Introduction

While we at AnandTech recognize that a good portion of our readership prefers to roll their own as far as desktops go, not everyone is that way. Sometimes there are also situations where we'd be better off just recommending a pre-built desktop to family than damning ourselves to being tech support at all hours for the next few years. So whether you want to kick back for a change, send something to family or a friend, or whatever your reason for going with a pre-built system is, we have a recommendation for you this holiday season.

I hope you'll indulge me for a moment. Even working on this guide I can already see a lot of the comments that are going to pop up for it. The fact is, I'm at the point where I sometimes wish I'd been able to just recommend a desktop to family members rather than building one and shipping it, or building one and then having to move away, or whatever the case may be. So for those of you that are able to build a machine on your own, I've no doubt that you can build a lot of these cheaper/better than the manufacturer or boutique can, but that's not really the point. There are myriad situations where a pre-built system is going to be a better choice, so many corner cases that it's not realistic to just say, "Well I could build it or you should find a friend that can." Trust me, if you're of that inclination, this guide simply isn't for you. If you're interested in our DIY recommendations, our Holiday 2011 Budget Guide is already posted, and we'll be following up with midrange and high-end guides in the near future.

However, if you're looking for a good recommendation for a pre-built desktop for this holiday season, you've come to the right place. While recommending notebooks has been pretty easy for us, the notebook market isn't quite as fluid as desktops can be. It's easy to target one thing or another, but the desktop market can be very gray. How do you really define midrange? What's overkill for a high end system? How low do you go on a budget system before it just isn't worth buying anymore? Trying to even target a certain price point can be nigh impossible; all of these machines can be configured within a massive range of prices from the manufacturer or boutique.

I've broken down desktop solutions into six categories: All-in-One, Budget, Budget Gaming, Midrange, High End, and LAN Machine. There's bound to be some overlap, but with these I've tried very hard to only recommend systems or at least boutiques I've reviewed and have experience with, and made an effort to recommend what I think is the most sensible configuration. If you have any other recommendations, by all means, that's what the comments are here for. I've also elected against including an HTPC recommendation; this is something that feels a bit hazy sometimes as even a PlayStation 3 can oftentimes handle HTPC duties for less demanding users. While I've built my own HTPC, my needs there are fairly rudimentary and I'd be doing our HTPC and media streaming enthusiasts a disservice by making some kind of recommendation.

Now, with all that rigamarole out of the way, on with the show!

All-in-One: Toshiba DX735

We haven't seen any of Gateway or Sony's systems in house yet, but between the three all-in-ones we've tested so far, Toshiba's DX735 has been my favorite. Toshiba's touchscreen experience may be about as rudimentary as it gets, but the DX735 isn't about frills and doesn't suffer from the kinds of schizophrenic configurations and design decisions that the competing all-in-one systems have. It's also the least expensive of the lot and the display isn't horrible (which is more than we can say for the Dell Inspiron One we looked at).

A lot of the problem with the other systems is that they're weird chimeras of desktop processors and mobile graphics, making the whole user experience feel a bit top heavy. You're paying more for a CPU that is likely going to be underused, and the graphics still feel like second-class citizens; I appreciated the DX735 for being a capable internet appliance and not having the kinds of perplexing configurations the competing all-in-ones had (not to mention the fact that it doesn't cook the hard drive the way the Dell Inspiron One does). You can certainly find cheaper All-in-One offerings, but only if you're willing to compromise on other elements (e.g. the display, performance, and/or build quality).

Recommended Configuration: DX735-D3201
Available in retail for $899
 

Budget Desktop: AVADirect Desktop PC Fusion FM1

This is the one category where I'm not able to make a recommendation based on personal experience with the hardware itself. While I feel like Llano's utility on the desktop is at least somewhat questionable, at the bottom end of the market it feels like the best deal. AMD's concept of a "balanced system" has some flaws, but at its core it's a fundamentally sensible one. I've seen too many people get hamstrung by a weak IGP in a low-end system; in the end you're going to wind up having to spend more money if you ever decide you want to game on a Sandy Bridge or AM3/AM3+ system, but if you absolutely must save money now and don't want to have to invest later, Llano is the way to go.

So why go with AVADirect in this instance? Of the boutiques I've worked with, they're among the best reviewed, and with their Llano-based desktop you get a $500 starting price for a decent system and a strong 3-year warranty along with better, more personalized customer service than you're apt to get going with a major vendor like HP or Dell. While I'm not a fan of the bottom rung HEC power supply, you're at least guaranteed three years of value and it should be enough to handle whatever minor upgrades you may want to pop into the system down the line. I'd just go with the baseline configuration and maybe make a minor tweak here or there; 4GB of DDR3 is cheap enough to upgrade to and you should be good to go.

Recommended Configuration: Baseline plus 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600
Available from AVADirect at ~$500

Midrange: Puget Systems Obsidian

Both my midrange and high end recommendations come from the same vendor: Puget Systems. Puget tends to be pricier than other boutiques, but what you get in return are simpler configuration options backed up by more careful, stricter component selection than you're liable to see from other boutiques and certainly way more than from a major vendor.

For midrange, I defined the system as being something in the neighborhood of a grand, and something that could be configured with a dedicated video card as needed but will otherwise fit the bill for the kinds of multimedia work that more and more of us (and our folks and their folks) are getting involved in. I wanted a machine that had a healthy amount of horsepower on tap if you need it, but is a good citizen of your home under less demanding circumstances, and the Puget Systems Obsidian fit the bill.

What makes the Obsidian such a solid choice is the smart component selection all around. The enclosure is where a lot of boutiques will tend to skimp, but Puget uses quality cases across the board and the Antec Mini P180 is among them. Thanks to the P180, the Obsidian is able to keep noise in check while still offering a healthy amount of performance thanks to the Intel Core i5-2400 quad-core processor in the baseline configuration. This system is cool, fast, and quiet. Puget Systems recommends the Obsidian for business and enterprise work, but that's not exactly a bad thing if you want a reliable workhorse.

Recommended Configuration: Baseline
Available from Puget Systems starting at $1,224
 

High End: Puget Systems Deluge A2

If you've been keeping track of recent reviews you'll notice I wasn't particularly fond of the highest end Puget Systems had to offer, the Deluge L2. Intel's Sandy Bridge-E platform really is basically a bust for enthusiasts; a fast hex-core processor can be invaluable for tasks like video editing, but it's next to worthless elsewhere, and I've found that even on my desktop a mildly overclocked Intel Core i7-990X is still getting bottlenecked by a two-disk RAID 0 when it comes time to render. When you start looking at how high the price of entry is for SB-E, you realize just what a poor deal it really is.

The A2, on the other hand, looks like a far better bargain. It still starts at a high price and doesn't feature the flashy custom liquid cooling job that some of you took issue with on the L2, but it's easily the least gaudy looking gaming system I've ever tested and the components are always quality. The customized Antec P183 V3 enclosure is also much appreciated, guaranteed to keep the noise down better than other boutique builds might. If I weren't so invested in rolling my own, this would probably be the desktop I'd order for myself.

Recommended Configuration: Baseline plus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 or AMD Radeon HD 6970 and an SSD
Available from Puget Systems starting at $1,830

Budget Gaming Desktop: WarFactory Sentinel

I often feel like the number one most underserved market in pre-built desktop machines may very well be the budget gamer. If there were ever a market that needed "that friend who builds computers," this is almost always it. Mainstream vendors like Dell, HP, and Acer are notorious for skimping on graphics hardware even in their high end desktop machines, to say nothing of anything south of a large. Meanwhile, boutiques find their margins increasingly strapped when producing less expensive desktops. A fast video card is always the easiest thing to cut (though you can certainly add one later). I liked WarFactory's Sentinel because I like configurations that feel balanced, that address a target market fairly surgically and maximize the price and performance without waste.

While games like Skyrim and StarCraft II are going to be heavily CPU bound, WarFactory's decision to go with an AMD Phenom II X4 for the Sentinel remains a smart one. AMD's aging Deneb core may lag well behind Sandy Bridge in terms of clock-for-clock performance, but the extra two physical cores do help make up the difference in an era where games are increasingly taking advantage of quad-core architectures.

