Recommend me three or four online retailers for buying a new system

[Sephire]

If I were building one for Photoshop editing this is going to be my components without breaking the bank. I chose NVIDIA card because of CUDA. And the boot drive has to be SSD drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKU0R31WEyc

For less than $1300 (before S&H):

You can add another 8 GB memory and more hard drives (data). Plus the OS (highly recommend that you get Microsoft Technet Subscription Micrsoft softwares with multiple licenses including Office AND you dont have to worry about losing your discs. Everything can be downloaded.) Windows 7 64-bit I recommend.

Also I assume you have at least an IPS panel monitor for best performance.

 

[bruceb]

For video editing see if Adobe will run on a 64 bit os and take full advantage of large RAM.
If it does, then you want a 64 bit OS with lots of RAM .. I would also suggest a total of 3 hard drives ... A small one of about 120GB or 250GB for the OS and installed programs. Two 1TB or 2TB drives, one for your Source Video, one for your Target (or edited) Video. Video editing will go a lot faster that way. I also suggest 2 or maybe 3 monitors. One to run the system, one to watch the source, one to watch the output.

Just checked and Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium requires a 64 bit OS
Plain CS5 Design Premium say 32 bit OS .. not sure if
it can install on 64 bit or if they have a 64 bit version.
Not sure which version you are thinking of getting, but be prepared to shell out some C-Notes for it.
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/systemreqs/

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/

 

[Davidh373]

If I were building one for Photoshop editing this is going to be my components without breaking the bank.

With exception to the 850W PSU and the i7 (as opposed to the i5) I fully agree. Photoshop doesn't use more than 4 threads. He is doing video editing with Premiere though, and the exporter in that program WILL. I will have to argue that the performance difference rendering between the i7 860 and the Phenom II X6 is not worth the $100 premium unless he is making big bucks!

 

[mfenn]

That being said, Magic Micro and Cyberpower both seem to have exceptional hardware availability and pricing similar systems out via both yields about the same pricing, way way cheaper than doing it through a major guy like DELL, etc. The markup is 40% to 60%.

So do you want a cheap system or do you want "a warranty that isn't sh**"? The two are mutually exclusive.

Additionally, the reason that you go for a Tier 1 vendor so that you don't need to worry about every little detail of the motherboard. If you want to specify everything in minute detail (nothing wrong with that) you are better off building your own. You'll have to do the same amount of research for a custom build as for a CyberPower machine.

 

[mfenn]

Yeah, not sure how they're still in business...

Well, with 60% markup they only have to hook a few suckers each month.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

mfenn, I don't want to get ripped off. Who does? DELL used to be the best, but that was long long ago. They haven't been on top for years.

I have thought long and hard about this and spent every free minute over the last two days research, reading, listening to you fine folks and I think I will but at least a partially built system, then handle the rest myself, OR, I will go the Cyberpower route, as they seem to build good systems and give you a heck of a lot of options.

Sephire, amazing system for not that much money. When I think about what was spent on my wife's now dead HP laptop, oh God, I cringe.

You guys have been very VERY helpful. I am currently installing Windows7 64 bit on my Shuttle XPC Prima and upgrading the ram from 4 to 8. I will try out CS5 on it (editing SD) and if I do like the program, I will go ahead and snag myself a killer system and move CS5 onto it.

 

[piasabird]

www.directron.com

They are a yahoo.com store with a good rating. They can build systems with no preference to AMD or INTEL, or they can also sell just the parts. They usually list about as many AMD systems as they do INTEL systems. They also sell combos. Usually I just buy parts and build my own.

I agree with some people that sometimes if you want a good warranty, Dell might be a nice name brand. Lenovo is a Chinese Company. IBM sold it a while back. Generally I would not purchase the lowest cost item from any retail company/brand. With any retail system it is important to order everything you want on the system from the beginning. They tend to size the power supply so it will barely run. If you add hardware later, you would probably need a bigger power supply.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

They look good too.

I won't go with the lowest, cheapest. Did that once. Got burned. The company I buy from needs to have a good reputation. That's key.

And I will buy a robust power supply. The minimum is never enough.

 

[Davidh373]

mfenn, I don't want to get ripped off. Who does? DELL used to be the best, but that was long long ago. They haven't been on top for years.

