Arkane's Deathloop

[WingedKagouti]

The point is that the time you spend on looking up parts you can just as well spend on looking up components for building it yourself, not that "it takes a long time".

I grabbed a pre-built the last 3 times I did a full system upgrade. I did get them all from a local store with their own pre-build setup, which lets you check each and every component. Heck, I even compared the cost of the system I got with what I'd have to pay for individual parts (using price checkers with other stores) and each pre-built always came out at roughly the same cost (5% difference at most) when including shipping.

The price difference has just not been worth it, even more so when considering I would have had to wait for 3 or more different stores each sending a package that may be delayed or "lost" in transit.

[Starker]

Why would you buy from 3 or more different stores? I would bet you can find the cheapest or at least the nearly cheapest option in a single store or at most 2 stores. And at least around here stores have free domestic shipping when the price is above a certain point.

As for packages getting "lost" in transit, I'm sorry to hear that you live in a place like that, but that's certainly not true for every country. An alternative might be physically going to the store and picking the items up. For example, in a lot of places, nationwide store chains have the option of getting your online order delivered to a local shop near you where you can pick it up at your convenience.

[WingedKagouti]

Why would you buy from 3 or more different stores? I would bet you can find the cheapest or at least the nearly cheapest option in a single store or at most 2 stores. And at least around here stores have free domestic shipping when the price is above a certain point.

I would have had to buy from multiple stores if I wanted to lower the cost below the completed system's price. And while volume sales can get you free shipping, it's not always at a price point where I'd get it from the cheapest store (when including shipping costs), which means that the free shipping is essentially overtaken by the increase in cost for the parts.

As far as items going missing in transit, it's only happened two or three times, but it's something I don't want to risk having to deal with for a single vital component.

And for the most recent system, there's also the scarcity of GPUs to consider. RTX 3060 & 70 have been readily available via prebuilts for the last half year or so locally (with 3080's being sometimes reasonably available), but getting just a card has not been easy without going on a long waiting list.

[Starker]

2-3 times!? I've had hundreds of packets delivered to my doorstep or an automatic parcel terminal or the local post office and not once have I had a packet become "lost" nor have I heard that happen to anyone I know. No wonder you can't trust your postal service.

Anyway, I've followed the PC building community for about 10 years now and dabbled in it myself occasionally and in the vast majority of cases, prebuilts don't really come close to the quality and price of a custom PC. And there are very good reasons for that -- aside from the poor component selection and bad component matching mentioned earlier, only the biggest systems integrators can match the price of big retailers, since they simply can't buy the parts in big enough volume to qualify for volume discount. This means you either got incredibly lucky and your local store is for some weird reason selling prebuilt PCs at an incredibly low margin or you are very unlucky and all the stores around you are price gouging on the components. Because even if you count shipping into the equation, around here it's only about 3-4 euros domestically, so something like a 12-16 euro price difference even if you buy from 4 separate stores.

Also, if you look around on Youtube tech channels, now that GPU scarcity has forced people to start reviewing prebuilt computers as an alternative, they commonly have a lot of warnings attached to them and there are a myriad of flaws and poor decisions that have been exposed.

[WingedKagouti]

2-3 times!? I've had hundreds of packets delivered to my doorstep or an automatic parcel terminal or the local post office and not once have I had a packet become "lost" nor have I heard that happen to anyone I know. No wonder you can't trust your postal service.

Do keep in mind that this is since the mid-90s, so it's not that common an occurence. While I can't recall it happening since every shop and delivery service adopted some form of Track & Trace, it's still lingering in the back of my mind.

This means you either got incredibly lucky and your local store is for some weird reason selling prebuilt PCs at an incredibly low margin or you are very unlucky and all the stores around you are price gouging on the components..

There are obviously price differences between stores, but the lowest prices match what I see elsewhere (when accounting for difference in VAT).

The store I use have both static pre-built and a custom parts "pre-built" which uses their normal prices for the individual components with no charge for putting the system together. As far as I know, this is part of their strategy to get new/repeat customers.

[Starker]

Yes, it's very common to offer some selection of parts -- change the SSD for a larger one, add more RAM, change the graphics card, etc. But the selection is still fairly limited even in some of the best cases and depends on what the store has in stock (or what they want to get rid of in some of the worst cases). And that selection is not always offered with the best interests of the customer in mind.

