PC builder looking to buy a desktop

In My Humble Opinion
1

So my first PC build was an x386 machine, way back in the early nineties. I’ve bought a laptop or two since then, but never bought a prefab desktop. However, for this year’s upgrade, it’s looking like I’ll be a bit short on time. But the thought of a pre-built machine is just … just … just weird.

I have no idea who to turn to. Dell? Gateway? Panamasonic?

Before even thinking about specs, I have a few considerations.

I want a machine that’s not filled with bloatware before I buy it. Heck, it doesn’t even need an OS, but that’s beside the point. I’d also prefer if it didn’t have an OEM version of Windows (need Windows for work), but that may not be possible. But no MS Works, no Symantec anything, nothing but a clean OS. If they have to put things on there, no hidden partitions I have to find in order to get full use of the space.

I want a machine without even the suggestion of custom vendor-only parts, slots, or doohickies. I want to be able to swap out every single component, from the PSU to the CPU in case something seems to be acting up. I want to be able to use theirs (if it’s under warranty) or anyone’s parts if I so choose.

I want a case that’s built for being inside it — lots of room, no sharp edges, drive cages and fan housings that slide out with ease. They don’t have to subcontract Antec, but that would be good.

If I’m paying them a premium to build it, I want them to have excellent service. At the moment, I can get pretty good service from everyone involved in my machine (e.g., Asus, Linksys, Western Digital). If something goes wrong or gets squirrelly, I don’t want a dip in service just because I bought from one company.

Ok, I think that’s about it for starters. Man, I sound curmudgeonly, but I hope the builders out there understand my trepidation. If I overlooked anything (this being my first buy, I’m not sure I’ve thought of everything), be sure to let me know.

For hardware, I tend to upgrade every three to four years. I like my PCs to last long enough to not be embarrassingly slow by the time of the upgrade, but they don’t need to still be on the cutting edge. Though it’s a professional box, the main performance tax will be the occasional FPS or other game I throw on it (e.g., HL, Fallout, L4D). I’d like to spec out on the other side of the Latest Thing, so there’s some room for software developers to catch up. That is, think back to when Crysis first came out — had I been building back then, I’d want a box that modestly exceeded its recommended specs, so it would run without breaking a sweat.

I keep virtually everything on a file server, so drive space isn’t important (though with the cost of storage, it shouldn’t really make a difference). Same thing with optical storage. Burners are dirt cheap these days, so I don’t expect it to make much of a difference. This is also one of those compatibility issues from above — I want to use a spare second drive I already have, and may even want to take their drive out and put it in another machine.

As for CPU/motherboard, this is a big area where I’m willing to pay someone else for their research. My current CPU is an AMD 64 X2 4800, so that should give you an idea of when I last looked into CPU models. The motherboard is an Asus M2N4. I need Gigabit LAN (do them make Ethernet boards anymore?) and onboard sound, but other than a good/fast chipset, that’s all I really need on it. Clearly lots of slots, quietness, etc., but nothing specific (of important note, since it’s inherently a business machine, I don’t overclock).

Current graphics is an ATI 4800, only a year or so old. Given what happened to the market a while ago, I’m assuming I’ll be able to dwarf that with relative ease without going too far over the $200 it set me back. But bottom line is that the combination of graphics card and CPU need to run any game currently on the market (and even those that have only published specs). I don’t need it to boot/run things nanoseconds or imperceptibly faster outside a benchmark, but I do want solid framerates.

I’m running XP now, so the RAM is maxed out. I don’t know if the adage of more RAM is better still holds out with Vista. Aside from gaming fun, I’ll frequently have upwards of fifty to sixty FF tabs open (various research projects), and Word, Excel, Acrobat, and other programs open at the same time. My current machine doesn’t choke on that, but I don’t know whether six or eight GB will make a difference. Similar to graphics considerations, I don’t need to sweat minute differences – for example, I’ve yet to read a strong argument for DDR3 – so overall, noticeable performance is more important than just statistics.

Lastly, there’s budget. I’d like to hit around fifteen hundred (or less), if at all possible. As it gets above that, I’ll rethink going to a retailer and probably revert to building it myself.

Any thoughts?

Then again, anyone have a link to a current article with hardware recommendations close to the above? Heck, I miss Newegg.

Thanks,

Rhythm

2

Here’s a site that lists different builds with different price ranges.

3

I was a long time homebuilder and I went for a commercial rig about 6 months ago. It was a smart decision. My needs were a little different than yours, but I also wasn’t as picky. Personally, I think your pickiness is unnecessary. Computers aren’t nearly as finicky as they once were, and most of the parts are essentially disposable.

