how big of a computer do I need???

[imagep]

Building your own computer is pure hell. Only worth it if your a glutton for punishment and just have a ton of time on your hands.

After your build it decides to randomly reboot, what do you do? which component is it? Could be Power supply, motherboard, CPU, Ram or Video card. Do you return all of them? Hopefully you purchased everything from the same place.

I gave up trying to build my own after two machines i built had issues and it's just a nightmare of time to figure out whats going on and I just don't have that much time anymore. Don't get me started on the aftermarket cooling solutions. If you love a jet plane sitting next to you, by all means.

Do what I do, wait until Dell has a good sale (Nothing right now) Avoid the high margin upgrades. Order the extras yourself, ram and video card and you'll have a great solid top of the line machine at low cost.

I need to buy two new computers and i'm waiting for Dell to come out with a good deal. Right now they just want to sell laptops and netbooks.

I have built and repaired lots of machines, but I agree, it is not really economically the best use of your time.

These days computers are so cheap I just run out and get a new one anytime I get frustrated with the old one. Then I give the old ones away and claim that I dont no nothing about computers so dont ask me to repair it for them or anything else about it.

A few years ago I ran into problems with the computer I use for ripping for our imagesetter. I purchased a $350 e-machine, and discovered that it is far faster than the $5,000 computer that origionally came with the system. Now, the crappyiest computer you can get is 4 times as fast and has 4 times the memory and 4 times the harddrive of my emachine (which still works fine).

I used to be a big time computer geek, and I ran into everyone asking me to fix their computer (for free of course), so now I just tell everyone "I dont know nothing about computers."

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Hey, I thought that I might post a shameless plug. We build computers for the sign and wrap industry (signburst.com). We have a solid knowledgebase of the software and equipment that you guys use as well as provide great support before and after the sale.

We build with top-notch hardware and pride ourselves in building very fast and reliable computer systems. We can make recommendations based on what you actually do with your computer, what software you use, and what versions of that software you currently use.

Take out all of the guesswork!

 

[choucove]

That's good info to know. Do you know what type of warranty level they were giving a hard time? If a company knows your warranty is about to expire they'll give you a hard time. But I have 3 years left on a business warranty. If memory serves me correct, Gold business warranty is next business day service where you take it to an authorized service tech or they dispatch one out to your home.

The only warranty that they accepted was one that still had over a year left (of a three year) and was the power connector not registering correctly. I had to reformat and restore to dell factory default image before they would honor that it was hardware, though, and accept the warranty. The others had the standard 1-year warranty.

I have a pretty cheap simple HP laptop I purchased a few years back. Just under a year after its purchase (with only the year standard warranty) I had something funky go wrong with the wireless card. HP replaced the wireless and motherboard and returned to me for absolutely no cost, that was a great relief.

ASUS produces most motherboards for dell, hp, etc which is more than likely why all your motherboards were no good.

I have used several ASUS motherboards in custom desktops before and been pleased with their quality, but I've also heard of many of them lately that have shown signs of poor quality control.

 

[synergy_jim]

mine is huge.....