New Computer Question

[Fibbles]

Another of my "Online Gaming" mates has decided to spend $3k of his hard earned $$$$ to build a fast and kick-ass system. This is the same community/clan that the other guy (with the SATA problem) is in, but I don't know his computer experience level.

Well, this is what I reccomended:

Asus A8N SLI - $269
AMD64 FX55 - $880
1 - 2gb's of DDR400 (something in 2-2-2-5) - $170 to $400
WD 74gb Raptor - $180
Maxtor 300gb SATA - $190
NEC 16x DVDRW w/dual layer support - $65
PCI-E 6800 GT (or 2 6600GT's) - $500 or $380 (using Chaintech)
SB Audigy 2 (or even onboard sound) - $80 or $0
Good Power Supply - $100 to $279 (for PC Power and Cooling's SLI PSU)

Plus whatever case he wants.

Now, another person is telling him to avoid PCI-E because it is new and to go with AGP instead. For that, he insists on the Asus AV8 (or A8V can't remeber which) and a GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Another person is telling him to buy a pre-built rig form Falcon-nw.com I'd say hell no to that. Some of his reasoning is because he doesn't know the difference between "retail" and "OEM", and thinks that OEM things are "shady".

He's reccomending this:
FragBox Aluminum Chassis w/FNW Logo
FragBox 500 Watt Power Supply
Windowed Side Panel w/lighting
MSI Socket 939 uATX Motherboard
AMD Athlon64 3500+ Socket 939
Corsair TwinX 512MB 3200LL-PT (2/256mb)
nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB - PCIE
1.44MB 3.5 Floppy Drive-Black
Raid 0 - Striped - Max Performance
WD740GD Raptor 74GB 10000RPM 8MB SATA
WD740GD Raptor 74GB 10000RPM 8MB SATA
Lite-On 16X Dual Layer DVD+/_RW
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
1-Year Parts and Labor

System Price: $ 2,885.22
Price with UPS Ground $ 2,943.27

OUCH! For $3K... That... System... Sucks!!!!

I found this funny, esp the "shady" part. His whole reason to avoid using price engines like Pricewatch and the like are because of the "shadiness of OEM". I tend to prefer OEM, I usually don't need the manuals or software (for hard drives, DVDRW's etc) and prefer to get it white boxed.

I hope he can get his SATA working, all I did was plug in the power and data cable to the drive and board, and turn it on. It recognized everything and I installed windows w/out needing 3rd party driver support. ^_^

Anway, what would you guys reccomend?

[fillip]

I found this funny, esp the "shady" part. His whole reason to avoid using price engines like Pricewatch and the like are because of the "shadiness of OEM". I tend to prefer OEM, I usually don't need the manuals or software (for hard drives, DVDRW's etc) and prefer to get it white boxed.

The price of ignorance.

[Knipex]

The other advantage of him buying prebuilt is you dont have to supply 24 / 7 support.


I learnt the hard way.......

[mnpctech]

http://prudhoe.codeword.com/mnpctech/aWIZB/aNelson/Nelson1.jpg


http://prudhoe.codeword.com/mnpctech/aWIZB/aNelson/Nelson2.jpg


If the guy has no idea how to do his own pc troubleshooting, tell him to buy the FNW or whatever retail pc w/ support he can afford. Otherwise you may be doing his "support help" ^_^

[scopEDog]

The way i see it, these are products sold to people that dont have the technical skill. I get asked all the time at work "So Ed, i want to buy a computer..what should i get". And for years I would tell people to build their own machines. With that they assume it comes with unlimited 24/7/365 support from me. Now i certainly don't have the time or want to show people how to click the start button so nowadays i always point people to www.dell.com (http://www.dell.com).

With that being said Dr.Fibbles, maybe its not a bad idea to point them to FNW because sites like that are geared for people like your friend. Remember they also get a certain level of support from them (be it hardware and/or software). So all of that is included in that PC purchase, even though it seems overpriced (at least the specs on the machine are pretty good) it is worth it to them.

I know your trying to help your buddy out, but if it were me I would show them a pre-built. Unless hes like your best friend for 50 years or whatever, then you wouldnt mind lending a hand :)

Oh and you have a PM ;)

[Fibbles]

I don't know him personally, and I don't really hang out with them much anymore (they're into WoW now, and change games too often for me), so he's going to rely on others, I actually know who his tech-support will be, so I don't mind telling him what to buy.

