re: #54 NetworkKed

If you have some time and are willing to have an adventure, try building your own PC.

This used to be a nightmare to try to do in the 90’s - you’d need someone to make sure that your motherboard and processor matched and cases and cables were universally awful. These days, there are sites which will work out the ugly integration details for you and make sure everything is compatible.

I’ve used pcpartpicker.com for several systems. Basically you pick what you want, and it shops it for you from ten or so well-regarded sources. (Notably Amazon. The last system I assembled I got everything there except memory.)

The parts come in the mail, and you assemble them. Easy easy.

If you’ve never assembled a computer before, my advice is to go with something mid-tower size or larger, and to get more power supply wattage than you think you need. The worst headache these days is sorting relative processor speeds - Intel and AMD have completely obfuscated the naming systems - I long for 2002 when basically you’d just compare clock speeds. At least with video cards there aren’t so many top-end options.

I had not heard of them. I will need to check them out. Thanks for the tip!

I have been building my own desktops since the 1990’s. In the past 20 years I really do not feel that I have saved much money on any initial build.

It is on the repairs, rebuilds, and upgrades that I can save money, time and aggravation. Particularly when the primary disk fails.

I also like the feeling of confidence that when something craps out, I usually can fix it.

One thing that I did was get a really large tower that allowed me to remove the sides. On previous towers I used to cut up my hands on sharp edges trying to fit in various boards.