Good place/deal for a PC?

[Person_Man]

So I need to buy a new PC. Old one is too slow. I built PCs on my own once every other year or so for the last 10 years, but now that I'm married I really don't have the time to do research on all the various parts and deal with the week-ish long assembly and tweaking process to get it to work.

Does anyone have any good ideas of places I should look? I check out Hardocp, Newegg, and TigerDirect on a daily basis, but nothing has caught my eye. My biggest concern is being stuck with substandard parts. In particular, I want to make sure that the CPU and power supply are good enough that I can upgrade the video card and RAM after a year or two to prolong the life of the computer.

Budget is around $1,000. Will be using it for current generation games, Microsoft Office, iTunes, lots of web browsing, and wi-fi for my iPhone. Willing to listen to all ideas. Thanks.

[thubby]

I liked ibuypower.

[Keld Denar]

I'll take a look through my old emails for the outfit I bought mine from. It was an e-bay based store. You literally navagate through a group of pulldown menus for the basic specs you want, they calculate a price, build the sucker, and then mail it to you. They do all the specifics.

Just say:
3.3 GHz quad core
4 Gigs DDR3 RAM
500 GB Hard drive
1 GB video card
X case

And they build it and ship it out. You'll have to buy/install your own OS and get all your peripherals, but that part is easy compared to the rest. I love the computer I bought through them and have never had assembly related issues with it (like overheating, etc).

[Person_Man]

I'll take a look through my old emails for the outfit I bought mine from. It was an e-bay based store. You literally navagate through a group of pulldown menus for the basic specs you want, they calculate a price, build the sucker, and then mail it to you. They do all the specifics.

Just say:
3.3 GHz quad core
4 Gigs DDR3 RAM
500 GB Hard drive
1 GB video card
X case

And they build it and ship it out. You'll have to buy/install your own OS and get all your peripherals, but that part is easy compared to the rest. I love the computer I bought through them and have never had assembly related issues with it (like overheating, etc).

Thanks Keld, I would appreciate any advice.


Went to Dell and Gateway. There is no way I'm buying from them. Their customization is very limited, and there is no way to opt out of the crudware.

I tried building custom systems at ibuypower and cyberpower. In both cases I could get exactly what I want plus a few throwaway freebees for around $1,000. Then they tac on $75 shipping for some crazy reason.

I look on Amazon and there are comparable computers with free shipping, but they never list all of the product details, so I have to spend 10 minutes Googling around to find out the Power Supply and whether or not the graphics card is any good and what not, and I have yet to find one I really like.


I'll research for a few more days then buy. Again, thanks for any advice.

[Keld Denar]

Found it. The company was CJLEI. Um, it doesn't appear that they are in business any more. Sorry. I dunno why they closed, I have no problem with their product. Check around ebay for a similar store, but make sure they have great ratings. Happy hunting!