this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Sometimes I wonder what the thought process behind the gaming aesthetic was. RGB (*if tunable) itself is fine and adds a nice opportunity for personalization, but are those tacky fonts, crystal-facet enclosures, and overall showiness just tasteless or do any gamers actually prefer that look?

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[–] Xande@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago

I was riding the first RGB bling bling wave back in the early 2ks and after a while I got sooooooooooooo annoyed by every light my PC emitted.

Same today.

I give a frog about RGB and when I bought my actual PCs back in early 2024 I used an old Chieftec case I had standing around for the first and bought a cheap case of Amazon that has no glass.

Both stand in a way that air can circulate and the PC stays cool, but light is blocked.

[–] digdilem@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

My gaming pc lives in a soundproof cupboard 5m away without a case because quietness is more important to me than any visual element, so any RGB thing gets avoided, or turned off.

I can appreciate a very colour coordinated and well put together "gaming" computer in a purely aesthetic sense. Some are genuinely pretty and I get that some folk take a lot of pleasure out of making something that looks beautiful and best of luck to them. But I'm not one of them.

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

How do you handle cooling?

Super quietness sounds great but having a CPU running at 1.000Β°C doesn't

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[–] KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

My gaming computer is in an old 4 unit rack mount server case. I think there is some sort of RGB nonsense on the motherboard, but you can't see it once the computer is racked.

Fuck RGB shit.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

back in my day those were case mods. i disable that shit immediately

[–] SilliusMaximus@mander.xyz 5 points 1 week ago

I like minimalist setup, I avoid RGB.

The only RGB I run is for my keyboard and only because I sit in a dark room and everything is black, so it can be difficult to see where the keyboard is. Back when I ran a regular mouse I also had an RGB mouse for the same reason, but carpal tunnel forced a trackball so now the mouse never moves and it no longer needs RGB.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

Well once you add LEDs it increases the FPS 30% so yeah.

[–] JayGray91@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

As long as the RGB is tuneable into any other color (combination) I'm okay with it. I also like white gaming peripherals more lately. I don't consciously seek gaming esthetics, but if that's the better value I pick it.

oh and someone else mentioned it's childish. good. I miss being childish. there's very little thing I have to do while AdUlTiNg that let's me being childish. so gaming will be childish for me.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 5 points 1 week ago

Fuck no. It's all disgusting.

I just want rainbow transparent tech back. Let me feel like I am still in the early 2000s.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

I don't like the aesthetic but a lot of my stuff is "gaming" branded for functionality reasons (eg high refresh rate monitor; mice with extra buttons; the mech kb I wanted happened to be gaming branded but I would've bought a keyboard with same specs and price that was not gaming branded). The gaming aesthetic is a bit weird when you think about it.

[–] MissingGhost@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

I've been a PC gamer for 32 years now. I do enjoy having a clear side panel. I've had one for 22 years. That way you can show off whatever you have inside. I don't use RGB or any kind of lighting. I just think clear electronics are cool, you can see how they are made.

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

I suppose it's down to each individual to decide whether they're more interested in gaming or the looks. For instance, one can be a diehard automobile fan without being super into spoilers, wraps, loud AF mufflers, underlights, etc., right? πŸ˜…πŸ˜Ά

[–] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

im not against leds, but I hate rainbow barf mode. paert of the things I enjoy is uniqueness of builds, via small or big customizations, and adressable rgb helps, but too many people keep it at default which causes too many fucking builds to look the same.

RGB that you can dim/disable beats a blaring bright red or blue LED you can’t, other than that I could leave gamer design behind

And I’m happy that backlit keyboards are widespread

[–] nagaram@startrek.website 4 points 1 week ago

I like a very small amount of RGB.

I didn't always, I wanted full no color, but the ONLY GPU I could find had just a smidge of RGB in the logo (MSI something 5060 ti) and I like it as a highlight.

i hate that most of it is half-assed unless you spend twice as much to make it look good.

the current black paint + edgelord logo + generic phrase about gaming + half-brighness rainbow LEDs on 40% of your components in every computer just gets old. if one actually spends a decent amount of money i think it can look good, tho.

[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think there's a fine line to be walked

Personally the only lights on my PC itself are the Ethernet ports on the back, and one little blue power indicator on the front

And since I built it in an HTPC case and stuffed it into my entertainment center, you kind of need to be looking at it from just the right angle to even see those. The case itself is a pretty unassuming black rectangle that looks pretty much like any other piece of AV equipment you might expect to see under a TV. About the size of a normal AV receiver, with a disc drive, a power and reset button, 2 USB ports, and a headphone and microphone jack.

My keyboard is a Keychron Q6 max with side-printed shine-through key caps, and my mouse is a Gameball Thumb (I like trackballs, and it's nice since I'm gaming on the couch so not much convenient flat space to move a mouse around) which has single ring of LEDs around the trackball and a small indicator LED to show the DPI settings on the mouse. Both of those turn off when they're idle, and when they're in use I have them set to a pretty simple spinning color mode.

My setup is in a finished basement and the lights are usually down so it's nice having them light up for the ease of seeing what I'm doing, and the simple color animations aren't too distracting.

