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With my current computer reaching 10 years old at this point and with the only notable changes being an upgrade in PSU and GPU (the PSU being a Corsair 500w from around 2013 and the GPU being a GTX 1660 Ti I got around 2019), it's about time I really just update everything. Especially since lately I've started having issues where my PC can sometimes BSOD when I turn it on, and the other day when I turned it on it basically started to make an alarm sound at me that I know was coming from the tower, something I can only recall happening once before long ago.

Now in the past I know I said "next time I'll make a custom rig," but I feel like I've seen too many instances of people who tried to do custom rigs running into too many issues that they can't find any answers to that it's made me go "never mind, I feel like it'll be too much of a headache for my inexperienced self" (with one notable example being the YouTuber Caddicarus). So yeah, what I'm looking for is to see if anyone on this site can recommend any specific manufacturers that do prebuilt PCs that are of good quality. The price isn't what I'm focusing on at this moment, I'm mainly just looking for things like how reliable/trustworthy certain manufacturers are. Like is iBUYPOWER a good one? Does Corsair make good prebuilts? Is Alienware still as good as it sounded back in the 00s? What about NZXT? One major reason why I'm asking ya'll is because while I have checked YouTube and tech sites for recommendations, sometimes the comments question the "top choices" due to things like sponsorship deals and the like, and I'm more likely to take the word of someone who'd gladly shill something without being paid for it.

I think they all pretty much use off the shelf parts, so I'd just say go with whichever has the specs/price you want. (though I don't know if Alienware still uses weird semi-proprietary parts.)

My current PC is from Cyberpower PC. It's roughly the same cost as building it yourself and has a wide selection of options. I've heard ibuypower is roughly the same in terms of quality, though most I've heard at my workplace that buy prebuilts do it through Cyberpower.

Just checked them out and wow the customization options are pretty in-depth. Good thing too because I really don't want liquid cooling (like I get liquid cooling works, but it's also one of the riskier things to use for cooling given one leak can ruin an entire rig, and I'd rather replace a fan than the entire rig).

I'm still open for more suggestions, but I admit this one's already shot up pretty high on who I might use.

PC Building is not too daunting. The worse that comes from it is ziplining any of your power supply's wires that you are currently not using. Also, consider that your references are infinite: Any problems that you may run, I guarantee that there is either a forum created for that discussion, or even a video on YouTube that can provide assistance on any dilemmas that may hinder you.

Most of my parts were purchased off Newegg, but this was before being bought out by the Chinese in 2016. Nowadays, their customer service is devolving rapidly with no hope for change. So stick with a premade if you do not wish to bother through with the usual headaches building a rig. Personally, I enjoy the troubleshooting- as bizarre as that may sound. Kept me out of the office and on the workbench during my time in the Army.

As for the tower, I bought it locally back in 2012 when I was stationed in Germany. It's a Cooler Master HAF from a Mom/Pop store over in Kaiserslautern that was too large to fit in a cab which meant carrying it for three miles back to the barracks. The weight wasn't too bad, but the packaging had my arms stretched out wide making it somewhat awkward to carry.

I still have the HAF and have recently upgraded pretty much everything inside save the power supply just to play Elden Ring without any lag or framerate dips. But she is getting there as some fan connecters have snapped off due to being a decade-old.

Another hiccup happened when the move to Korea knocked my graphics card obsolete. While I was waiting for the new GPU to arrive, I put the old card in the oven to reheat the solders to bring it back from the dead. Surprisingly, it work but the output had a permanent purple filter, so it was only good for browsing/streaming.

I almost wonder if my current computer is sentient enough to know I want to replace it, it blue screened on me again today and lately it's being annoyingly finnicky with recognizing that my new mouse is plugged in. It's like it's begging me to just let it rest.

Cyberpower is still the top pick for the moment, it looks like I can get a pretty good RTX 3070 and Ryzen 7 rig for around $2000 from them, but I'll hold off for a little longer to see other suggestions.

I haven't seen anyone ask but what frame rate and resolution do you play games at?

60 FPS, 900p at the moment. The monitor is an older HP LED from like 2012, I might update to a 1080p monitor with g-sync in the near future though.

I think the 3070 would be a bit overkill for your usage, unless you plan on getting a 1080p/165hz or a 1440p monitor. Really it depends on what you plan on doing/playing. If you mostly play older titles or games that aren't that demanding I think a 3060 ti would be a better fit. If you plan on playing the latest games and utilizing ray tracing more then I would go for the 3070.

You could also downgrade the Ryzen 7 cpu to a Ryzen 5 5600x, most games don't take advantage of 8 cores yet and in most cases the performance increase is negligible.

I also want to add that you should make sure the cpu you're choosing isn't an APU since you're getting a GPU for your pc. AMD adds a G to the end of the titles(5600g, 5700g vs 5600x, 5700x) so you can identify them easily. They tend to perform worse and are meant for media/light use pc's rather than a heavy gaming pc.

