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Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

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Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $400.00 PC from your service could rival or beat a console. I recently got the itch to buy the Xbox One. I had the 360 before it with the Kinect and it was a passable party game machine, but I usually game on an old-ish desktop that maybe I've invested $600 in over the past four years. i5, 7000 series AMD card, 8gb ram, etc. Seems to handle any modern game I can throw at it. With a copy of Watchdogs that Xbox turne…

> I'm just surprised there isn't a competitive $199 console out there. Well, there's the Ouya, which is a nice little platform. You can get one an second controller and most of the games available for that price point :) Specs and SDKs at https://www.ouya.tv/develop/ hth, adric

He said "competitive." The Ouya is dead.

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#132
post #82

Beautiful execution and a well-done site. Nice visual choices and a good responsive layout. Great example of waiting until a product has some polish before a Show HN. Yesterday, Forbes did an article[1] about how console gamers are moving towards PC. I think you could really knock it out of the park if you capitalized on that trend and added a portion of your site for folks looking to migrate. Something that shows ho…

> PC Master Race Please don't perpetuate this inane meme. It is needlessly inflammatory and would probably alienate a healthy portion of your target market.

You say that, but you forget what the target market for gaming rigs actually is.

I game pretty extensively as a hobby but I also hold a serious 9-5. While I don't call people homophobic slurs and scream "oh my god no scoped" and all that, I can appreciate and keep up with the typical gaming attitudes in the market these days. To be honest, I look at gaming as a different persona and snap in and out of him at will; a few close folks in that circle of mine know what I actually do, but to them I'm just another "lol rekt" dude. Just like you'd expect some things out of a typical HN user, I expect some things out of a typical gamer. I also balance that with calling out the less-desirable portions of that culture, like homophobia, racism, and sexual harassment, when I can.

The master race thing is a tongue-in-cheek exercise which really, as a couple other folks have pointed out, has a more subtle message. If you allow yourself to be alienated by things that other folks find humorous -- and it's totally within your right to not find it humorous, by the way, I'm not saying that -- you're just going to have a bad time, that's all.

Gaming and the culture around it is not something to be taken seriously. Even e-sports have an element of insanity. To be entirely honest, I look at master race and calling console users "plebes" as the gaming generation getting older and discovering there's another one right behind them, and that one likes Call of Duty on Xbox and Minecraft. Really, though, you'd be hard pressed to find someone on either side who takes that sort of thing seriously. At the end of the day, we're all gamers doing what we enjoy.

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#133
post #103
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "PC Master Race" mentality has left a sour taste in my mouth. It is a joke to a few but it is starting to become serious (weather they refer to it as PC Master Race or not). Most arguments are made by technically unqualified enthusiasts on subjects like architecture, performance, and cost effectiveness. I suppose the reason I'm bitter is because I'm constantly being told (online and lots of PC enthusiast friends…

Well, it really is technically inferior to a gaming PC. And I say this as somebody who owns several consoles and does not own a gaming PC. In making that choice, I had to accept that I would get less power than a PC user, at least for most of the console's lifespan. I use a console because that's what I'm comfortable with and it lets me play with my friends, not because I want to be at the cutting edge of gaming tech…

One thing the "master race" seems oblivious about is how owning a desktop computer has become a lifestyle choice. Many people have no need/desire to have a computer desk and office-style chair and a large screen in front of their face. (Perhaps it seems too much like work?) While not strictly "technical", the size/space/noise is a big disadvantage to PC gaming. (Although admittedly there are things like SteamBoxes.)

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#134

Why no info on multi-processor systems? Google provides their chrome engineers with 16 core, 64gig systems. Dreamworks provides even larger machines. So anything labeled "Expert" seems to need better options

I don't work for google, but I wouldn't build specific machines but instead spin up a VM as needed.

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#135
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perpetuating the meme is perhaps unwise (and alienating as you pointed out). That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices. Especially in a format that lets you customize and meet a certain price point. Shame it's not easy to have comparative benchmarks against console hardware at this time, despite the newest generation being effectively x86 hardware we h…

>That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices. Sure, but calling console players 'plebes' probably isn't the best way to do it.