Where my lighting excess does come in though is with the Philips hue lights I have synced up to my TV the overhead lights, a light strip behind my tv, and a light tube underneath it. Between that and the surround sound I think it's really immersive for movies and gaming. I think I've hit a good balance of it having some wow factor without being too distracting but opinions will of course vary on that.

[–] SaneMartigan@aussie.zone 4 points 1 week ago

I got a plain black case without a window. I used to have Razer KB+Mouse but after a deathadder and viper died I'm trying a logitech mouse, the matched RGB was nice at first but I lost interest in it.

[–] Geodad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

No. I turn off the flashy LED shit.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I hate those lights so much. I only want one light on my entire computer it should be right next to the on button to let me know it's on. That's it. I had that. It was wonderful. Then when I upgraded my graphics card it came with a light and now the thing glows green and I hate it. And don't get me started on the stupid Mouse.

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My take, I was a gamer when I was young, when a 386 was gaming for me and till today when a 4090 is gaming for me, but I prefer normal looking shit without RGB. My 4090 colours allow me to set it to one shade of blue that I like, but I’ll be happy with a closed unit without any colour as well. What I would prefer, over colours, is free time to actually game :/

[–] littlewonder@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't care much about my case and the internals but you can pry my flowing; gradient; pink, purple, and blue-lit peripherals, with gold ripples after a key or mouse click, from my dead hands. It's the little things that make me not want to eject out of my chair when dealing with work shit. I feel like a golden bi wizard when I'm at my desk

[–] Delphia@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Im 40, I have a mortgage, a boring and safe car, a stable union government job and Ive been married for 10 years.

Having my computer make pretty lights is one tiny glimmer of my youth left in my life and if you want to make me feel bad about that, you are a cunt.

Even as a nongamer I appreciate the stylistic aspects of gaming computers, but tbh if I were going to buy one I'd probably put the money into better specs and a plain case.

[–] bcgm3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I used to be against it, then my PC died in the early COVID days and the only (practical) way I could get a future-proofed replacement was to get a pre-built, and they all had RGB.

From there, though, it grew on me. Like so many other things I enjoy about working with computers, the learning process was just super enjoyable for me.

I read about different standards (RGB vs aRGB, 3 pins vs 4 pins, this module or that one, this software vs that), tried a few things, and got it looking like I wanted. Now I'm using OpenRGB to make my own patterns that match the room or the weather or whatever wallpaper I've got. Turning understanding into control and self-expression just feels good man.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

I was into it when I was a teenager, then got over it quickly. This was before RGB programmable lighting was even available, you had to buy your own individual LEDs that didn't change color.

Also this was the era where CGI anime girls and/or robofrogs were plastered on the GPU and cases had giant useless hunks of plastic to make it look like constipated Transformer so... in all honesty it's probably gotten better.

[–] TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I like the stuff because my kids like all the rainbow effects. Normally while working or gaming I will set the effects to be off though.

[–] msherburn33@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

We went from boring beige PC cases, that looked rather boring and were in dire need of some stylish upgrades, in the complete other direction and overshot the target by a mile. I find most modern PC stuff incredible ugly and impractical. Even just finding a tower that still has a 5.25" slot took effort, since most don't even have them anymore. The whole idea of transparent windows on your case or putting your PC on the desk instead of below it, is complete nonsense, especially when you don't even have room for swappable disk drives. The good old desktop PC at least went under your monitor, but modern PC cases don't even do that.

I am kind of surprised, despite all those decades of PC gaming, we still don't have gaming PCs as compact as a Playstation/Xbox. They do exist, e.g. the old Alienware Steam Machine was tiny, but they are far from common place and often either underpowered or overpriced.

I'll admit to liking the look of some gaming PCs, with a custom loop with clear tubing, colored coolant, coordinated lights; it hits the same way a well done build in Satisfactory does.

I'm not really interested in gaming peripherals like a big chunky mouse with a bunch of angled plates on it trying to look like Gigatron's jock strap. Some RGB can be kind of cool, I kinda wish I could do more useful stuff with it, like I always throught it would be cool to have RGB lighting that varied from blue to red with component temperature or something. I'm not the biggest fan of just unicorn vomit for the sake of unicorn vomit.

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Flame decal πŸ”₯πŸ”₯πŸ”₯ I thought it was cool 10 years ago, Now my actual setup is black and blue light

[–] N00b22@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Gamer here, I do like my setup RGB matching the same color (Red)

But only because something has RGB does not mean I'll buy it. RGB β‰  Quality

RGB isn’t something I actively seek, but most thing come with it regardless. I have my gaming PC under my desk on the left side. The case has a glass panel and the light bounces off the TV cabinet next to it. I use Open RGB to set my LEDs to teal and purple inside the case and my Razor mouse. I have a voyager split keyboard that can self-set its RGB without any external app. Long winded way of saying I do customise it so it isn’t too garish, but I only care about backlighting on my keyboard (I still don’t really have home row down)

[–] SoupBrick@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago

I like it :)

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I'm just running a stock Framework 13 currently. I do have several older desktops that I plan to get running again at some point. I might consider a new build, but it seems like a waste these days. No RGB for me. The only light I don't mind seeing at night is a dim red. Everything else is obnoxious.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago
[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago

My PC is RGB because it was cheaper that way. If I had the budget for what I really wanted, my PC would be made of translucent plastic; probably orange or purple.

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