alt Hacker News> Computer building on those days was much more unfriendly.
Has it? CPUs ran much cooler back then. And gpus didn’t need brackets and special power cables and all that. Water cooling was harder. But also way less common or necessary.
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I think yes - everything was just more breakable. It feels today's heatsink, CPUs, motherboards, can handle the load and installation they're designed for (rtx 5xxx power connectors notwithstanding). I started building PCs in early 1990s and it was also just easy fun. Early 2000s were this weird time where even doing mainstream things you were absolutely supposed to, such as installing HSF on a CPU, was ridiculously perilous.
Mobos and cases also seem better designed these days. Yes some components need more stuff than before but it all seems to plug in and slot and wrap and screw in nicely if you're patient and methodical. Heck even the cases themselves are somewhat less likely to slot your wrists :).
I feel ~2003 or so was the cusp when I started seeing less builds that were just maddeningly messy and sharp and hyper loud and crazy, and started getting more predictable and sane and workable.
All anecdotal and based on personal perception of course :)
> Has it? CPUs ran much cooler back then.
CPUs now throttle to keep their temp in check. Back then, if the temp got too high they’d be permanently damaged like in the example above.
> Water cooling was harder. But also way less common or necessary.
Water cooling isn’t necessary today, either. The heat pipe heatsinks we have available are so good that you can cool every consumer CPU with a good air cooler. The automatic throttling means it won’t be a disaster if the temp gets high. Water cooling might get a few 100 more MHz during sustained all core workloads but it’s not necessary.