Infinite Insanity - There's ALWAYS Another Sale! (Daily Sale Talk)
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Wow, very impressive! Unfortunately I'm single and can't think of anyone I know who would be capable of that or take the time to do all of that and I don't feel techie enough myself. I think I'd be up to upgrading it myself, and I'd like to learn how to do that, but building from scratch seems really daunting. I suppose I could ask the sales person at PC Connection to email me with everything I would need and ask what the price difference is to buy the parts vs the whole computer and if it's significant, I could hire a kid from Craig's List to put it together if that was cheaper. Something to look into... But I still don't have the money for any of that right now...
I second that! Especially with "special needs" as we renderers have, you save a lot. And it is so much easier than it was a couple of years ago.
Actually, you can currently get a new 980 Ti 6GB from B&H for only $50 more (i.e. $420)
Well, it seems today was the day I was waiting for as I managed to blow the rest of my budget
Picked up Fox bundle, Wolf 2.0 and Real Fur for Mil Big Cat 2, by Allesandro-AM as well as the Twister by AntFarm, and just because it added to the discount and reduced the cart-price by a dollar, I got SS Lainee for Kalea 7 from the "Still New" section (don't have Kalea 7 but the texture uses Genesis 3 default UVs anyway).
Yes wonderful... after spending way to much yesterday (getting 38 items) today they have a somewhat decent gift card sale... sight....
Agree, although 12% if buy two items is fairly poor; guess my credit will run out soon. Good good me, but bad for Daz.
Just as an opposing perspective... I'm an IT professional by trade - and I've done a bit of paid writing on technology - enough that I have a cirlce of friends who you might recognize from ZD Net, CNet and other technology outlet sites...
I was recently in a discussion about how fruitless DIY computer building has become with a guy named Jason Perlow who writes for ZD Net. He was of the opinion, and I tend to agree, that it is frequently cheaper and far less hassle to buy a discounted name brand PC than to try and build your own these days.
In either case, you've got to be careful. I don't think things have become simpler in regards to DIY PC building, I think they've become more complex. I've been building PCs all my life - and the things that can bite you in the butt today are a lot more complex than when I was building 386 and 486 machines in the early 90s.
The DIY tower has become a niche market for power users and power gamers who need high end graphics processing and highly customized machines. Because of this... a low demand for people with special needs, the prices have gone up significantly. Everyone wants... well, everyone wants cheap mobile devices, PC sales are flat in general... but when people do want PCs, they want slim, 2-in-1, ultrabook format hybrid laptop/tablets like the Surface Pro and Surface Book. If you want a DIY tower - TigerDirect, Fry's, Best Buy... you've got a target on your head... you're a speciality buyer they know is willing to pay a premium.
There are certainly deals to be had, and you can save money... but in general, it isn't going to be cheap to build yourself a quality rendering machine for 3D.
You are correct if you have of the shelf needs.
You where also ok with mor special needs until 2 or 3 Years ago where the cost for "extra stuff" you don't need that come with the more high-end machines that have the stuff that you need was more than compensated by less work and good mass production prices.
Since the Desktop (and more and more also the Laptop Market) is shrinking everything that is not absolutly mass market got more expensive and especialy the selection in the high-end and niche sector is less, so the chance to find something off the shelve that meets your needs for an reasonable price is much lower now.
Regaring building: The last PC I build from the scratch (after 15 years of doing so) was in the mid 2000s after that I went with of the shelf stuff (only doing some upgrading here and there. At the beginning of this year I build a rig again from scratch and it was sooo easy:
You are probably right that if you have problems they are more complex than those you regulary encountered in the past, but you encounter so much much less of them.
I guess 13% tomorrow, 14% day after tomorrow. ;)
Hah!
Maybe, but unlikely. I'd love to be proved wrong.
I'm expecting a character on Tuesday, so the gift card sale is kind of confirmation of that. But like I said, actually I'll amend that: 12% without a qualifying sale is poor imo; with a qualifying sale, it's rubbish (that's English for trash).
And even more rubbish when you need two qualifying sales for 12%. My store credit is running pretty low, so I was hoping for a GC sale, but there is nothing in the new/still new list I want/need. If it was 8% without a purchase, I might get that, but as it stands I would lose the 8% I gained having to buy an unneeded item.
