Has the honeymoon phase with your PC ended?

I'll cut to the chase. Recently, I put together a new build and I'm finding myself opening the case from time to time and looking for ways to hide a cable better or just to look at it lol. I'm not sure if this is OCD or if it's normal, but it is the first build I've thrown together on my own, so maybe I'm proud. Anyway, do you ladies and gents do this as well and if so, when did the honeymoon phase end?

I've had mine for 3 years,did some minimal cable management when I built it. Cleaned the inside 2-3 times and that's about it. Don't really care as long as it keeps running

You get over it. Now I try to spend minimal amounts of time maintaining my PC.

Yeah I undress my PC whenever I get the chance, it just looks sooooo good naked...

/sarcasm

When you have a case with a side panel it's hard not to look. I always glance at mine.

LOL

Considering my PC is in the closet approximately 30ft away from me, nah.

However I still adore my aorus x3 plus v4 laptop whenever I look at it.

But shhh, I don't mention the other PC's that I perv at...

Cleaning my PC from time to time is no big deal for me. And I can never afford a brand new one, at least not the kind I want, it's always a bigger or smaller upgrade. And there's always "the next thing to upgrade" that I'm looking forward to. So there is no "honeymoon" period, in fact it's not like marriage at all :).

Got over it and only cared that it would start and run cool. I do clean it up like every 3 months or so because Cali is a dry place and my tower can easily get caked with hair and dust.

Just take a photo of it for posterity. I still have a photo of my first DIY. Assembled in 1992. The photo was taken in 1993 after I installed my first CD-ROM. A 1x CD-Rom drive......state of the art. He He.

@intotheminx:

What I do is I write down lets say 3 changes (maybe 1 major + 2 minor) I would like to make and then make those changes every 6 months. I try to resist the urge to make changes on impulse.

I usually get at least 6 month honeymoon out of doing it this way. In June I added a new 1TB hard drive, an extra 120mm PWM fan to my tower CPU cooler and also an extra system fan to increase the air pressure in the case to help prevent it from vacuuming the whole room.

I'm fairly happy with my system at the moment so I might just make my Christmas Review a small spring clean, tidy up the wires a bit and blow out the dust. Its also making a slight buzzing noise so I might try to find a solution to silence this.

I am never happy with how it ends up looking... Recently ordered another 140mm fan. Need a few new cables... Also want to try soundproofing it.

Speaking of cleaning dust. Can we use canned air or is that a no no because it gets cold?

My main issue is that I purchased a non modular PSU, so I still have a bulk of cables in my case and I don't like the way it looks even zip tied. I wish I would of been more patient and purchase a modular psu.

@intotheminx: I have always had modular PSU. Even though I can now hide all the cables in the bottom compartment and won't see it.

@intotheminx: Mine is a "semi-modular" PSU. Pretty sure your PC looks better tho :)

I use canned air and sometimes it sprays a vapour over the components, which I really don't like. It tends to evaporate though and everything seems to work ok still. I try not to spray any of the circuitry, just mainly the fans, the vents and the dusty surfaces.

Many of the computer stores in my area are always sold out of compressed air cans because they use them to clear the dust out of the customer computers that they fix.

I also have some nice anti-static cloths that I "borrow" from work...

Has anyone heard of people having issues with their computer due to high dust levels? I've heard that dust rarely causes an issue unless your components are so caked in it that it causes them to overheat. I have had dust get into the bearing of one of my system fans in the past causing the temperatures to rise to a point that the computer was slow. But thats about as bad as it got for me.

Never on desktop but the fan on my laptop works much harder than it would be doing if I got the dust removed.

I got this beauty so it's hard to look away

@PfizersaurusRex: rofl, don't you have anywhere to actually mount your SSD ^^?

I haven't deeply cleaned my PC since like May/June, when I installed my 980 Tis. I have a 900D and all my parts are custom water cooled. All my fans run at their lowest possible setting. Rarely have any dust in them.

I clean off the fan filters every 2 weeks or so, but that takes me like 2 minutes to do.

I'm going to have flush my system soon though. I like flushing the loop every 7 months or so.

I'd have to buy some sort of adapter, but why bother. It's a mess ether way. I'm eyeing this case Fractal Design Define R5, it has 2 SSD mounts behind the motherboard. Never seen such layout before, it's pretty neat.

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-black

@ShadowDeathX: Do your filters slide out or have to be unscrewed? I only ask because my PSU filter slides out, but the one on top of my case has to be unscrewed from the inside. I fund it odd.

Slide out. The top filter is removed with a latch.

@PfizersaurusRex: Lol. Yea I don't have to hide cables in the driver bay, but there are a couple of annoying wires dangling in my case because they are too short to move. I wish I could disconnect them. I guess the most important thing is to not block fans.

Out of curiosity, what hardware do you have?

the good old days where it took 80 minutes to burn an 80 minute audio CD

FX-6300, GTX 660 and 8GB RAM. Will hold on to the gfx card till 14/16nm GPU's are out, CPU and mobo will stay for a little longer (maybe till Zen?) But the first thing I wanna upgrade is the case, this CM is limited in every way.