I guess here's something to use as a benchmark.

-My current rig with its old CPU and the GTX 1660 Ti can in fact run Doom Eternal at a smooth 60FPS with everything set to "high."

-However a game like Black Mesa will become a slideshow on chapters like Surface Tension and in parts of the Xen chapters. I understand the engine here is much older and less optimized (devs even admitted it) but the fact remains I've seen videos of people getting this game to run smoothly at maxed settings and I'd like to become one of those people if I can.

I'd also like to make sure I'll be able to handle upcoming Unreal Engine 5 games and I would like the option for ray tracing since I'm a sucker for good lighting.

I'd go with the 3070 then if you're really interested in ray tracing and don't mind spending the extra 100 dollars for the card over the 3060ti. As for processor that's also up to you, looking at the price difference between the 5600x and the 5700x on Cyberpower and it isn't as large as the GPUs(40$ difference). You'd be happy with either one, the performance difference between the two would just be barely noticeable or not at all while gaming. Both would be a heavy upgrade over whatever you currently have in your PC, I bet it's bottle necking your current 1660ti.

Yeah confession time: my current CPU is an FX-6120. If it weren't for the fact I need an entirely new motherboard to upgrade to Ryzen I might have upgraded the CPU a couple years back (the motherboard is also an HP mobo, I mentioned this in the past but for anyone not aware the current PC I have is an HP Pavilion that my father bought for me during college when my old Windows XP computer from 2004 began to die, so as you can see I basically stick with one "rig" for about a whole decade). When taking into account the fact I need a completely new motherboard on top of a new CPU, uncertainty that my current computer can even support M.2 SSDs, and the "added bonus" of this current computer showing signs that it's on its last legs, I basically went "screw upgrading just one or two parts, I need an entirely new computer."

Trigger pulled, I've ordered the new PC.

Nvidia RTX 3070
AMD Ryzen 7 5700x
1 TB WD M2 SSD with a 4TB HDD for extra storage
32GB of RAM
Cooler Master CPU fan (I don't want liquid cooling, as I said I feel it's too risky)
850 watt Cooler Master PSU (it was only $40 more than the 750 watt so I figured why not do some mild future proofing)
High air flow tower with magnetic dust covers
And I threw in a personal "hey why not" and paid the extra $19 for them to put thermal paste on the CPU.

And because it was on a special I went "hey, why not?" a second time and got a 1080p, 165Hz monitor with g-sync support (honestly really got it more for g-sync, I'm probably still going to be old fashioned and stick to 60 FPS for the majority of games).

The PC in all was around $2000, and the monitor was below $250. After tax I spent a bit less than $2500, so I stayed pretty close to my main target.

Now give me about another year or so of saving up and I might finally get a Valve Index (Quest 2 looked attractive for a while but nah screw Facebook/Meta, I'm not putting up with them just for RE4 VR, plus they just announced they're upping the price of the Quest 2 by $100 "because of inflation" and again screw Zuckerberg for that reasoning, he don't need to inflate shit but his own ego).

NEVERMIND I'M NOT GOING WITH CYBERPOWER PC ANYMORE

They put me through an entire week of crap by claiming my bank won't process the order, but the reason is because they're not following the process my bank follows when it comes to processing stuff. They keep saying "your bank is saying the address doesn't match" but that's a fucking lie, my bank verified EVERYTHING fucking matches up, it's Cyberpower's bullshit system that's being the problem but they won't fucking admit it and process the order properly. I cancelled it so now I need a new option on who to buy from. At this point I'm so frustrated I might as well just go to Best Buy or some shit.

Final update and then a mod can close this thread if they want:

I went with iBUYPOWER instead, and I'll admit maybe it was at least partially out of spite towards all the crap I had to deal with with Cyberpower. I also spoke with a co-worker of mine who is way more into PC building and whatnot and he said I frankly should just stick to an RTX 3060 Ti since a 3070 would be a bit much for 1080p gaming, and he assured me that my worries about liquid cooled systems are really only based on people using custom liquid coolers and not pre-made closed systems so I went ahead and chose a liquid cooler after all. By going with a 3060 Ti instead I saved about $200 compared to what I was originally going to get from Cyberpower, but other than a different GPU and deciding I'll go with a liquid cooler after all the insides of the PC from iBUY are basically not that much different from the one I mentioned above. The new monitor is also just going to come from Amazon instead of Cyberpower.

But yeah what made iBUY so much easier to deal with is they actually had a way to properly process the payment that my bank was fine with and they didn't give me any bullcrap hassle about "it says your address doesn't match" or some such despite me knowing for a fact that's not the case.

But yeah looks like this saga is over so a mod can lock this thread now if they want to.