>>721142790
>It's crazy how much people relied on pre-builts back in the day.
I think its about the same now, though I admit that for those inclined to build your own, its...sort of...more accessible? That is to say, lots of case functions we take for granted today, were NOT at all the case back in the day and you had to mod the fuck out of things to get room for extra fans and the like. As far as parts themselves, I think its different but not necessarily easier. Internet shopping was absolutely a thing and I remember ordering from niche PC enthusiast sites, notably FrozenCPU, Xoxide, Performance-PCs (the last of which is still open thankfully and does much of the same stuff). I remeber buying a motherfucking
>Vapochill
at one point from FrozenCPU, when I was sponsored by my university's computer club for a local LAN and overclocking tutorial/contest. For those unaware a Vapochill unit was sub-ambient phase change cooling; the early ones required a custom case, the later ones Lightspeed like pic related came in their own little custom setup that usually went underneath high end cases like those from LianLi (but you could use it with any case provided yu could get the hose to the mobo/CPU).

While these "Specialty enthusiast" things were expensive, relatively loud, powerful, and rare, more conventional hardware like CPUs, GPUs, mobos etc.. were sold not just online at a variety of places, but at computer stores or even Gamestop / Electronics Boutique (I remember getting one of my video cards from an EB back in the day - it was like $600 so it was my 'big' birthday present; can't remember if it was a Voodoo or an early Nvidia / ATI. ). While today Microcenters are sort of the only wide store of their type in many places, we used to have CompUSA warehouse type stores that had actual PCs/components etc, so it was accessible in its own way.

Out of room for the convenience bbit but I generally agree!