Hi. Well, when I purchased my Tower a few weeks ago I had numerous options for 1-3 years of warranty (maybe even 5 years)...don't forget that almost all credit cards (in the USA) provide an extra 1 year of warranty (that matches the manufacturer's) for free. So be sure to check with your credit card company.

The reason I suggested the Tiny (to others besides you too) is that it is super small. You can buy either 710 or 910 in 3 flavors: Tiny, Small Form Factor, or Tower. I forget the difference between the 710 and 910 but likely it is overall expandability on the motherboard itself. Both models have tons of USB 3.0, offer a few different video cards, numerous Intel chips, numerous drive types and styles (traditional, SSD, and M.2).

I've been using integrated graphics cards for over a decade. I easily push 1080 resolution and many have more than a VGA output. But I also do not play games. Video cards (IMO) has been the last piece of computer hardware that has a myriad of choices and every year there are new advances. It's amazing. But I cannot keep up with it. If I really needed a non-integrated card, I wouldn't spend more than $100 as an add-on unless I'm a)doing serious gaming or b)know video cards inside and out and am looking for a particular technology spec. I wanted to buy a video card with this Tower so I could use it for crunching, but alas, I couldn't find any info on which video cards Lenovo offered working with WCG.

$1500 CAN is about $1900 USA. That's a ton of money to spend on a PC these days, not to mention a general-use PC. My Lenovo M910T Tower I bought a few weeks ago was $945 after taxes and is:

● Intel Core i7-7700 Processor ( 8M Cache , 3.6GHz )
● Windows 10 Home 64
● Tower 85% Power 250W
● 16GB DDR4 2400 UDIMM
● Integrated Graphic Card
● 512GB SolidState Drive M.2 NVMe
● Slim DVD Burner / CD-RW, SATA
● Integrated Intel Gigabit Ethernet

Google the tech specs if you want deeper specs (it's a 1 page PDF but this forum will not allow me to paste the URL here oddly) but tons of SATA3 connections, M.2, plenty of options at checkout for video cards (or buy them later and plop them in yourself). Although I still use the VGA adapter, it has a few HDMI outputs.

This Tower is my desktop that I use for our home general use as well as music remixing and of course crunching. It's pretty quiet when crunching at 100% with the fans going and almost silent when the fan is not going.

Again, my Tower is almost 1/2 your price. If you're getting caught up with the warranty or other non-technical issue, I would pick up the phone and call Lenovo or use their Chat window. My order from them came directly from China so I can't imagine they would have a problem shipping to Canada.

I think at most you would have to spend $1100 USA for a general-use system that has a nice video card for gaming. Wait a few weeks for Black Friday or Cyber Monday and I bet you will save another $50-$150 USA.

Lastly, you seem to imply that you do not have a credit card. I would strongly discourage you opening up a Dell Credit Card and spend 2x the money just because you get 0% financing with Dell. You're far better off opening a normal Visa/Mastercard and getting 0-5% financing and buying WHAT YOU WANT. Regardless of you opening a Dell card or a regular credit card, the credit process is exactly the same.

I treated myself to a new Cruncher recently.

Got the i7-8700K day after release. Been crunching magnificently since. Gaining badges faster than ever with 12 threads running full time.

Good cooler is a key and mine tops out at 60C under load.

It's base speed is 3.7GHz but with BOINC running it's at 4.3GHz!

I am glad you asked. I just finished a Ryzen 1700 build last week, running Ubuntu 17.10 (non-overclocked). This is a dedicated machine for BOINC work, and runs 24/7.

It has just finished its first group of MCM running on 15 cores, with another core supporting a GTX 970 on Einstein. The times are averaging 3 hours 43 minutes, with not much variation. And with the GPU disabled, it pulls 129 watts from the AC power. (Since it has a gold-rated 90% efficient power supply, that means 116 watts to the motherboard, which is an ASRock Fatal1ty X370 GAMING X).

It would be interesting to compare that to Coffee Lake, if the numbers are available. I compare it to my other WCG rig, which is an i7-3770 running Ubuntu 16.04. With MCM on 7 cores, and the other core supporting a GTX 980, the times are 3 hours 55 minutes per work unit. It draws 97 watts from the AC line.

Since the Ryzen has 15/7 times as many work units running at a time, that makes its output about 2.26 times as much as the i7-3770, or considering the power, about 1.7 times as efficient.

You are welcome, considering your many contributions. Performance information is of limited value unless it is shared.

The last time I checked on my Win7 64-bit machine, MCM did pretty well. It does not have the large reduction under Windows that the VINA work units do. I would not mind crunching it on Windows at all, and in fact often use it as a backup there.

EDIT: I think MCM and MIP are the most "Windows friendly", with only about a 10 to 15 percent difference than Linux as I recall. The others I reserve for my Linux machines, but there is some difference between them. Maybe SCC and even TB do well under Windows, but I don't recall as I have not gotten that many to compare. I am sure other people here can help.