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You first need to decide whether you want a desktop machine or a laptop. If all your work will be done in one place then a desktop be OK but how likely is that really? I use a lot machines that are classified as "gaming laptops" and they work really well for me. I like 17-inch displays because the pixel density is better for old eyes like mine. The main things that makes them a "gaming laptop" are fast displays and a good GPU. The CPUs are usually pretty good in them also. After I broke my last laptop I bought a new one and it's a pretty good machine. It's an Aorus which is made by Gigabyte. At work we have dozens of MSI gaming laptops and they work really well for us. I would highly recommend both of those brands. You could always get a decent-sized monitor to use with it if you want a bigger display and LCD monitors are reasonably portable. With a mid to higher end laptop there is very, very little they can not do. I also do CUDA programming so I get them with Nvidia GPUs and they are quite capable. I have a 3080 GPU in my work and home laptops and it is very nice. 3D graphics are no problem at all for them.
The last desktop machine I bought was pre-built because GPU prices were obscene when I got it. It was like I bought a GPU and they threw a computer in on the deal. I would probably not advocate for a desktop machine though because it really limits your mobility for no good reason that I can think of since laptops are so capable these days.
Incidentally, with the nature of our work, we find the lighted keyboards to be really, really useful. I wouldn't want a machine without one now.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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This is going to be a replacement for my home PC, so it's going to be a desktop. But I do have a decent laptop for use when travelling, and I'm not opposed to upgrading that, either. Our own Honey the Codewitch turned me on the Daskeyboard series lighted keyboards, btw, and I love the thing. I will definitely be getting another when I buy/build the next machine!
Will Rogers never met me.
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build all the way.... I have seen so many shortcuts made by Dell, HP, etc I swore never again. The machine I built 10 years ago is still thundering along in my daughter's bedroom. Glancing to my left at my Ryzen 9 desktop server, it's been thundering along on Windows 10 for 4+ years and has never crashed once. Since I suspect you are not building a gaming rig, you just need a good chassis, SSDs, a good power supply and a motherboard perhaps with a built in graphics chip, though I would argue for a standalone.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I configured one last night at Newegg that should last me another ten years, I think - about $3500 though. I may rethink that a bit before I pull the trigger...
Will Rogers never met me.
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charlieg wrote: The machine I built 10 years ago is still thundering along...
I have machines going back probably 20 years. All purchased as is. Added a few things probably to each but nothing significant. And I am certain all of them would run if I just turned them on because I did not move on from any of them because they were failing. I suspect the older ones are VGA and definitely have serial and parallel ports. Probably a modem card.
Actually machines even older than that which still worked I got rid of just to free up a bit of space.
I actually have 3 CRT monitors that still work too. And a HP Laserjet.
But I wouldn't want to try to run any of the games that I play now on those older machines.
Although I do still use a soldering iron that is at least 20 years old.
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Here's a system I configured about a month ago. Has 2 options for the processor depending upon what you want to spend. I bought the nVidia 4070 (non ti, saved about $200) video card and have been pretty happy with it. Pick your case (I'm a fan of the Corsair cases as their no fuss water cooling works great with them).
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1P0391S75HS/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_2[^]
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Nice! Thanks for sharing that. I may want to back off on my 24 core selection of a twelfth-gen i9 processor. They're a bit pricey.
Will Rogers never met me.
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I used to always build, but on my last machine, I decided to go with a good custom builder. I don't know what country you're in, so I'm not sure what would apply to you, but this is the route I'll probably go next time too (I went with, and would use again, WootWare - wootware.co.za)
I won't buy some off-the-shelf junk - companies tend to stuff them with the lowest-spec'd rubbish they can get away with at a price-point, or put totally mediocre hardware in the box and charge $arm + $leg for it (GamersNexus videos cover a lot of these charlatans!).
I'd suggest finding a local company which builds based on "loose" specs and which has a good reputation for service, so if something goes wrong during shipping or something fails in the machine, they will help with RMA'ing things.
For reference, I spec'd the following for my machine:
- latest-gen i9 (11th at the time - 12th came out a month or 2 later... but I couldn't really wait)
- 64Gb RAM
- board supporting the above, with Wifi & Bluetooth support, either on the board or on a daughter board (ended up going that way)
- Liquid cooling
- Minimal lighting (but I ended up with more than I originally anticipated, and I kinda like it)
- Chose a case that I like, looks-wise and rated online as tough and easy to work with (Phanteks Ethoo EVOLV)
- Originally kept my GPU, but then bought a GPU from them - it's a minor installation
- One NVME drive, if the overall cost fell within my budget (which it did)
Whilst they did suggest an AMD machine for a slightly lower cost, they also didn't shove it down my throat, and respected me when I declined (a good friend of mine had been having an uncommon issue with his AMD that I was afraid I'd have, and I didn't feel like enduring the RMA cycle for a minor price difference - about 1.5% on the entire system)
What I got
- 11th gen i9 11900KF (can push the clocks - which I'm not - but no igpu - which I don't need)
- 64Gb 3600mhx ram (2x32)
- Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Elite
- Fractal design cooler
- The Phanteks case I wanted
- Sabrent rocket nvme (which I wouldn't recommend, tbh - tends to overheat in a pcie-4 slot, though the Windows drivers just slow the drive down when it's heating up, so you won't notice in Windows - just the drive will get slow; but under Linux, the drive goes offline...)
