Let's talk Prebuilt PCs...

The_Chieftain: Back when Christ was a corporal (around about 2000), I bought a Falcon Northwest. I have to say, I found it an extremely well-built and capable machine, but they are just a tad expensive. It was, however, an excellent foundation which meant that over much of the next decade, I could easily and seamlessly upgrade one or two components and keep a very respectable machine. The next decade, I went totally home-build. I used to work IT, building a PC was not a major challenge (except when I came back from deployment to discover new motherboard ports had been invented in my absence). It may not have been pretty, it may not have been the fastest thing on the planet, but it worked and was quite affordable. I never forgot the quality of the Falcon N-W, however, Finally, before the end of last year, I decided that my last PC could be upgraded no more, and a new one was required. As ever, it came down to "Do I want to take the time to build a new PC, or shall I just solve the problem by throwing money at a prebuild? I went with another pre-build, not least because they seemed to have a better handle on graphics cards and Ryzen 9s than I seemed to be able to find online (and I wanted to make the expense in that tax year), but old impressions still count. After doing some research, I decided Falcon N-W was still the company to go with.Turned out they are still very good at building PCs, and I have absolutely no quarrel with the quality of the product they provided. Now, in fairness, they're still not cheap. With the exception of the primary SSD, I saved a few hundred dollars by buying the additional three drives on the commercial market (not least also, with a military discount), and they plugged in quite happily, even if perhaps the cabling isn't -totally- pretty.  I expect, though, that this machine will similarly last a very long time before I will need to consider upgrading it, and I expect no issues when that happens in a few years.