Who makes the best desk top computers these days, and best price?

[Balog]

Buy a Dell, delete the crapware.

Or go balls-out, and get an Alienware machine.   

You can't really roll your own for dirt cheap anymore - retail PC prices have dropped that much. By the time you purchase and assemble the machine, then buy and install whatever licensed copy of OS you want, you're right there with Dell, sans warranty.

(Yeah, I know there's TigerDirect and other sellers of kits.  I've assembled a couple, and you can ask Balog about the quality of what he received on his last kit build...)

I came to that conclusion a while ago, and about the only real savings I get is when I buy and refurbish corporate lease turn-ins, but that's a totally different animal - again, you're rolling up your sleeves, and still sans warranty.

/Laughs cynically..... Who needs USB 2.0?   The TD kits are ok; the main parts are wysiwyg but the little stuff (power supplies, cases, usfreakingb ports etc) are cut-corner. Unless you buy each part on sale over a period of time, or have a hook-up for certain parts (like a friend who works for intel who can hook you up with the newest processors at employee prices   ) getting a Dell and nuking the crapware from orbit is the way to go. If you're willing to run *nix or have an old XP license you can transfer to the new box that's a big savings.

Refurb boxes are awesome tho. I would never buy a kit to build my own, but I'd snatch up a refurb box in a heartbeat. With corporate boxes you can usually just slap in a video card and call it good, and you can sometimes get off-lease machines from a place that did cgi or something that are very good graphics-wise.

[roo_ster]

As long we're talking refurbs, keep your eyes peeled for HP xw4100 through xw4400 workstations.

I have had very good results with them.  Very dependable, IMO.

Heck, an OLD xw4100 with a 3GHz P4 & 2GB RAM is just as fast as most new multi-core stuff...until you start doing multi-core-friendly tasks or need more than 2GB RAM.

[slingshot]

A year ago, my choice was a Gateway with a lot of ram memory.  I have been very satisfied with the machine.  Since Micron (MHC as I recall) purchased Gateway and I have owned a number of Micron machines, their overall quality seems to be UP.  I don't buy Dell machines.  Won't.  I don't buy HP desktops although their overall rating has gone up considerably in the last couple of years.  HP desktops used to last about 2-years max; quality has improved as I understand it.  I choose HP for laptops as they have the highest product rating the last time I checked.  The newer laptops are much updated from ones produced only a couple years ago. 

[erictank]

A year ago, my choice was a Gateway with a lot of ram memory.  I have been very satisfied with the machine.  Since Micron (MHC as I recall) purchased Gateway and I have owned a number of Micron machines, their overall quality seems to be UP.  I don't buy Dell machines.  Won't.  I don't buy HP desktops although their overall rating has gone up considerably in the last couple of years.  HP desktops used to last about 2-years max; quality has improved as I understand it.  I choose HP for laptops as they have the highest product rating the last time I checked.  The newer laptops are much updated from ones produced only a couple years ago. 

I rather like my new HP laptop, a dv7-1240us - about $750 after rebate (which we're still waiting on, of course, so ATM we're out $900 for the computer), so it's not a bargain-basement machine but it's not their top-end job either.  It DOES have plenty of crapware on it, which we're slowly dealing with, but it plays nice with the new wireless network, talks to the printer and the USB backup drive attached to the desktop machine over said network, and even plays my games well (none of which are anywhere NEAR bleeding-edge - we're talking about Tron 2.0 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 here). 

64-bit WinVista Home Premium, AMD Turion RM-72 dual-core (2.1 GHz, runs plenty fast for our purposes), built-in wireless has been troublefree, integrated graphics chip is surprisingly good (again, I'm not demanding too much from it), 4GB RAM and a 320GB SATA drive, Lightscribe DVD burner (which I haven't played with yet, but it reads and burns regular discs like any other DVD burner).  My only complaints, and they're tiny ones, are that the finish on the machine, including the touchpad (which has an integrated physical button to turn it off if you'd rather plug in a mouse!  EVERYONE should be doing that!), is a shiny dark-brass which attracts fingerprints, and the keyboard markings are decidedly low-visibility and not backlit.  Helps my touch-typing skills, I guess.

[slingshot]

I actually love my HP laptop also.  It is one of their special games editions with a fair amount of RAM.  I replaced a 1.5 year old Compaq (also a HP brand) that is a piece of crap.  It has XP on it and I still use it to download photos from one of my digital cameras.  My wife primarily uses it now.  Lost WiFi on it at a motel and I said this is the last time I'm going to depend on this thing.  Now I have seperate internet that I can pretty much get anywhere there is cell phone coverage with my laptop.  Comes in handy at times when I travel and I don't have to depend on the slow motel wireless network speeds.

[fspitzdorf]

Just finished modifying my Dell Vostro 220 so that I can work from home and do some free lance engineering design. 

$645 out the door delivered (Price + sales tax + free shipping) for a new 3 GHz core 2 duo, 2 gigs of ram, 250 gig Sata, DVD/RW, built in gigabit, video and sound with vista home basic AND a 22 inch Ultrasharp flat panel DVI monitor...

4 gigs of DDR 2 PC6400 - $21 shipped from Frys
EVGA 9800 GTX+ Superclocked 512 Mb... $124 shipped from newegg
500W power supply - $35 shipped from Newegg
extra Molex to Sata adapter was $3 + shipping from Newegg

Took me 20 minutes to swap parts and fire it up... another 10 to install the video drivers and crap...

FWIW, it pegs the vista grading chart across the board at 5.9... (never seen a score higher than 5.9 on a vista machine)

Only crap thing I hate about the dell boxes is the inability to overclock the processor... Some folks have played extensively to reflash the bios with a hacked version to allow it... But I am not balsy enough yet...

[guns and more]

Best and best price are not compatible.

Although I'm a PC user, I think the best is a Mac.

For best price, it's hard to beat a Dell. I'm writing this on a 5yr. old Dell that hasn't missed a beat. My last Dell was running windows 3.1 if that tells you how long I keep them.

You'll never save money by building your own.

[Gewehr98]

Unless you're a gamer or running BOINC, overclocking is highly over-rated, and doesn't do the reliability and durability of the processor(s) much good.  There are factory-overclocked Dell XPS systems out there, but they come with a warranty and have exceptional cooling capacity.  If you're looking for more FPS in a video game, some video cards do allow overclocking using ATITool, etc.  I've overclocked my Radeon HD card a few times using ATITool, but it produces prodigious amounts of heat even before I overclock it. I've since throttled it back to stock speed, and I could only imagine what a pair of bridged CrossFire Radeon cards would do. 

Clean up the Vista garbage running in the background, turn off all the Vista eye-candy, and you'll gain more performance than overclocking the CPU a few Mhz would give you. 

[Cromlech]

Indeed, for most people overclocking isn't really needed. Now if you have multiple GPUs in Xfire or SLI at high resolutions, a 4GHz+ CPU is really what you want to keep them running at their peak potential.

[fspitzdorf]

Rivatuner can be installed and used to monitor temps and play around with OCing of video card stuff... My 9800GTX + came with it's own software based OCing utility...

Sometime this week I'll get around to installing a 64 bit version of Vista so that I can actually use all of the RAM installed in the box...

Thus far it screams running Solidworks.