- later, a Gigabyte Aorus 3070
The experience was great - I had the fun of picking out what I wanted, with the safety of not having to double-check that I hadn't picked anything incompatible. I then got a beautiful, powerful machine without the stress of potentially damaging expensive components. I was up and gaming that day, no sweat, no stress. I had an email trail about 10 deep going back and forth, refining the system based on costing and requirements - this is why I say: choose a company with good customer service. I'd emailed another company (evetech) and the guy got back to me, obviously annoyed with my email setting out my requirements, having missed part of what I asked for - and 3 days after I sent the mail. Wootware got back to me within a day with the AMD recommendation, and turned around with a similar Intel quote within a few hours of me pushing for Intel.
------------------------------------------------
If you say that getting the money
is the most important thing
You will spend your life
completely wasting your time
You will be doing things
you don't like doing
In order to go on living
That is, to go on doing things
you don't like doing
Which is stupid.
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I pretty much always build my own these days. I like being able to control all aspects of the build. About the only time I didn't building my own was when I got an Amiga (loved that machine). Unfortunately, Commadore was run by a bunch of morons so the Amiga didn't survive. In any case, building computers now is much easier than when I built my first computer back in 1978!
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'78 eh? Yeah, that was challenging! I had just finished building an Altair 8800 about then, and changed jobs to design hardware and program HP minicomputers. I didn't get around to building systems for myself until IBM set the standard for what we call a PC today. Good times, and so many more choices to make today!
Will Rogers never met me.
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It was definitely fun and was a great learning experience. Bought the CPU card and the buss board (S100) but the rest of the cards were my design and were wire wrapped. A 4K RAM card, a dual serial port card to start.
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I'll late to this , but what the heck ...
I see buying a PC already built as outsourcing your PC or workstation requirements, versus building your own from parts that you have to research, trust and test to see if you get the performance and reliability that you need. It becomes time consuming, where that time could be spent on actually using the computer to perform your craft. The downside to building your own is that retail parts most times don't match the much higher quality of OEM built parts, like in the old days when you bought a retail hard drive, that drive was sub standard and didn't pass all the tests to be an OEM drive that a corporation would purchase.
I've been using Dell Precision workstations since 2011, and have no regrets. I just bought another last year (Dell 5820) and put a 10 core Xeon in it, and one of those NVidia cards RTX-A4000. I don't need gaming speeds, just reliability where I can run the computer for 12 hours straight with no issues, for at least a decade. As far as cost goes, it's almost the same to me, but the little details like not really needing tools to work on it is nice. But I have the computing power to do what you described no problem and really quick. You can call Jose at Dell for a good price if you choose this route. Just PM me for his email or phone number.
If it ain't broke don't fix it
Discover my world at jkirkerx.com
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I built my current desktop machine based on recommendations found in a StackOverflow employee’s blogpost. I posted about this a couple years ago:
The Lounge
I’m sure things have changed, but I don’t regret building this machine, and as for hardware compatibility, might as well get advice from someone who’s successfully put the pieces together.
Toms hardware is another good resource.
Edit: dang it. Today I read an article about MSI’s software keys being stolen.
Cheers and good fortune whichever way you go.
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
modified 12-May-23 10:36am.
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I just faced the exact same problem, and for the first time in 37 years it was cheaper (by more than $200) to buy a full desktop from Dell than it would for me to build my own using the same or similar components, even using the old case, power supply, and video card.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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BUILD
Why ?...
CRAPWARE
Building your own, and paying the ransomware prices to Microsoft for the real deal with real disks and everything, is the single best way to be sure that you are really getting "Clean Windows". My own experience: it's about the only way.
Not to mention fifty different reasons for a disk going bad. It happens. (I learned last month)
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"In the Enlightenment, there was a conceptual world based on faith. And so Galileo and the late pioneers of the Enlightenment had a prevailing philosophy against which they had to test their thinking. You can trace the evolution of that thinking. We live in a world which, in effect, has no philosophy;"
Obviously ethnocentric historically.
Not even sure how it applies to the modern world.
There are about 1.3 billion Catholics today. So certainly there is some philosophical viewpoint. And during the Enlightenment and before that they were certainly doing their best to force those Christian variations on the world they knew about. Naturally the 'ethics' of the Enlightenment in that regard doesn't really seem like an ideal that one should strive for. And obviously Galileo as a specific example of a less than ideal example of that.
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For better or worse, the States of Europe had a philosophy which most of them agreed upon. They may have fought over the details (e.g. Catholic vs Protestant) but it acted as a guideline to their view of the world. Other parts of the world had their own philosophical guidelines (Islam, Taoism, Hinduism, etc.). All new ideas were tested against these philosophies, and those propounding ideas that countered them ran considerable risks.
Many people still have personal guidelines based on these philosophies, but philosophical guidelines do not appear to exist at the State level. Any risks run are purely pragmatic, e.g. opposing the current rulers has always been a dangerous activity.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: For better or worse, the States of Europe had a philosophy which most of them agreed upon
Yes but the tone of the article implied that this was therefor 'good' (vs 'evil') and thus better than now.
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Wordle 690 5/6
⬛⬛⬛🟨🟨
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Wordle 690 4/6*
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That ... was not easy!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I got 4 letters on my first try, still took me 2 more attempts! 
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
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Wordle 690 6/6
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⬜🟨🟨🟩⬜
🟩⬜⬜🟩🟨
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