  1. Forget about the bloatware concern. It’s a silly worry for a former homebuilder to have. You have all the knowledge you need to uninstall it thoroughly and there are apps available online for free that scrub that stuff for you. The bloatware (advertising basically) cuts the cost of the rig substantially, use that to your advantage.

  2. Don’t worry about the OS. You have OS CDs at home already if you are a homebuilder. Use the one that’s on the PC your are retiring. Or install Windows 7 RC1. If you want a new, fresh OS the bloatware concern above is doubly silly.

  3. Custom vendor only parts? What are you talking about? I assume you are not building an OS X rig…so what exactly are you worried about? I’m not aware of any company making PCs that uses any parts that can’t be swapped out at will. I suppose there’s a optimized case fan/mobo combo or some integrated front USB ports but these are all good things, improvements over the generic homebuild cabinet.

As for all your other expectations, they are all in the specs. You are a homebuilder. You know how a computer works. You can open a CPU case up in the store and look at it and decide if it’s spacious enough for you. You shouldn’t need to deal with tech support. If a HD fails, you replace it yourself. If a graphics card fails, you replace it yourself. If Windows gets wonky you troubleshoot it yourself. Trust me, there isn’t a company out there who’s help desk will be more knowledgeable than you are.

Use all these factors your your advantage. Buy a refurbished unit for a song and abandon the upcharge that comes with a warranty and support that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Decide how much processing power you need and how much graphics power you need and then go to Newegg.com and buy the cheapest one you can find. Upgrade the memory yourself if it saves you $50. The mobo/gpu/memory/cpu combinations offered by Dell, HP, Sony etc. are all optimized to work together so as long as the CPU cores/speed fit your needs and the GPU can run Crysis go with whoever offers the cheapest machine.

If you need a top of the line, elite gaming rig you should still build it yourself. From the sounds of things you don’t. You should be able to get a rig that does everything you need for $800 easy, probably half what it would cost to build it yourself. Take advantaged. Refurbs are a steal if you are comfortable working on it yourself. Go into Microcenter and pick one out, I got a Dell Intel Dual Core 2.2 GHz processor for $350 with 4GB RAM and plenty of power. For $80 I could upgrade the GPU and play Crysis easy.

Computers are cheap and disposable, snobbism is misplaced and expensive.

4

Stay away from Dell & HP. They use parts which are not industry standard. If you want to upgrade anything other than a harddrive or DVD drive, you may be out of luck. You might just be better off going with a no-name brand. You’ll be getting cheap parts, but odds are they’ll at least be standard parts which can be upgraded or replaced. A good sign is if the case looks like a case that you could just buy on its own.

Keep in mind that the whole point of bloatware is that it brings down the cost of your computer. The companies who make those trialware programs pay for them to be on there, which absorbs the cost of the company manufacturing and selling their computers. A real easy fix is to buy a bloatware computer, and just wipe the entire drive and do a fresh install from a REAL OS install CD. You can get OEM copies of Windows on newegg.com for $100, or just go with the free beta of Windows 7 (which is good through March 2010, which by then should be upgradable to the final release).

5

Falcon Northwest. Their off-shelf Talon line will give you everything you’re asking for and their service is specifically designed to make every other computer manufacturer feel ashamed of themselves. They’re pricey but the $4000 paint job is entirely optional.

6

Oh wow, I got a Falcon NW about 10 years ago. Good to hear they’re still kicking it, because they did a damn fine job designing my brother’s computer.

7

I think any mom and pop shop should give you what you’re looking for. My last non-laptop I got from End PC Noise. I was happy with the computer and service I got from them. Their parent company is here where you can get a custom computer that isn’t focused on being quiet.

8

Can you give an example? I have a Dell and this simply doesn’t appear to be the case. The only thing that might be a hassle to upgrade is the mobo and cpu, but I’d never replace those I’d just buy another new computer. With so many technologies changing anything more than incremental upgrades are impractical because you are left with a bottleneck or deprecated component somewhere. And incremental upgrades aren’t cost effective.

9

You’ll pay a lot for the service though. These types of places simply cannot sniff the price per performance that the big boys can provide. Suck it up, ditch the geek cred and save $300.

10

Yes, just about any of their Dimension or Optiplex systems. I used to have a Dimension and it turned out that the ONLY RAM it supported was the type which I had to buy directly from Dell, at very inflated prices.