Pre-built is OK, but I'd suggest not going with an outfit like Falcon, Alienware etc. They overcharge way too much. Once, long ago, I bought a pre-built from Hypersonic PC. I had just been given $1800 by a rich aunt (rich cause she saved her money, still does. Won't buy anything not form a thrift store and she's too stingy now - buys used soap, toothpaste etc... Seriously.) I shopped around for something I could game on. Hypersonic had the best mix of value and power, so I chose them. That's a mistake I'll never repeat. All the "fancy" options I chose for customization and cooling were a ruse. Instead of adding 2 80mm fans to the side panel (as I'd been led to believe), they slapped a Card Cooler over the AGP card, but it was blocked by the solid panel (no ventinlation holes either, just solid steel). The expansive mid-tower was really small. I was worried when I first turned it on, the hardware monitor kept flashing that the system temp was 120°F over and over and the speaker was beeping. I had to take off the side panel to get it to drop down to 93° and I realized that the internal wiring was a freakin mess. They claimed to have "professional cable routing". That was the first case I ever modded, I took apart the card cooler and made 2 80mm holes on the panel with knockouts, then drilled the screw holes with a Dremel. I ended up buying a new case, an Elan Vital something or other (it was really famous at the time). That bad experience is what I credit for getting me into DIY.

I think the system was:
AMD 1.3 T-Bird
Asus A7V 133
512mb RAM
20GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
GeForce 2 Ultra 64mb
Pioneer Slot loading 6x DVDROM
HP 300i 8X CDRW
SB Live 5.1
3Com 10/100 NIC

One of the first things I did was add my dual Monster 3D 2's.

I should add that their tech support told me to "run it with the side panel off".

You guys do have a point, let's say his techie doesn't have an answer, I'm probably going to get pegged as his support. The other guy has called me at home a few times... I reccomended a pre-built if he doesn't have good to great DIY skills and is unsure. You could have potentially saved me hours and hours ^_^

Lastly, if he wants a smaller sized computer w/out Falcons price for their Fragbox, I sent him here: http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=M&Category_Code=Hornet
The Monarch Hornet Micro ATX SFF. It looks pretty neat, I'm thinking of getting a barebones when this system becomes secondary to my AMD64 in 6-8 months.

[dutchcedar]

Heh... my first foray into a real PC was the online "building" of one at a site who's now out of biz... MaximusPC, I think it was. It was fun and it worked. It didn't set the house on fire and did its job. It was probably a rip-off and over-priced. There was likely a bunch of sham stuff in there that was over-sold, like the power supply upgrade and the case... but in retrospect... its long forgotten and now a part of our county's landfill. :h34r:


My point? That's what will happen to the $3,000. Falcon rig. It'll have braggin' rights for a few weeks. Then it'll be a gamin' rig like all the others. Soon it will need an upgrade, then a replacement. Then to the landfill we go. Do ya really want to inject yourself into the loop?

I guess I kinda think like scopEDog and have kinda quit giving recommendations to friends. I hand out Flashawk's business card and if they want a second opinion, I send them to BOXX Technologies. If that don't scare 'em off, I send 'em back to Staples... :lol:

[mnpctech]

A little late, but I stumbled upon this if anyone cares to see a tour of the Falcon Northwest Headquarters (http://www.systemcooling.com/falcon_nw_tour-01.html)

[Fibbles]

A little late, but I stumbled upon this if anyone cares to see a tour of the Falcon Northwest Headquarters (http://www.systemcooling.com/falcon_nw_tour-01.html)
Neat. Falcon sells the chassis for their Fragbox 2 as a DIY kit now, but it's still $300. The custom cable shortened Silverstone PSU is $129, so that's a heafty premium, unless you mod your own PSU. I really want the case, but for that much I could buy all sorts of new Aqua Computer parts :unsure:

http://falcon-nw.com/fragbox_case.asp

[Pug]

A little late, but I stumbled upon this if anyone cares to see a tour of the Falcon Northwest Headquarters (http://www.systemcooling.com/falcon_nw_tour-01.html) Dayumm!! Puts my place to shame, that's fo' sho'! :p ;)

[o/t] I like the idea of the acoustic foam on the PCI blank plates, nice touch.

