Looking at a new PC

[Snowreap]

I can't say that there's anything wrong with it, but I would certainly never get such a thing. It's a matter of personal preference, I guess.

I wouldn't pair a quiet liquid cooling system for your CPU with a potentially noisy fan on your video card -- I'd make sure the GPU fan is quiet as well. they don't say anything about what kind of fan the video card will have -- probably one of the usual shrouded windtunnel designs that sound like jet engines.

I find it odd that they tell you the brand name of the CPU cooler, keyboard and mouse, but omit this information for the GPU, RAM and HD. I don't find it odd that they omit the brand of the power supply (everyone does), but personally I'd want to know that too.

I'm old-fashioned and I still buy music on CD's. but I like to be able to accurately rip those CDs which means having an AccurateRip-capable optical drive (one which can read both the lead-in and lead-out). this means knowing exactly what kind of drive you're getting, which I noticed they don't tell you. it's probably a crap drive that can read either the lead-in or the lead-out but not both. at least they tell you the color, so I suppose that tells you what they consider "important" features.

UEFI BIOS. I don't know yet whether that's a good thing or not. there are some fears out there that UEFI will basically lock you in to running Windows or (iirc) Redhat Linux. no other choices, because nobody else is ponying up the cash to get their bootloaders UEFI-signed. realistically, you're probably never going to run anything other than Windows anyway, so being locked in to UEFI may be a non-issue.

-ken