“Brands differ less than you might think,” says de Looper. “Most large desktop computer brands use the same [internal] parts from the likes of Intel, Nvidia, and AMD,” meaning specifications are often similar between brands. However, the exterior of a desktop computer may vary more. De Looper says that brands “have their own design languages, which can impact usability when it comes to placement of ports on the front versus the back, and simply how a computer looks.”

The outlier is Apple, which uses its own Apple-designed chips and MacOS operating system, which is a very different experience to most desktop PCs.