[Fibbles]

This has a pretty good ending. The friend just ordered a Dell. This particular Dell has:

Dell Proprietary Case
Intel P4 3.4 Socket T (LGA775)
Dell's Proprietary 915 Chipset Board
2 Gigs of DDR2 533
1 80gb WD SATA
2 16x DVDRW's
ATI X800XT PCI-E
SB Audigy 2 ZS
2/3/4 (can't remember) Year Onsite warranty (this was important)

All for... $2500? Nope... $1500? Yep. Seems they were having a 40% off sale and he got in at the last minute. It ends 2 hours from now. That's pretty good, and I won't need to be anyones tech support! YAY!!! ^_^

[fillip]

Thats a damn good price for a 'manufactured' comp. Wouldn't find anything that decent at such a good price on these shores.

One question though, who needs 2 DVD/RW's? http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/confused.gif

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

Nero allows you to burn to mulitple drives at once so if your in to banging out multiple copies of DVD's the its usefull.

[fillip]

Nero allows you to burn to mulitple drives at once so if your in to banging out multiple copies of DVD's the its usefull.
I hear ya! http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Fibbles]

I've got 2, but I only use 1 to burn. I like having 2 of my more commonly played games ready and on hand, with dual opticals, it's a little bit less of a hassle, since I tend to play certain games in spurts and rotate when I finish the current one or get tired. The current games are Neverwinter Nights and Immortal Cities: Kiddies of the Nile.

[fillip]

I've got 2, but I only use 1 to burn. I like having 2 of my more commonly played games ready and on hand, with dual opticals, it's a little bit less of a hassle, since I tend to play certain games in spurts and rotate when I finish the current one or get tired. The current games are Neverwinter Nights and Immortal Cities: Kiddies of the Nile.
Yeah but you could do that with a DVDrom and DVDRW, no need for 2 x DVDRW's if you just need it for that. http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Fibbles]

Yeah but you could do that with a DVDrom and DVDRW, no need for 2 x DVDRW's if you just need it for that. http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/wink.gif
But... it depends on what Dell is offering, and the only options were for either a DVDRW or a CDRW, with one free, so why not go for 2 DVDRW's?

I have 2 cause I bought a Plextor 8x DVD+R/RW etc a year ago, and just got the NEC 16x DVD+R multi format with dual layer support recently. I took my Sony CDRW/DVDROM combo and stuffed it into a tupperware box.

[fillip]

If they're offering it then may aswell take it, but i couldn't understand why two was a necessity - until i learned about Nero's multiple burning facility.

[Fibbles]

Well, I'm about to drop to 1 optical. The reason is that my 2ndary IDE has pin problems. :( So now I'll have my Nec 3500A as the primary device and my Iomega Rev as the slave. The Rev is quite nice, although expensive, its disks can hold up to 90gb's of compressed data. Using the compression tools, I've been able to store 75gb's of stuff :), that's pretty neat. Plus it came with Norton Ghost, so I can backup with no problems :)

Another friend decided (best friend of the guy who had SATA trouble and dentist) he needed a computer boost. He had a 1.7 P4 and 256mb of RAMBUST DRAM, and a 9800Pro. His specs are:

Windows XP Pro
Dell Dimension XPS Gen4
P4 3.8GHZ
2GB 533 DDR2
Generic Keyboard
Generic Mouse
Radeon X800XT
1 74GB Raptor
1 160GB SATA
1 3.5" Floppy
1 48x CDRW
1 16x DVDRW
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD
1 Year Warranty w/at home service

Total was $4,097.00... Paid $2,464.50

Again, I'm no ones techy :) Looks like I'll need to drop the $$$ on some DDR533 so I can keep up with that ^_^ I'd rather have a Viewsonic 20.1" LCD though, and I can afford neither :(

[Starbuck3733T]

I really hate when dell specs their meory with the DDRXXX numbers. DDR400 = 200 MHz FSB, DDR533 = 266.5MHz FSB (1066MHz QDR for P4s). But my initial instinct things DDR400 = 100MHz FSB, DDR533 = 133MHz FSB because they're specing it with the P4s.

Use the fscking PCXXXX numbers, they make more sense!!!!

[Fibbles]

Uh.. It's 533mhz DDR2... It's what Intel uses on their 915/925 chipsets...

DDR2 PC2-4300 is the official name.

Come to think of it, I tend to use the DDRXXX myself, instead of PCXXXX.

