I want to know if it's better/cheaper to buy off the shelf (Dell, etc) or build my own. Historically I have built my own, but I'm not sure it's worth the time and trouble.

I need a lot of storage. Want something that works reasonably fast. Probably want to spend less than $1600. PC/Windows preferred.

Thoughts?

https://pcpartpicker.com/

I just used this site to help me build my latest PC. It's nice because it allowed me to pick the parts I felt were required/important to what I needed, and then narrowed down options on the remaining parts to select.

And for those pieces of equipment I could not find a price listing for, I simply searched online on my own and found where to buy locally.

Get a gaming computer...buy name brand and you have their warranty. It used to be cheaper to build you own, but unless you just like to do it, I don't think it's that much cheaper.

Are you going to keep your current monitor? In the past, picking a good, color-correct monitor was at least as important as your computer.

For those who know, what are the characteristics to look for in monitors for photo editing? Are all current monitor designs excellent in terms of color rendition, or are some better than others?

I have a decent 1080p monitor I can use. But not 4K.

In the past, it was my impression that an ISP monitor was just as important as its resolution. The ISP monitors supposedly had much more accurate color rendition.

You'll want a 4k display, they're not that expensive these days and the difference in quality is noticeable. You can calibrate a good display if you need to, I've never gone to the trouble as my work is 96% digital. If you'll be outputting a lot of work to be printed it's worth doing.

As far as building I gave that up years ago, just not worth the trouble. I'd personally just go Mac but everyone has their own preferences, there's lots of places that will let you spec a custom PC.

Most displays are IPS these days.

4K isn't worth it unless you are going for a huge monitor and that's expensive. A 27" QHD monitor is really good and you can get them fairly cheap.

fig96 said:

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Most displays are IPS these days.

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Thanks for that info (and for correcting ISP to IPS).

Sponge said:

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4K isn't worth it unless you are going for a huge monitor and that's expensive. A 27" QHD monitor is really good and you can get them fairly cheap.

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They're not significantly more expensive, and especially worth it if you're used to any kind of hiDPI display and/or if you're doing editing/photo/design work like OP.

Source: people pay me to do design work

LG 27" 4K - $318 on Amazon

Dell 27" 4K - $279 on Amazon

All good, just figured I'd make the subtle correction