Well, the system drive on the old Desktop is a 320 GB HDD I salvaged from an old netbook, so I at least want to upgrade to SSD for the OS even if I wait another cycle or two of capacities going up and prices coming down before investing in a 4TB SSD so all of my data is on flash instead of spinning platters. As for doing a custom build, had I a reliable daily runner and money to burn or access to someone knowledgeable enough to help troubleshoot issues in person, I might consider it as a side project, but I've never built a PC before, the most I'm comfortable with doing inside a tower is installing/removing SATA drives, I live in a small, middle of nowhere town that can't really support a computer repair shop and I'm the most tech savvy person I know in meatspace by a wide margin, and this old dell I'm using as a stop gap until I get a new PC is running worse on bare metal than the dead HP ran a LiveDVD(and I think the Dell also has a dead CMOS battery as its boot order seems to reset to HDD first everytime its unplugged, forcing sighted assistence every time I need to boot install media or a Live DVD to do rescue operations, so I'm afraid to even try customizing the Install of Debian I managed to put on it since I can't willy nilly boot into a Live environment to make/restore backups of my root partition. In short, I don't have the experience to build a custom rig and be certain everything will work first try, don't have anyone with said experience I can turn to, and my stopgap is too fragile to put up with delays if I don't get the custom build right on the first try. And I was dealing with software issues on the old HP for about a week before its death knell, so I'm pretty much at the end of my patience for dealing with tech issues. On 4/13/23, Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I thought about the custom build myself, but from what I see at the > moment, the CPU and motherboard bundles are running close to $500 now, > and that's not even taking into account the RAM. The good thing is that > you won't be saddled with an OS that you have to get rid of, because > there is no OS on a custom build other than the one you put on it or > hire a builder to put on it, and the boot firmware should just boot up > from the optical drive or USB you plug into it before you transplant the > hard drives. That said, you shouldn't even have to worry about > installing a new OS from scratch unless your SSD is damaged. This is > because Linux is very easy to transfer from one PC to the next just by > taking the OS drive out of one and putting it into the other. Since in > that case you wouldn't really need to worry about hard drives sucking up > your funds, your CPU, motherboard, RAM, case and optical drive should > most likely stay under $700, and definitely under the $1,000 high side > of your budget without making your life needlessly difficult or making > you get help just to boot it up for the first time. > > ~Kyle > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > > _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list