New PC Under $1000

I always try to get the unlocked version of Microsoft CPU’s. The K indicator at the end signifies that the chip is unlocked. For reference here are the other chip “Codes”: Link

The Intel® Core™ Processors number include letters in their product line suffix. The table below includes the meaning of these letters.  

With SSD’s mainstream. I like not having to wire the hard drive along with everything else. It makes for a much cleaner look and and you never have to worry about the airflow, wires, being caught by the cpu fan or being ziptied so tight that you start to have connection issues. Samsung drives have been great so far, so until I find a better alternative Samsung is it.

Speaking of CPU coolers and fans. The quietest out there and the most reliable have been the nocturna series. Great for one customer that hates the “fan noise”. Yes I had to get him a passive cooled power supply as well. Even with an i9 its still running great 3 years later.

Power supplies are pretty standard and for running a low end 1050 as well as not spinning drives, a 450 might be overkill. But they are pretty stable and do not fail so easy. We have an oil rig service company that was skimping on the cheap $25.99 special power supplies and they went through so many motherboards just due to the bad power on the rig sites. EVGA Seems ike a fairly decent brand, and as I stated I do not have issues with these.

While serial ports seem to be a thing of the past to most industries, a lot of embedded and sensor data relies on RS232 as well as RS485 to communicate with the hardware. While there are a ton of adapters on the market, these dongles plug into the motherboard and give a lot better performance and last a lot longer without issues.

Motherboards are the core of the core of the computer and I love ASUS Motheroards. It is one of the few motherboards that still has a serial port plug, so using the above dongle is possible with this one and very few other brands. Asus is also has one of teh best bios designs, which allow you to install firmware in the bios over the network instead of downloading, writing dos to a usb, extracting and then hoping you have the right version and are allowed to get a bios update (looking at you supermicro). You can skip over into the bios, hit download and install and it will connect, download the correct version and install it, just like it should be in 2022.

Must get a licensed copy. I have seen 2 companies be audited and charged huge fees. Due to the wording in some of the Microsoft legal jargon, when they start evaluating which software you had, vs purchased. The breakdown each office application separately which increases the total owed to enormous amounts, give the legal team options to reduce the fines making them seem reasonable. Do not get caught without your license.

This part does not count as part of the price. This is for those that do not alraedy have a nice case or are wanting a new one. The comany I’m building these four for are puting these in a custom built cabinet on the oil rig trailers. Cases are pretty overpriced in my opinion. Lights clear sides to be throown on a floor out of the way of anyone seeing them. I personnalky would rather just a plain black metal case. I have evn looked at a few aircases recently and the seem nice, but $200+ for an open air case taht won’t protet it from cats, kids and dust? No thanks.