should I buy a superexpensive yet completely badass system from alienware, or build one? go.
8/6/2007 11:25:48 AM
build...unless you enjoy throwing away money./thread ]
8/6/2007 11:41:44 AM
neither...unless you enjoy throwing away money/thread
8/6/2007 11:58:18 AM
both...unless you don't enjoy throwing away money/thread
8/6/2007 11:59:18 AM
yeah I've got a pretty big budget to build a badass desktop, just havent' decided whether or not to go thru alienware or build the box.
8/6/2007 11:59:32 AM
let me build it, ill charge only a modest amount, and you'll be helping out a fellow wolfwebber
8/6/2007 12:11:22 PM
build yourself. only labor costs will be your time spent putting the parts together.
8/6/2007 12:35:57 PM
build...money should be spent for enjoyment, spend more on the best parts, less on labor./thread
8/6/2007 1:26:18 PM
well, as a christmas gift to myself, I'm wanting to buy a pretty badass machine, with super awesome gaming ability plus a lot of storage space. systems that I "built" online with alienware and falcon were around 10G and lil bit more; but that's with all that stuff, speakers, monitors etc. getting another laptop pretty soon, probably this week. but I know that I want to get a badass desktop machine, and seeing as how its a christmas gift to myself, I don't mind waiting a lil while to get it. I've got a big budget for it; so that's cool.
8/6/2007 1:41:28 PM
With dell/alienware, and falcon you'll be paying a lot more for labor. I suggest buying all the same parts yourself and saving a bunch of money. Unless you want to pay the extra $ and have them build one for you. http://www.falcon-nw.com/config/build.aspFor example if you compared the price you got there^ to the price you do here:http://www.newegg.comThen you'll find that the newegg price is much much cheaper.[Edited on August 6, 2007 at 1:54 PM. Reason : .]
8/6/2007 1:48:28 PM
if you have a big budget you should definitely let me build it i dare say that other than bobbydigital and synapse, i've probably built more systems than anyone on this board, most of which have been highly specialized setups.
8/6/2007 1:57:08 PM
I highly recommend: http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81802Used this case on my last build, and both panels come off allowing you to cable behind the motherboard. Very handy. ^he knows what he's talking about... just don't ask him about a side panel window, i made that mistake before. [Edited on August 6, 2007 at 2:10 PM. Reason : ..]
8/6/2007 2:10:29 PM
^that's a pretty damn good case. Although, if you willing to drop 5-7K on a machine, there are MUUUUCH better options out there.
8/6/2007 2:13:40 PM
^so if you had no price limit on a case what would be some of your choices? I think i'm only knowledgable in mid-range antec/tt cases.
8/6/2007 2:31:47 PM
8/6/2007 2:59:49 PM
its possible, because Im sure there are plenty of lurkers here. But im up in triple digits.
8/6/2007 3:09:47 PM
If you are doing it for gaming, spending any more than $2k excluding monitor is retarded.
8/6/2007 3:19:24 PM
I want great gaming capability, but also great capabilities for storage and damn near anything else I would want to do.
8/6/2007 3:22:40 PM
^^haha well you could say the same thing about cars. "spending more than 40k on a car is retarted" unless you have the money. It's easy to go over 2k$ for a decent gaming rig and raiden wants to do it.[Edited on August 6, 2007 at 3:22 PM. Reason : /]
8/6/2007 3:22:43 PM
hey, I'm not opposed for saving a buck or thousand, however if something can be found that is comparable to a built alienware/falcon/(insert other company here) system; then I'll check it out. and I'm not opposed to having it built. one of the things that liked about alienware setup was that you could have 4TB of space, that's a lot of hdd space.also want a pretty sweet monitor or dual monitor setup.
8/6/2007 3:28:50 PM
horse..... trickle down the bypass dawson./thread
8/6/2007 3:31:39 PM
8/6/2007 3:32:33 PM
8/6/2007 3:34:49 PM
Exactly, you can build a superb gaming righ, with all the storage you could possible need for around $2k
8/6/2007 3:35:32 PM
For a full tower, the Lian-Li PC2100A/B Plus II (http://www.lian-li.com/product/product06.php?pr_index=29&cl_index=1&sc_index=2&ss_index=7&type=b) is awesome, but the Soldam WiNDY Alcadia ZR3000 is the gold standard for an air-cooled case. (http://www3.soldam.co.jp/case/alcadia_zr/3000/index.html)In a mid tower, the Soldam WiNDY Alcadia ZR1000 is pretty much top of the heap(http://www3.soldam.co.jp/case/alcadia_zr/1000/index.html), with most of the Lian-Li mid tower cases following closely. I really like the PC-S80, PC-V1100, and PC-V1200 Plus IIThey are all way ahead of Antec/Thermaltake/Coolermaster/et al. All those guys are still stuck in the 90's "modder" design style, using 10+ year old production and engineering technology
8/6/2007 3:39:05 PM
8/6/2007 3:42:17 PM
^it was implied that companies use some ODM parts specifically made for them. For these purposes buying parts off newegg would do just as well. ^Yeah, along with support i forgot to mention warranty. You gonna offer a warranty Noen?[Edited on August 6, 2007 at 3:46 PM. Reason : .]
