Some thoughts on budget friendly computers that do not break the budget - told in story form

Value has been a priority my entire life.

Even still... I have been talked into purchasing new (mostly lenovo) laptops by my tech friends over the years and it has not really worked out well for me. SO I found my own laptops that are reasonably priced and can do everything I thought I ever needed until I tried to run Diablo IV.

Let us start at the beginning of this journey. Amazing Lenovo machines and how, for some reason, my environment sought out their destruction within a year. I paid 1000+ for nice modern machines but I never got the life out of them. Sure enough I kept having expensive computer purchases while my 2004 Dell Inspiron 9100 was still kicking. Got a key board replacement under warranty and then was fine for 14 years. Maybe I should be looking at Dell computers?

In 2008 I build a liquid cooled core i7 tower as it was the best, newest chip on the market. I wanted a serious computer and I never used laptops as actual laptops so why was I focusing so hard on mobile computer solutions? I had run of AMD and non quad core intel processors over the years that never really knocked my socks off so it was time for a change. I did it on a budget sub 1500 as it was something I always wanted off my bucket list. I bought the cheapest I7 chip and ran it at double its speed with a off the shelf water cooling unit for a year straight before a cooler line blew and it melted the motherboard. Not the best practice for a liquid cooled right that I used mostly to assimilate all of the internets information into my head while streaming Netflix.

Having used i5's at work (and that one AMD computer most folks are smart enough never to forget the lessons taught by it) I knew I had better set some ground rules for all computers going forward. They would have at least the i7's capabilities: 4 cores that can run at least 8 threads as I could never find the limit of such a processor even with my CAD work, growing interest in CFD/FAE, love of having a thousands tabs open doing research on everything that popped into my head, and love of streaming video. You don't buy a computer because it can do what you want it to do. You buy a computer because it will do what you want it to do for as long as possible. Key point.

Enter the Dell M6600 on the used market. I found a nice example from 2011, battery worked, lease trade in, some graphical glitches and price tag I could get behind: $300 bucks shipped. Core i7 Quad core (have to pay extra attention nowadays with all the tricks they play on consumers), large ram support of sufficient speed, and impressive video card capabilities with CFD simulation scores riviling 1500 dollar alienware brand new laptops. Not surprising: these things were $3000-4000 dollars when they were knew and they were marketed as large/heavy/desktop rivaling machines. I chased some strange issues with it, as a newbie with a fresh computer science degree eventually ending up with an upgraded graphics card it never came with running custom firmware (a dell thing) and having a bios that didnt even properly support all the features of the i7 it had.

I had my fun and caught a great deal on a M6700 since I couldnt get a deal on reasonable deal on M6800 with maxed out specs. Even though it was from the same era as the M66000 it had the bios options to properly use an i7 boost/throttling/etc. I still use this computer for everything besides gaming especially when I am travelling going on a good 8 years before deciding to get back into gaming with the release of Diablo IV. I played the 3rd version alot back in college and was excited after all these years to enjoy a never version of it. My 6700 met the basic hardware specs outside of the newer DirectX and such the 4gb video card couldnt support. I got the game to load for a good 30 seconds and even got to move my character a bit before it crashed.... it was time for something new.

Lets try a desktop again. I still had a good case and accessories from my liquid cooled fun from back in the day so I decided to revive it with 600 dollar budget. I got a 6 core i7 cpu with motherboard and 4000 mhz overclocked ram for less then 300 bucks used, a proper cpu cooler, had to get a power supply as the 1200 watt in the case died probably with the motherboard, got a great deal on a 1070ti from a bit coin mining server, bought a reasonable NVME, blue ray 4k drive, cables, etc. Easily the best value for a machine when it comes to gaming capability. Not a dell but it was really a collection of name brand parts that met my specifications. Im not realy much of a gamer these days but I have the capability.

Alternate title - How the core-i7 will forever be immortalized on my tombstone.