While pocket protectors, taped glasses, and plaid shirts are not going to win any fashion contest the lovable group we refer to as computer nerds do seem to know a thing or two when it comes to technology. While most of us have never paused to consider what motivates the light adverting, dungeons and dragons playing, fantasy reading, anime watching, code breaking, overachieving computer nerd, the populus has inadvertently migrated towards the behavior that would have venerated them among the computer nerd ranks.
Perhaps the trend for the populous to spend more time now on the computer then watching TV was the inevitable progression for those of us who were not cognisant enough to realise that we should have been a computer nerd a long time ago. Regardless, this aside is to highlight a point that computers are now an essential part of our lives. While those “sports” enthusiasts among us who like to expand their abdomen by consuming inordinate volumes of fermented hops while memorizing every obscure statistic about every team that ever existed, are very conscious about their tool of enjoyment, the TV, computer users lag far behind when it comes to their tool of choice. The trend to purchase substandard “value” boxed systems at the big box stores begs the question why haven’t the masses gotten on board with the idea of getting the best computer for your needs?
Computer nerds since the advent of computers have known build it yourself and get the best possible computer for your needs. For those of you who have not had the misfortune to own a big box PC, congratulations you dodged a massive bullet. For the large masses that have purchased a “name brand” PC you are probably regretting it for many reasons. Need I even mention the now notoriously horrendous international phone “support” (We do have to use this term lightly) asking the 70 year old first time computer owner to open their computer and re-seat their RAM. Of course there is the enjoyment of un-boxing your new computer powering it on only to find crapped up windows straight out of the box (Trial programs, free offers, and sometimes spy-ware). To top it off we all love the unexpectedly poor performance on video games and rendering when you purchased the vulture (salesman) inspired bleeding edge machine.
Many of us who have owned a big box computer have learned our lesson and come around deciding to let a reputable custom build shop stocked piled with those lovable nerds build our next PC. Some of us however are still tempted by those exceptionally great “value” computers, wanting to grab that diamond for the price of a rhinestone. As we age we all inevitably come to the same conclusion that our elders have tried to impart for generations that is you get what you pay for.
You don’t get a Rolls Royce by building on a ford chassy likewise you don’t get an exceptional PC by putting a lot of memory or a fast processor in a system with a substandard motherboard or slow seeking hard drive. Every component that goes into a computer is important. The motherboard which is the base of the PC determines the RAM speed, Hard Drive transfer speeds, Video Card bandwidth etc build a system on a good base (motherboard) and your off to a good start. The integrated motherboards that come on most big box PC’s share memory with the video card so straight out of the box a lot of RAM is lost on the Video Card and game performance is decreased because system and video RAM are shared. Hard Drives which store all your data have different spin speeds, seek times, memory caches etc. if you get a good hard drive attached to a good motherboard you can see substantial speed improvements over substandard parts. Frequently we at Systek have built a custom computer for a customer, their friend not wanting to be outdone purchases the bleeding edge big box computer only to find out that the Systek PC posts better performance scores. Let me save you all a lot of time in the inevitable progression for the populous to unknowingly become Computer Nerds and purchase your next PC from a reputable custom build shop.