My current desktop computer (with upgrades) was purchased to replace my previous desktop computer which had been chugging along for 7 years ago. It has now been chugging along for almost 6 years itself, which means it sounds like I should get a new desktop in the next year. Rather than wait, I pre-emptively bought a new desktop now.

I’ve been having a couple of issues with my current desktop – although I think they stem from the same root cause. Almost ever since I bought this computer, the front USB ports had a problem. They would occasionally short when plugging in something and cause my other USB devices (even those plugged in the back) to freeze (basically I have to reboot since neither my mouse nor keyboard would work anymore). I couldn’t just simply reboot though, I had to disconnect the power cord and wait 10s (for some capacitor to dissipate probably). Recently, when the front USB port doesn’t short, it occasionally corrupts the data being transferred (such as photos from my camera). I’ve resorted to copying photos from SD onto my laptop, and then transferring over network to my desktop – that’s a pain. Finally, I’ve been getting BSODs every once in awhile (although that could just be because I’m using my computer more).

So I jumped a year and bought a new computer now when Dell was having a sale. Here are the primary specs:

  • Intel Haswell i7-4770 (8M Cache, up to 3.9Ghz)
  • 24GB RAM (DDR3 1600Mhz)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB GDDR5
  • 2TB 7200RPM + 256GB SSD
  • Blue-ray combo drive (writes CD/DVD)
  • Win8 Professional

This came out to $1799.99 – $450 in discounts, which is a shade over $1500 after tax. There were actually a couple of promotions on at the same time. Prior to this promotion, I was looking at two bundles at $1599 and $1499. The $1499 bundle was the same as the above, except only had 16GB of RAM (I don’t think the extra 8GB will be of any benefit). The $1599 one was a student offer, which included a 24″ monitor and a $100 e-coupon on top of the $1499 bundle. If I didn’t find any other sales, I would have probably gotten the $1599 package; but I didn’t really need another 24″ monitor. With this package, I saved another $100 (there was a $50 coupon that would have applied anywhere).