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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 9415973" data-attributes="member: 725">But as with car parts, buying second hand computer parts isn't for the average consumer and certainly not for the not-Tech person that's running that 10+ year old machine. They don't know what they need exactly, they wouldn't even know how to read a compatibility list. Chances are good that they would order the wrong memory and break something when installing it. We all started somewhere as well, but we were motivated to learn and were not disdainful of what we were trying to fix or upgrade. While if I invested enough time and effort into how a washing machine works, I could probably do a lot of fixes myself. But I don't really, so going in half baked will probably do more harm then good. Not to mention that if you take the time you invest into it, it certainly isn't cheaper to do yourself (value your own time), so unless it's something I enjoy learning/working on, it's best to let an 'expert' do it. It's the same with anything really.6-8 years ago I was working as a freelancer at an MSP and what they charged for changing RAM/HDD/SSD and reinstalling the OS was already €100+/hour (ex. VAT as it was Business-to-Business), the MSP was very happy with me, because I was doing that pretty fast and accurate (could do it blindfolded), but it was pretty much only for customers that had Macs (when you still could do RAM/HDD/SSD swaps or in that period of time when the rest of the world was moving from HDD to SSD. It was only economically viable to do that in certain cases...For my last workstation I just assembled an over powered machines with enough RAM and storage to last me a LONG time (7 years as it turns out), I opened it once or twice to clean (moving parts/airflow)... I now have mini PCs where I just chugged in the max amount of compatible RAM (64GB) and 6TB of SSD space, put it in a passively cooled case and I never intend to change that again! No moving parts, so no internal cleaning required! Some might call it lazy and wasteful, I just call it time=money efficient as I don't really like messing with my production machines (I earn my money on those) and I don't enjoy it as much as I used to. If I want to mess with a computer's hardware, I'll get myself a hobby machine or just mess with some Raspberry Pis. But after 40 years of messing with computer hardware (started with a C64) it has lost a lot of it's appeal, it's now generally just a tool that needs to work...</blockquote>

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