Yeah, I agree. While it's a good deal if you already planned on buying a couple of the new items, if you weren't though, just purchasing them to get the qualifying % off kind of defeates the purpose.
Me, too. After yesterday's "CatchUp' I'm out of store credit; but having to buy the items I wasn't going to buy would wipe out any savings I might get on a $200 gift card. Maybe if it had been purchase of any new items I would have gone for it; but since it is so restricted to to just the few 'Debut' or 'Still New' items I'm going to pass.
Oh well, With no store credit I'll probably be really saving money by not buying as much.
What? 12% with no qualifying sale is a straight 12% saving on everything - how is that poor?
2 purchases to activate it is too much to be worth it for me though since everything being released just falls into the "pretty but I don't actually need any of it" category. Terradome is the only real eye opening release I've seen in quite some time.
I could do with a Genesis 3 Anatomy bundle though (Like the V4/M4 one but updated to scale etc. for Genesis 3 and its morphs) but I guess Daz isn't making stuff like that anymore :(
Oh, and considering the GC sale says today only, I'm very much doubting it will be any other day.
Like I said, my opinion; other's opinions will vary. And I've had much better, although they are extremely rare. I judge them on what's gone before, not just on what's likely. 12% without any qualifying would have tempted me. I loaded my cart to see and as the bundle counts as one item, and all I'm slightly interested in is the figure (because I like Second Circle's figures); it turns out to be a very low percentage.
I can wait, in fact I'll likely buy elsewhere as there are a couple of items I have wishlisted at Rendo.
Interestingly I have just done a bunch of anatomy renders for use in our next game, and naturally I had to use these older products. Still look reasonable despite their age, and converted well for iRay shaders. Newer ones would be nice though, but I would not hold your breath, because as you said this is pretty niche, and a lot less in demand than more skimpwear.
This sale I'm saving a fortune because most everything is female based aND I work primarily with male characters. I also have a policy of 50% or more or I don't buy.
Renomista, I think we're on the same page. I agree with most of what you say above.
I do have the old one and it's great but it is also a bit ... old. and you couldn't morph it for like George very well so if you want it to not be V4 or M4 you're either out of luck or in for a ton of work. Probably won't sell skimpy outfits though (and ironically I heard rumblings of those starting to be censored more) so oh well.
What I really want and could really use right now is a Cat & Dog 7 (with kitten/puppy morphs etc. too.) And sorry, Daz, but telling me to go buy a generation 1 bundle to get them is not going to cut it.
Personally, it's well-worth paying extra for a machine from a retailer I can get fixed if they screwed it up.
Having wasted a fair amount of money trying to do things myself... yeeeah.
I sometimes think there's a version of impostor syndrome at work for kitbashers, where they think 'surely my ability to know how to assemble a computer can't be that great, why don't people do this more?'
I think that's the calculus behind much of DAZ's sales: they're often intended to reduce the average purchase cost for customers who frequently buy lots of stuff. Hence why there's a lot of "buy 2 and get XX" promotions.
I agree the choice of products to trigger the gift card discount is way too limited, especially as I already bought yesterday to trigger the catch-up discounts. If it were any new release, or even any PA festival new items, I'd jump on it. As is, I'd need to spend $175 plus on the gift card just to cover the price of those items I don't really need or want. I suppose another way to look on it is that if you spend enough, you'd been getting those items free. I'd just really like a little more choice. :(
I also used to build my own PCs, but I stopped doing that a while ago. I am tech-savy enough to do the build, I just can't be bothered with the hassle for the very small amount of money saved. Also with the advent of iRay and the desire for a decent nVidia card(s), the needs of a renderer are not that different from a high end gamer, so we do not really need something that is particularly niche.
That sounds like me. I used to do the periodic tech support for the company I worked for right out of college (programmer that was lowest on totem pole...so I got to disassemble their junkers to create frankenstein test servers, lol). I've built my own back years ago, but would rather spend my time doing other things. I'm happy with my computer.
