Best place to purchase/build a new PC?

I need to get a new PC really soon and I need some suggestions on what make/model to purchase.

Should I go with a Dell or HP and have it custom built on their sites.....or is there something else better out there for the price. I know that there are other sites that will custom-build you a pc as well. I just need to be pointed in the right direction and would appreciate any recommendations/suggestions and insight from this great community.

Thanks.


p.s. No Mac's or Laptops please.

 

Why don't you build one ?

 

What will you use the computer for ?
Gaming ?
Routine Internet surfing, e-mail, etc ?
Something else ?

Laptop or PC/Mac ?

Only my personal opinion, of course, but if it is to be used for routine web surfing, I can't see not buying from the Dell small business outlet.
Optiplex 740s, 755s, and 760s are very reliable machines and you get the OS as well as a three year warranty.
Some are available with quad core CPUs, some with Core2Duo; the selection is usually extensive.
Pretty much any PC or laptop model Dell has offered in the past two or three years is available through the small business or home/home office outlets.
Perhaps you can build something comparable for less, but it won't have a total system warranty or a return option.

If you need a gaming machine, the aforementioned VelocityMicro and I Buy Power are good places to look.

-And, of course, there's always Apple.

 

It is better to build one for your self, here is what I build for my customers:

ASUS Motherboard with long life capacitors!
good cooper fan (CoolerMaster...)
Corsair power Supply, Sparkle or PC Power&Cooling for better systems
Video Card made by ATI or ASUS (not the ones that only use ATI or GFORCE chip and rest is low quality)
AMD quad core
DDR2 4gb
NEC DVD burner
Seagate hard drive with SATA3 or WD Raptor for better systems
Card Reader

So instead of paying for name you can get top quality system that will last you at least 5 years.

 

I was about to pull the trigger on the Velocity Micro Vector A5....but backed out the last minute.

It seems like "building" one is the way to go....but I have no experience in such a thing.

Is there a place that builds them for you?

 

You can decide what you want at Ibuypower as already mentioned,and they will build it for you,then deliver it to your front door.

 

I agree with that wtsinnc posted...it's hard to beat Dells business grade computers. Even many of their home grade ones are hard to beat...but the biz grade models are more solid and have that 3 year warranty.

Building your own...it's fun, I do it for my home and office rigs a lot, but you have a much higher chance of getting parts that aren't fully compatible and won't play nice together.

 

for a gaming machine look at http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/
i got my computer from there uk site and they are a good company.

if you want to build your own pc you can get advice on forums such as hexus

 

If you are willing to do a little study, you can build one yourself and get a lot higher quality for less money.
Nearly all components these days are intercompatable and just plug together.

I really like www.newegg.com

 

What about this Dell Vostro 220 Slim Tower. I just customized it. Would this be a good choice (i.e. processor, memory, video card, network interface, etc)?

Also are Vostro's any good...better than Inspiron?

 

Two thoughts from a non-expert user:

1) Can you possibly wait until you can purchase with windows 7, instead of vista? As a non-expert, I would be concerned about upgrading to windows 7 after the fact. I know it's $ free, but is it glitch-free? I'm assuming you would want to move to windows 7. If not, disregard this comment.

2) That is a small hard-drive (160 gig) you're putting on that computer. Have you thought about your storage requirements. Vista + craplets can easily take up close to half of it.

 

I just took delivery of a Vostro 220 mini-tower to replace a four year old custom-built Velocity Micro machine. The VM machine had the neatest interior you ever saw; all the wiring neatly wrapped, etc. But I'm drop-kicking it out the door, even though it should still be adequate for my purposes. The machine occasionally drops bits. This happens rarely enough that it took a long time for me to pinpoint the root cause of the varied problems I was experiencing. A random and infrequent failure of this sort is hard to detect with non-parity memory and virtually impossible to troubleshoot. I've had to use all sorts of hash totals, etc. in order to spot when something goes wrong. Hours and hours and hours of diagnostics on the hard disk and memory turned up no problem. The culprit could be the power supply, it could be the motherboard, it could be data cable, it could be the processor. It's simply infeasible to replace each of these in turn. I don't mean to fault Velocity Micro for the problems I had with this machine; it's a luck-of-the-draw lemon so far as I'm concerned. It could happen on any computer you buy or build, but this experience has made me more inclined to buy commodity, assembly-line machines.

 

My experience has been that a basic dell computer, if you wipe it can install the OS yourself, is a great way to get a moderately cheap business computer with decent quality parts. They key is to wipe the drive and put the OS on yourself, to get rid of all the 'help' they try to pack in there.

When building your own, newegg.com is by far the most popular. I have personally ordered about $20k of parts, with very few returns. Occassionaly a part will be defective, and newegg has always been fair by me and promptly.

Asus motherboards, I will never buy another. I only buy intel or gigabyte anymore. I have had too many Asus motherboards in the last 4 or 5 years that are garbage. MSI mobo's, they are Ok, but not my fave either. Intel boards these days that I have built may lack a few features, but have all been rock solid for me. I have built gigabyte boards since the athlon came out years ago. Even a gigabyte board made for computer manufacturers, where it is a little bit different from normal boards, definately lacking quality bios options, still seem to always be rock solid.

Overclocking and extreme performance raises other issues. Some users love Asus, I used to. Evga is the only maker of video cards I buy anymore. BFG is junk IMO. PNY too. Not that they cannot make a good product, but experience has shown that those and other brands have, for me, had a higher rate of issues of some kind. I wish I could still buy gainward video cards, they have been by far the best I have used.

Just some miscellaneous ramblings you may find useful.

Sul.

 

2 questions....

1) when is the official release date of Windows 7?

2) does newegg.com build desktop PCs...or do they only sell parts?

 

newegg.com -- parts.

windows 7, late october as of now.

Sul.

 

Newegg sells all the parts you need for building a PC. Newegg and Amazon among others are selling preorder Win 7 for over 50% off right now. I would have to agree with some of the other posters here advising you to build your own. It is not difficult. ASUS for instance has a quality vendor list for memory to use in their mobos and they have a list of cpu's that are compatible and the list grows as new cpus come to market and they update the bios to acommodate. One of the issues with buying a retail pc (ie Dell or HP) is the upgradability. They put a little psu in it, cheap ram, and will only issue a couple of bios updates. Without the bios updates your chance of upgrading the CPU to a newer one is far less likely. If you decide you want a better GPU then you would probably have to buy a PSU along with it. They generally sell most of them in MicroATX cases that has little space for cooling or adding hardware. IMO get each individual piece of hardware that you want and build it the way you want it the first time, then your good to go for several years without having to upgrade anything.