A Few Musings About "Custom" Computer Vendors..


Over the last several years, I have gone from custom building my own computer systems from bare-bones kits to getting the custom-built systems available from many vendors.

I have two systems from Velocity Computers – one desktop and one laptop. The desktop is a pretty heavy duty unit with two processors and 64 GB of RAM. Most of the time it runs acceptably well. It is used mainly for Photoshop, and occasionally for Poser Pro 2014. I had Poser on the laptop as well as Photoshop, but as of this writing the laptop is not working.

I also have a laptop from Origin Computers, which I use mainly for DAZ Studio. I have a desktop unit from Titan computers, which I use pretty much exclusively for Poser Pro 2014.

Right now, as I mentioned above, the Velocity laptop is pretty much a doorstop. I have a support ticket going with Velocity right now, and I am waiting for a response from them with our last email exchange.

Just last week, the Titan computer arrived back home after being sent to their service department for issues I was experiencing with it. One of the main problems I had with it was the fact that if I left my external USB drives plugged in when I booted it up, it would try to reinstall Windows. I did not have this issue at all with the old HP computer that I previously had in this spot. It would boot up just fine with all three USB drives connected.

Naturally, the technicians at Titan could not duplicate this problem. They updated some drivers, and put the system in a brand-new case as FedEx had apparently damaged the old case on the trip to their service facility.

Regarding the USB drives, I have two Hitachi drives, and had a Seagate drive on which I kept my master runtimes for Poser. The two Hitachi drives are rock solid, but the Seagate drive would continuously drop out, then pop back in, then drop out again, then pop back in again. With it dropping out every few seconds, it was completely useless. However, if I plugged another drive in, it worked fine. Similarly, if I plugged the Seagate drive into my oldest system (which was the last system that I built myself from a bare-bones kit), the drive works fine. So I now have two Seagate drives attached to my old computer, along with two Hitachi drives, and all four drives work fine. So I am basically using this system as a backup server. Why do the Seagate drives act so flaky on the Titan system? I have no idea...

Anyway, after taking a week to reconfigure everything, move my Poser files around, move my master runtimes to one of the Hitachi drives, I finally got everything working relatively smoothly.

No sooner did I get everything squared away with the Titan computer, then the Origin laptop began throwing boot up errors. It would throw up a message "your computer encountered a problem and has to restart" when it was booted up. The first time this happened, it took about five reboots to finally get it to boot into Windows properly. It will kick this message up about every fourth or fifth time I boot it up.

I just opened a ticket with Origin, and just got a response from them. In a nutshell, they said in order to rule out the problem being software-based, I would need to insert the recovery USB stick they included, and basically wipe the drive and reinstall everything factory fresh. Of course, this means that I would have to reinstall DAZ Studio, and a few other apps that I have running on the system. It's kind of a pain in the ass, but then again if it was a hardware problem I'd have to do the same thing after they replaced the drive.

So… At the moment I have tickets open with both Origin and Velocity. I don't even want to think about the total price I've paid over the years for all of these 'custom' systems, but let me just say that none of them were under $2300.

When the Velocity laptop decided to lay down on me, I went to Micro Center, and paid a little over $1200 for a Powerspec laptop with a 17 inch screen to use for Poser Pro 2014 and Photoshop. I haven't had it very long, so time will tell how well it continues to work. But at the moment it runs poser smoothly, as well as Photoshop and a couple other apps I have installed.

The upshot of all of this rambling is just this: why in the hell should I continue to spend inflated prices for these custom-built systems, when I can go to Micro Center and for half the price get a system that works just as well if not better? Next time I need a powerful system for 3-D rendering, I will be giving very deep consideration on whether to get a custom-built system or just simply go to Micro Center and bring one home the same day for half the price.




Comments

  1. I too am having problems with my computer so I symphsize with you. I have to reinstall everything which is so annoying and time consuming. Hope all your solutions work for you for ages 😀

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  2. Sorry to hear of the issues. Really sucks. the computer I'm typing on right now is an old (read ancient) HP that I got back in 2008 and it is chugging long just fine - of course the max memory is only 8 gigs. The one I'm using for rendering is the gaming computer I bought and it currently has 16 gigs but I plan on upgrading it to 32 gigs. The only issue I had with it was the power supply dying and having to get an adapter for the HDMI port. I agree that paying those extra bucks just doesn't sound like a good investment if all you're going to do is ship it back to get some issue resolved.

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