A few years ago one of my
desktop units failed. I replaced it with a miniPC, a minisform
model I put more RAM and two 2TB SSDs into, and it runs just
fine. Maybe that is the way to go.
For many uses this works just fine. The miniPC offer simplicity, small size and low power consumption if you're OK not being able to upgrade more than RAM and storage.
(I have a portable
high-resolution LCD screen now, and I think I'll eventually just
carry around miniPCs rather than laptops.) But then again I
also have a 14-year-old ThinkPad that still runs like a dream
once I put in an SSD; one of the last models with the "real" IBM
keyboard in it.
Perhaps mistakenly, I thought
that the combination of new hardware with the rough requirements
gamers have for their machines -- able to be run hard for long
periods of time, for instance -- would give me durability and
was the Next Best Thing to the trouble of actually assembling a
desktop machine myself. (I actually like to build computers,
but I just don't have the time these days, unfortunately.)
A good chunk of this can be done online. The state of the art of online assembly, NZXT.com, does ship to Canada. But Canadian retailers such as Canada Computers offer local services that are similar if not as slick. You of course then deal with the various brands for motherboards, power supplies, cases, etc. but if you trust the store you generally will do OK. This is the preferred path for gamers, since high-end GPUs have special needs. I rarely hear people in this list talk about water cooling.
I didn't even consider
ThinkCentres, which word-of-mouth had rated as overpriced and
underpowered,
You had me at overpriced.
It's not that they're under-powered -- you can easily buy a ThinkCenter with an i9 inside -- so much as being too expensive for the power you want. This raises the word that is critical to our discussion that hasn't been said yet: VALUE. Everyone has their own tradeoffs of price versus performance versus features versus intangibles (shapes and positions of the keytops, for instance).
To some people the value of the brand is worth the premium, which takes us back to the original subject.
I am not a market of one
(yet). But there are times when it is starting to feel that
way
That's what the custom PC makers listed above are pretty-well designed to address; those people for whom one size fits one.
I suspect this list of
desiderata would apply to many in this group:
- reliable and long-lived
This is usually measured by warranty length. For instance: typically cheap storage drives will have a year or two warranty, high-end drives (that might otherwise have identical specs) five years or more. All part of the value tradeoff.
- user-upgradeable and
user-fixable
I find a remarkable amount of PC hardware not user-fixable. User-replaceable may be as good as it gets.
Keep in mind that "user-upgradeable" has a shelf life for many components, even if building your own PC. Eventually your CPU and RAM sockets will obsolete, after which upgrade parts will become rarer (and more expensive) to the point where it may be cheaper to replace than upgrade. Be realistic about what (and how soon) you can see yourself upgrading.
High is in the eye of the beholder. If you have a home server the individual stations may not need much.
- able to manipulate
high-end graphics (and sometimes high-end audio) files
That's too vague for a recommendation, because "manipulate" takes many forms. High-end video editors and format conversion tools can chew up plenty of CPU and/or GPU.