I don’t have a problem with people decorating their computers however they want. They paid for it. It’s their computer. Everyone’s got their own aesthetic preferences.
However, the last build I did, I was getting a little exasperated with how increasingly-hard it is to just find desktop components that don’t have RGB lighting on them any more. I mean, to me, the desktop computer is a box that has a bunch of circuit boards in it. I’m generally not looking at my RAM sticks or motherboard segments, and don’t have a glass window on the side to admire it (it gets dust in there, and I’d rather have a sturdier case without glass). I could do without the extra light pollution in my life. Most stuff can be disabled, but it’s kind of obnoxious to be buying and figuring out how to disable hordes of little RGB LEDs.
I’d also add that where LEDs exist, they have multiplied over the decades not just in number, but also in brightness.
If I wanted to have my computer be a light show, which I don’t, I’d get a DMX512 controller for it, and real lighting effects hardware.
Maybe going for rack-mount hardware is an option. It’s something that I’ve thought about sporadically over the years, and it does have certain benefits, if you’re willing to give up portability. But rack-mount builds generally command a premium due to the market being less price-sensitive, and noise is often a more of a factor, since datacenters don’t care about keeping things quiet for employees.
Paraphrasing a tidbit of information from Northwest Repair, who’s a guy on YouTube that does board-level repairs on computer hardware:
Apparently, reprogramming the firmware config and changing the RGB light status on a DRAM module are both done through the same SPI bus. Consequently, every time you change the RGB lighting, it has a tiny chance of accidentally bricking the stick.
So not only is RGB an additional upfront cost that consumers might not want, it could even contribute to long-term costs by reducing the lifetime of some components.
I remember years ago there was a firmware source leak (or maybe the binary was analyzed or something) for gigabyte’s led controller firmware/drivers that basically just exposed the firmware programming bus to user land because that’s how they did lighting updates and the kernel mode driver just passed whatever the user mode driver gave it, which could include firmware updates to other hardware IDs.
It was at this point that I stopped running a lot of those hardware control utilities (and I suspect that might also be why I barely saw any issues with the Radeon 5700 XT that was a bit infamous for “its” issues that I think might have just been incompatibilities with 3rd party “helper” utilities or shit written by companies that had gotten to the “just ship it” stage of development).
Things like Noctua fans and motherboards aimed at enterprise use cases tend to not have the shiny distractions that average tech bros want.
You probably want to stick with ATX over rack mounted stuff as an individual, just means you have to search for function-over-form brands for peripherals and the motherboard.
The RGB, the gaming chair…gimmicks that do nothing…it’s stupid but somehow they work…they form trends and people latch to it even though realistically they do nothing functionally.
I would argue they are detrimental to the experience. Gaming chairs are not more ergonomic than good office chairs. I don’t want external lights getting in the way when I’m concentrating on the monitor. RGB is literal light pollution in your own room.
looks at image with ten visible LED fans
I don’t have a problem with people decorating their computers however they want. They paid for it. It’s their computer. Everyone’s got their own aesthetic preferences.
However, the last build I did, I was getting a little exasperated with how increasingly-hard it is to just find desktop components that don’t have RGB lighting on them any more. I mean, to me, the desktop computer is a box that has a bunch of circuit boards in it. I’m generally not looking at my RAM sticks or motherboard segments, and don’t have a glass window on the side to admire it (it gets dust in there, and I’d rather have a sturdier case without glass). I could do without the extra light pollution in my life. Most stuff can be disabled, but it’s kind of obnoxious to be buying and figuring out how to disable hordes of little RGB LEDs.
I’d also add that where LEDs exist, they have multiplied over the decades not just in number, but also in brightness.
If I wanted to have my computer be a light show, which I don’t, I’d get a DMX512 controller for it, and real lighting effects hardware.
Maybe going for rack-mount hardware is an option. It’s something that I’ve thought about sporadically over the years, and it does have certain benefits, if you’re willing to give up portability. But rack-mount builds generally command a premium due to the market being less price-sensitive, and noise is often a more of a factor, since datacenters don’t care about keeping things quiet for employees.
Paraphrasing a tidbit of information from Northwest Repair, who’s a guy on YouTube that does board-level repairs on computer hardware:
Apparently, reprogramming the firmware config and changing the RGB light status on a DRAM module are both done through the same SPI bus. Consequently, every time you change the RGB lighting, it has a tiny chance of accidentally bricking the stick.
So not only is RGB an additional upfront cost that consumers might not want, it could even contribute to long-term costs by reducing the lifetime of some components.
I remember years ago there was a firmware source leak (or maybe the binary was analyzed or something) for gigabyte’s led controller firmware/drivers that basically just exposed the firmware programming bus to user land because that’s how they did lighting updates and the kernel mode driver just passed whatever the user mode driver gave it, which could include firmware updates to other hardware IDs.
It was at this point that I stopped running a lot of those hardware control utilities (and I suspect that might also be why I barely saw any issues with the Radeon 5700 XT that was a bit infamous for “its” issues that I think might have just been incompatibilities with 3rd party “helper” utilities or shit written by companies that had gotten to the “just ship it” stage of development).
Things like Noctua fans and motherboards aimed at enterprise use cases tend to not have the shiny distractions that average tech bros want.
You probably want to stick with ATX over rack mounted stuff as an individual, just means you have to search for function-over-form brands for peripherals and the motherboard.
The RGB, the gaming chair…gimmicks that do nothing…it’s stupid but somehow they work…they form trends and people latch to it even though realistically they do nothing functionally.
I would argue they are detrimental to the experience. Gaming chairs are not more ergonomic than good office chairs. I don’t want external lights getting in the way when I’m concentrating on the monitor. RGB is literal light pollution in your own room.
Yet another secret? The best “gaming headphones” are just standard audio gear or music studio stuff.