We are in the mobile age, and technology is focused towards mobility and efficiency. Even a basic smartphone is capable of doing the jobs that required a PC. And then, there are the laptops. Ultra thin, batteries lasting you a day, powerful enough to handle most tasks with ease and aplomb. And then, there is the desktop computer. These forgotten heroes once ruled the roost. Over time, laptops and smartphones have replaced them.
“Desktops, my god, they are awfully outdated! Who uses the *dabba these days?”, says my friend at school.
To be honest, I was in the same school of thought. Well, until I built mine. So here’s the story. I have used desktop computers since a very young age. A few years back, I pleaded my parents for an upgrade. They very well knew what I meant. I wanted a laptop.I had always wanted to flaunt a laptop. The rich kids at school who carried a MacBook wherever they went always made me jealous. And so, I got a laptop. Over the couple of years that I used it, I spent a lot of time with it: gaming, tweaking, coding and also opening up the hardware. However, I felt that I was missing something. I did not exactly know what.
One fine day, my beloved laptop gave up. I tried all methods of fixing it but in vain. It turned out that some parts had conked off unexpectedly and the replacement bill was huge enough to put a dent on the pocket. So I contemplated the idea of a new laptop and began searching around.
Now, some people advised me to buy a desktop. At first, I turned a deaf ear to them but eventually, as I started researching more, the activity of buying your own parts and building a desktop tailored just to your tastes allured me. On the other side of the coin, I had to give up portability. After a lot of sleepless nights, I decided upon riggin’ up my own desktop.
And now that I have successfully built my desktop, here are some points which justify my decision, which I took from the heart. And the best decisions are surely those which seem to make sense even after following your heart!
1. Cost
Let’s get this straight out-of-the-way. Desktops, especially the custom builds in which you shop for individual parts, are WAY more value for money than similarly priced laptops or even factory assembled desktops.
2. Personalization
Credits: Ian Duncanson Case Mods
When you buy something, you check whether it meets your needs and ticks your tastes. Almost 100% of the time, you find the product to be lacking somewhere. What do you do? You simply decide to live with the compromise. However, that isn’t the case with desktops. You can choose every part that goes into that cabinet yourself. If budget doesn’t permit you to buy a certain part you wanted to, you can always save up and buy it in future.
And then, there’s the other side of personalization, aesthetics! Want something loud and flashy? RGB lighting and funky cabinets to your rescue. Want a sleeper, silent understated look? That too is possible! At the end of the day, it all depends upon you and how you want to characterize your machine. No wonder there are case mod competitions all over the world to showcase various builder’s mettle!
3. Ergonomics
Though this might be a subjective opinion, I believe that desktop computers are much more ergonomic and comfortable to work on. Slap on a nice mechanical keyboard and a large, high-res display and those boring work sessions will surely seem more appealing!
4. Increasing your knowledge base
If you are serious about your build, you’re bound to spend hours on researching for the right component. This, in turn, means that by the time you finish, your knowledge about computers in general has increased to a great extent. And once you’re hooked, you’re hooked for life. You don’t necessarily need to buy a part, you will research about it just for the sake of doing so.
5. Upgradeability
Upgrading a desktop is a much easier and pocket friendly deal on a desktop. When you decide to spend some cash to spruce up your beloved PC, you can just spend your buck on upgrading something like your CPU/GPU or add something like a high performance enthusiast grade SSD.
6. Repairs
Again, you just have to pin point what is causing the problem. Once you do that, you can just swap out the bad part, replace it and continue again to work away to glory! It’s that simple!
7. Overclocking
Overclocking is making a computer part work faster than it was prescribed to by the manufacturer. Generally, people overclock CPUs, GPUs, RAMs etc. The overclocking room is much higher on a desktop. One of the primary reasons is cooling. A desktop offers better cooling and you always have the option of upgrading to a liquid cooler, or hell, a sub-zero cooler if you want to push higher. And in the unfortunate case that you conk something off, you can always replace that instead of scrapping the whole machine.
I just started out on overclocking and it’s a really, really interesting thing to do. Competitive overclocking is also considered to be a sport.
These are the reasons why I am enjoying my new desktop much more than I would have ever thought. I have found what was missing when I used my laptop as a daily driver. If you too are interested to build your own desktop, do follow the build guides listed on the website. If you still have any queries, drop us an email and we’ll try to help you at the best of our potential.
Till then,
Ciao!
*dabba: Dabba is a Hindi word which primarily means ‘box’.
