For those of us who aren't 13-year olds borrowing mom's credit card but likes PC gaming

[wessberg]

I'm writing this while my son is jumping up and down in the couch next to me, so this might be some incoherent mess. I couldn't come up with a decent title, so sorry about that. I'm open to suggestions. But here we go:

• I like PC gaming
• I like the specs of PC gaming hardware and peripherals
• But, I can't stand the "gaming aesthetics" of such hardware and peripherals.

You know, all the overkill RGB lighting and completely over-the-top science fiction inspired design elements (Thanks, Alienware, for starting that trend, I guess). All the "Republic of Gamers" and "AORUS" logos and clichéd statements such as "Team Up. Fight On" printed on the motherboard as if their only target audience is 13-year old kids borrowing mom's credit card.

I know, I know. Putting "gaming" in a name sells. From a marketing and business standpoint, I'm sure it sells better and it probably allows for asking a higher price for the same exact components.

But aren't there any alternatives for people like me who just want sleek looking components with awesome performance for some late night gaming?

I mean, I was shopping for a new monitor. I looked into some Acer and Asus monitors with awesome specs such as DisplayHDR 1000, 144hz refresh rate and 4K resolution, but I would never stand the embarrassment of placing one of these monstrosities in our living room and looking my wife in the eyes saying that she now had to look at that thing everyday.

I ended up buying a Dell monitor, for crying out loud. It's great, fantastic even. But it sure ain't a gaming monitor, neither in specs nor presentation. But it looks great with its minimalistic and simple design, and the wife isn't complaining.

And just yesterday evening, I was looking for a new wireless mouse that will be great for gaming. I looked for the entire night. The best I could come up with was getting something like a Logitech G Pro Wireless or one of the Razer mice with extremely cringeworthy names such as Viper or Basilisk and keeping the RGB turned off. It is so frustrating.

Why is it the norm that gaming hardware and peripherals sport these over-the-top aesthetics and names? Why isn't it a niche for something like e-sports enthusiasts? Is it because the target audience is teenagers who watch a lot of e-sports and streamers? I'm not saying that products with less over-the-top styling doesn't exist that can be great for gaming, but they are far and few between!

I'm sure I'm far from the only person who just wants an awesome PC gaming experience with awesome hardware and peripherals, but at the same time is scared away by the gaming branding. I want something that is sleek looking. Industrial design. I mean, imagine Apple designing gaming hardware, and I guess you have arrived at what I want.

I had to get this rant off my chest. That was nice. I hope this will be read by someone who feels the same and can bring some feelings of solidarity.

 

[siaan312]

You totally can get "non gaming hardware"

Founders edition graphics cards usually don't look "gamery" and even if they do, put them in an fractal design R5, no window. good airflow. just a black box. most of fractal design's stuff is just straight black.
Business oriented motherboards exist, so does bare pcb/no rgb just black ram. psu's are usually just black boxes anyway and noctua's coolers are like, the definition of "boring business".

As for keyboards and mice, logitech's stuff is usually not overthetop gamery., and razer/other gaming peripherals look gamery because of the rgb.
as for the names, 1. obviously they name it cool things because why not, and 2. its a joke, since all of their mice are snakes, which, well, eat mice.

Also, about your statement of "I'm sure it sells better and it probably allows for asking a higher price for the same exact components"
That's actually not true.
a "gaming gpu" will cost the same as the same gpu with a less flashy cooler if it performs the same almost always.

Yes, there is some stuff that's only available as gaming, say the top end "MAXIMUS" and "RAMPAGE" motherboards, but they're just, good motherboards, with flashy esthetics because that's what most people like. not just "13-year old kids borrowing mom's credit car".

I won't say I'm an adult, I'm only 17, but I know my dad gets excited about RGB a whole lot whenever we build a pc. much more than me atleast.

 

[wessberg]

I'm sure you are 100% correct that the flashy explosive colors and aesthetics of premium motherboards is what most people - people buying expensive motherboards that is - wants. Otherwise, why would they keep doing it.

