Show HN: Build a PC in 3D in the Browser
buildcores.comI've been building this over the past few years. I left my job working on Google Earth to make a 3D PC builder. We have quite a few users so it's able to fund our team but I realized I never shared on HN!
Why are so many gaming parts made with annoying leds? I wouldn't mind having a case with a transparent window in order to quickly check if said computer needs a cleanup but those lights are so annoying this is a no go.
I could disable most leds from my mainboard settings but not for my gpu. I can turn off the lights of my cheap mechanical keyboard with a shortcut but they always turn on by default when I turn the computer.
Is there a database of parts without stupid lights included by default? It should be the norm but it seems it has become rare or you have to pay a premium or install conpanion apps to be able to turn them off by default..
I see it kind of as a matter of fashion, similar to furniture being made with gouges in the wood or denim sold with holes worn into it.
Over 20 years ago, the case I bought had extraneous blue LEDs (although they were blessedly easy to disable; just don't plug in their power cable). And that's around the time I started seeing LED light strips, liquid cooling kits with fluorescent fluid and UV case lights. Add a few years, and basically anything sold as gaming-related is going to light up colorfully, have a bunch of LEDs on it, and all that. Big, glass-sided aquarium cases, wires tucked behind the motherboard or hidden behind plastic/metal covers.
IMO, it's an aesthetic that looks cool on display items in the store, but that I'd look to disable in my own hardware. My motherboard has one RGB LED, but I think I have it disabled. Kind of a moot point; my case is opaque anyhow.
It upsets me that you often have to pay extra to remove this thing that cost them money to put in, costs me money to use, increases the complexity, adds more points of failure, isn’t even nice, and is sometimes even actively worse (e.g. a backlit keyboard is much worse than high-contrast printing if you always have good lighting, especially if the caps are white).
I unplug what I can, and cut what I must.
A window to check on dust? Surely you mean a camera connected to a CV pipeline so an agent could order a can of compressed air?
How do cleanrooms measure dust?
The cheapest RAM I could find at the time had an annoying "breathing rainbow" RGB mode. The software to control them is extremely buggy and would fail to turn off the LEDs regularly. So I just scratched the power traces off my RAM going to the LEDs at the top of the PCB. No more RGB!
Wow, this is incredible. Just in time for black friday too. One comment, is the amount of client side work made to be adaptive depending on how beefy the user's machine is?
On my desktop this loads great, but on my old-ish laptop the whole machine slows to a crawl when I click into a build. I assume due to whatever graphics rendering is going on.
Really nice! Sorry for the weird question but how does it generate money to fund your team? Through the 3D Configurator API for Businesses?
interface feels quite cluttered
I'm curious to hear how you would improve it. I agree we probably should cut down on the amount of things on screen
Make sure the main action, whether to add to build, go to the next part, or browse through the parts have the most prominent buttons. Move some of the less commonly used actions into a dropdown or a panel off to the side (or even on a separate route) instead of right by all the main controls.
Cool, now I can play "PC Building Simulator" without having to install Steam :-P
Jokes aside, this looks pretty cool and I'm sure I'll get absolutely sucked into it!
This looks incredible
Wow moment opening your web, thanks for sharing, going to dig in!
that's so cool!
any chance this can model airflow one day?
We have airflow orientation visualization (not actual simulation) as a pro feature, but maybe one day we can do simulation. It just shows arrows to show what is intake vs exhaust right now
Looks like it can as a paid feature
How about an emulator supporting the HCF instruction, letting the magic smoke out from chips, as well as pyrotechnical devices like explosive bolts and self destruct magnesium case igniters? That would be great with airflow modeling.
Yeah because building a _REAL_ system has become too expensive :(
This looks like a simple idea executed PERFECTLY.
Shared with a few people I know - and I will refer to this instead of "asking my bro" about techy hardware stuff.
Since i personally have a VISUAL learning style, this is right up my alley.
good hunting + best of luck with this. ps. I adore the website design + messaging too. 10/10
thanks! would love to see if it is useful
dunno, sounds like pcpartpicker, but way more complicated.
Good luck!
This is really cool.
This is actually a pretty cool use case for 3D in the browser. Being able to visualize component compatibility instead of just reading specs makes a big difference, especially for people building their first PC.