The cynical part of me feels a bit sad seeing content creators use their platform to push for overpriced products. But I guess it's not as bad as selling bath water.
That said, I don't think I'd personally touch anything related to the OTK brand and their creators. Most of their personalities are too colorful for my liking.
People really should just build their own system, it isn't hard.
Never bought off the shelf, never will.
Oh I used to be in this camp. I'll tell you what changed my mind. I started a new build. I did all my research and ordered all my parts. Everything came in and I put it together. Turned it on and it won't POST. Check everything. It's all seated correctly but it won't POST. Long story short I ended up taking it to a repair shop. Issue was that in spite of me having the right motherboard for the CPU, the motherboard needed a BIOS update to run the CPU. Only way they figured that out was they had spare CPUs laying around and could install a different CPU that worked in the motherboard and flash the BIOS. How exactly was I supposed to troubleshoot that on my own? Do I just order a bunch of spare motherboards, CPUs, RAM, and video cards so I can sort out which part is causing the problem? Do I just RMA the whole thing and hope the replacement parts don't have the exact same issue which would be very likely in this case?
Anyway, bottom line is any savings I had completely vanished with that repair bill. It was a total waste of time and in spite of paying as much as a pre built machine, mine still didn't have any warranty or support to speak of. Fortunately it was a solid machine from that point forward and I ended up giving it to my son when I was ready to upgrade again. However, I was done with doing my own builds. I'm blessed with a big enough paycheck that the couple hundred bucks I MAY save on building it myself is not worth it to me. I got better things to do with my time.
I used to build my own machines, starting with the Z80 S-100 bus systems. The last two PC's however I had built for me. The small extra cost doesn't really affect me, and I like having someone who does it all the time build it for me and give me a warranty.
Comments
Never bought off the shelf, never will.
That said, I don't think I'd personally touch anything related to the OTK brand and their creators. Most of their personalities are too colorful for my liking.
Oh I used to be in this camp. I'll tell you what changed my mind. I started a new build. I did all my research and ordered all my parts. Everything came in and I put it together. Turned it on and it won't POST. Check everything. It's all seated correctly but it won't POST. Long story short I ended up taking it to a repair shop. Issue was that in spite of me having the right motherboard for the CPU, the motherboard needed a BIOS update to run the CPU. Only way they figured that out was they had spare CPUs laying around and could install a different CPU that worked in the motherboard and flash the BIOS. How exactly was I supposed to troubleshoot that on my own? Do I just order a bunch of spare motherboards, CPUs, RAM, and video cards so I can sort out which part is causing the problem? Do I just RMA the whole thing and hope the replacement parts don't have the exact same issue which would be very likely in this case?
Anyway, bottom line is any savings I had completely vanished with that repair bill. It was a total waste of time and in spite of paying as much as a pre built machine, mine still didn't have any warranty or support to speak of. Fortunately it was a solid machine from that point forward and I ended up giving it to my son when I was ready to upgrade again. However, I was done with doing my own builds. I'm blessed with a big enough paycheck that the couple hundred bucks I MAY save on building it myself is not worth it to me. I got better things to do with my time.
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2025: 48 years on the Net.