Agree, hence why I said drop the meme but keep the finer points. :)

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#136
post #115

Your obvious rival here is PCPartPicker. Having used that extensively, here's some things I don't like about yours: Expert mode removes compatibility checks. This shouldn't be the case - as soon as I select an item, it should cull the results and show me only the intersection of items that are now compatible with my chosen piece of hardware. The lack of an ability to filter. Maybe I want to splurge more on a graphics…

I just built a pair of PCs using pcpartpicker. I had similar thoughts:

1) I really like auto-filters on compatibility. If my CPU and mobo aren't compatible, don't let me put both on the same build.

2) I don't need to see big pictures of most of the components. I might want to see what the case, monitor, and peripherals look like, but I'll only look at the SSD when I'm installing it.

3) I didn't see an easy way to sort or filter by specific criteria. On PCPartPicker, I sorted HDs by $/GB and was able to easily scroll down the list until the first drive that was large enough (1 TB), and probably could have filtered it to only include those. Here, I just have a bunch of hard drives to pick from, in no particular order, without a lot of advanced options -- and I didn't even get many on the screen because of the large images.

It's just a couple steps away from being a really excellent site.

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#137
post #115

Your obvious rival here is PCPartPicker. Having used that extensively, here's some things I don't like about yours: Expert mode removes compatibility checks. This shouldn't be the case - as soon as I select an item, it should cull the results and show me only the intersection of items that are now compatible with my chosen piece of hardware. The lack of an ability to filter. Maybe I want to splurge more on a graphics…

Also missing: an obvious way not to include an HDD/GFX card (I just tried the "pro" setting).

I think your categories are too large - e.g. you show various motherboards but really no way to choose which one you want (i.e. physical size, minimal ports, other characteristics), nor an easy way to select the chipset.

Similarly, the SSD grouping simply had "SSD"s. Again, features like encryption support and/or powerloss protection might be interesting to look at; and even more obviously, I'd really like to narrow down the selection by size.

I saw you preselected the 4770K, yet the 4790K is it's successor (and certainly should be an option).

All in all, I want a system to satisfy various needs. Some aspects I may not care too much about or know much about, so a default choice or bias is fine, but there's almost always some aspect I do care about. And if you really don't care, you should probably look into just buying some ready-made HP or whatever (no idea which brand is best) box, and at least you'll get good somebody to put the thing together for you (and be responsible when it doesn't work).

Re: Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

#140
post #117
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more axes to gaming quality than simply polygon performance. You have to be specific about what is superior.

I really can't name any technological aspect in which consoles are more powerful than a PC. That's kind of the point I was driving at.

The secret power of consoles is that the hardware doesn't change over the course of the console's life in a significant way. If I buy an XBox 360 on ebay, I know that ANY xbox-360 game will run on it. In contrast, PC gaming is a mess of compatibility questions.

If I want to play the new Wolfenstein, or Watch Dogs, or any "new" game, chances are my 2 year old PC will not be able to run it well (unless I spent $$$$ on it, rather than $$). If I want to play a new game with all the dials turned up to 9 (or 11), I basically expect to spend $1200-$1500 on a new PC every two to four years.

If I look at OLDER games, it's even worse: Will this game even install? I have a giant library of games which I would love to play, but I can't figure out how to get them to run on a current version of Windows. (Sea Dogs, Starfleet Command 3, etc.) These games are ten years old, and I can't even get the installers to run correctly -- or if I do, the game crashes for other "win 8 >> Win XP" reasons. I would pay money _again_ to be able to play some of these games in a reliable way (and have re-bought things for Steam), but most of the time they're not supported anymore.

My Wii will still play Windwaker (11 years old), and I can buy an XBox and any copy of Halo and be pretty confident that it'll run, even if ten years old (assuming the hardware hasn't failed).

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