[Yellowsnow17]

The other advantage of him buying prebuilt is you dont have to supply 24 / 7 support.


I learnt the hard way.......
Best advice ever. :) I have had this happen to me as well. As computer geeks, we feel that the pre-built boxes are not the best bang for your buck experience. We like to think that we can make a better computer for less. This is of course true, but now you have committed yourself to the role of technical support.

As hard as it is to recommend a prebuilt, it's going to save you a lot of hassle in the long run...

[fillip]

Best advice ever. :) I have had this happen to me as well. As computer geeks,...
Who you calling a geek?! http://wizdforums.co.uk/images/smilies/rant.gif


ah, who am I kiddin'... Yeah, i get pestered too often with regard to PC problems and advice. It was fun at first now it pi**es me off

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

You think thats bad? Laura my fellow IT tech got invited to a party on new years day by a heighbour. 10 minutes after she got there they produced an ADSL modem and asked if she would set up their broadband for them! :rant:

[fivecheebs]

To be honest i still get a kick out of helping my mates out. I did get pissed off with it at one stage but now i am keen again. I have been asked to do stuff at a party in the past too, not like you describe though DRB, I dont tend to get annoyed but my wife does...... with me .... :rant: so i explain this to whoever asked me and usually look at it for a few mins then arrange a time to come back.

[jiff]

The trick is arrive P!ssed, works every time;)

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

lol i think she was. My mum has a habit of telling her friends i'll look at their PCs for them with out telling me whhich is very annoying. I've had bad expeirences with peoples home PCs before so i only work on close friends or family.

[Fibbles]

lol i think she was. My mum has a habit of telling her friends i'll look at their PCs for them with out telling me whhich is very annoying. I've had bad expeirences with peoples home PCs before so i only work on close friends or family.
Same problem here. She would tell people at work and I would suddenly have 4 -5 people calling every week or so. I hate fixing strangers computers cause it's too 'pressureful' (if that's not a real word, it translates to - full of stress from moronic people questioning my every move and motive). It's also time consuming and everyone wants the service for free. I have no idea what to charge, but going somewhere and spending hours on a voluntary basis gets old, especially when you're broke. What's worse is when you've got a broken piece and everyone thinks I can magically fix it, or will buy them a new one cause I'm the fixxer-upper. I'm not buying anyone jack schitt!!! :mad: GET THE 7734 (upside-down) AWAY FROM MEEE!!!!

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

I hear you! When somebodys spent 1K on something they (understandably) get very nervous when you start messing around with it. They are always paranoid about loosing data but dont seem to think that having a virus scanner or updating it is nessecary or see the link between downloading everything that flashes and is colourful off of the net and all the spyware thats infested their pc. :rant:


My sisters the worst one. When i upgrade my PC the old parts either go to my mums or her computer. I always tell her DO NOT buy games for the kids to play on it as the pc is not fit to play them, otherwise the bits would still be in my computer. She always does though then wants me to come around and 'fix' it so it wont BSOD or crash when they try and do something its not capable of doing. Because they dont have much money though i always end up feeling kind of obliged to pay or subsidise the neccessary bits.

[Fibbles]

Well, for the most part I'm being left alone from person 1, but person 2 is driving me nuts!!! He PM's me on AIM all the time, and when I don't respond, I get the "you're ignoring me, why?". He is probably driving Dell nuts too, because he questions everything. He demanded to know why his (sata) hard drive cables were different, he was sure it was a Dell proprietary thing so he'd be stuck with their parts, but I showed him that wasn't true, and he seemed to take it badly. He bragged that he got an ATI x850XT PE instead of the x800XT, so I asked him what the card looked like, and he said he hadn't taken the side panel off yet (how'd he know about the cables?). Then, he asked what the x850XTPE looked like, so I described it and he said that it was exactly the card he got... But I didn't describe the x850, I described the basic "build by ATI" x800XL (with a very different heatsink - the 850 has dual slot cooling). Some people annoy the 7734 upside-down out of me!!!

7734 upsidedown is HELL in a calculator (leet speak form the 7th grade, thanks Mr. Martinez ^_^ )

[ỒĊBłůē]

7734 upsidedown is HELL in a calculator (leet speak form the 7th grade, thanks Mr. Martinez ^_^ )
We used to amuse ourselves with 71077345 and 55378008 [snigger!] :huh:

Then some bright spark got a calculator with Hex on it too :blink: