Thinkin bout new PC

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Im sick and fed up of being left out of all this Battlefield 2 gaming goodness, next month Im going to get me a new PC. Im thinking along the lines of Alienware, since they seem rather professional and their machines *appear* to be very powerful. Is it worth buying a PC from Alienware? Im hoping to buy one of the higher-end machines (Aurora 7500 or higher), and Ill certainly need to chuck in a decent 7.1 sound system. Im guessing that will set me back in the region of £2k (im not worried about the price much, not that Im rich, but Im still living with my parents so 100% of my earnings are basically mine). Is there anywhere I could get a similar PC for cheaper, or are there any issues with AlienWare I should know of?

Also, whats better? "AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-57 Processor with HyperTransport Technology 2.8GHz, 1MB L2 Cache" or "Intel® Pentium® 670 with technology H.T. up to 3.8 Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache"?

 

[T-Bone]

Didn't I tell you not to buy form Alienware?

They're prices are ludicrously high yet people still buy from them as they think they're getting a good deal. I recommed building your own. The best way i suggest to do this is to go to a local store and tell them what ur looking for. I personally suggest Creative COmputing in Pollockshaws. It's the one I use and they have never steered me wrong. Other solutions would be something like Overclockers.co.uk.

Also, whats better? "AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-57 Processor with HyperTransport Technology 2.8GHz, 1MB L2 Cache" or "Intel® Pentium® 670 with technology H.T. up to 3.8 Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache"?

TBH I aint 100% sure but I would always choose AMD over Intel simply because intel are the reason we are onl just getting 64 bit processors now instead of 6 years ago but the 2MB does pose a threat there. I think you'd be best getting a dual 64 board if you can afford it and I'll have a look into that for you.

Also...Alienware cases look AWFUL!

 

[Ronin Storm]

Is it worth buying a PC from Alienware?

Are you thinking desktop or laptop here? I'm guessing desktop from your Aurora 7500 reference. Personally, I would only buy laptops from Alienware. They've had a pretty good reputation for service and build quality, though you'll always find contradictions regarding those, and they sport some neat options at the laptop level. For a desktop? I'm not sure I'd buy from them as I'd feel like I was paying for brand not necessarily quality at that point.

If you happen to be considering a laptop, then seriously consider the Dell XPS 2. I've had the privilege of seeing the Dell XPS (1) in action and they ooze power and have cool and customisable lights on the sides and front... (I love lights!)

Ill certainly need to chuck in a decent 7.1 sound system

I'd disagree. How are you going to listen to your 7.1 sound array? Speakers? So where are you going to put all these speakers? I've had a 5.1 array for a bit and speaker placement is an arse even then! I now have a pair of 5.1 headphones (which are a bit weird and pretty heavy, by the by) but I can see no real gain in 7.1 sound for the desktop.

Is there anywhere I could get a similar PC for cheaper

Yes, there always is, but I feel the question really is whether you want to support it yourself (buy the parts and build it) or pay someone else to support it (buy the package including support). Each has ups and downs. I've been building and supporting my own (and friend's) systems for nearly ten years and I'm getting pretty bored with having to fix hard drive failures and motherboard-memory incompatibilities and so on. Still, I've got two systems (one for me, one for my partner) that are as good as I can make them for the money and are really very stable.

My limited experience and somewhat old knowledge of Alienware is that their support is decent. Pretty much everyone else, professionally, I've had bad run-ins with from time to time -- Dell, Overclockers, Dabs, Scan, HP, Fujitsu... and on and on. There are an array of "do not touch these companies ever", including Time and Tiny. There's a fair few small shops that do systems, but I've not had generally good reviews of them (Mesh, leaps to mind, as one to avoid).

If you've got time, patience and friends who can help (THN, for example) then maybe building your own is for the best. At least you aren't paying for support that can really let you down, and you get to learn a lot about how PCs work and how to get the best out of them.

Tech.THN, Haven's upcoming site parallel to this one, will probably be able to help out with some of this too.

Also, whats better? "AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-57 Processor with HyperTransport Technology 2.8GHz, 1MB L2 Cache" or "Intel® Pentium® 670 with technology H.T. up to 3.8 Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache"?

In the past, the rule has been AMD are cheaper and often faster at doing one thing, where Intel are more expensive but stand up to hammering across multiple activities better. I've lost track around 64 bit systems, though. "HT" for Intel processors is pretty powerful (stands for HyperThreading) but only comes into play with multi-threaded applications, IIRC. Many games don't use HT so it's a bit moot. I have a vague impression that Intel processors are, over all, more stable than AMD, but AMD ones are generally overclockable -- might want to check that with Haven or Pestcontrol or someone like that.

Personally, I buy AMD because it's cheaper and does what I need.

 

[Pestcontrol]

I generally agree with RS here.

If you buy the latest and greatest, you get the LEAST possible value for money. Top that off with fancy alienware... you get the idea. Decadence for the rich or foolish, if you ask me.
FX, EE, or even regular top models, are almost always overpriced, and only worth getting when money is not an issue. Ordinary mainstream CPU's are more than fast enough for modern games, a fat graphics card is what you need. SLI if those greenbacks are really burning.

