News Best of Computex 2024: Hardware Evolution Meets the AI Revolution

[Admin]

From mini PCs with super-fast graphics to dual-screen monitors and super-powerful CPUs, these are the best products of Computex 2024.

Best of Computex 2024: Hardware Evolution Meets the AI Revolution : Read more

 

[abufrejoval]

These portable gaming consoles, that can double as a rather capable workstation, are perhaps the most significant new evolutionary niche I can currently see in "PC" hardware. Their biggest attraction to kids and parents is workstation capable hardware at console prices.

I quote PC, because they lack many of the expandability traits that I considered key for the last four decades, but they make it up in flexibility.

I see the Strix Point squarly targeting that point and to me it's the (well-deserved) death ringer of the consoles, which I never liked for myself, even if their importance for scaling the gaming market might have been crucial (and now missing?).

The "other new PC", the "M$1" or Microsoft's fruity cult clone, is perhaps the new corporate PC incarnation, which mostly succeeds, because it is ever less "personal" and more compliant.

Probably more complicit to M$ deeds than even corporate purchase managers care to admit, but that's another issue.

The gaming PC Tom's hardware was built on? An ever smaller niche that would really need a fundamental re-design, because it's hitting the walls everywhere, including the original design as a box with a mainboard and slots.

 

[vinay2070]

I still cant convince myself to keep the case on the desk. It has to be away from me on the floor and the desk space is only for multiple monitors, KB, Mouse, USB hub and personal items like phones remotes etc. Keeps the noise further down too when gaming.

 

[abufrejoval]

I still cant convince myself to keep the case on the desk. It has to be away from me on the floor and the desk space is only for multiple monitors, KB, Mouse, USB hub and personal items like phones remotes etc. Keeps the noise further down too when gaming.

Apple ][ and most other micros included the keyboard into the chassis, so there was little choice. My last Apple also had a "gravity locked" lid, because you were constantly rummaging at its innards. I even kept a soldering iron on my desk in those days...

Having a separate keyboard and thus a choice was one of the "firsts" the IBM-PC brought to the mass market.

Then most screens were 12-14" and rather miserable to the eyes, so in a way you needed the desktop chassis to put them close enough to see. Cool stuff took advantage of the angled CRT tube to have monitors face you like a laptop screen, but I guess that only worked with monochrome.

Micros and PC started noiseless, even if the PC had a fan in the power supply. They only part that moved was the floppy disks and who would want to bend down every time they changed one? Some software would require complete stacks of them once noise arrived in the form of constantly spinning Winchester drives or hard disks.

It was then when I relegated my IBM PC-AT into a floor standing position, because it had it look really cool, like a Micro-VAX.

It also ran Unix, so for the first time ever, my PCs created an illusion of autonomy, because they made clicky (voice coil!) hard disk seeking noises on their own, not just as a consequence of user action, which was how one defined "reactivity" before.

My first CPU fan came attached to a Pentium-83 Overdrive, with Intel promising life-long replacements in case it ever failed. I'd just love to ask them today!

To this day I'm constantly maddened by the fact that the only front facing ports on my workstations top out at 5GBit/s, while accessing the 10/20/40Gbit/s stuff is popping what remains of my disks.

But between my keyboard and the the ceiling, today everything is screen, so behind or below is the only place compute can go.

And thanks to nifty Noctuas and tinnitus the only high pitched noise is fabricated inside my head, even at 750 Watts of gaming.

It's much harder to escape the heat they are producing, quite ok during the last winters, but it puts me off my game during summer: no airco in this 1830's home.

 

[apiltch]

I still cant convince myself to keep the case on the desk. It has to be away from me on the floor and the desk space is only for multiple monitors, KB, Mouse, USB hub and personal items like phones remotes etc. Keeps the noise further down too when gaming.

Agreed, but I think you and I are in the minority among PC enthusiasts. Actually, this would be a fascinating poll to do of TH readers: do you keep your PC on the desk or on the floor?

 

[palladin9479]

Just wait, we'll have AI cases, AI keyboards then AI mouse pads. Soon monster will be selling AI Energy drinks...

 

[palladin9479]

Agreed, but I think you and I are in the minority among PC enthusiasts. Actually, this would be a fascinating poll to do of TH readers: do you keep your PC on the desk or on the floor?

Floor, all of them on the floor. Desk space is for stuff I am doing.

 

[abufrejoval]

Agreed, but I think you and I are in the minority among PC enthusiasts. Actually, this would be a fascinating poll to do of TH readers: do you keep your PC on the desk or on the floor?

13 PCs under the desk (4 mid-towers, 2 ITX shoe boxes, rest NUCs/flat mini ITXs in what Amazon sold as a metal mesh shoe-shelf), two NUCs/minis on a shelf above the screens, which also contains four notebooks, an RP5 and a OP5+ somewhere among the five partially cascaded KVM switches underneath the two 43" screens. 10Gbit or 2.5Gbit networking using NBase-T switches behind the screens.

Built the desk (240x80 cm) myself ages ago and it's just a plank on two stands. Apart from the NUCs and laptops, all computers are in a constant state of continous rebuilding with evidently some fornication or else going on because it started with only one in 1984. And that was an Apple ][ clone which was a desktop by design.

Actually there was a DEC Professional 350, basically a PDP-11 for about a year before that. That was a desktop (with a separate keboard) because it also had floppy disks. But since it was a loaner, perhaps it doesn't count.

That's just within arm's reach and not counting the other computers in the home...

 

[bikemanI7]

My PC Desktop Tower has always been on Part of Desk designated for Tower on Lower shelf under Keyboard tray.

Someday i will get a Desk that support Dual Monitors though and hopefully has a dedicated tower spot on Lower part of New Desk, as i prefer it down there, and not sharing space ontop of the desk next to Monitor

 

[vinay2070]

Apple ][ and most other micros included the keyboard into the chassis, so there was little choice. My last Apple also had a "gravity locked" lid, because you were constantly rummaging at its innards. I even kept a soldering iron on my desk in those days...

Having a separate keyboard and thus a choice was one of the "firsts" the IBM-PC brought to the mass market.

Then most screens were 12-14" and rather miserable to the eyes, so in a way you needed the desktop chassis to put them close enough to see. Cool stuff took advantage of the angled CRT tube to have monitors face you like a laptop screen, but I guess that only worked with monochrome.

I believe back in the days when we had computers it was an expensive and a niche product. Not everyone had them and people felt uncomfortable putting a case on the floor even though it was possible with some computers.

My family was the first to have had computer at home among relatives. We had a pentium 100 (thanks to my elder bro, he knew what we were getting) while all the school computers were 486 and pentium pro was just a server there. The cost of computer itself was several times the cost of a TV. There was no way we could have thought of putting that case on the floor lol. And a few years before that, there was a computer at my fathers office where a seperate room was allocated with air conditioner for a 286 (or a 386 not sure) machine that booted off a 5.25 floppy disk and no footware was allowed to be worn inside Only my dad knew how to operate it (very basics) and was used for power grid distribution planning. They all thought computer would get virus if we wore footware inside the computer room (probably a ploy by the vendor to keep the dust out) And I used to tag along with my dad once in a while to play that accolade grand prix cirtuit racing game. fun times.