Pre-Built Desktop Buyer's Guide: Holiday 2011 Edition

Conclusions

Undoubtedly there are going to be some omissions in the list I've put together; this is just a rough guide to get you started. While notebooks are anybody's game (and a lot easier to recommend depending on a person's needs), desktops honestly feel like the province of boutiques. It's win-win across the board: you're oftentimes supporting a smaller business, and customer service is generally going to be superior. This is an area where boutiques are just going to be able to excel over lumbering giants like Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer: they're more agile in every way, and they're typically more apt to use higher quality parts.

But there's another benefit: if you have a lousy customer service experience, know that boutiques watch the comments on reviews and articles like these, and they check out what people are saying about them on forums. They have to; unable to wholly compete on price with major OEMs who can enjoy economies of scale, the customer service angle of the business becomes a much bigger deal, and word of mouth is a major issue. So what about boutiques X, Y, or Z (e.g. the ones we didn't mention)?

While the bulk of my recommendations are for machines from AVADirect or Puget Systems, I've also tested hardware from CyberPowerPC, iBuyPower, DigitalStorm, WarFactory, and Origin (we're still trying to get some Alienware desktops in house). CyberPowerPC and iBuyPower were taken out of the equation for two reasons: our commenters have a tendency to vent a little bit more about these manufacturers suggesting that everything may not be on the up and up where customer service is concerned, and I've generally been unimpressed with the cases they've chosen to use for their builds. DigitalStorm has potential and I wouldn't recommend against buying from them, but we butted heads a little over the unsettlingly high voltage that was being fed into the Intel Core i7-2600K in the Enix system we tested. Origin I've only tested one system from and found it to be a quality build, but their packaging is a waste of resources and frankly a royal pain to both store and manipulate: the wooden crate our review unit came in was heavier than the unit itself. Finally, I did recommend WarFactory for the budget gaming system, but they seem small and I'm not sure how that lifetime warranty will play out.

Ultimately, if you're in the market for a custom machine, this holiday season is a great time to get a smart, well-built machine from a good boutique. You can get something with a solid warranty, excellent customer service...and you won't have to suffer with an anemic video card. Yes, it's possible to get faster video cards from major OEMs, but you're usually locked into expesive choices across the board and the result tends to be unbalanced. If you think we missed a particularly impressive offering, though, let others know in the comments!