I've been setting aside a few hundred bucks every month for the past few months in anticipation of buying a new desktop PC - I've had my current rig since 2016 and while it technically works fine for 100% of the things I use it for, every couple years a component will fail and cost me $300 to fix (most recently it was my motherboard) and at this point it's starting to feel like I'm paying a subscription fee to use a 6-year-old machine.
Because I know Cohost has a higher-than-average concentration of tech-knowledgeable types, I figured I would allow you the greatest pleasure known to the tech-knowledgeable: the opportunity to offer your well-considered in-depth advice and opinions about computers and computer-adjacent components.
What I'd appreciate some guidance on:
- External data storage/transferring data from my old machine to the new one. What would be the "best" (easiest/safest/etc) way to back up and transfer the important stuff I've got on my current PC? I can probably just use GDrive for the text files etc but I've got. Images and videos. You know how it is. I picked up an external hard drive from The Source but the transfer rate was garbage and when I tried to check the files on it it said they were corrupted. Help
- Gaming monitor upgrade ideas. Currently have a 23.6" Asus VE247, wouldn't mind going a little larger while preserving the same depth of color and responsiveness
- Graphics card recommendations. Currently have a NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. Not looking to break the bank on this one (like I said, the current card's been able to do just about everything I need it to, my demands are not great), so mid-range recommendations would be appreciated
- Audio peripherals. Currently got a couple of cheapish desktop speakers (Realtek High Definition), and an expensive-ish headset (Corsair HS45) that unfortunately has a growing crack in its headband. Lemme know your favs
- Any other good-to-knows or uncommon pieces of knowledge you might want to pass on. All my PCs in the past have been built by my dad so I really don't know very much
And a few caveats:
- My general goal is "better specs than my current 6-year-old machine but definitely not anything near top-of-the-line", and the absolute ceiling of my budget is $3,000 CAD, and I'd prefer to come in significantly under that if possible
- It's gonna be a Windows 10 machine. I am 34 years old and I am not going to learn how to use Linux
- You probably already figured this out if you've read this far but despite having used computers since I was 11 years old and somehow being a niche-unpopular developer of pornographic software I am not actually very good at computer. Layman-level communication is very appreciated
Okay, I think that does it! Thank you for helping me make my computing experience better than it currently is!