Top 5 Desktop picks you may want in your Holiday shopping cart!
Since Apple’s big reveal of the iMac Retina, the desktop PC has been enjoying a fair bit of stage presence, and we are prepared to bet it will continue to do extremely well through the holidays and beyond, especially when offering the outstanding specs found in the following top five shopping cart “must haves”.
Apple’s ultimate computing behemoth, the Mac Pro, is designed to unfold creativity, without compromises. Powered by a 4, 6, 8 or 12 Core Intel Xeon, up to 64GB DDR3 ECC RAM, 30MB of L3 cache 40GB/s Gen 3 PCiE and 256 bit-wide floating point instructions. Bar-none, one of the most powerful and fast desktop systems on the planet.
The ideal applications for such a monster are definitely high-end, fitting production-heavy tasks, such as high-resolution image processing, CAD drawing and 3D simulations. Gamers will enjoy the most fluid, life-like, cinematic experience available, with dual D300 and D500 FirePro GPU, and support for up to three 4K displays, and up to six Thunderbolt displays. Also, the HDMI 1.4 UltraHD port supports multi-channel high definition audio output for best sound reproduction.
Wireless support is available through 802.11ac Wifi and Bluetooth 4.0.
When Apple unveiled the iMac Retina, the Cupertino tech giant set a new standard for design, performance and specs. It took the iMac as we knew it and made it better, faster, thinner and gave it an outstanding, and so far, unmatched resolution: 14.7 million pixels. 5120 pixels wide, 2880 pixels tall, over a 21 inches or 27 inches screen.
The iMac is even harder to top, when it comes to the hardware necessary to control such incredible amount of pixels: the AMD Radeon R9 M290X GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM, which can be upgraded to the AMD Radeon R9 M295X with 4GB of GDDR5.
The iMac Retina is powered by either the 3.5Ghz Intel Quad Core i5 CPU, or the 4.0 Intel Quad Core i7, for best performance, and offers the choice of up to 1 Terabyte Fusion Drive or the equivalent in SSD capacity.
The iMac Retina 5K can be configured to be anything, from the perfect work desktop, to a powerful and versatile desktop system for the whole family.
An amazing gift for any hardcore gamer: the MSI Gaming All-In-One PC is feature-packed and ready for battle, with a 27 inches touchscreen, 1280 by 1080 pixel resolution, Intel i7 2.4Ghz CPU, nVidia GTX880M and 16 GB DDR3 RAM and 2 Terabytes of local storage, plus two128GB SSD drives.
Get the fastest LAN party/multiplayer performance with the Killer E2200 Game Networking, 802.11 AC WiFi, and Bluetooth 4.0, and enjoy outstanding sound with two 5W Yamaha speakers.
The unit also includes a 2.0 Megapixel integrated webcam, SDXC MS MMC card reader slots, HDMI in and out, two USB 2.0 and four USB 3.0 ports.
This All-In-One desktop PC from Asus can be described as both elegant and versatile, featuring a 23 inches 1920 by 1080 pixel resolution, multi-touch screen, and powered by a 1.7Ghz Intel Dual Core i7 processor.
This All-In-One comes with 16GB DDR3 RAM, and up to 1TB of SSD storage, making it a great home system, as well as a reliable and powerful work PC.
All the features of a desktop PC, none of the bulk! The Asus Vivo PC is powered by the dual core Intel i5-3337U, comes with 4GB of DDR3 RAM upgradable to 16GB, and includes 1 Terabyte of internal HD storage.
The compact design frees up a lot of desktop real estate, yet doesn’t skimp on expandability, offering two USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Gigabit LAN, VGA, TOSLINK, audio line-in and out, and microphone jack. the Vivo comes with Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated GPU, Bluetooth 4.0, IEEE 802.11ac and IEEE 802.11b/a/b/g/n. High definition sound provided by ASUS SonicMaster and AudioWizard.
While this unit does not come with a monitor, there are several great options worth looking into, as well as plenty of must-have accessories.