I’m also thinking of getting a new desktop PC and monitor (long overdue) and V’s going to use my old one as hers is really slow now. Where do you think is the best place to go these days, NOVA or Bade Rd? Have you heard of any deals lately? What would you recommend for a struggling IM guy like me?
Why not just buy an Apple pc and get dual boot Windows for the IM stuff? They’re a little pricier than PCs… or just get an off the shelf model (Xenbook) or Ultra book from Acer. They’re more than capable of running the latest stuff that marketers use.
You might be tempted to have one made for you, but I’m not so sure it’s really worth it these days. Lots of people do it, but an off the shelf PC should be fairly decent. We bought off the shelf minipcs about three years ago, all still going strong so far. And I bought a small Asus for home (now two years old), and a new Asus for my desk at school. All mini-form factors. Reliability seems to have improved for local brands a good deal.
The real advantage of building your own is the repair ability and the fact that you can customize your design much more than off the shelf, so think lots of RAM (8GB seems more than common), SSD for faster performance, low power for energy saving, and a decent graphics card for video/3D that you might want to watch. I’d swap higher gaming PC type performance for more mundane things, such as lots of RAM/SSD, pertinent things (USB 3.0), and LOTS OF DISK SPACE, esp. for back ups.
I’d also run the old PC as a backup PC for your data, JUST IN CASE.