Marshall Posted August 16, 2016 Share Posted August 16, 2016 The beauty of PC building is its apparent simplicity due to standardized form factors and compatibility across several generations but at the same time customers suffer from being overwhelmed by the huge amount of options. This problem is being caused by high product segmentation that 1) lets you choose from hundreds of compatible pieces of hardware with 2) tiny price differences for different performance levels and feature sets. In addition 3) hardware gets obsolete very quickly after a few years due to the narrow release cycle to compete with other manufacturers which further dilutes the offer. Spoiler Example: Somebody who wishes to find a mainboard with socket 1150 for Intel processors can choose from over 300 models! Also one has too many options within their budget... will you choose GA-H81M-S2V for €44 / GA-H81M-D2V for €48 / GA-H81M-HD3 for €50? Or one of the literally hundreds of other options? And are you certain that the most pricy model is also the best one? Anyway if you are not going for one of the better models now, you will end up with a low-tier machine in four years! Though this is just a problem for gamers who want to keep pace with the current development and who want to play the latest and most demanding Direct3D / OpenGL games. Larger businesses and public offices made long-term investments for a ten-year cycle when having installed thousands of machines that run Windows XP. After its ending support they just updated to Windows 7 which will stick around for a while too. You as a private customer or business owner, do you wish for larger release cycles to prevent devaluation of your machines and less hardware to make choices faster? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts