My Dell P4 Dimension 8400 desktop lasted 8-9 years running XP everyday without a single issue and I never reinstalled the OS.  Finally died last December but it's still hanging around beside the couch waiting for me to decide what to do with it.
 
One of its hard drives (a Maxtor) was carried over from the previous computer (another Dell) so it ran for something like 13 years every day.
 
I'm reading this on the orginal 17" Dell monitor, so about 9 years old, looks the same as it always has.
 
The lastest desktop I built myself.
 

 
Ouch.
 

The problem with Dell (and other similar brands), is that they typically use consumer grade parts not intended for DAW's. This includes the power supply, which is usually a piece or garbage and rated 300W or less. You can get into their higher end business computers (HP Z series, etc), but at that price point you may as well go to a custom builder such as those already mentioned.

easy to swap out the PSU for a bigger one

> The problem with Dell (and other similar brands), is that they typically use consumer grade parts not intended for DAW's.

Sorry utter baloney! :) Everybody is a consumer, the only parts made especially for DAWs are the interface/soundcard.

Let's remove this current myth which may have been true at the beginning of the century.

10 years ago you would buy a workstation off a production line targeted towards games, add your interface/soundcard and that would give you enough horsepower.

Nowadays even medium budget machines from a production far outweigh the power of the best machines 3 years ago (or even the year before). You just need to add your interface/soundcard and perhaps add a USB or firewire card (assuming the machine is lacking).

The idea that reliability is better in custom workstations does not hold true esp if the sole idea is to use the latest and fastest technology, because even after a burn in test you are still the beta tester.... although nowadays the chances of a system being totally stable are 99% (unless you want to go into overclocking).

The same rings true of production line PC's. Every now and again you get a faulty batch (and this is rare nowadays), however it is not in the manufacturers interests to produce PC's with faulty parts, that would be an extremely expensive mistake especially when their profit margins may be as low as 5% (stack 'em high sell them low).

So really the only reason to get a custom PC is knowing you have absolutely the latest gear and the fastest possible configuration, and you feel warm and fuzzy that a person you know has tested it. No different to how games players feel, if they want the fastest machine  Now that may give you a 10% advantage.
 
Now considering my Dell XPS 8100 has rarely been pushed above 60% of its total resources I would question if such as system is really necessary unless you 200 plugins and 128 tracks on the go (just a wild figure I poked out of the sky). i.e. this DAW is intended for Abbey Road studios (and even then I would question that). I think really it's more like... hey look at my cool customer car rather than serving any functional purpose. It makes you feel good to have a machine that is 10% more powerful than your neighbor. There is another reason, large manufacturers are generally a lot better at dealing with things when hardware breaks down proving you have a long warranty. They always have enough parts.
 
A final note, processing/memory usage of DAW software hasn't really gone up that much over the last 3 years, things may be about to change though (i.e. large realtime usage of plugins like melodyne etc).
 
That's my take anyway.

By "consumer grade", I mean PC's available at popular electronic stores (ie; Best Buy). You cannot compare those components with higher end builds. With a custom DAW machine from a specialized builder, you get the PROPER parts...there is a BIG difference between a cheap Dell MOBO and a custom build for example. Sure, an i7 or Xeon processor is always the same "part", but it's everything else that makes a difference. Have a look at the specs of a quality machine from Vision DAW or Rain, they are built to perform. Even the HP's that Cakewalk list on their site are fairly decent. And I'll probably be blasted for this, but Apple is a big player in the industry because it uses quality parts that LAST.

> With a custom DAW machine from a specialized builder, you get the PROPER parts.
 
The same rings true of production line PC's. Every now and again you get a faulty batch (and this is rare nowadays), however it is not in the manufacturers interests to produce PC's with faulty parts, that would be an extremely expensive mistake especially when their profit margins may be as low as 5% (stack 'em high sell them low).
 
Consider...  these guys do 5 year warranties. Everything from any PC is made from the same factories etc. And it's no different, if you want the best parts go buy the highest quality system from either you custom builder or production line supplier (i.e. Dell). What do you mean by a "proper part" anyway? Gold plated sockets? Water cooling systems supplied with distilled water supplied from the lakes surrounding the volcanoes of Indonesia?

> With a custom DAW machine from a specialized builder, you get the PROPER parts.
 
Nope what you often get is parts that are put in production line PC's six months later. You get the latest and greatest before the big boys supply the latest and greatest.



There are PC's and there are what audiophiles think what a PC should be.... it's always nice to try and live up to the myth. Occasionally it happens (not saying it doesn't).

CakeAlexS

Too funny. I just want you to know I shot hot coffee through my nose when i saw this. I laughed so hard. Finally an IT job I can do! I get to work out my frustrations at the same time. That is important when your working on computers!
 
I think computer companies have the same problems other companies have when they get big. They start out serving the customer and they win all these awards for customer service. Eventually they get huge and headquarters wants to increase their profits. So they begin by cutting customer service. They move the manufacturing to China. They move the tech support to India. They cut costs and change policies. They begin to depend on name recognition. cheaper and older parts are used and bought in bulk.
 
This is the way companies die. This is what happened to Packard bell, Gateway, Compaq and now dell. Sure their older products work great. That is how they built the company in the first place. They took pride in their brand, but now it is not about serving people it is about finding customers and the dollar becomes the only important thing.
 
When I say cheap parts I am referring to things like older parts and plastic moldings. Dell did this to me when they purposely used an older motherboard that would not map over 2 gigs of ram per dimm slot. Nothing is wrong with the hardware. They just chose to use older parts for cost reasons. This computer cost me over a grand a little over 2 years ago and they are using inferior parts? By inferior I mean older. Anywhere they can cut corners they will.
 
You can have problems with any computer from any manufacture even a mac. When you build your own machine at least you know what is in it.

> When you build your own machine at least you know what is in it.
 
Yup and then you may become pig in the middle if something goes wrong.
I've had it before when I've built my own system (I've done that two or three times, and I've built hundreds for others) whereby there would be an incompatibility issue with the motherboard and graphics card. Even after firmware updates etc the motherboard manufacturer would blame the graphics card manufacturer, and vice versa... Effectively I am pig in the middle.
 
Situation... deadlock. Solution, buy more hardware and hope it will work.
Better solution, make somebody else pig in the middle who doesn't have low overheads, buy a maintenance contract with them. If my Dell breaks down Mr Engineer comes round the next day with my needed part...
 
Ta
 
Alex