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Originally Posted by Cathar
I think the issue here is that Procooling itself is not becoming irrelevant, it's that water-cooling overall has stagnated, at least from a technical point of view.
Taking a look at the XtremeSystems w/c forums the interest levels seem to have moved from the DIY design and technical aspects, and so on, and have moved more towards general system building from DIY parts. Sure, people are still interested in how stuff performs, but they're heavily factoring in size and noise into that equation too.
This is also reflected in the market-place. How many new blocks are on the market nowadays? Some companies are running products from 2 to 3 years ago, albeit slightly refined with the odd tweak here and there, but overall the marketplace hasn't moved to any great deal.
We've all analysed the crap out of pumps, fans, blocks, radiators, tubing, and so on, and slowly but surely as a community we've narrowed down the choices to the good stuff, and the average stuff. What is there left to do? PC water-cooling overall is closish to a "known quantity" now. Sure there are quirks and debates over testing methods, and the strength of each side of the debate gets backed up by real-world evidence for both cases. Take a look at the SG overclockers w/b review. Higher overclocks (more stable cooling of the core) yet with higher reported temperatures. Go figure. I do believe that those debates were really more of a symptom of the lack of real things to talk about. Everyone's fighting over the scraps of what there was left to do.
That's all besides the point though. PC was heavily aligned with the bleeding edge of w/c development and attracted the audience it did because advances were coming thick and fast for quite a while there. That's no longer true, both in the market-place and in the DIY case. This is the real reason for the decline. It actually started over 2 years back when PC was split into sub-sections in an attempt to spur additional debate in various sub-areas. Instead all I feel that it has achieved is split the sub-interest areas up into ways in which people HAVE TO first have an interest in some sub-section before they'll even click on some thread. i.e. the PC site seems to now be so sub-diversified that it somewhat inhibits the lively cross-pollination that occurred between sub-interest groups.
Is there an answer? I don't know. Get back to roots maybe. It's never going to be the place it once was. That's not anyone's fault, that's just the way the market place has taken us all. I'd say get back to a singular technical discussion forum format. Put it back in one place where people can easily see the content and contribute. Also, raise the default "Show past 30 days" only, and increase that to 1 year. It might re-spark some interest in topics that have slid by the way-side and are less easy to find for the casual browser.
Take a look at OCForums, XTremeSystems, Hocp, and OCAU. While some here may look on those sites with a certain level of contempt, they are still active and somewhat lively. I don't mean look to replicate them, but look to see just what it is that people are posting about. Not all of it is non-technical. People are really more focused on system-building. The correct matching of components, and so on. If you want to attract the masses, start talking the about stuff that is interesting to the masses.
PC has backed itself into an elitist corner. Again, I don't believe that this is anyone's fault, but there sure was room here for the focused technical forums alongside with more mass-interest discussions. PC's forum user base generally eschewed the mass-interest group and as a result once the technical aspects declined, just as they were always going to one day, it's left without the support base that it's looking for. I mean take a look at where a number of the more technical posters here started posting. It was on those sites, so having mass appeal people isn't all bad.
Look around the web. Look at what's working today. Refocus the technical aspects, and hopefully something will be salvaged.
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