One probably that I saw when I was buying from a local builder back at that early job I just mentioned, was that they would use cheap fans and power supplies in their mid and low end machines and those parts were often prone to failure. Shortly after I was tasked with this responsibility, we had about 5 desktops have their powersupplies go bad within a few months. They were all under warranty, so it didn't cost any more than the hassle of me finding a temporary computer, driving down to the shop, etc, but when it came time for me to make purchases after that, I recommended they stop using the local dealer and they agreed. As much as I hate dell, their computers usually last a long time. They might be mediocre powered machines (at least the business desktops) but they usually last years before they start failing.
The problem with the gift card sale is that if you buy 2 new items and want discounts on other PA items or Mega Fastgrab, you have to have it all in the same cart. So you can't use the gift card today at all unless you plan to purchase 4 new items. And the PA items still seem too expensive even with the discount... A part of me just wants to say "I'm done." I have enough content for like 50 figures to last a lifetime... I end up spending a lot more time looking at content for sale and IMAGINING what I can do with it than actually doing it and then I don't even remember what I bought and unless it shows up in smart content (which it often doesn't) it could be lost for years until I go into the store and uncheck "hide products I own" (or whatever the actual wording is) and then I think "OMG! What am I doing? I already have so much stuff I never used or didn't even know I have!" If I made a rule that I would not buy any new content until I used everything I already own from all stores, the next time I'd be on this site I would probably be in an old age home or possibly the afterlife LOL...
If you have the money, the sales are great, but if you don't, it just tempts you to spend money you shouldn't. With a shopping cart full of things I can't afford, I'm at a crossroads of two popular slogans "Just say no" and "Just do it." But if I "just do it" I might not be able to pay rent... So, I think today will unfortunately be a "move everything to wishlist" day... And as I've learned by now, there's always another sale....
We build all our machines and have for decades. :) Well, we don't build our laptops, but all our desktops are home-built and upgraded regularly. It saves us money and lets us have the exact hardware we want from the tower itself (I absolutely adore my Fractal R5 Blackout) to heavy-duty power supplies and fans, our OS of choice, etc., which is the most important part. And it's so much easier these days. I've even bought some CPUs at great savings off eBay, although you have to be careful. That said, if you want a normal setup for normal everyday use, such as wordprocessing, it's more economical to buy one ready-made.
My daughter built us six desktops when she was 9 years old with no adult intervention or anything other than the instructions provided with the parts. Her only error was reversing a wire on a LED on one unit, so an indicator didn't light. Easy fix. Soon after, my husband gave a 10 and 11 year old a one-day crash course in building their own computers. I think that pretty much proves it is not rocket science anymore. It's mostly that folks get intimidated at the thought of doing it, because they feel it must be complicated. And if it does feel like rocket science or intimidating, Google is your best friend. There is not a problem you can have that someone has not posted the answer to or a video showing to fix it.
timmins.william, not knowing what went wrong with your system, I'm guessing what might have cost that amount of money. I know from experience it is very important to research the hardware you buy for compatability. That can get a bit complicated, but there are a lot of awesome websites that people have crunched the numbers, tell you what's compatible, etc.
For example, my last upgrade I had to make sure that my i7 3770k ivy bridge was compatible with the motherboard I was buying. I googled it and found the answer. My husband also wanted me to use my old case, and I finally capitulated, since I was getting all the other new parts that I wanted. However, my new Hyper 212 EVO CPU cooler was too tall for my old case, which we discovered during the build. He was upset because he'd missed that and the Fractal R5 case was at that point an extra $125 since we couldn't wait for the price to go down But I was happy because I got to buy the new case I wanted in the first place, lol. ;) And luckily, the error in calculating the clearance only cost us the $125, although I admit to throwing in a few more new fans just because I could, lol. I can see where if I had not meticulously researched the compatability of the motherboard, CPU, graphics card, etc.
I could have ended up with parts that simply couldn't have been used together. It definitely required homework, but all of that information is out there, plus there are forums where people will gladly help you compile a list of the parts for your ideal system. So I guess my post above was a little simplistic in that I wasn't considering that we bought the parts we supplied to the kids, so they got to skip that stage. But it's amazing the amount of help out there and how many people are willing to go out of their way to help folks who ask. Luckily, Google also lets us find those posts and benefit from the advice given to others or ask ourselves. :)
From complicated configurations to explaining how to stay grounded while working with electronics, it's all out there. :)
Wow I've seen better sales on a normal day than what is offered today.