Why spend time on something that you can outsource?
Outsourcing is fantastic. I do it all of the time for many things both professionally and in private. But there are also things that I spend a lot of time on, even though I could solve a specific problem 10X faster by simply handing it over to someone else. The problem is that I enjoy certain problems, crazy as it may sound. The perfect example for me is to build a new workstation PC. I could solve that problem in minutes by outsourcing it. But to build it myself is something that I enjoy so much that I simply cannot rob myself of that pleasure. Even though it will certainly drive me crazy at times.
I have been active in the PC building scene since the late 1990’s. And it has been an amazing ride to witness the incredible progress that has been made. I was around when we used a calculator to define hard disk partitions and today my RAM memory exceeds the size of my first hard disk by a factor of 100X. And the most impressive thing for me is how amazingly well everything just works (for the most part at least). It’s not as if things have become less complicated in the past 20 years…
To build a computer is a wonderful learning process. To optimize and select components that hopefully will work well together requires a lot of reading beforehand. Everything from hardware compatibility to airflow and cooling. It is practical electronics and thermodynamics at work. And mechanics, because you also have to put the stuff together. I know that one day I must take the final step and build my own custom water cooled loop. That will also include a basic course in chemistry, plumbing, fluid dynamics and a lot of additional thermodynamics. You cannot complete a project like that without learning a ton of new stuff. Stuff that I am convinced will be invaluable as a civil engineer, where we apply the aforementioned branches of physics to design better buildings.
To build a custom water-cooled high-end PC is arguably one of the most pointless and stupid things imaginable, if the goal is to acquire a new workstation. Sure, it will probably perform 1-2 % better, and the hardware might be a couple of percent cheaper than prebuilt systems, but when you factor in the time spent, it will likely be one of the most expensive computers on the planet. But the purpose is not to acquire a new workstation. It is to learn physics in one of the most fun ways I know of. Heck, you’ll likely even learn some color theory when playing around with the RGB lights. I was not expecting that when I built my last PC.
However, custom PC building is a hobby that will die for the mainstream. The hardware industry is now moving over to chiplet designs which are much more effective than today’s ancient principles with discrete components. Functionally, it is a no-brainer. But just like with electric cars, it takes a lot of the “soul” out of the equation. A Tesla cannot create the emotions that a dinosaur powered V8 can. It is not even close, even though it wins hands down in just about every measurable objective parameter. I suspect PC building will go the same way as photography. Not too long ago, we had mainstream compact cameras and camcorders and stuff but that’s a bygone era. Instead, photography has become an expensive hobby with high end optics and camera houses. Maybe we are already there. Computer components are very expensive today. For the price of a high-end GPU in 2017, you can’t even buy an entry model today and that is after the prices have come down slightly after the last crypto boom. It’s a bit sad, but there’s not much you can do about progress.
It is just a shame that with all that progress we will also get rid of the bonus physics courses I mentioned earlier. And I am hard pressed to consider that a good thing. If everything eventually becomes a black box that magically does what it is supposed to do, who will design and build the next generation of black boxes when old-timers like yours truly are gone?