So my laptop is toast. I'd like to bridge into the Desktop Scene.

It's been nearly 3.5 years since I bought a pc. I had a nvidia 1gb gpu and an i5 processor. My biggest frustation with lappy's would be the constant need to plug it in. This time around, I want more of a workstation experience. Something that demands me to sit at the desk and plug-in work, as opposed to using it on the couch or the bed where I inherently feel lazy. My computer fell off the bed a few weeks ago. The sceen is broken, the hard-drive is toast and I'd need to buy another OS, because the Windows 7 key rubbed out. (The sticker was on the bottom for years). Originally, I spent 640 usd at the time. I'm hoping to spend the same or less. (Preferably to use this editor).

Can any of you suggest what brand I should look towards? Forgive me for being a Nvidia snob, but I haven't had a different pc before as I'm quite young. Most gaming pc rigs I've seen suggest AMD gpus and processors, are they any good? I'd like a small form factor so that I can lay it on the desk and have a monitor stand on-top of it.

Thanks for the read guys.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229437

Really, nVidia and AMD, in my opinion, are all about the same for most users. I normally stay with AMD cause there prices are better/better bang for the buck. Although Intels normally compile faster.

Main concern is make sure you have lots of cores, atleast 8 gig of ram, and I recommend a SSD for the OS as boot time is just so quick.

This could also be good for you, just make sure that it has a PCI-E slot so you can add an actual video card if needed.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4GH1J73862

 

If you are building a new PC - Go to this site

http://pcpartpicker.com/

It allows you to find parts cheaper

 

After going through the frustration of researching components/compatibility, ordering parts, building, returning defective parts etc. I just order from http://www.cyberpowerpc.com now. One of the last ones ordered I went through the research process; Did a custom build on their site with the parts I wanted then pieced together the same rig on newegg and cyberpower came out only a couple hundred more but with a warranty. Granted you can just as easily send individual components back to manufacturer while still under their warranty but you may have to go through several returns before catching all broken parts after, for example, a MB short; I can just ship the entire box back to cyberpower and let them figure out what all went sour... That wasn't really an example as it did happen to one of my desktops

Wife's laptop was ordered from cyberpower and close to a year in-use my youngest spit a mouthful of water onto the keypad, sent it back and they replaced all broken parts.

Its been a few years since ordering a desktop from there so I have no clue what their prices and customer service are like now. If you do order a custom build PC I'd suggest ordering it without the OS installed. At least with cyberpower they now install the OS and ship you a recovery disk. I've read a lot of bad reviews about the company but I've only had one complaint out of about 6 PC's - Same example I used above - When they shipped the rig back they decided not to properly package the rig for shipping and in transit the case took a beating. They offered to replace the whole rig but it worked fine and I didn't have a backup to wait another 6 weeks.

 

While I suppose it could be worth it to some people to pay a few hundred extra for a full-system warranty and having someone else put it together for you, I wouldn't turn someone off from building their own PC by making defective parts sound like really common problem--it's not.
Order from reputable sellers and brands and handle the parts carefully (don't build the PC while wearing wool socks on a carpet lol) and you should be fine. I've never had a defective part sent to me and I've built and continuously upgraded five desktops over the years.
Also, if you're the type to OC or continually upgrade and change your PC, I doubt the factory warranty that you paid for would cover much of that.

 

Going to add my experience as well. I've been buying primarily reputable brands, from NewEgg and TigerDirect almost exclusively, and handling the parts with anti-static equipment. My one and only defective purchase, in almost a decade of building systems (started in 2005), was a Razer Naga mouse.

I have a selection of brands I stick to almost exclusively with some very occasional purchases from other brands if they offer something specific that I need. Antec for power supplies, EVGA for graphics cards, Gigabyte for motherboards, GSkill for memory, and Western Digital for hard drives.

 

I've also never had a DOA internal part over probably 20 builds and 10 significant upgrades.