8/6/2007 3:45:16 PM
alienware area-51 alx setup ~$8500:Dual 768MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800 Ultra - SLI Enabled - Liquid Cooled!Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB - Overclocked to 3.33GHz!Includes Liquid Cooling!4GB Low Latency DDR2 Performance SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 x 1024MB Alienware® Approved NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (b/c I don't want vista)2TB (2 x 1TB) Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 2 x 32MB Cache [+$460 or $14/mo.] 2TB (2 x 1TB) Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 2 x 32MB Cache [+$460 or $14/mo.] 20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner 20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner Ageia PhysX PCI-Express Processing Unit w/ 128MB GDDR3 - More Info Alienware® 1000 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply 27'' Dell 1920 x 1200 UltraSharp Widescreen Flat Panel - Supports Blu-Ray! Logitech® Z-5300e 5.1 280-Watt Speakers Logitech® G15 Gaming Keyboard Alienware Recommends!Logitech® G5 Laser Gaming Mouse Alienware Recommends!falcon setup ~12G: ICON Exotix - Flames (the paint job is about 1500 bucks)Mag-Lev Mach V Chassis fan replacement.ICON Standard SolidSilverstone 750Watt Strider - ModularEVGA nVidia nForce 680I - SLIIntel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6850 3.0GHzIcon Watercooling Kit4GB Corsair Dominator 8500C52x nVidia GeForce 8800Ultra 768MBBFG PhysX Accelerator - 128MBCreative Labs X-Fi Fatal1ityD Link WUA-2340 Rangebooster G/USB adaptNo RaidHitachi 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 2Hitachi 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 2Hitachi 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 2Hitachi 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 2Sony 16X DVD-ROMSony DRU830A 18X Dual Layer DVD+-RWSony 3.5in. Floppy-BlackWindows XP Pro - 32 BitLogitech G-15 Gaming KeyboardLogitech G5 Laser MouseSamsung 24" - 1920x1200Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1Monster Power 800HPbut yeah, those are the 2 systems that I've "built" online via their config site. so I'm going to get either one of those or piece one together. either way, as long as it rocks, its all good.
8/6/2007 3:50:26 PM
^ now go to http://www.newegg.com and build those systems, and see how much cheaper they are. If you're spending the money, might as well get a 30" at 2560 by 1600 instead of the 24"/27".[Edited on August 6, 2007 at 3:54 PM. Reason : .]
8/6/2007 3:51:59 PM
Dude, if you drop $12k for a computer, you are a fucking idiot. Especially if you pay $1500 for a god damn paint job on A FUCKING COMPUTER.
8/6/2007 3:53:46 PM
forgot to mention, only got the 1 year warranty. and I"m making enough that I can get a rig like this and if I feel like I need to upgrade the following year, then I'll just turn the old into a file server and get a new one. but its bad when my (current) laptop kicks my current desktop's ass.
8/6/2007 3:53:50 PM
^x6 And stability. I know alienware does pretty extensive testing to make sure your machine will be as stable and have parts w/o defects in it. If they miss something you've of course got the warrenty.
8/6/2007 3:56:14 PM
better watch out for those liquid cooled systems. Dell (alienware's parent company) recently stopped production on their high end XPS line that uses the same components because of instability problems.Liquid cooling is a pain in the ass to deal with too.----And yes, I've provided 1 year hardware labor warranties on every machine I've ever built, minimum.----^Nope. There's a LOT you can do to boost overall performance once you get above that 2-3k threshold. Gaming can be improved dramatically with SLI on the two biggest cards available, and it will make a marked difference at the extreme high end.[Edited on August 6, 2007 at 3:58 PM. Reason : .]
8/6/2007 3:56:28 PM
8/6/2007 4:00:22 PM
Drastically improved? What on max settings you get 130 fps instead of 90 fps? You get a higher score on benchmarks? I'm sorry thats not a noticeable difference. That's all for bragging online to other people who spend too much money on gaming rigs.Sure two years down the road your SLI cards will be noticeably better. But at this time just use the 2-3k you saved on the last computer to buy a new one that kicks the shit out of anything you could of bought before.^ yes w/o monitor.
8/6/2007 4:03:00 PM
8/6/2007 4:04:58 PM
dang, I thought they would have gotten better with the liquid cooling thing by now.
8/6/2007 4:05:57 PM
Dude, spending more than $1500 on a complete PC (ie. every required component) at one time just wouldn't make any sense. You have to look at the games that are out now, and are coming out soon, and figure out exactly what you need to play them at the resolutions you want. Crysis is pretty much going to be the peak of performance, and it was shown running at 2048x1536 on a Q6600 with a single 8800GTX GPU at around 60fps. Wait for the fall refresh on nVidia's line of DX10 video cards, buy one of the lower end Conroes, get a 150gig Raptor and load up on RAM. All together, it shouldn't cost you more than $1200 + the cost of a sweet ass 24" LCD. Spending lots of money now, to be able to play games in the future just doesn't make any sense because prices on these things fall so fast. Spend just enough to play what you want to play now, and upgrade later for fractions of the cost. About the only thing you need to be sure of is that you have a platform that will be upgradeable for a couple years at least. Since LGA775, DDR2, and PCI-Express are gonna be around for a while, you shouldn't have to worry about that. [Edited on August 6, 2007 at 4:17 PM. Reason : :]
8/6/2007 4:14:22 PM
Ok you guys seem to think you can play current games at higher res with nice FPS using a 1500-2000 gaming rig. NOT TRUE. http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=859&model2=722&chart=298That's oblivion at 1920 by 1200 (doesn't have 2560 by 1600) and that's NO AA and the top of the line 8800 ultra only hits 30.5 fps.
8/6/2007 4:25:08 PM
^Even though you're only speculating about what Crysis will take.... as Shrike said:
8/6/2007 4:36:48 PM
^i have a 24" inch and 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 look VERY different. AA adds A LOT to game in 1920x1200 too. I can't really say anything other than to try it out for youself. I was sad i couldn't play Call of Juarez at 1920 by 1200 with AA turned on, i had to play it at 1680x1050 with no AA, and it looked VERY different than 1920x1200 with AA turned on.
8/6/2007 4:39:24 PM
10K-12K for a computer? then turning it into a file server in a year and buying another?you're either1) trolling2) an extremely wasteful person.if its 2, take 2K-4k, build a god system, and donate the rest to an organization who will use it to actually help people.
8/6/2007 4:46:15 PM
8/6/2007 4:47:48 PM
Dude, you're talking about one game, Oblivion, which is known to have pretty shit performance outdoors. In fact, it's been that if you turn off one setting "Shadows on Grass", you get about 20-30 more FPS out doors. On top of that, its an RPG, not really a game that demands awesome FPS at all times, especially most of the fighting in that game takes place in dungeons. DX10 as a whole has poor performance regardless of your setup right now.http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3029And that will improve with newer (most likely cheaper) hardware and drivers.I took the liberty of putting together the balls to the wall system I would build today if I didn't care about money. It's still overkill in every regard, but it comes no where close to the prices of those Alienware system.
8/6/2007 4:49:47 PM
^you're right. Oblivion does kill gpus outside. Have you played it before? Yeah i turned the "shadows on grass" off a while ago. Really helps.
8/6/2007 4:54:51 PM
if someone wants to spend 10k on a computer, more power to them.who are you guys to judge ANYONE? Most of the people in this thread (myself included) have spend god only knows how much money on electronics we neither needed nor really utilized to their fullest.
8/6/2007 5:09:23 PM
Well of course, he can buy what he wants, god knows I don't have room to criticize. But the problem with buying from Alienware is you are spending so much more money and not getting much back in return. Alienware is one of the reason PC Gaming is on a decline, because people think they have to spend that much to get a good performing gaming PC, which is simply not true. I'm just trying to educate the guy, and anyone else who reads this thread. I liken it to buying HDMI cables from Monster Cable for $150, when you can get the same thing from Monoprice.com for $6. It just doesn't make sense.
8/6/2007 5:15:45 PM
8/6/2007 6:08:08 PM
8/6/2007 6:27:04 PM
8/6/2007 6:31:53 PM