My 12 year old computer is getting flaky and slow. I can't upgrade the RAM in it beyond the 8 MB it already has. It's time for a new one.

I'm trying to spec out what I should get. I know this topic comes up frequently, but I am unable to find much recent using the search function. No doubt this is due to user error. Can someone tell me what search will work?

I'm looking to get a Windoze desktop. For all you Mac users, I know you think Mac is superior, and you may be right. However, for reasons having to do with earning a living, I'm going with Windoze, so any suggestion for a Mac is a non-starter.

My thoughts at this point are:
i7 processor (is an i9 worth it?)
mid-range video card
32 GB ram (with space for more should I need it)
1 TB SSD (I have a 4TB HD I'll transplant form the old computer, which holds all my photos)
nic card, lotsa USB ports

Is there something else I should include that I'm not thinking of?

Again, if someone can point me to a search that will answer the question, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks, all.

A multi drive housing holds 3, 4 or 5 drives. It is an aluminium housing with trays that the drives mount in. At the inside end of the housing is a backplane that holds 3,4 or 5 SATA connections so that the drives will mate with them. The inside end of the housing usually holds a fan plus the SATA data connections plus a couple of power supply connections. The outside of the housing, the end you see, usually has lights to show you which drives are powered on plus a locking mechanism to prevent the drive accidently coming loose.
SATA connections, although they are often used this way, are NOT designed for frequent plugging in and out. There are some specs somewhere for how many insertions the connections support. However this is not an issue when the drives are only infrequently moved.
Google 'multi sata drive housing internal' and you will see hundreds of example. Not to be confused with housings holding RAID arrays. They just hold 3,4 or 5 single individual SATA drives. They aren't particularly expensive either.

When a drive fails you turn off the PC and pull the drive out, swap it with a good one and plug it back in again (not forgetting then to reformat and relabel the drive) and copy your data back. No having to pull the cabinet out and diving into the guts. Also makes changing the drive size for a bigger one a piece of cake. When upgrading just leave all the drives in position. My chassis is now over 15 years old and I have had 2 motherboard swaps within that time.
For your interest I use the 6 trays as follows -

System or C: drive 250GB SSD
Data drive HDD 2TB containing data + image copies of the OS drive
Swap drive 126GB SSD (because I can but not essential)
Movie drive 4TB
Backup drive 1 2TB
Backup drive 2 4TB

The 2 backup drives are backup copies off my wifes PC.
She has an identical setup.

The backup drives are copied over a 1GB network. An identical PC in another building (drive wise anyway but not processor etc) contains copies of all the backup drives so we have 3 copies of everything. An offsite copy of the drives is also kept.

My 12 year old computer is getting flaky and slow. I can't upgrade the RAM in it beyond the 8 MB it already has. It's time for a new one.

I'm trying to spec out what I should get. I know this topic comes up frequently, but I am unable to find much recent using the search function. No doubt this is due to user error. Can someone tell me what search will work?

I'm looking to get a Windoze desktop. For all you Mac users, I know you think Mac is superior, and you may be right. However, for reasons having to do with earning a living, I'm going with Windoze, so any suggestion for a Mac is a non-starter.

My thoughts at this point are:
i7 processor (is an i9 worth it?)
mid-range video card
32 GB ram (with space for more should I need it)
1 TB SSD (I have a 4TB HD I'll transplant form the old computer, which holds all my photos)
nic card, lotsa USB ports

Is there something else I should include that I'm not thinking of?

Again, if someone can point me to a search that will answer the question, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks, all.

" The inside end of the housing usually holds a fan plus the SATA data connections plus a couple of power supply connections. "

On the outside of the inner end of the drive housing there will be 3,4 or 5 SATA connections plus, usually two, either a couple of SATA power connectors or 2 of the old style drive power connectors or even both of these.
If you implement a case using the multiple drive housing you MUST make sure that your motherboard has sufficient SATA connectors. I have 6 drives plus 2 optical drives so my motherboard has 8 SATA data connectors. This often means you need to use a better class of motherboard but that is maybe not a bad thing.

My 12 year old computer is getting flaky and slow. I can't upgrade the RAM in it beyond the 8 MB it already has. It's time for a new one.

I'm trying to spec out what I should get. I know this topic comes up frequently, but I am unable to find much recent using the search function. No doubt this is due to user error. Can someone tell me what search will work?

I'm looking to get a Windoze desktop. For all you Mac users, I know you think Mac is superior, and you may be right. However, for reasons having to do with earning a living, I'm going with Windoze, so any suggestion for a Mac is a non-starter.

My thoughts at this point are:
i7 processor (is an i9 worth it?)
mid-range video card
32 GB ram (with space for more should I need it)
1 TB SSD (I have a 4TB HD I'll transplant form the old computer, which holds all my photos)
nic card, lotsa USB ports

Is there something else I should include that I'm not thinking of?

Again, if someone can point me to a search that will answer the question, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks, all.