pouët.net

It has been some years since I don't buy a new PC, and now it seems that desktop sales are decaying fast in favor of mobile devices, so the offer is little it seems.

So, basically, I want a branded desktop (just to ensure the settings are well balanced and tested and to be almost sure that after unpacking it, it will work right), without a silly gamer case, and with a mid to high end gpu and cpu.

I've tried at Dell, Acer, HP... and nothing. The most close to what I want are Alienware, but they would look totally stupid at my office because of the case.

So, any suggestions?

I'm been thinking in switching to Mac too, but would like to keep using Windows because of Visual C, mostly.

Don't buy a PC, build it!

Today bulding a PC with separate components is very easy, because some work of standardization has been made.

Otherwise, some hardware parts sellers offer "unbranded" complete assembled computers.

You can run Windows on a mac too.

urgh, apple hardware... macs are built with the same components but almost twice as expensive and with poor cooling due to their primary focus on design. When I've messed around with their hardware - tried it twice, once laptop, once stationary machine - I overheated the GPU and crashed the OS, once the solder of the RAM of the graphics "area" (they don't support add-in cards of course) melted so I had to RMA the machine. Also their "superior design" usually involves sharing RAM between GPU and CPU. Maybe not on imacs, but the prices of those things are horrifying.

I totally concur with Natopsi, build your own. There are some nicely designed cases. For the price of the cheapest iMac you could get a box with an i7 and nvidia gtx card.

I built a bleeding edge machine (fastest i7 possible, nvidia gtx 580, 12GB ram) 4 months ago. IIRC that build set me back about 1400 euro..

+1 for building your own. If you're not that confident about picking parts and assembly, there's plenty of guides for building PCs of various prices and uses over at places like bittech.net. As for silly looking cases, I use an Antec 900-2 which looks a bit silly, but as it's under the desk I don't really notice. :)

Sorry, that should be bit-tech.net. Damn autocorrect.

Buy an Olivetti!

Listen to this guy texel.
For just over AUD$1500 a few years ago I got this thing. 2x 9600gtx, intel quadcore, 4gb ram kit, 2x 32gb ssd and 2 bigger hdds, case & 850w psu from my local pc shop. I got them to build it ($50 from memory) for the warranty.

+1 for build. About every PC enthusiast site has articles.

Intel and AMD are the only ones who manufacture their own chipsets for their respective CPUs now (so stability shouldn't be an issue), just got to match the right sockets. Everything uses DDR3 and PCI-E.

Though it might be tempting, do NOT skimp on the PSU. Seat the heatsink right, plug things in properly (don't confuse 8 pin CPU with 8 pin PCIE), and don't statically shock anything, you should be good. And make sure your case has enough clearance for your graphics card.

I've built/added to/repaired literally hundreds of cases, these days everything is pretty much colour coded and screwless but heed my suggestion to get them to build it (if it's relatively cheap) - when 1 of my ssd's died I got a new 1 gratis and immediately. If I hadn't been able to do my own data-recovery they would've had to have paid/done that as well - and that was just their standard 12 mth. warranty on parts and labour.

Drop your i7 into an Asus motherboard, my Gigabyte one was better spec, but it kept making an interesting shade of blue on boot.

Or, are you just going to wait (another) 6 months and build an Ivybridge?

I've sent an old Olivetti 286 or 386 cardboard box to the garbage last month :D

more time than money: build a PC.

more money than time: buy a mac.

yeah if you want a powerful desktop PC, you better build it.