PC vs Laptops

Laptops have been out for quite some time and early concepts of portables or machines that were carried around for travel has been traced since the mid to late ’90s. But with desktop computers bringing more performance as compared to equivalent laptops, is there any room for laptops?

Performance vs Portability

Desktops are known as king of performance due to the use of high powered performance that are customized by PC users themselves. Generally speaking, a $1000 worth of money is enough to already build a AAA Gaming machine. On the other hand, portability is what laptops make the cut, although a similar $1000 laptop lacks powerful GPUs, CPUs, less memory, and less storage since most of the money were devoted to the motherboard and compacting all of the circuits in a small form factor.

Too much compromise?

While laptops these days have better specs right now, they tend to be pricey than a similar spec PC. It’s just there are too many compromise in cramming all of the horsepower of a desktop into a smaller chassis that has less cooling prowess and relying on battery to power the device. Even an inclusion of keyboard, trackpad, and a screen are nice to have, one of them would get compromised. In short, nothing is built equal in a laptop and they had to cut corners to bring the price down. It is not a good thing.

Why HEDT?

HEDT chips or High End Desktop Processors are chips that have numerous number of procsessing cores and are devoted to productivity and heavier multitasking. These are processors that have support for Quad Channel memory, more PCIE lanes, and have a very premium pricing. But are HEDT still the king of the hill?

Intel’s Complacency

Without any competition back in the days, Intel has been charging customers a very hefty steep price to get a HEDT chip, let alone Extreme Edition chips. Since then, consumers believe that 4 cores were for mainstream and anything more than 4 are HEDT. This resulted into Intel charging customers sometimes way more than what you actually want to have. Let alone for sometime it had lack a generation behind than mainstream, lacked integrated graphics, and more power. Now people were still paying Intel $1000 for the top end Extreme Edition chips. Not so long until Broadwell-X came and charged customers with a whopping $1700 for the Core i7 6950X. Then, Ryzen came along.

Thread RIPPED HEDT

Ryzen had been hyped, bringing 8 cores on a mainstream chip. It put a lot of pressure on Intel and more than the Ryzen Threadripper. Bringing more affordable HEDT chips with still great performance. Intel responded by a not in the plan X299 Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X HEDT chips that brought affordable 10 core CPUs. Well, they still charge a whopping $1800 for their Core i9 7980XE, at least it is 18 cores. But AMD had some other plans. It brought 16 cores for $1000. It is the same price as a Core i9 7900X, a mere 10 core CPU. And the trend continued with 2nd gen Threadripper that had a top of the line skew 32 cores, 64 thread 2990WX at the same price as a 7980XE, and it’s rebrand 9980XE.

Intel Killed their own lineup?

With the Core i9, people think they are prosumers. But to a surprise, the Core i9 9900K was even a mainstream 8C,16T part, which even made Intel effectively cannibalize their own existing HEDT chips, since the 9900K even outperformed it’s much more pricy brother 7940X. And, Intel has some secret 28C,56T CPU as a rebrand of the Xeon8180, a chip that costs 9 grand. Intel has been murdering it’s own Core i9 and even Xeon lineup.

Does it matter?

Keyboards are essential part of a computer. But always one question rises when buying a keyboard: mechanical or membrane? It might seem very easy, but the truth is that shopping for a keyboard requires many researches and advice from others.

Meme-brane?

Are membrane keyboards that really bad that many people spring into a mechanical keyboard? To a degree, it is not so bad. After all, membrane keyboards are the cheapest of all. But that doesn’t mean it is a great value. Because quality and feel are important as well to some people. Membrane keyboards aren’t the greatest in typing longer papers and their input delays are far more worst than a mechanical keyboard.

So Mechanical for the win?

Not always. While mechanical keyboards are far more superior than membrane keyboards in terms of typing and gaming, there are too many choices and variations of mechanical keyboards. And it is more expensive than membrane keyboards. But they are better in quality and has extra features not present in membrane keyboards.

Value in Mechanical Keyboard

Shopping for a mechanical keyboard isn’t as straightforward as it suggest. Multiple variations of mechanical switches, board partners, features, and quality aside makes buying a mechanical keyboard more difficult than what you expect. This blog focuses on buying a mechanical keyboard based on switch,

Before we continue, let us identify commonly known mechanical switches available. First, the Cherry MX switches. Four common switches are available: Cherry MX Red are for gamers since they have very fast actuation and no sound. Cherry MX Blue are for hardcore typists and is usually the reference for mechanical keyboard since it has a tactile bump and loud clicky noise. The sweet spot is Cherry MX Brown, offering a combination of Red and Blue. The Cherry MX Black is a much heavier variation of Cherry MX Red.

Razer, on the other hand, has a similar switch variation to Cherry MX, called Razer switches. They have the same concept as Cherry MX, only different color and manufacturing. Razer Greens are more of Cherry Blues, Razer Yellow are more of Cherry Reds, and Razer Orange are more of Cherry Browns.

Logitech also has it’s own switch called Romer-G swtiches. Other switches are sometimes knock offs of Cherry MX.

Where do you start?

Building a PC sounds pretty straightforward. You just search a dozen of parts, put them together and call it a day, right? Well, technically yes, but in you are one of the few people who wanted to build a PC with greater emphasis on not on aesthetics and RGB, but you are more about versatility, chances are you are looking for a PC with great value. How do you secure value in your PC?

Value: Worth Looking in PC Building

Value does not necessarily mean having the cheapest parts in your PC. Rather, value is more about finding the best possible performance without compromising quality. It does not mean you are also overspending on your parts that does not affect performance to even none. It simply means that building a PC that is wise.

Identify your Needs

The biggest tip in identifying value is that you identify your needs. Are you a pure gamer? Or a productivity oriented person? Pick parts around that concept. Ask yourself if your PC is geared for gaming and/or productivity.

Value Tip-CPU

Value on CPU means identifying the CPU you need. Pure gamers and mostly works needing single threaded performance and higher clock speeds, go Intel. Meanwhile, if your workloads are sometimes gaming and needs more cores and multi threaded performance, try AMD Ryzen.

Value Tip-RAM

Identify your workloads in terms of system memory. If you just need to get up on gaming, 8gb of RAM is enough with heavier multitasking and system memory-hungry tasks do usually start at 16gb of RAM. Also, it doesn’t mean that more memory translates to better performance, so try tweaking the memory frequency first before biting on a shiny new upgrade.

Value Tip-Storage Devices

In terms of storage, HDD, SSD, and HHSD drives are usually your storage devices. A good value in storage identifies balance in speed and capacity. Works that does not need large capacities but you want some speed, HHSD are better. Speed is more on SSDs and if you need large capacities, HDD are the go to.

Value Tip-Motherboard

A good value motherboard starts with critical thinking. It starts with identifying the chipset. There underlies the features of the board. So before jumping buying that shiny new X399 Zenith Extreme, do some research and identify if your CPU is supported by the socket and the chipset.

Value Tip-GPU

GPU value depends on several factors: if your workload needs CUDA acceleration, Ray Tracing, and deep learning, go for NVIDIA. If your workloads rely on OpenCl compute, AMD cards are better value.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton