The two types of PC builders. Which are you?

I have a Ship of PCeus thing going on with mine.

Not the case, but I did this since I didn't have the correct monitor stand

Not sure why it rotated my picture 90 degrees. But yes that is a 2x4 and yes those are zip ties

PC builds aren't all so polarized. I am in the middle, spent like $1500 on components and built it myself and it looks great and runs smoothly. Sure, it doesn't run Cyberpunk on Psycho but it's running Starfield very nicely and I didn't even have to tape an AC unit to it.

The desktop gaming PC that I have was a very nice PC like the one from the first panel but I got it as e-waste dirt cheap because the previous owner wanted to throw it away since it was 2 years old and he thought it was outdated. That's absolutely insane and wasteful, I hope most people aren't like this.

I did take it apart and redo it though in a much less flashy case, call me a heretic but I don't really like LEDs and window cases I prefer a much simpler look. So I guess this one would be kind of like the second one, even though all the parts are very nice and new.

Though I did assemble my Pentium 2 and 486 PCs from scratch, kind of like the first one but I guess that doesn't really count because they are almost all old parts (New soundcards though) and they're retro gaming PCs.

Definitely the bottom for me. All I care about is that it runs, can run whatever I want it to, and for games has more of a stable framerate. Looks definitely come second to functionality, if you ask me.

To me the two types are the kind that have really good looking, color coordinated components and then myself who has a random assortment of totally mismatched components because they were the cheapest or best performing option.

Wait why would she have a boobs mousepad thing?

Bottom PC is truly sexy to my eyes. That's a PC someone looked into, with their limitations, a PC they wanted and did their best to get what they need and want

I'll go against the grain in the comments:

I'm the top one.

I hadn't gamed in 20 years and this got me back into it. I wanted it all white. I never buy myself anything nice or new. And it was fun to learn how to build a PC. Don't @ me.

I figured out a long time ago that making the PC pretty is useless

When turning on my computer from cold it doesn't wake the primary monitor from standby. I need to turn it off, unplug the monitor, wake the monitor up from standby manually, start the computer and plug in the cable at the right time...

You tell me which one I am.

Are you asking me if I’m a top or a bottom?

There is a 3rd type.
Those with the "dark horse".
It's a smallish black box PC, no RGB, mini-itx sized, sits under the desk, mostly out of sight.
Quiet, well cooled.
Has the latest gen CPU & GPU, oodles of ram and nvme storage.

Lol my ssd's are just hanging out of the case by their sata cables. I'm missing some hardware so its just guts-out until I find that ziplock bag full of screws (i remember seeing it a couple years ago). my wrist is killing me tho, that ergo mouse pad makes a lot of sense.

The poor one.

My partner has one of the boob mousepads.

Builds a $5000 PC to play Koikatsu.

gigachad

A mix of both. I have good components and my stuff is set up to be very well organized, but my PC looks old

I'm the guy who bought one ridiculously expensive component that's now bottlenecked by the rest of the build until I can replace everything else haha

Tfw when no 150lb server rack

I like to think I'm the first but actually I'm the second.

I'm in between, I like/need my beefy components (for work) but I don't worship my machine or feel the need to pimp it out, as long as it's quiet and out of my way and provides the performance I'm happy. That's why I have 0 RGB and use a big ass noctua fan instead of water-cooling.

The case is dented and front USB don't work but I still love it

I'm the kind that used their PC as a heat provider during winter.

One of my SSDs just dangles in the case even though the rest of the build is put together just fine

Got a new SSD and didn't think to measure out the distance the wire was going to need and it ended up like an inch short so it now just dangles from a little setup I did to remove tension from the connectors

Looks silly but since SSDs don't have moving parts I see no reason it wont be fine

I was the bottom, but finally going to be the top this week! Just purchased everything to build my first new one since 2016. The 2016 one was me buying decent stuff but mostly mid range. This time I feel like I went mostly top tier outside some things (although some stuff says mid range which I don't get). Although I still don't care how the pc looks, I am one of the few that hates RGB and purchased everything I could without it. I took it so far that I got myself Noctua fans. Yes, I really don't care that my pc will look brown beige inside, at least I know it will be quiet and cool which is all that really should matter!

Bottom panel all the way. Expensive stuff dies/burns out at the same rate as cheap stuff, so you might as well go with the cheap stuff. The best way to pc game is on a budget custom build.

i just use my 8yr old pc with the i5 and gtx 970. it keeps crashing but i just ignore it and it still works so whatever

my peripherals are mostly free handmedowns except for my g502

I'll just buy some Dell Optiplex for $200 from eBay, and then maybe trow in a cheap GPU.

I bought a replacement cover for my case. No window. Cable management can suck my dick.

I'm the one that can't afford to build any PC 😭

I recognize that game on the top panel's monitor...

I absolutely love both types. That's why I'm somewhere in between.

I do not deserve the one on the top. I brick my software on a monthly basis

both

I once put a huge room fan on my computer when the CPU fan died. It worked! I'm much more extreme than that second panel.

My pc looks like the first one (clear panel, same LED colors) but I most certainly feel like the second one with my rattling case fan that I never bothered to fix

Depends, if it's all new stuff I'm the first one. If I'm swapping things out or cobbling something together from scraps it's the second one.

I am perfectly in the middle.

I want to say the first, but it's the second

I drilled a hole in the wall and my PC is the nightlight of the kitchen. No noise.

Definitely the bottom one. I have a totally black PC case and one of the case fans has a power cable that's extended using 2 taped together GPIO cables from my raspberry pi kit. There's also a hard drive in there that hasn't been working for 1 year at least

What about sffpc?

These days, the top. Pretty close to it, too--other than the hardline tubing, that's about what my gaming setup looks like.

I've also ran systems in the past where the "case" is the box the motherboard came in, and you started it by tripping the switch header with whatever piece of metal was handy. Good times.

I cut a hole in the side of a NUC and wired a graphics card to the nvme port. It's stuck to the back of my monitor with velcro. It works.

no glass, no worries

Most people build budget or best bang for their buck builds

I took tin snips to the GeForce 310 from my old family computer because I had a SFF PC and wanted a second monitor, so I guess I'm the latter

There was the guy on reddit a week or so ago that was the fusion of these. Ran a custom cooling loop up his wall into the AC vent and got insanely low temps.

The first, but I pay someone to do it for me

I'll be the $5000 guy in the future.

I'm very satisfied with my build but my main issues are cables. The cables of the two CPU fans are way too long so they hang in a pretty non aesthetic way. On the other hand, the cables of the fan headers are too short for me to put them in the back of the case so it has to just stay there below my GPUs. It's awful.

It's perfectly possible to go full-blown overclocking with watercooling whilst not buying top of the range parts (which tend to be "twice the price for an extra 10% performance" deals) and not spending a cent in decorative elements such as turning your PC box into a lightshow.

In fact it absolutelly makes sense to get well selected parts from the high middle end of the consumer segment using knowledge about performance bottlenecks to select the right stuff to get more bang for the buck and pumping up performance further with overclocking using the right self-assembled cooling and tweaks to things like voltage supplied to the CPU.

I like to call it Intelligent Performance Aware PC Builder but calling it Tight-fisted Old Gamer would work too ;)