktop, all I want now is a thin and light. I'm definitely a casual gamer if a gamer at all so I will stick to consoles.


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