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Originally Posted by Etacovda
DIY isnt all about price; I think Jaydee mentioned recently he'd spend upwards of 3k on waterblock design etc.
Thats not pocket change. A lot of DIY'ers would like to see their product evaluated.
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My Father-in-law has built up quite the little woodworking shop. It's his hobby. A couple of nights a week he'll spend a few hours playing with his tools, turning things on the lathe, gluing things, making pens or chess pieces or whatever. He really got into making pens and whistles, and built boxes to showcase them. When you visit he'll pull out boxes of custom turned pens made from different woods and plastics, and even animal horn. He's invested a lot of money in his hobby, and doesn't think twice about spending more unless it gets into the thousands. From what I've seen of Jaydee's posts and pics, I think he's got a similar outlook on it as machining has become a hobby for him.
I suppose that's the difference. I can work woods, metals, and plastics, solder and weld, build circuits and the like, but none of that is my hobby. They're just things I know how to do. I don't use tools often, they're not my hobby, so I don't have much of a kit or shop. I fabricate when I need to for some other purpose, not for the simple pleasure of doing so, although I have noticed as I get older I enjoy it more. I see how it could become a hobby, and how at some point a desire for objective measurement could creep up if you've been at building a particular class of object though successive refinements. I just don't see most DIYers hitting that point. Really, how many waterblocks do you need, and how many variations before you get one that performs adequately?
Compare it to case modding - there are far more people modifying their cases than there are people entering case mods into contests or even posting job logs of their mods. Most case mods are pretty ho-hum, add a window here, a blow-hole there, a face plate here, a cold cathode there. To the top of the case-modding pyramid such things are hardly worthy of notice. It's the difference between the service center of the local auto dealer (commercial) and Monster Garage (folk like Jaydee), but I suppose more like Junkyard Wars - what can we put together that works, and we can scrounge up the parts. And waterblocks, while useful, just aren't as sexy as fire boats or catapults or dragsters, and even if they were, it's hard to imagine two groups of four getting excited about building competing water blocks the underperform commercial blocks, especially if they have to pay for the testing to determine the winner.