I think most cases use slide out option. All my filters slide out same on my previous towers.

In 1993? A CD burner cost several thousand $$$$$$. I had a Mitsumi 1x CD-ROM drive. Not even a burner....... ;-)

Like this one. A Mitsumi 1x CD-ROM drive was very unique. First and last time they used that kind of tray:

Well this current build is actually part of one continual build I've been doing since 1998, the only thing that remains the same is the speakers. Back then I don't think ricing was a thing, it was some heavy ass beige case. I was more excited about the fact that my graphics card had 2MB of ram I think.

I just try to do it right the first time so everything just works, I usually do a few upgrades over the life of a computer (hdds/ram/new gpu maybe) and clean it out then

The honeymoon is always renewed whenever I assembled a new PC. There's always a photo, be it the PC or the parts.

I started taking photos regularly after I bought a digital camera in 2001.

2003, 2005, 2009. None for 2013 because the current PC is a stopgap until I switch back to Intel and assemble a new one.

I'm lazy as hell when it comes to cleaning my PC, especially when it gets a bit older. 99% my younger brother cleans it for me.

@PfizersaurusRex: That's a nice one. I assembled a computer for my friend last month using that case :)

Just read this thread and thought to myself I am not alone !!!!!!

First comp was a ZX Spectrum, first desktop was a shop bought Packard Bell with 540mb hard drive, 33Hz processor, graphics practically non existent and it did have the CD drive.

Started upgrading and then building and never stopped, get as much fun from building tweaking etc as I do from using.

PfizersaurusRex That looks like the Sharkoon Bulldozer case had the same one on the last build, nightmare for cable management, I looked at the Fractal then moved to the Silent base 800, I've already started modding that case !!!!!!

Same with me. I tried the ricing thing with a clear panel case back in 2005-2009. It didn't click with me. All my subsequent PC cases have solid panels. I have the same Logitech Z-2300 2.1 speakers from 2005. Over 10 years old. So, I got my money's worth. I'm also using the same DDR3-1600 RAM sticks from 2009. The hard drives from 2009 are also being used as additional storage.

@s1mplicity: Oh the horror! Packard Bell...!!! I almost quit computers because my first computer was a Packard Bell. 100mhz Pentium, 16 MB RAM, and a 1.6 HD. And a 14.4k modem! $2,000 with no monitor or printer. And resource conflicts until the day it died!

@jun_aka_pekto: I love Sapphire cards! I just don't know if I want AMD again right now.

I have a corsair c70 case, I would like it better without a window, but I really like the handles. My NAS which I built a little bit after is a Lian-Li Q25b case which is about as austere as it gets.

i guess i'd care about my case more if it was in the open to look at. But i keep mine in a closet to keep it in a low dust environment, so i don't see it much unless i have to pop in bluray or plug in a usb thing.

I purchased a Corsair Air 540 just to hide my non modular PSU and it's cables lol (well, also for better airflow to the gpu). I had a thermaltake chaser before, but it was horrid for cable management and just way to tall and it's HDD bay blocked fresh air to my GPU.

Now I just open it up to dust out my PC, other than that I can't complain about it. No cable clutter, already has lighting so cleaning is now my only maintenance on it. I do get urges to buy a modular PSU, but then I come to my senses and realize my current one is way more then enough and it's not worth the extra money and this case hides the clutter.

I will admit, with the Thermaltake Chaser, I was never happy with the cabling solution. I could ignore it for a while before I went crazy on zip ties and trying to better organize it and trying to shove unused cables out of sight, but it wasn't fully possible to do so. But now with my 540 air, I'm happy and the cable management can be hidden reducing my OCD about it.

I personally use this guy: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001J4ZOAW?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00

It does get hot after using for several minutes, but its powerful and saves money in the long run. It is quite loud as well however. But I still like it as I don't have to buy compressed air anymore, and have it weaken after a few squirts like compressed air..

I started going mid-range (down from upper tier) in 2009. The 2009 parts had a Sapphire reference Radeon HD 5770. Back then, I was still gaming at 1440x900 or lower. The HD 5770 was an okay, very reliable card.

that's why I avoided it on my latest build. Just build it, close it up, and maybe open it up once a year to blast the dust out.

I'm glad my case doesn't have a see through panel. It would drive me nuts seeing a cable. Def going for fully modular next time.

@jun_aka_pekto said:

Just take a photo of it for posterity. I still have a photo of my first DIY. Assembled in 1992. The photo was taken in 1993 after I installed my first CD-ROM. A 1x CD-Rom drive......state of the art. He He.

Looks like we are so over those days now.

But thinking back what did 8x - 16x DVD and CD drives mean ?

Yeah, I think my PC needs a shower, it's been some time.

I've always thought there's something sexy about laptops.

They're easy to fall in love with!