If you've got cash to spend, i'd recommend fast harddrives like a WD Raptor, possibly a dual core processor (future games will make use of this, and even today dual core brings much more than just speed), and a nice amount of RAM. Speed is so much more than just your CPU and your computing experience more than just BF2.

And AMD for sure, for a number of financial, performance and practical reasons. I'm really looking forward to Intel's next gen CPU however.

Regarding sound, speaker setup is one thing, 7.1 also has limited compatibility and just having surround is much more important than whether it's with 5 or 7 speakers. As for headphones, you can get the 5.1 ones, or just a decent Creative X-fi that achieves the same effect with ordinary ones. I use only headphones for gaming these days, speakers will create annoying echos in teamspeak or skype, and there's the annoyance factor, you can't have the volume required to pick up every sound from the game reliably like you can with headphones.

@ RS: I have to disagree with HT being powerful. Intel's even dropping it for future processors. It basically slows everything down, but enables your cpu to do two things at once, and hopefully more work gets done when the two are added up. Great for certain specific applications and some servers, not so great for your desktop. The future is multicore, starting with dual, at least in the desktop world.

 

[Ronin Storm]

@ RS: I have to disagree with HT being powerful.

Ya, I can quite believe it for pretty much everything. I only really note it as powerful because we, at work, notice the difference running XML transforms via the .NET Framework on a P4 with HT. Not exactly your everyday experience, though.

 

[Pestcontrol]

It's likely in such a scenario that you have multiple threads doing different kinds of work, each of them not depending too much on the trace cache and other resources that are halved instead of shared.

Anyway as i said, server work. The fast-deep-and-narrow, very speculative P4 design isn't best suited to it, either.

Tetsuo, if you want to build, or at least decide the parts for your own machine, i'd be glad to help out. It's sort of a job for me

 

[Fi$hy]

My two cents here, I read somewhere that AMD was better for gaming as it's simply got more brute strength (number crunching ability) Wheras Intel where better for more "sophisticated" (in the loosest meaning of the word) tasks such as image editing and music composition.

Personally on my old Pc, i had AMD, never a problem got a bit annoyed it used less Ram than it had available but that was probably a motherboard/ram issue anyway.

On the laptop it's a Pentium M, and again no-problems.

So personally no-preference, I guess it's all financial in which case the AMD wins (unless we really belive the stories, in which case it depends on what you use it primarilly for, in this case I'm guessing gaming, so AMD wins again!)

 

[Pestcontrol]

It's certainly not a brute strength vs sophisticated thing. In fact, if anyone Intel with their now bust mhz-is-everything netburst design are the grunts here. Their design is more evolved in some ways, but that doesn't say much at all in CPU land

The best analogy i can come up with is this: Intel is a dragster, AMD a F1 car, software has straights and bends, games happen to have more bends.

And the Pentium M is a F1 car driven by Michael Schumacher.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Nice analogy, Pest!

 

[Unregistered]

Forget the FX-57 - it's overpriced. Have a look at the pre-built systems from the likes of Scan, Evesham, Mesh and so on - they'll give you an idea of what sort of things you'll need, and you won't need to spend two grand either.

If I wanted something along these lines, then I'd probably go for something like:

Athlon64 4000+ or X2 3800+
GeForce 7800GT 256MB
1GB PC3700/PC4000 RAM
74GB 10,000rpm WD Raptor + 200GB WD Caviar
Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe M/B
SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Music

That comes to about £1000. Add the rest of the bits according to personal taste.


Buffalo_Hunter

 

[Pestcontrol]

There'll be 150GB raptors coming out very soon. Apart from that, that list is Pest approved.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Thanks for the help guys, Im glad you all know so much about it because I know SFA. I am a little confused though, some of the sites (particularly the Scan site) were really baffling, and all the concentrated monotonous text with no explanations was getting on my wick.
I did manage to make myself a rather good PC on the Mesh site, for only a little over 2 grand (around about where I want to spend), but I was annoyed at the fact they only allowed you one hard drive and no option of a 10,000rpm Raptor (unless Im missing something).

Here it is:

AMD Athlon X2 4800+ with H.T.
Asus A8N SLi PCI-Express Motherboard
2048Mb DDR400 Memory - PC3200 (2x1024)
250Gb Serial ATA Hard Drive/16Mb Buffer
256Mb Geforce 7800GTX TV-Out + DVI PCI Express (the Dual 7800GTX is veeeery tempting, but also very expensive!)
19" ViewSonic VX924 TFT Flatpanel monitor - DVI (3ms)
Creative X-Fi Extreme Music soundcard
Creative Inspire 7.1 Surround (sorry, but I really do love KC's 5.1 over a headset any day, Ill probly get a headset and all mind you)

Im not sure about power surge protection, it all seems rather substantial to me, so I just opted for the Surgemaster 6 socket thingbob, which seemed alrite.

All that for £2132.70, which is helluva better compared to alienware I guess.

Now the only thing that worries me is cooling, and acoustic dampening.
One more thing, whats better? One 256mb 7800GTX or dual 256mb 7800GTs?