I have thought long and hard about this and spent every free minute over the last two days research, reading, listening to you fine folks and I think I will but at least a partially built system, then handle the rest myself, OR, I will go the Cyberpower route, as they seem to build good systems and give you a heck of a lot of options.

Sephire, amazing system for not that much money. When I think about what was spent on my wife's now dead HP laptop, oh God, I cringe.

You guys have been very VERY helpful. I am currently installing Windows7 64 bit on my Shuttle XPC Prima and upgrading the ram from 4 to 8. I will try out CS5 on it (editing SD) and if I do like the program, I will go ahead and snag myself a killer system and move CS5 onto it.

Like Mfenn said,

So do you want a cheap system or do you want "a warranty that isn't sh**"?

I have a feeling (from your previous posts) that you want a warranty that extends beyond the years that come with it, and that just isn't going to happen. If you get 1 year, you'll get one year of coverage, if you get 2 years, two years of coverage, ect. No company is gonna baby you replacing a part past your date of warranty, even if the part does have a particularly high fail rate (hard drives in a MacBook [pro] come to mind). Simply put, any company will honor their warranty for what it covers until it expires. You can't expect Dell, HP, Cyberpower, Compaq, or really any other companies to honor their warranty a single day after it's done.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

David, please do not make assumptions. It's just not going to lead to anything positive. Laptops and Desktops are not the same animal. Criminal behavior on the part of HP and their laptops has no baring whatsoever on my looking at a new desktop. You are also grossly misstating the problem that occurred with HP, which blatantly delayed fixing my wife's laptop computer until the warranty had expired.

My last two desktops are (were) Shuttles. Neither had a warranty outside of the actual parts themselves. When something broke, I fixed it. The only desktop I have ever personally owned with an actual big fat warranty was purchased last century. So long ago in fact I don't recall from what company it was purchased.

All I want to avoid is having to assemble a system from scratch. I don't enjoy laying down a motherboard, seating a CPU, etc. But I can handle drive installs, video cards, memory, all that stuff. That's not all that hard.

I've made me decision on what I am going to do and i thank those who came in here to respond in an effort to be helpful. Some of you truly helped me make my decision.

 

[Sephire]

I assembled a couple of Shuttle PCs too. Its rather painless. But very limited upgrade options especially adding more hard drives.

Checking around Newegg I found this Shuttle SX58J3 socket 1366. Not too bad for someone who wants this form factor. Anyone who has a big desktop and wants to go smaller they can just transfer their components to this.

Personally for that price I will settle for an ASUS or Gigabyte MB and look for a better microATX case

 

[Davidh373]

David, please do not make assumptions. It's just not going to lead to anything positive. Laptops and Desktops are not the same animal. Criminal behavior on the part of HP and their laptops has no baring whatsoever on my looking at a new desktop. You are also grossly misstating the problem that occurred with HP, which blatantly delayed fixing my wife's laptop computer until the warranty had expired.

I'm not making an argument for HP, what I am saying is you are making a bigger deal out of this than it has to be. While it is VERY important not to buy from a 2 bit company who is going to scam you, there often aren't differences between how companies handle your warranty. While the HP support rep did tell you to crank the fan up, you did it without pushing for a replacement or calling again. It's just as likely Dell, or Apple could do this. I'm certainly not saying they WILL, but what I'm saying is we don't know how their support will change, or what specific rep you will get. Throw HP out the window, this isn't about HP. Any... ANY company will cut corners if it means they'll make a dime. Most every company (that charges anywhere near reasonable prices) will build with a cheap, limited mobo, cheap (likely overvolted) ram, and a graphics card that will bottleneck the HELL out of the CPU. There are exceptions, but those options are very obscure and VERY expensive.

 

[Davidh373]

I would actually recommend Boxx though since I haven't seen it come up.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

I'm not making an argument for HP...

While the HP support rep did tell you to crank the fan up, you did it without pushing for a replacement or calling again.

Excuse me? You have no idea what you are talking about now. I talked to them numerous times. According to them, the reason for the problems was the fan was defaulting too low. That was a lie. It is one reason why they were being taken to court all over the country. I spent two years dealing with HP and it was pure hell.

And it has nothing to do with this thread! Nothing. So please kindly just move on. It is not relevant to this subject. We are not talking about laptops or HP.