I'm just glad they've started copying each other and doing "Creator" and "Designare" series now that are basically the same, but with less or no RGB, maybe an extra M2 slot or two, and basically less colors and less awkward slogans like "Team Up. Fight On".

And yeah, I'm glad Fractal Design exists. But they are the extreme minority. I'm not saying it is never possible to find any hardware without gaming branding, I'm just saying that for the vast, vast majority of consumer PC hardware and peripherals aimed at gaming, they offer styling that I very much consider fitting with my 13-year-old-with-moms-credit-card example. For example, the only mouse I found which looks to be great for playing games without looking like a toy is actually the Razer Pro Click, and it isn't even a gaming mouse, it just happen's to seem to have great specifications that happens to be well-suited for playing games. This is rare, but I just don't get why that kind of products isn't the majority. But I guess maybe the target audience for this kind of equipment in general is teenagers who watch a lot of e-sports. There's a lot of RGB in that segment. That's probably why.

Oh, about the argument about sales, I'm super confident that the marketing departments of Asus, Gigabyte, Msi and the other usual suspects puts "gaming" into their product names because the data shows it sells better. Maybe someone can bring some data into the discussion, and we'll see what's what.

In regards to the naming, well, if you think the names are cool, more power to you. We're clearly very different in that regard, and that's fine. This post is addressed at other people who is also tired of all the gaming branding and just wants a much wider selection of hardware sporting simple, minimalistic aesthetics and awesome performance. But thanks for chiming in

 

[USAFRet]

I'm with you on the anti RGB thing, as well as the current naming conventions.

Wireless mouse - Logitech MX Master

 

[wessberg]

Wireless mouse - Logitech MX Master

I LOVE the aesthetics of that mouse and have considered getting it for productivity tasks, but I'm specifically looking for a mouse that is great for gaming. I just found the Razer Pro Click which is the only mouse I've found that looks to be great at playing games while still rocking a pretty minimalistic look. Nice to see that there options like that, albeit very few.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Throwing some thoughts out in a random mess:

• Some people may be on the "ew RGB" no matter what train, but I don't mind it. My problem is people just slap on RGB and leave it on the default rainbow wave and the rest of the hardware doesn't have some semblance of coherency as far as aesthetics go. If I'm going to by flashy hardware, I at least want them to look nice together.
  
  
• I've found lots of case manufacturers avoid the "gamery" aesthetic. When I think of "gamery" cases, I think of brands like Apevia and Xion, which are pretty much bottom tier anyway. A lot of the recommended brands tend to stick with minimalist designs. Or at the least, have a line that's not as gaudy, but performs just as good
  
  
• Logitech seems to have the most tame industrial design when it comes to their gaming peripherals, with a few exceptions. Yes there's RGB in all of them, but they also have on-device memory which is a godsend if I don't want to run their apps.
  
  I also think Corsair made keyboards with nice designs, but their software lately is lacking.
  
  
• Motherboards I would say are hit and miss. The last system I had used an MSI board with RGB that had no onboard memory so if there was no power, the RGB settings reset. I'm currently using an ASRock board that does save the settings.
  
  Though it could be a made into a moot point if you get a case without a side window. Then again that could be said about all of the internal hardware
  
  
• I don't find ASUS's gaming monitors that bad if you use a VESA mount. It's just their stands I find gaudy as heck. And while the backside of the monitor does have that "stealth fighter and Transformers had a baby" aesthetic, you're not looking at it all the time. The front side tends to be really tame, unless you hate the ROG logo.
  
  
• My absolute biggest gripe though with gamer hardware is the software you must have running all the time to get them to work properly. I get that you should have them for configuring, but it's like every company decided they can't spare 1 cent to add a megabyte flash chip to store persistent settings (which isn't even necessary, just hijack the SoC's flash ROM space). I mean, I get that shaving everything as much as possible on a product you've planned to produce in volume saves a lot, but if you can add 5 cents to the manufacturing cost for this one feature, I'd gladly pay $10 more for it.
  
