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Best value for a desktop computer?


Chrisjd

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One you build yourself. The price difference between pre-built and home-built computers is narrowing these days and for non-gaming systems you can definitely save some money by just buying one, but with a home-built system you can pick your own high-quality parts and be ready to upgrade in the future.

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Since you live in Minnesota, hit the Micro Center store in St. Louis Park or at least check their website. They have some smokin' deals up there on a regular basis, plus their house brand (PowerSpec) and brand-name refurbs are definitely worth considering. I have a PowerSpec from a couple years back that was less than half the price of a name-brand equivalent, with a faster processer and no unwanted software that I'd have to turn around and uninstall.

 

Incidentally, the best prices from retail outlets tend to be the plain old Pentium (Dual-Core) models. We've had an HP with the E5200 Pentium CPU in the office here to test, and it really runs fast. It used to be that the lower-end PCs had less cache or slower bus, but you can get around that with most of the current hardware.

 

You might get a better deal buying a barebones system, picking up a plain-box hard drive (again, check Micro Center) and going someplace like General Nanosystems to have it installed if you're not inclined to do it yourself. I've done that twice, and it still came out cheaper than buying some bloated POS at Best Buy.

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I recommend building your own. I know there's always one nerd in a thread that says this, but you can get exactly what you want for the lowest price. Plus it's super fun, and you'll be better suited to support the pc when there are problems.

Also it's way ass easier than it ever has been. All you do is choose a motherboard and get parts that have the same interface.

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