 

[mnewsham]

Excuse me? You have no idea what you are talking about now. I talked to them numerous times. According to them, the reason for the problems was the fan was defaulting too low. That was a lie. It is one reason why they were being taken to court all over the country. I spent two years dealing with HP and it was pure hell.

And it has nothing to do with this thread! Nothing. So please kindly just move on. It is not relevant to this subject. We are not talking about laptops or HP.

I think the point he is trying to make is it doesn't matter that HP did that because EVERY company has horror stories HP, DELL, Apple, ASUS, Lenovo, Gateway you name it and someone had something terribly wrong happen and got screwed by the company. The fact that it happened to you with HP doesn't mean HP is a lesser company then Dell or Apple, i usually find HP quality higher then that of Dell's laptops actually. All it really means is you got caught in some loophole and ended up getting screwed, sucks for you, sucks hard. Boycotting HP products wont do anything but limit what you can buy and make yourself feel better. They wont notice your lost business, you might however pay more for someone else and notice the lost money.


Just my $0.02

 

[Davidh373]

I think the point he is trying to make is it doesn't matter that HP did that because EVERY company has horror stories HP, DELL, Apple, ASUS, Lenovo, Gateway you name it and someone had something terribly wrong happen and got screwed by the company.

Precisely. It is relevant because I know that as long as you are buying CONSUMER grade products you will always have problems. The only way you will feel at all appreciated as a customer is if you buy a workstation product by Dell, HP, BoxX, or a few others. My point was entirely relevant, and I don't feel that being angry or sarcastic is helping your cause at all. Aside from that, what I was doing was to explain myself for your misunderstanding of my comment, which you continue to misunderstand... At this point I don't think I can make this point any clearer, except saying this...

SPEND THE 40%-60% UPCHARGE FOR A WORKSTATION CLASS PRODUCT, OOOOOR, EXPECT TO GET BONED IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS. REGARDLESS OF THE COMPANY INVOLVED WE HAVE ALL HAD PROBLEMS. GET OFF BITCHING ABOUT HP. EVERY COMPANY PULLS THAT BS.

 

[BoomerD]

I have to agree with David. Even though, like you, I won't ever give a dime to HP because of the way they screwed my son over with his PC in the 90's, (yes, elephants never forget ) Dell and the others also have their "support Hell" stories that are well deserved.
Sadly, it's usually folks who aren't "techy" enough to know (at first) that support is dicking them...until the warranty has expired...and it's too late.
All too often, customer support is handed to some company in India where the rep on the other end speaks English with a barely understandable accent...has a script that they're REQUIRED to follow...and often means telling you to completely reformat your HDD for every little problem.....and it's nearly impossible to get them to pass you on to level 2 tech support...where you can USUALLY get an actual computer tech.
I battled this exact problem with a Sony Vaio PC (original Pentium...with MMX!) in the mid 90's. MOST of their folks at the call center were pretty good, but were hampered by the requirement to follow the script to the letter...I can't tell you how many times I had to reformat my HDD...until I found out from a different source about a patch for some--damned thing or another...(chipset-based) that totally eliminated the source of all my headaches.

Even though I had built/modified a few PC's before that, I was never really comfortable trying to build one from scratch without any help...until I went through "Support Hell" several times.

Sometimes, it makes sense to buy a "pre-built," rather than building your own, (especially for business use) but for an enthusiast/gamer, there's NO EXCUSE for not building one instead of paying a premium to let someone do it for you...and charging you through the nose for often substandard parts.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

I wasn't talking about HP in this thread, other than a single remark on the side. And we wouldn't be talking about HP in this thread if David hadn't brought it up. I have repeatedly asked that we just stop talking about it. Can't we just please, stop talking about it?! I don't appreciate my thread being hijacked.

And as I mentioned, I have had numerous systems built by myself, or Shuttles that just have warranties on parts and have been plenty happy. What I don't want to do is buy a system filled with bloatware.

Let's move along now. Please. With sugar on top.

Oh yes, I am not a gamer, Haven't been for a long time. Wish I had time for it.

 

[BoomerD]

Matt, the problems is that there just aren't very many "reputable" companies out there who build computers.

HP
Dell
Gateway
Lenovo
Cyberpower
Acer
ZT
ibuypower
eMachines
Velocity Micro

Those are about the only ones I can think of...and MOST will fill them with "bloatware" as a "feature" because MOST people either don't know better...or actually think they're getting a good deal with all the software included. (even though it's often only 30-90 day trial packages.