Their Optiplex systems use compact cases, which are incompatible with generic power supplies and add-on cards.

11

I’m sorry but this is bullshit. You were getting scammed. There is no proprietary RAM. I’ve been Googling to find any confirmation of this and there is no evidence of it being true. I’ve found a couple references to Dell Laptops from pre-2002 that used a special type of RAM, and that you had to replace it with a specific type of compatible RAM, but Crucial and Kingston sold that RAM. It wasn’t proprietary, though I’m sure Dell enjoyed telling the technophobes that they had to get it from them, even if it was a lie.

While it’s true that ultra compact cases require special components that might be hard to locate or specific to a small number of machines/manufacturers, nothing about them is proprietary. The OP has specifically said that he want’s a full size cabinet so that’s a moot point.

12

I had problems years and years ago with a Compaq and heard of similar things about Dell (as fusoya mentioned). Wasn’t sure if it was still true by and large, but it sounds like for some components it still is. I’m also getting a Mac and hate hate hate the Apple Tax (given that it’s to do design work I really shouldn’t mind paying so much for their packaging, but still), so the thought of being locked into someone’s RAM or whatnot is not pleasant.

Though I’ve done some incremental upgrades before (a while ago when graphics fell through the floor allowed me to make a heck of a leap for only a couple hundred bucks), my main concern is replacing fried components. It may not be common, but I’ve had it happen (and helped out lots of others whose machines died) often enough to be wary of relying on a single provider.

You’re really spot on with regards to building budget power boxes – especially refurbs and used machines. But given that uptime and reliability is key, I’m a bit limited to shiny new boxes with fresh warranties (whether that’s superstition or not).

Thanks for the heads up on the M&P stores – rather than be large enough to brand all their components, they’re chock full of names I recognize (e.g., Asus, Antec, WD, etc.). The Talon looks really good and just what I’m looking for.

13

It’s just not true and has never been true. There once upon a time was a need to specially pair memory and it took extra effort to make sure you got the right one, but it was never limited to just one manufacturer. The big memory manufacturers all sold the stuff, it was just harder to find and amateurs bought the wrong stuff and whined about it.

By incremental upgrades I was referring to small steps up in speed/capacity, not large leaps. There’s rarely any upside to jumping from a 2.2 Ghz Core2Duo to a 2.5 GHz Core2Duo. When the upgrade is worthwhile they’ve almost always come out with a new chipset/socket/bus speed/slot type that requires wholesale changes. Moore’s Law and all. By the time my last homebuild was ready for a new GPU and it was cost effective to do so, I’d lost the ability to upgrade because my AGP card was replaced by the PCI-E standard.

Be careful here. Warranties on computers are usually useless. If you get a refurb or a budget box from a custom discount builder you won’t get much of a warranty, but you save a ton of money. On a new machine you get a warranty, but that warranty comes with a ton of strings. To get a repair you almost always have to send it away for 2-4 weeks at a time. They won’t just send you a new RAM or GPU, they’ll require you to surrender your entire machine and wait. If the OS gets screwed up they almost always do a clean install from the OEM disc, they don’t diagnose and fix. It’s ALWAYS faster and wiser to do your own repairs and replacements. Warranties are ONLY for people who don’t know anything about computers.

Factory Refurbs occasionally have uptime issues, but so do new machines. If you don’t have issues in the first few weeks you probably never will have them for either type. Beware of Best Buy open box items and the like though, they are a much different animal.

If you are REALLY worried about being able to get immediate service, an m&p store that offers walk-in repairs might be your best bet. They will probably charge you for the repairs as needed, but that’s better than some silly service plan. Going to a store like that that builds their own and does quick repairs is wonderful, it’s just pricey. For most applications the price premium isn’t worth it, even with work computers.

I know homebuilders like names like Asus, MSI and the like, but they are not reliable compared to the big brands. They are flexible and customizable, but the infinite configurations they take makes them rife with bugs and conflicts. You really need to stay up on firmware updates, they tend to be more trouble than they are worth if you really want seamless, low maintenance, trouble free use. The testing and reliable pairings the big brands provide are unique and the most reliable options.

14

Who the hell are you, Dells marketing manager.

My current warranty service returns are less than 10 out of several hundred custom builds. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say 5%, even then, those warranty services included preserving data where needed, and were done in a few days.

Who do you think makes those “big brand” parts. Dell doesent make anything, they do final assembly just like the smaller shops do. Last I heard most of dell motherboards were made by Foxconn, a brand you almost cant sell on the shelves in a shop, printers are usually made by lexmark, another famous cheapo crap producer.

