Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

[thesloc]

Everybody knows that desktop technology is pretty much outdated (if not archaic already). The future obviously belongs to mobile technology.

Anyway -- kinda tired of cleaning the tower components every month...no matter how air-tight/dust free your environment is, you'll ALWAYS be guaranteed dust.


Why can't they just get rid of PSUs and giant ass heatsinks/fans all together??


This is becoming a design flaw -- as PSUs haven't really changed (the concept/purpose of them) in at least 2 decades. Kinda like BIOS technology.

Anyone else tired of this desktop poverty technology???

While I'm down here -- can anyone tell if these caps need recapping???




Poverty desktops; not even once.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Most of the caps you have there are solid polymer, so no need to replace them.

Dust gets the same in mobile devices too, at least the ones that have fans in them. And the effect is usually 10x worse than a "poverty desktop". If a laptop had that amount of dust in the heatsink, it'd probably be dead by now. More laptops and tablets and whatever = more work for me, so i'm not complaining.

[tmiha71]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Fighting dust, tough one task, as idea - build overpressure in the case (slightly stronger vent for intake - stronger than all outtake fans). With intake filters of course... Maybe it will work without filters. Haven't tried. Only guess...

[c_hegge]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Dust is one of the main reasons I prefer desktops. In a laptop, it takes half an hour to get many of them apart for cleaning. It's more like half a minute on a desktop. Besides, I never get dust. My case has one exhaust fan and four intake fans (which all have filters on them), so no air gets in unless it goes through the dust filters first, and cleaning them out is easy

Also, laptops don't usually play games (and those that do overheat and seldom last longer than 2 or 3 years). For the average consumer, desktops may very well be replaced by smartphones and tablets. BUT, for the corporate and enthusiast market, that won't be happening any time soon.

[smason]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Holy crap, I have 2 long haired dogs, and I only clean my desktop out every 4 months.
Maybe try cleaning your house once in a while!

As for why desktops? Performance, flexibility (customizing a notebook is pretty limited), reliability, etc. etc.

[1supertech]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Holy crap, I have 2 long haired dogs, and I only clean my desktop out every 4 months.
Maybe try cleaning your house once in a while!

As for why desktops? Performance, flexibility (customizing a notebook is pretty limited), reliability, etc. etc.

LOL that is funny

[cheapie]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

The main problem with laptops is that manufacturers can't standardize anything.

[Pentium4]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

That LiteOn PSU probably has bad Ltec in it

[Uniballer]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

My eyes aren't what they were 30 years ago, so I do not enjoy staring at a 15" screen. 24" is more like it.

[mariushm]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

2x24" monitors here , 1920x1080 and 1920x1200

4 hard drives, 5.5 TB+ of disk space ... try fitting that into a laptop.

Doing video encoding to get a paycheck and feed by hobbies and pay the rent... try doing hd encodings for 10 hours in a row on a laptop.

I do have an IBM T40 on the desk, which is great for quickly taking it with me somewhere if needed, but otherwise is gathering dust.

Not everyone is just going on facebook or youtube and wastes their time, so a phone or laptop is not the best tool for everything.

ps. laptops gather dust too.. and it's worse with them, they can cook themselves and they're harder to open and clean, while desktop computers can be easily opened and have much higher tolerance to heat provided you have quality parts in the first place, not shitty oem motherboards and lowest/cheapest dell/hp desktops.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Comparing a PC to a tablet is like comparing a B-double to a kei truck. I'll stick to PCs for the time being.

I think I have cleaned my PC maybe 4 times since 2006, and this PC never has the side panel on. Does air conditioning play a part in helping send dust particles all over the place? I ask that as my house does not have air conditioning.

I will agree however that some aspects of the PC should have changed long ago, probably during the transition from AT to ATX:

A PC should still be able to boot (e.g. into BIOS/POST/visual error) and show something on the screen with no RAM modules installed, or if any other minor error occurs (aside from having a completely missing CPU or graphics card/display adapter of course), rather than beeping and/or flashing lights like something from 1976. It wouldn't be that hard to include 1MB of RAM somewhere on the board, or even as part of the CPU itself like L1/L2 cache etc. (where this RAM is not used if memory modules are installed, so if you have 1GB installed, it wouldn't be 1GB+1MB). The same could be said about graphics cards, why can't you upgrade these by adding memory in a similar fashion? Who remembers the Sound Blaster AWE32 which had its own memory slots on the card itself?

I also agree that current power supplies are physically too small, the form factor may have been good for 250W in the AT days, but these days there is no room to fit large components like transformers, capacitors and heat sinks inside a 150x140x85mm box for a decent amount of wattage and retain good airflow (250W doesn't cut it for today's computers, with CPUs and GPUs being orders of magnitude more powerful than those from 1992, even if power usage has dropped dramatically). It doesn't matter whether they are meant to be repaired (serviced) or not, it's not the point. I won't even get started on SFF PSUs, or even SFF cases for that matter. Ugh.