As for warranties...they're always questionable at best...and if that's your big concern, you can usually purchase an extended warranty.

 

[Davidh373]

Matt, the problems is that there just aren't very many "reputable" companies out there who build computers.

HP
Dell
Gateway
Lenovo
Cyberpower
Acer
ZT
ibuypower
eMachines
Velocity Micro

Those are about the only ones I can think of...and MOST will fill them with "bloatware" as a "feature" because MOST people either don't know better...or actually think they're getting a good deal with all the software included. (even though it's often only 30-90 day trial packages.

As for warranties...they're always questionable at best...and if that's your big concern, you can usually purchase an extended warranty.

:thumbsup:

And we wouldn't be talking about HP in this thread if David hadn't brought it up.

lol... you're still not getting it ... It was using HP as an example... not the primary subject of my statement... Honestly you are pretty thick if you think so...

But since you brought it up, HP is awesome, you should get an HP dude, totally, do it. They are the best in the world and anyone else who thinks otherwise is an idiot. Only HP can provide the standard of service you're looking for. It's not like I recommended Boxx, or Dell, or any other companies in my posts... I just love HP... If HP had a dick I would be sucking it right now... I'd totally be gay for HP... Totally the best! Just DO IT! :awe: (sarcasm)

 

[mnewsham]

:thumbsup:


lol... you're still not getting it ... It was using HP as an example... not the primary subject of my statement... Honestly you are pretty thick if you think so...

But since you brought it up, HP is awesome, you should get an HP dude, totally, do it. They are the best in the world and anyone else who thinks otherwise is an idiot. Only HP can provide the standard of service you're looking for. It's not like I recommended Boxx, or Dell, or any other companies in my posts... I just love HP... If HP had a dick I would be sucking it right now... I'd totally be gay for HP... Totally the best! Just DO IT! :awe:

:wub:

 

[Davidh373]

And OP, if you have read our posts, at this time you should be educated on what kind of computer to buy. There is literally NO further advice we can give you. All the companies have been brought up. Either buy a workstation class product, or custom build. Otherwise, you are likely to get screwed with any and every company you choose. That seems to be a consensus anyway... I mean, maybe not EVERYONE gave that advice, but most everyone.

You can read our posts to get the companies we recommended, or you could keep posting the same questions over and over...

 

[Patrick Wolf]

What I don't want to do is buy a system filled with bloatware.

Cyberpower is perfect than. They have a format HDD only option. You buy your OS seperately and install it yourself. 100% Bloatware Free. Course you can do that with any system by just formatting the HDD.

 

[BoomerD]

Cyberpower is perfect than. They have a format HDD only option. You buy your OS seperately and install it yourself. 100% Bloatware Free. Course you can do that with any system by just formatting the HDD.

"Back in the day," The Sony Vaio computers came heavily loaded with crap. Not only games and office software, but they had their own "Vaio" interface...it looked cool and was easy for the kiddies...but it was a heavy burden on the system by itself.
Didn't take me long to figure that out...and to reformat the HDD w/o all the crap. (unfortunately, with the Sony disk, you had to jump through hoops to reformat and only install the OS...but it could be done)

 

[Matt_Stevens]

Honestly, David, you seem hell bent on having the last word. First of all, I am not posting the same question over and over. I really don't understand where you are getting this stuff. And I already stated long ago in this thread that I had decided on what my options are and stated what i was likely to do. I also thanked everyone here for their help and figured that would be it.

THEN you came in with the HP thing. And again. And again.

Apparently you failed to see...

I have thought long and hard about this and spent every free minute over the last two days research, reading, listening to you fine folks and I think I will but at least a partially built system, then handle the rest myself, OR, I will go the Cyberpower route, as they seem to build good systems and give you a heck of a lot of options.

Sephire, amazing system for not that much money. When I think about what was spent on my wife's now dead HP laptop, oh God, I cringe.

You guys have been very VERY helpful. I am currently installing Windows7 64 bit on my Shuttle XPC Prima and upgrading the ram from 4 to 8. I will try out CS5 on it (editing SD) and if I do like the program, I will go ahead and snag myself a killer system and move CS5 onto it.

Thread is no longer useful. I know what I am going to do.