When I was younger and had more time and less money I'd do the weeks of research, buy from the cheapest dealer kind of thing. Spend many hours on it to save maybe a couple of hundred bucks. These days I walk into the shop with a budget in mind, and pick things off the shelf until the budget is expended. I'd rather save the many hours of research and spend that as many hours of additional time using the new system to do productive stuff. Unless you get a real lemon chances are that the practical difference the research might get you is negligible - everyone seems pretty darn competitive at any given price point these days.

 

Woah. I've had three DOA peripherals in maybe 15ish years. One was a Wacom device that had a defective battery - the device itself was perfectly fine. The other was a Razer keyboard, that got replaced by an identical Razer keyboard (identical to the point that it was broken in the same way). It had taken ages to follow up the first time, so instead of doing it again I just decided to never buy a Razer product again.

 

I fully intend to go back to Logitech with my next mouse purchase. The Nagas have very specific defects that almost invariably appear within two or three years. Left button starts doing accidental double clicks, middle mouse button stops responding, etc. The middle button issue has already appeared and the mouse is not at the two year mark yet.

 

I'm using a 5yo Logitech at work that's still great. At home I have a couple of old Logitech mice that are also still perfectly serviceable, because when I upgrade them it's not because my current one is broken. My G7 is great save for the battery life getting somewhat on the short side after 3 years of significant use. I liked it so much I went straight for the new model of the same, though. (To be fair, battery life is actually no better, but the updated version lets you plug a cord in so it became a non-issue.)

 

I highly recommend you get or build silent PC. Possibly with Antec p280 silent case, and CPU water cooler.
I found the noise so annoying when reading, learning and programming. Mind felt disoriented, now it's clear for hours.

 

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that defective parts is common when ordering parts. I've built 3 machines and upgrade rigs as needed and have only had one defective PSU delivered. But that PSU blew two MB's before I sent it back and the PSU tester was reading fine.

And razer products are delicate POS. I like the deathadder mouse but they don't last very long.

 

I go to pricewatch and piece together the parts in tabs then place the orders when I'm good to go.

Just start with a CPU motherboard Combo. (CPU's are a pain to install and not really worth the few bucks).

Grab some RAM.

Hard Drive.

Optical Drive (I'd recommend a $20 DVD drive, since optical drives are almost obsolete).

Case.

You can get a good Power Supply with the case or separate for less than $30 (Don't be a sucker and buy a 1000 watt supply you don't need).

And finally research your Video Card on Tom's.

It's super easy, and way cheaper than pre-fabs.

 

Pricewatch is primarily good for picking up used or older generation components. I'm currently in the process of building a file server using an ASUS K8N-DRE motherboard I picked up for $10 and a pair of AMD Opteron 270s I picked up for $20. I haven't bought the memory yet, but I checked and it is $40 for 16GB.

Something to keep in mind though is that buying low priced components will often land you low quality components and this can come back and bite you.

Low quality power supplies, for example, may be lacking in protection circuitry. This isn't only for protection from external sources but also protection from the PSU itself should it fail for any reason. Without those protection components the PSU can feed spikes back into the system and blow out components.

 

WHA...!

Nu-uh...

That's crazy-good deals!

 

The ASUS K8N-DRE came from Geeks. They appear to be out of business now.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=K8N-DRE-SATA-PB-2

StarMicro sold me the AMD Opteron 270s and are the supplier for the memory as well.

http://starmicroinc.net/

Unfortunately I spent far more money on the computer case because it was an Extended ATX motherboard and thus considerably bigger. Standard ATX is 12-inch by 9.6-inch but this E-ATX board is 12-inch by 13-inch.

 

I've got a comical amount of cases from, of all things, yard sales. You'd be surprised how many Old PC's you can find.

 

How many people are likely to be using a server tower though? Extended ATX and SSI EEB are the most common form factors for servers, but they are also incompatible with each other.

The case I ended up with was a real monster. Very heavy, very durable, and a lot of space for drives. It still barely holds the motherboard and the twin Hyper TX3 coolers though and I'm going to have to remove them in order to insert the drives.