@wildbill83 so even prebuilt desktops should be avoided? Well my laptop I removed the bloatware and had to add some obvious upgrades like dual channel RAM and SSD, along with using a cooling pad (eventually even needing to re-apply thermal paste and undervolt CPU). unfortunately I wouldn't shop around since I'd also need good customer support, logistics, and quality control, in which the only website that does that is Amazon. Sadly in Canada, MicroCenter isn't a thing and the closest equivalent NCIX went bankrupt years ago; Best Buy, NewEgg, Canada Computers, Walmart, and others all suck.

@uikakarotuevegeta individual component manufacturers will provide all the support you need; though in reality, assuming you use good quality stuff that's compatible with each other, motherboards, ram, HD's, cpu's, etc. are bullet proof for the most part. If anything fucks up, it will be the OS...

SSD's are nice for speed, but they still aren't there for longevity/durability; they're more for storage, not constantly writing/re-writing data as is the case with OS's. I'm still using Hard drives that've lasted through 3 PC's, over 15 years old

pretty much all the legacy computer part brands are garbage now, stick with the independent retailers/online stores. Shippers are the biggest hassle these days (late orders, missing orders, etc.)

As for cooling and PSU's, Thermaltake & Corsair are the best two period; I wouldn't even consider anything else (AIO liquid coolers are nice if you really push a cpu, especially overclocking)

for motherboards, I go with MSI (currently using a B450)

Kingston for RAM

pre-built's can be hit and miss; many I've worked on in past were a mix of descent and cheap shit parts that were poorly optimized leading to bottlenecking, with little room for upgrading/updating. Might be okay for basic office tasks, but crap for gaming, cad/cam/modeling software.

@wildbill83 cool but HDDs are slow af and none of my SSDs have ever died on me, plus a lot of newer games pretty much require a SSD to even work. when it comes to durability, I've broken every single HDD in every laptop I've owned by punching them a few times, whereas every single SSD has never died from such impacts. Yes I do have anger issues, which are caused by tech that's too slow for me among other reasons.

I wouldn't really go for MSi since their stuff tends to either be overpriced, as well as the company itself having a reputation of punishing anyone that criticizes them like tech reviewers. And by legacy part brands, I'm not sure who you're refering to, unless you mean those like ASUS, Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, etc