  So far Logitech seems to have some semblance of this on their G series stuff, but not some of their consumer stuff (notably their wireless keyboards need software to make the F-keys act like F-keys instead of shortcut keys)
  
  
• I guess the biggest lie to me is the idea that you need this hardware to play well. And it's not even because it looks cool or whatever, but that you need the specs it offers. Maybe if you're at the highest level of your game in precise twitch action games, but you don't need a 360 Hz monitor, an "ultra light" mechanical keyboard, a bajillion DPI with a bajillion click lifespan mouse and dual RTX 3090s to beat Doom Eternal on Nightmare.
  
  I mean yes, I've dabbled in some of this, but I don't have a desire to go to the extreme end of things. To me a $100 mouse is no better than a $30 mouse performance wise.

 

[wessberg]

And while the backside of the monitor does have that "stealth fighter and Transformers had a baby" aesthetic, you're not looking at it all the time.

Hahaha, that's the best and most correct description I've ever heard of ASUS ROG design style 😃

My absolute biggest gripe though with gamer hardware is the software you must have running all the time to get them to work properly

Now this here is really interesting and worth diving into!

This is also a very important consideration for me, in particular as a dual-booter - I expect that for gaming peripherals, all configuration happens from software on windows or on the physical hardware itself, but I would always assume that the settings (such as turning off RGB lighting) persist after booting into a different OS. Are you saying that something like a Razer mouse doesn't have any persistent memory?

In the same vein, I was also wondering why NZXT CAM had to be running in the background on Windows for stuff like custom fan curves to take effect. It was always strange to me that they didn't just flash to some persistent memory bank on, say, the fan controller, because with the current solution there's two problems:

• It doesn't kick in before Windows have launched ( so there's potentially fan noise while booting up until that point)
• It causes problems for dual-booters when they boot into Linux/Mac OS

Now, interestingly there does exist open source software that allows for setting the fan curves without having to run the CAM application in the background, though that memory is wiped on shutdown.

This is something that doesn't get that much attention I feel like, but you're totally right - it is definitely an important concern.

 

[Benjamin22044]

The hardware you chose was not that bad, but could have been better. And when most of us are newbies, we tend to make the kind of mistakes. However, the cost factor is also an important factors that makes us settle for less worthy products than the ones that we actually want.

 

[Ralston18]

My view:

"Never let form get in the way of function."

AKA - "Do you care about the color of the rope that the lifeguard throws you?"

I want my computer to be stable, perform as required, and last.

Pretty colors do not meet those requirements. And no amount of marketing will convince me otherwise.

 

[XThe_Juggernaut]

I don't think I've ever actually heard anyone mention this before. Time for a sleeper build! Buy a 90's yellowed out box and force all the components in it, then get a crt pull out the innards and replace with high performing innards of a newer monitor XD haha. I'm 31 and I feel like a lot of that newer stuff looks pretty cool. Not a fan of phrases and logos though so i agree with you there but sharp looking design is pretty sexy these days. I'm with one of the other replies buy a basic looking case and throw away the stand of the monitor and buy a generic monitor stand.

 

[BogdanH]

I'm one of those who can't stand "christmas tree" PC's and it literally hurts my brain looking at them, seriously.
Yes, market is filled with "RGB" stuff and there's reason for that. It sure does make younger people feel like a (game) winners if they look at their "bad ass gear".
But then, we never had so much choices as we have now and so, everyone can build his/her "perfect looking" PC. When I buy PC related stuff, I just look after non-RGB components. Or, for option to turn RGB lighting to minimum/off.

When I built my PC in this spring, I intentionally decided for Fractal Define R6 with solid side panels -and it was not because of saving money! Yes, for some it might look only as a black box.. but for me, it's very aesthetically pleasing design. Btw. my previous case was Coole Master Silencio.
Similar with keyboard. I needed backlit keyboard because of functionality and so I decided for Razer Blackwidow Lite which only has white illumination, where intensity can be set in 20 fine steps. No, I don't need WASD keys in red to find them

Just sharing my thoughts