a recommendation please for pc purchase

citychicken · January 2008

can anyone make a good recommendation of a site(s) to buy a new pc? pc hardware? looking for good pricing but also would prefer an online store with solid reputation. i am not thinking of an out of box dell or similar but would like to customize and build myself with components of choice.

i know there are lots of options online, just thought some of my fellow eggers with pc experience might have some personal experience along these lines.

happy eggin
mark

DynaGreaseball · January 2008

CityChicken,

I know you said you don't want a Dell, but when I was in the computer network administration business, I purchased over 400 Dell desktop computers, in a 2 year period, for my contractor. We upgraded a badly needed PC inventory network, entirely, and I was extremely impressed with Dell's quality.

Out of the 400 or so computers purchased, only one was not functional, out of the box. I simply called the Customer Service Dept. at Dell and the next morning, before 10:30 am I had a new motherboard waiting for the contractor to replace and certify it. By noon, the PC was in service, one day late.

Dell has taken some hits lately because of their common stock, but I can't say enough good things about their product quality, customer service, and their response times.

Hope this helps

Pork Butt Mike · January 2008

Mark it all depends on what your looking to get out of a computer. I build all my own. If your going to use it for emails, little gaming,forms, and just mess around. Then go to best buy and get there extended warranty with it is my sugestion. If your a hard core gamer and need a power house computer then email me, we can talk. As for on line ordering you can check out http://www.newegg.com/ I buy all my parts threw them when I am building computers, they are very good and dependable. I think they still build full units. Good Luck & Happy Egging.

Nikonsal · January 2008

Not only is Newegg fast with their shipping. They have excellent customer service. I have received a couple of motherboards that were defective which they promptly replaced.

tach18k · January 2008

I'm a Dell buyer also, there is some custom thing Dell can do for anyone. It all depends on what you want. Dell used Intel motherboards. It use PNY/Nvidia Graphic cards or ATI cards. CD/dvd are sonys. There are choices beside those. It just a matter of knowing what you want. In socal I use mwave.com 10% and I use ACNT.com for the remainder 90%. Both are local to me. I do build md my own computers and buy from Dell when I dont.

citychicken · January 2008

thanks for the quick replies.

ooops nothing wrong with dell; never had one either. i just prefer to build my own. it's kind of a hobby i suppose. i just haven't built one in a few years.

i am looking to replace what i currently use as my primary home pc. i have had for the last 3.5 years or so. still is running problem free for now, so i expect to use it to host a personal home web server. specs of the pc listed below.

i am not a heavy gamer, but do like things fast and dependable. i run apps like photoshop cs3 and chief architect which both like lots of room to play. i expect to continue running winxp on the new pc and hope that it will carry me through to whatever new iteration of windows is on the horizon. i think i'm not such a big fan of vista and all of its fluff.

anyway thanks for your recommendations.

if you have any additional thoughts - please feel free to post them.

happy eggin
mark

CPU Type AMD Athlon 64, 2400 MHz (12 x 200) 3800+
Motherboard Name Asus A8V (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)
Motherboard Chipset VIA K8T800Pro, AMD Hammer
System Memory 2048 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (11/03/05)

Display:
Video Adapter RADEON 9600 SERIES (256 MB)
3D Accelerator ATI Radeon 9600 (RV350)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter Realtek ALC850 @ VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio Controller

Storage:
IDE Controller VIA Bus Master IDE Controller - 0571
Storage Controller Adaptec AIC-7850 PCI SCSI Controller
Storage Controller H+H Virtual CD 9 SCSI Controller
Storage Controller VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller
Disk Drive Maxtor 6 L200M0 SCSI Disk Device (200 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA)
Disk Drive Maxtor 6 V200E0 SCSI Disk Device (200 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II)

DynaGreaseball · January 2008

I think you've answered your own question.

lowercasebill · January 2008

i just bought 2 dells a lap top and a desk top. both customized as i wished, using the website, after which i used the live chat and had their techie review my choices and good recommendations were made. i choose dell because i was abel to get windows xp and not vista and 4 gig of ram on both, hp and toshiba did not offer that combination and sony's are much more expensive. just my opinion and i am not tech proficient

Cornfed · January 2008

Have you ever looked at the Do It Yourself guides from ARS Technica? They configure 3 levels of boxes from the Budget Box to the "God Box." I think it's pretty useful - http://arstechnica.com/guides.ars

As for actually buying the parts, I've used newegg.com, which someone else mentioned, and zipzoomfly.com. Both seem to have very good prices and service, at least from what I've seen.

Good luck,
Cornfed

Hungry Joe · January 2008

If your comfortable building your own I'd also recommend Newegg.com, I've been buying form them for years and never had a problem. Go duel core and a couple gigs of RAM with a nice video card and a fast hard drive and your set for a couple years. (if your not a big gamer:)

BamaEGG · January 2008

City, you probably won't like my advice but some say it is worth what you pay for it. Get a mac. I know all the reasons people say don't get a mac and I'm here to tell you it is all garbage. My 24" iMac will dual boot into Mac OS X and Microsoft Vista. It has a excellent screen, great looks and believe it or not will run Vista faster than 99% of all the PC's out there.

Other than that I have always heard good things about NewEgg.

Katodude00 · January 2008

If you are still considering a Dell today and tomorrow are good days to buy. It is Dells year end and they are offering some great deals. You may have to actually speak to a person to order but generally you can get them to knock a bunch off the price.

stike · January 2008

wish i knew how to build one myself! i just got quoted $7k for a new rig. yee -IKES!

gonna get it, but am just waiting for sticker shock to wear off.

Hustling Hare · January 2008

I bought a Dell about 2 yrs ago and it's a pretty good machine. There were a couple of things the disappointed me. First was all of the crapware on it to either put up with or to clean off. Second, I wanted to add a flash card reader, went to Frye's to get one that plugged into a header on the MB, and the discovered they didn't provide the usb header for expansion. I did find a place for the reader in another machine so I have the capability I want, just in a different place.

Another of my old machines went to pc heaven last year and I built a new one to replace it. I'm much happier with it. It's an Athlon 64x2 with 2gb ram and Vista. It has a reasonably fast graphics card and I put a 300gb hd in it. Also an HD tv tuner, neat!

I deal with NewEgg and another place closer to home, Directron.com. I've never had trouble with either of them.

ShortRIb · January 2008

Toshiba
That's all

Oilbrnr · January 2008

BamaEGG wrote:

City, you probably won't like my advice but some say it is worth what you pay for it. Get a mac. I know all the reasons people say don't get a mac and I'm here to tell you it is all garbage. My 24" iMac will dual boot into Mac OS X and Microsoft Vista. It has a excellent screen, great looks and believe it or not will run Vista faster than 99% of all the PC's out there.

Other than that I have always heard good things about NewEgg.

x2

And I make a rather good living off of supporting Microsoft products as a SysAdmin. But at home, where I manage money, family photos and video, maintain a website and surf, the dual boot (or VMware) Intel based Mac is the way to go.

a recommendation please for pc purchase

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