 

[[THN]Buffalo_Hunter]

DON'T GO TO MESH - their PC's are cheap because they have no support - if anything goes wrong, you'll be racking up phone bills like the proverbial.

I'd also suggest not spending all that money (unless you want to waste it). PCs are like cars - you can get 90% of the performance of the one you've found for probably two-thirds of the money. Plus, the graphics card will be out of date in a few months when the 7900 is released.

But, at the end of the day, it's your money.




B_H

 

[Pestcontrol]

Hmm, a nice middle-of-the-road option would be to use the 512MB 7800's, they're a bit faster too, and more future proof with the additional memory, even if it's not really used today. Raptor + big disk is worth it, too.

Regarding the processor, i'd get the X2 4400, it's got the big L2 cache, only runs a few mhz slower and is loads cheaper. They all overclock to 2.4 without problems anyway. Avoid the 4600.

And that's a damn lot of cash you're spending. Did you win the lottery?

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Well the problem is that everywhere has their own pros and cons, nobody has it all :/ I guess building my own system sounds like a good idea in theory, but I might need to get KC and Tbone round to give me a hand and I have no idea what to buy and where to buy it from. If I was to buy a package deal, I wouldnt know where to go. Do i go cheap with minimal support, or expensive with better support. Decisions decisions.

 

[Ronin Storm]

If you buy parts then you're in for supporting it all yourself anyhow. That said, I think there's probably enough people around here and the soon-to-be Tech.THN that you can get by regardless.

So, if you're going that route, look for well recommended parts (we can make some solid recommendations between us) and then price hunt. Sometimes you're better off buying everything from one supplier because it keeps your returns management easier if something is broken and you need to send it back.

In the UK, I've done okay (mostly) with buying parts from:

• Aria (www.aria.co.uk)
• Overclockers (www.overclockers.co.uk)
• Dabs (www.dabs.co.uk)

I've also bought some stuff from Scan (www.scan.co.uk). Overclockers have been both the best and the worst of them, for me. Aria has done a fair middle-of-the-road job to date. Occasionally Dabs have better prices, but Overclockers tend to do fine on cost.

Many here, I'm betting, have built their own PCs and heard the horror stories about this-or-that supplier. I'll support Buffalo's "don't buy from Mesh" from a close friend's experience. Small local shops, though, can sometimes work out really well if you know the people who run it. I'll add "don't buy from PC World or Dixons" as well.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I was discussing building my own PC with Tbone when an idea struck me (or at least I hope its an idea). Right, I was sitting there thinking "Hmmmm, this building your own PC malarkey is a bit tedious and it could get mighty complicated.", and I was also thinking its a lot harder to pay for stuff when you buy it all individually rather than when you buy it as a package (even if it is more expensive). Then I remember Buffalo saying that Mesh is cheap(er) because the support is pretty crap, or non-existant. Well, how about I buy a cheap(er) system from Mesh, and then just disregard their support and support it myself? Or is that a non-starter?

 

[Ronin Storm]

Or is that a non-starter?

I'd disregard it as a non-starter, but it's certainly a thought worth raising.

I'd disregard it on two accounts:

1. When building a computer, quality is everything. This means that a crappy IDE or SATA cable can really screw things up, even though the motherboard and hard drive are just fine. Expect Mesh to use crappy cabling. Expect this to extend to all things.
2. When you pay a company to build a PC for you, you are paying for the parts, the labour, the desk and room and power used in building the PC, possibly some implicit support costs and any profit-based markup on all of the above they might wish to charge. When you build it yourself you pay for parts and desk/room/power, and the labour is your time (arguably money too). The overall experience is cheaper and you get learning and (on occasion) a laugh too.

 

[thatbloke]

Ok I have skimmed over this thread, and I can see the general flow of things here... I personally would recommend building your own computer... If you do do that, then I would only ever buy my parts from ONE place: NOVATECH!

They are a local company to me and are very high quality, damn good service, and DAMN CHEAP too... They are also very professional...

As you seem to have money to burn, take a look at the Nero X2 range of pre-built systems... otherwise, have you considered upgrading?

At Novatech they sell Motherboard bundles, which include the Motherboard, a respectable amount of RAM, and a processor, heatsink and fan all pre assembled for you (so that all you need to do is screw it in the case and plug everything in).

You can then buy a new graphics card, and simply whack it in, get some more RAM if your heart so desires and then maybe a new PSU depending on how meaty the one you already have is.

This gives you the advantage of being able to keep your original hard drive(s) while still being able to add more if you want, and also to keep your original case, though if you are buying all this stuff you may want to look into getting a shiny new case anyway... AND DON'T FORGET THE COOLING SYSTEM!!! Just a case fan or 2 will be ok, but without them you will fry the processor quicker than something that fries things very quickly...

There ya go, my 2 cents on the matter, hope it helps!

 

[Fi$hy]

Nah, I think cooling systems wise, liquid Nitrogen all the way #joke#

Also does anyone know a method of increasing the cooling on a laptop, as the fan is adaptive and only seems to manage to keep the core temp at 52C. which is a bit high. Also when my CPU kicks in, the heat increases to about 60, which is rather worrying.

#sorry for the hijack#