[lti]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

If that's how your computer looks after one month, you have other problems. A laptop would get just as dirty, but they're harder to clean.

I don't know why anyone would buy a new laptop. I don't know if any aren't junk. I guess Dell laptops and Lenovo Thinkpads might be okay since they don't use the same hardware as everyone else, but almost all laptops are made in the same factory using almost identical hardware.

I guess some people like using an unstable and unreliable computer that has a really crappy cooling system with a tiny vent that the fan has to suck air through, the worst display, keyboard, and touchpad they could find. If a modern laptop lasts more than six months without needing some piece of hardware replaced, you are extremely lucky.

[thesloc]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

All my laptops seldom collect dust. The new ones have a little net sort of thing that prevents heavier particles from being collected or sucked in all the way into the heat sink.

Although I have seen pretty bad laptops. Hell but I've still seen more dust-plagued desktops than laptops (I'm solely a laptop tech)

[ratdude747]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Holy crap, I have 2 long haired dogs, and I only clean my desktop out every 4 months.
Maybe try cleaning your house once in a while!

As for why desktops? Performance, flexibility (customizing a notebook is pretty limited), reliability, etc. etc.

Agreed. even without filters ive never seen a pc get that dirty in a month. Even in the dirtiest of places.

[thesloc]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Its probably a design flaw in the case

The fan acts as the only vacuum, so any small amount of dust -- anywhere -- goes through it.

I should probably get rid of it or get a new one or new case altogether.

Anyone have any suggestions? (the most air-circulating)

[Uniballer]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Antec Three Hundred moves a lot of air and has decent dust filtering. Some people don't like the bottom-mounted power supply and top fan.

[newtothis]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

My view.... Try playing Call of Duty Black Ops 2 on multiple monitors at highest graphic level with a laptop... HA!

Try Overclocking any laptop to the extent of a desktop!

Try beating cooling solutions for desktops with any laptop!

FAIL! FAIL! FAIL! = EPIC FAIL!

[Sparkey55]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

I have all desktop computers here. No laptops no cellphones no Ipads or Iwhatevers. I have radios that weigh more than a pallet full of laptops. The largest cause of dust in computers like you show is from nicotine smoke or pot smoke. A computer case sitting on the floor also is not good for air flow.

[Elysarian]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

Comparing a PC to a tablet is like comparing a B-double to a kei truck. I'll stick to PCs for the time being.

I think I have cleaned my PC maybe 4 times since 2006, and this PC never has the side panel on. Does air conditioning play a part in helping send dust particles all over the place? I ask that as my house does not have air conditioning.

I will agree however that some aspects of the PC should have changed long ago, probably during the transition from AT to ATX:

A PC should still be able to boot (e.g. into BIOS/POST/visual error) and show something on the screen with no RAM modules installed, or if any other minor error occurs (aside from having a completely missing CPU or graphics card/display adapter of course), rather than beeping and/or flashing lights like something from 1976. It wouldn't be that hard to include 1MB of RAM somewhere on the board, or even as part of the CPU itself like L1/L2 cache etc. (where this RAM is not used if memory modules are installed, so if you have 1GB installed, it wouldn't be 1GB+1MB). The same could be said about graphics cards, why can't you upgrade these by adding memory in a similar fashion? Who remembers the Sound Blaster AWE32 which had its own memory slots on the card itself?

I also agree that current power supplies are physically too small, the form factor may have been good for 250W in the AT days, but these days there is no room to fit large components like transformers, capacitors and heat sinks inside a 150x140x85mm box for a decent amount of wattage and retain good airflow (250W doesn't cut it for today's computers, with CPUs and GPUs being orders of magnitude more powerful than those from 1992, even if power usage has dropped dramatically). It doesn't matter whether they are meant to be repaired (serviced) or not, it's not the point. I won't even get started on SFF PSUs, or even SFF cases for that matter. Ugh.

Some PSUs are larger (longer/deeper front to back) these days...

I remember the AWE (IIRC the ram was to store MIDI patches in), I also recall owning a gfx card way back (May have been a Matrox or Cirrus Logic thing, possibly VESA Local bus) that had additional ram sockets on board...

Of course, I remember 486 boards with DIL sockets for the cache ram (and upgrading said cache on mine!)

[thesloc]

Re: Why would anyone get a desktop anymore

You wouldn't need that much cooling if you had smarter processor, otherwise, we would be up at like 6Ghz if you kept Pentium technology.

Gotta think outside the box with what you want or are doing.

Since technology is getting smaller and faster so should desktop technology. Nobody envisioned tablets or even phones having the capacity that they have today much less envision a cooling solution to them.

Everybody knows this, manufacturers know this, and futurists know this.

Overclocking too will become a poverty man's method to having processing speed.