Component choices are smart all around; if the Puget Systems Deluge A2 was the desktop I'd order for myself if I wasn't a builder, the WarFactory Sentinel is the desktop I'd be most apt to build for someone else. I'm not a fan of the high $1,200 price for the recommended configuration (clearly not exactly budget), but a couple of tweaks to the configuration will net you a far more reasonable system.

Recommended Configuration: Reduce storage to a single 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black and reduce GPU to an AMD Radeon HD 5770.
Available from WarFactory starting at $755
 

LAN Machine: AVADirect Mini Custom

As far as miniature monsters go, I haven't personally dealt with a single boutique as willing to experiment with shrinking powerful hardware as AVADirect has been. To date I've played with Micro-ATX builds from both CyberPowerPC and DigitalStorm, but AVADirect is the only one I've seen go straight up Mini-ITX. Making a tiny gaming machine isn't as cut and dry as some of these bigger rigs are, but the two I've tested have both been interesting and impressive in their own right.

When you get this small, engineering starts to matter a lot more. These are circumstances where I have a harder time recommending a specific configuration; AVADirect is crazy enough to cram two AMD Radeon HD 6990s in a tiny Micro-ATX case, so they're obviously going to be able to handle whatever you ask of them.

This is a situation where I'd actually advise talking directly with their customer service about tailoring a system, something they really excell at in my personal experience. You're going to be playing a balancing act between heat, noise, heft, power consumption, and performance, and what I might personally prefer may not be suitable for you. I can't stand a computer that generates a ton of noise, but if you're going to be at a LAN and wearing headphones, that may be less of a factor for you. Either way, AVADirect is definitely the place to go for custom built LAN machines.

Talk to an AVADirect representative about tailoring a LAN machine.

Conclusions

Undoubtedly there are going to be some omissions in the list I've put together; this is just a rough guide to get you started. While notebooks are anybody's game (and a lot easier to recommend depending on a person's needs), desktops honestly feel like the province of boutiques. It's win-win across the board: you're oftentimes supporting a smaller business, and customer service is generally going to be superior. This is an area where boutiques are just going to be able to excel over lumbering giants like Dell, Lenovo, HP, or Acer: they're more agile in every way, and they're typically more apt to use higher quality parts.

But there's another benefit: if you have a lousy customer service experience, know that boutiques watch the comments on reviews and articles like these, and they check out what people are saying about them on forums. They have to; unable to wholly compete on price with major OEMs who can enjoy economies of scale, the customer service angle of the business becomes a much bigger deal, and word of mouth is a major issue. So what about boutiques X, Y, or Z (e.g. the ones we didn't mention)?

While the bulk of my recommendations are for machines from AVADirect or Puget Systems, I've also tested hardware from CyberPowerPC, iBuyPower, DigitalStorm, WarFactory, and Origin (we're still trying to get some Alienware desktops in house). CyberPowerPC and iBuyPower were taken out of the equation for two reasons: our commenters have a tendency to vent a little bit more about these manufacturers suggesting that everything may not be on the up and up where customer service is concerned, and I've generally been unimpressed with the cases they've chosen to use for their builds. DigitalStorm has potential and I wouldn't recommend against buying from them, but we butted heads a little over the unsettlingly high voltage that was being fed into the Intel Core i7-2600K in the Enix system we tested. Origin I've only tested one system from and found it to be a quality build, but their packaging is a waste of resources and frankly a royal pain to both store and manipulate: the wooden crate our review unit came in was heavier than the unit itself. Finally, I did recommend WarFactory for the budget gaming system, but they seem small and I'm not sure how that lifetime warranty will play out.

Ultimately, if you're in the market for a custom machine, this holiday season is a great time to get a smart, well-built machine from a good boutique. You can get something with a solid warranty, excellent customer service...and you won't have to suffer with an anemic video card. Yes, it's possible to get faster video cards from major OEMs, but you're usually locked into expesive choices across the board and the result tends to be unbalanced. If you think we missed a particularly impressive offering, though, let others know in the comments!