Yesterday’s post felt awfully whiny, and for that I apologize. I guess it’s just hard for me to get into “the Christmas Spirit” (whatever that means) these days. Most holidays don’t seem to faze me, to be honest. Sure, I’m thankful for the day off or whatever, but everything else just strikes me as blasé. Maybe it’s because I don’t really have a strong sense of time; one day feels like the next, and without outside markers it can be hard to really be aware of the passage of time. Part of getting golder, I guess.
But that enough downer stuff. The good news is my PC build research is progressing! The interminable sea of numbers and acronyms is slowly but surely starting to make sense. There’s still a lot of questions that need answered, but I’m avoiding those for the moment and trying to enjoy looking at all the fancy motherboards and graphics cards and whatnot.
One of the big things I’m struggling with is the AMD/Intel question. Like anything, there are advantages and disadvantages to both choices, and finding balanced, objective analysis beyond “it depends what you’re going for” online is hard to say the least. Sure, AMD chips tend to run cheaper, but Intel chips tend to be faster. I’ll admit to being a little biased by previous experience, as well: all my past computers have been Intel/Nvidia setups, so the Intel naming scheme makes a lot more sense to me. With AMD, I have to completely re-learn the naming schemes and product tiers.
And choosing something merely because it “makes sense” seems a really shallow approach to me. But I can’t seem to help but be influenced by it. Maybe I just need to take some time and really dig into the numbers and details, but then of course I run the risk of information overload, and being even less able to make a decision than usual.
So yeah, I don’t know. Right now I’m leaning towards an Intel setup, mostly because that’s what I’m most familiar with. And who knows: maybe familiarity is a valid concern when doing something as potentially complicated as building a computer from scratch. And to be honest, I’m probably not going to learn too much more the deeper I dig, because there is a lot of information out there, and by the time I got through it all I’d have to start over because something new and better will have come along.
I will say it’s comforting to know that there’s plenty of resources online, like Logical Increments, Reddit, and even a build generator to make things nice and easy. And while I don’t want to go with something just because I read it on a list written by someone I don’t know, I have to start somewhere.