Custom building offers far more range in that you can select the most bang for your buck components and make additional cost-saving decisions. A well chosen PSU can actually save you some money on your electric bill compared to the cheapest option that prebuilt PCs often come with. There are some relatively cheap PC cases with really good airflow that I have yet to see any prebuilt PC use. You can select RAM based on what has actually been tested to work well with the CPU above the JEDEC standards. And of course you can build the whole thing with upgrading in mind, which is much easier if you, say, make sure you have enough room in the case for a larger GPU / more drives or that the motherboard actually has 4 DIMM slots and enough SATA ports / M.2 slots to allow for future upgrades.

[WingedKagouti]

Yes, it's very common to offer some selection of parts -- change the SSD for a larger one, add more RAM, change the graphics card, etc. But the selection is still fairly limited even in some of the best cases and depends on what the store has in stock (or what they want to get rid of in some of the worst cases). And that selection is not always offered with the best interests of the customer in mind.

Their "pre-built" custom builds allow you to pick from every part that fits (ie. you won't be offered a MB for AMD CPUs if you're building a system with an Intel CPU) in their catalogue, not just random stuff they need to get rid of. The differences between using that and building a PC yourself are that a) you buy all components from that store and b) you don't have to put it together yourself.

[faetal]

Is it maybe time for the mods to split this into a different thread?

[Aja]

Watching henke's snippets of Deathloop on Twitter makes me convinced that I should hold out for either the PS5 version (if I ever get a PS5) or a wait for a better GPU. It looks so much nicer and more playable at 60FPS than the PC version on a Geforce 1060.

[heywood]

That looks more playable than I expected, still pretty smooth even on medium settings. I'm looking to run at 3840x1600 though.

[henke]

Just tried playing as the invader, Julianna, for the first time. Did 4 invasions. Died 4 times.

In my defence the netcode is laggy as fuuuuuuuck on my end. The lag has me teleporting around so much I can barely walk around the map much less keep a steady aim on someone.

[Malf]

In my defence the netcode is laggy as fuuuuuuuck on my end. The lag has me teleporting around so much I can barely walk around the map much less keep a steady aim on someone.

Yeah, blame the lag...





(I just needed an excuse to post that)

[henke]

Hahaha good one.

The invasions do feel weighted in favor of Colt tho, even discounting the lag. I'm not sure if I've actually been invaded by another player yet or if it's just been AI, but I've won every time. Curious to see what others here think about the invasions. Y'all gotta play this already! It's good! (maybe not as good as Prey, but I'll withhold final judgement till I'm done with it)

[Shadowcat]

It looks so much nicer and more playable at 60FPS than the PC version on a Geforce 1060.

That looked totally fine at all settings throughout the entire video.

[Aja]

It was fine, yeah, but it looked much smoother on PS5 even though it was frequently hitting 60 FPS on the PC video. I don't know if that's a stuttering or frame-pacing thing or whatever, or maybe it was that whoever was playing was very twitchy with the mouse; either way I found it unpleasant to watch.

[ZylonBane]

Is the GeForce 1060 supposed to be some old 'n busted card? Looks like they're still selling for around $800.

[Brethren]

I think it's safe to say that you can't judge GPU power by their prices online these days.

[Aja]

Is the GeForce 1060 supposed to be some old 'n busted card? Looks like they're still selling for around $800.

I bought mine for I think $350 CDN three or four years ago. Until recently it's played most anything on high settings at 1080p and 60FPS.

[heywood]

I guess I should sell mine
I bought my GTX 1060 5 years ago for $400
And we all thought GPUs were in short supply then

[Jason Moyer]

A 1060 was a nice lower mid-range card...4 years ago.

[Starker]

Someone's lower mid-range is someone else's upper mid-range.

[faetal]

I'm still rocking a GTX 1060 6G from 3 years ago which seems to deal with most stuff, although I'm having to play the more recent stuff on medium settings.

[Thirith]

Is it maybe time for the mods to split this into a different thread?

Can I second this?

[Yakoob]

I think it's safe to say that you can't judge GPU power by their prices online these days.

It's not about how big the VRAM is, it's how you use it

[Jason Moyer]

I'm still rocking a GTX 1060 6G from 3 years ago which seems to deal with most stuff, although I'm having to play the more recent stuff on medium settings.

I have a GTX 970, which isn't much different performance wise, and it's been a total shitshow playing many games the past 3-4 years.