Sahuagin posted...
now that I think of it, what does buying a "prebuilt" do that avoids these problems? you avoid putting it together at first but it can still fail and need repair. prebuilt or not, the components can fail, require diagnosing, and replacing.
a big difference is whether it's a modular system (PC) or not (console, though I think they're a tiny bit more modular these days). but prebuilt PCs are still PCs (and still modular). (right?)
Well, if I couldn't fix it right there, I might have just taken it to a repair shop and hope I wouldn't get ripped off, because I didn't have any tools to tell if the CPU was dead or not. That, or I could just take the $100 that would have costed, and bought another CPU just for testing, and I don't even know where that would leave me, because I would be down a ton of money because part of PC repair is the assumption that you have tons of spare parts sitting around, still needing another expensive CPU to actually use. (I generally give away my used PC parts to family/friends)
But there are some people who do subscriptions to companies like ibuypower(?), where they return their computer every year and get an upgraded one for a decently fair price. I don't think I'd go through that hassle tbh though, I genuinely don't care about having bleeding edge hardware.
It's blasphemy to me or you, but if *
I
* feel like I'm getting in over my head, then your average FIFA playing chum is probably going to say no thank you. The part of my brain dedicated to endlessly messing with electronics, in other people's brains is dedicated to other, possibly more important things.
All that's to say that I don't think consoles/prebuilts are completely useless anymore, like I did at a certain point in time. 2 years ago I would have said a PS5 is just a waste of time.