As to the proprietary RAM Q, it wasn’t so much proprietary but Dell is pretty much the only occurrence I have seen of PC-3200 DDR2 RAM in a system, and for whatever reason mixing ram types in those machines almost never worked, IIRC the boards would not support faster ram. Many of the same series machines lacked video card slots at all, why order them that way at all unless you wanted to make them difficult or impossible to upgrade.

In addition, the parts used by most independent shops have warranties that run 3+ years. When big names buy parts, they get a discount by requesting a no warranty or 1 year warranty version and or handling returns themselves.

I am right now processing an RMA for a customer on a 2 year old monitor, I am just charging him for the packing material and shipping.

Just like the little guys cannot touch a big name price, the big names cannot touch our service.

We can remote into customer machines, put onsite techs there in a matter of hours if not minutes, hell I have on probably a hundred occasions dropped in to handle some small 5-10min issue onsite for no additional charge for people who came to us for work.

15

Get a Mac.

16

Way to save a few bucks there… :rolleyes:

17

I’m not pimping Dell at all. fusoya made a claim about fictional proprietary RAM. I’m fighting ignorance. Occasionally doing so means you speak in favor of uncool companies like Dell and Microsoft.

It’s neither here nor there, but the big boys are probably somewhere in the vicinity of 1%, if that. As I said above mom and pop stores are wonderful. They provide a great service for many people, however economies of scale are not in your favor. This has upsides and downsides.

The point isn’t that the use better parts. In some cases they don’t, but generally speaking most computer parts and pretty good. They fail at a low rate considering what they are asked to do. The big brands advantage is in testing a small number of configurations and demanding certain specifications from 3rd party suppliers. The sheer volume of units they make in the same configuration allows them to weed out gremlins that one-off custom configurations are apt to get.

Every memory manufacturer makes that format and it’s readily available. Mixing RAM types is never a good idea. I’m not sure why being an early adopter of DDR2 means you should dismiss their portfolio out of hand. If the machine you buy has a less common memory type that’s the shoppers issue, it’s not like it’s not posted in big bold letters on every box.

So what? Warranty repairs are a hassle and if you are a homebuilder it’s just a waste of time and money to have a manufacturer do something you can do in 3 minutes. Whatever warranty you have, a single one from a big brand or the hodgepodge of warranties that come with each of the parts from a custom builder is going to require you to send in those parts for replacement. It’s just too slow compared to swapping it yourself. You might as well save the money.

Again, so what. He claims to be a homebuilder. I’m saying that if you are a computer savvy person, skip the warranty and save the money and do it yourself on the slim chance you need it. I’m not advocating that small shops are useless, I’m just saying that if you are a do-it-yourselfer you can save a fortune by exploiting the big boy’s buying power. All the advantages of a small shop become irrelevant if you can do repairs and upgrades yourself, you end up paying a premium that you don’t need to.

18

I wasn’t making any fictional claims. This was at least 10 years ago so I don’t have the specs on hand, but I wanted to go from 64 to 128 MB of ram and there were free slots, so I bought some Kingston RAM which fit the specs of the motherboard. They didn’t get detected. After doing some research, I discovered that the BIOS would only detect a special type of RAM which Dell made and sold.

19

Can you explain this a little more in-depth? I wouldn’t consider myself as being very computer savvy, but I put together my first PC two months ago and everything seems to be fine. Are you saying I’m at more risk of having something go wrong at this point compared to if I had just bought a Dell?

Do what in three minutes? Get a new part and install it? I live in a populated section of NJ and with all of the CompUSA stores out of business around here, it’s hard to find PC parts in a brick and mortar store. And when you can, the selection is weak and the prices are really bumped up. My PC before this was a Gateway and when the power supply and monitor died (on two separate occasions), I called them up, told them what my symptoms were and they sent me new parts in the mail and they only took about two days to get here. It was only after that that I had to send my old parts to them and with UPS picking them up for free and using the boxes that the replacement parts came in to pack the old parts, it was a piece of cake.

20

Older Dells had, as I understand it, proprietary power supply wiring issues making it impossible to replace the p.s. in (for example) an OptiPlex GX1p with an off-the-shelf p.s.

As a frequenter of public library computer-upgrade sales, this kind of thing is very much worth knowing about going in.

Also, while not an example of that problem exactly, if I’d known that my recently-purchased GX400 could only use RDRAM, I’d have left it behind and picked up an extra GX260 instead. :slight_smile: