vishusmartishus

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Tonight... I ordered this system:

It has:

Pentium D 820 (2x2.8)
1gb RAM @ 533mhz? I think
Geforce 7300LE videocard (not for gaming, that's not what i want it for)
20-inch Widescreen Ultrasharp Digital Monitor
Dell 100 watt 5.1 surround speakers.
Creative XtremeMusic PCI card.

I'm getting this computer mainly for its movie, music, picture, and application capibilities, not for gaming.
What did this computer cost me, altogether, with shipping?

$1150

Tonight is the last night for the sale, too, so I'd hurry up if I were you.
 

MadModMike

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Tonight... I ordered this system:

It has:

Pentium D 820 (2x2.8)
1gb RAM @ 533mhz? I think
Geforce 7300LE videocard (not for gaming, that's not what i want it for)
20-inch Widescreen Ultrasharp Digital Monitor
Dell 100 watt 5.1 surround speakers.
Creative XtremeMusic PCI card.

I'm getting this computer mainly for its movie, music, picture, and application capibilities, not for gaming.
What did this computer cost me, altogether, with shipping?

$1150

Tonight is the last night for the sale, too, so I'd hurry up if I were you.

Interesting...

I get a CPU that, at best, has shoddy support w/ nF4, 1GB of 5-5-5-15 DDR2, a GPU that is less powerful than a Celeron, a 20" Monitor that makes eating crystals sound good, a PCI Sound card to waste my PCI Bandwidth, and a 5.1 Dell Speaker System that makes listening to Intel's FUD's worthwhile, and all of this for only $400 more than what it'd cost to build it.

Yeah man, I'm on top of that, I just hope I aint limited to only 10 of those beasts.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time
 

vishusmartishus

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I don't think any of you realize that I don't care about any of that shit, nor am I an 'AMD retard'.

I realize AMD is in general better, and I could've gotten a gaming pc for much more money.

This system is going to do everything I want it to.

I'll buy a gaming console for games.

Thank you.
 

luminaris

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Tonight... I ordered this system:

It has:

Pentium D 820 (2x2.8)
1gb RAM @ 533mhz? I think
Geforce 7300LE videocard (not for gaming, that's not what i want it for)
20-inch Widescreen Ultrasharp Digital Monitor
Dell 100 watt 5.1 surround speakers.
Creative XtremeMusic PCI card.

I'm getting this computer mainly for its movie, music, picture, and application capibilities, not for gaming.
What did this computer cost me, altogether, with shipping?

$1150

Tonight is the last night for the sale, too, so I'd hurry up if I were you.



Well, let's see ..

Monitor $432 (current)
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?sku=20013YR&c=us&cat=snp&category_id=5194&cs=19&l=en&Page=productlisting.aspx

Pentium D 820 $217
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116213

The cheapest 533 RAM, $71. I bet you any amount of money they will install DDR2-400 just to save money. I can't tell you how many Dell machines I've seen with the lower speed memory installed.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820211010

Creative XtremeMusic PCI card $112
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102188

Dell 100 Watt 5.1 Speakers, Currently $48
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?sku=313-2247&c=us&l=en&cs=19&category_id=6178&first=true&page=productlisting.aspx

Dell 7300LE, add $40
256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache [add $40 or $1/month3]

With that, the total of these parts comes to $920. Now, that gives Dell 2 thousand extra dollars to skim off the price of the case, motherboard, drives etc. and we all know, you can buy a new motherboard, case, drives, keyboard, mouse and anything to complete this system for well under a thousand bucks.

I also want to mention that Dell is certainly not going to pay $217 for a Pentium D 820, they will certainly pay less for it along with the other parts mentioned so in conclusion of this and IMO, you didn't save anything and by building it yourself even if you buy the operating system, you probably would have saved 200 dollars or more.
 

TabrisDarkPeace

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Looking more closely at the hardware, and disabling my usual anti-Dell bias to form a non-biased opinion, I must say that is a fairly decent deal.

8) The Dell UltraSharp series of TFTs is quite good, unlike theirs, and others, lower end TFTs.

8O The sound card is excellent and is not going to flood the PCI bus on the included mainboard.

:) The Pentium D processor is decent, and has excellent performance for price, especially in the longer term.

:arrow: Video card... Who cares ?, My best video card come this Friday arvo will be a Radeon Xpress 200M (single channel, shared with system memory) on a laptop. :p Where I used to get 80 fps on my Radeon X800 XL, I'll now get 8 fps on my laptop, (or more at lower detail), and likely 2 fps (assuming the game engine even loads) on my 'remaining' Rage XL on the Opteron 270. 8O

8O In all honesty dual-channel DDR2-400 vs dual-channel DDR2-667, there is not that much difference between the two, considering what you're using the system for.

:p People here often forget there are more uses to PCs than 'playing games', and many people are moving to consoles because frankly 1 console every 3 years sure beats 1 x $1,000 video card every 18 months.

They raise valid(ish) enough points, but if it does (more than) what you want, you are happy with the price, performance, quality, warranty, support, and upradability, etc then as a consumer you have won.

Over 70% of the video chipsets in the world are Intel Integrated Graphics of some sort, and that is enough for most people.

You can always install a GeForce 6800 GS or Radeon X800 XL, or other 'affordable, yet decent performance' video card later on anyway, should you desire to do so, right ?


I think people with under 100 posts should be presented a more welcome approach, less we have no forum society to build upon. 8)
 

red_onion

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Well, just to be fair, his original $1150 included shipping, which your tally didn't. Also, to compare apples to apples, your tally should include:

8 hours building @ $30/hour: $240

4 hours on forums asking questions like, "Why doesn't this work?" and, "Okay, I tried that, NOW why doesn't it work?" @ $30/hour: $120

I'm no Dell fan, and it's still cheaper to build yourself, but for some people it isn't worth the hassle for the sake of <$500 difference.
 
Make that a 200$ save (just a typo, I guess).

But, yes, frankly, you've been had. Even building a POS wit hand-picked components can result in a fast and silent enough system less expensive than Dell's /*insert not nice word here*/.
 

TabrisDarkPeace

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What, exactly, is wrong with the system ?

Talking stuff that is going to make over a +5% difference in final real-world performance too.

I dislike Dell as much as the next guy, but even I am happy to admit when they do something right.

Their higher end, and even mid-range, systems are not 'that bad', even for gamers on a budget, but their problem is gamers on a budget like to build their own, and Dell will never offer them that experience... as it can be a very bad experience, even one resulting in personal injury which = bad media coverage for a large company. :?

Same with Alienware, The real gamers / prosumers build their own, that is the way it has always been, and will always be.

If you ran Dell, what would you change ?, and why ?
 

red_onion

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As a few people have already said, this isn't a bad deal for a prebuilt non-gaming PC. (And by the way, when I say "non-gaming," I mean as a primary use; the rig should certainly run current games just fine.) Good for you.

Yes, it would have been cheaper and probably better to build yourself with components painstakingly researched and hand-selected, but if you were interested in building it yourself, you'd have done the research and already known that.

Good luck and enjoy it.
 

Kama-sama

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That ~$200 (heh pretty bad typo) difference includes motherboard, case, hard drive, Windows XP, and shipping. Even though he didn't list it, it probably also includes an optical drive, keyboard, mouse, and possibly some kind of warranty.

All in all, definitely a good deal.
 

red_onion

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I'm saying that's how much it would cost for a person to build a system himself or herself. I'm assuming something like $30 per hour for that person's time out of their weekend or whatever (some people make more than that, some less) and 8 hours including research and the actual building.

I'm just trying to address the question: sure you can save $200+ if you build a computer yourself, but doesn't the time it takes you to actually do all the research and work yourself also have value? That time and money wasn't included in the tally above.

I wish 8 hours was unrealistic, but including the research I did to learn how, I spent at least that building my first rig (you gotta start somewhere). Took me forever to figure out how those little jumper things worked and to get the stupid case lights to operate, but that's a whole other story.
 

TabrisDarkPeace

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72-hours to build and exhaustively test a system is not uncommon.

In fact it is ideal to hammer a machine before selling it, to ensure minimum dodgy machines are sold.

Multiple Memory Tests, various patterns, aswell as tests that hit the chipset settings and timings hard.

Power Supply Unit load testing.

CPU Tests

HDD media and interface tests. (eg: SeaTools, PowerMax, WD Data-Life-Guard, etc)

Copy heaps of data (both a few large files and heaps of small files) to/from HDD confirm not corrupt (mostly driver & controller test this one, also can isolate dodgy cables)

Optical drive tests

Sound tests

Testing of each USB port at given speeds, confirm data doesn't get corrupt.

Copy 8 GB data to/from each network adapter, confirm not corrupt (WinRAR is good for this as it can store heaps of CRC style information in files, otherwise just compare CRC32, MD5, SHA512 match before and after copies).

MMMmmm, what else ?
 

mesarectifier

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I'm sure if you're building to sell (and you're working alone) it could take a long time to make sure you're selling a quality product - Mesa/Boogie tube guitar amplifiers are hit with a hammer at full volume and put through tests equivalent to being dropped from an 8 foot stage before leaving the factory.

But if you're building for yourself, you wouldn't bother, would you? I have never bothered to put my own systems through such extensive testing.
 

TabrisDarkPeace

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Find the niggling faults before you'd normally notice them.

Ideally while the parts are still under warranty.... 8)

Saves potential problems later.


Say your building a PC, and can't really have it 'out of order' for a 3 year period ?, What do you do ?
 

red_onion

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Agreed, but the point is still valid ... 8 hours or more of your weekend doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount of time to lose to computer building if you choose to build it yourself, and that time has value. And I have to assume vishusmartishus hasn't built a computer before; if he had, why would he turn to Dell now?

72 hours of testing is probably extreme for a home-built PC, which is why I added 4 hours of time spent scouring the forums for answers and advice. ;) Either way, it's time/money you don't have to spend if you let someone else do the work.
 

mesarectifier

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I realise there's a good reason to doing all that testing, and it makes sense. But most of my PCs are recycles - i.e. FREE - anyway and I use my Mac for most things now, so I don't bother. But for servers for sure I run h/w tests.
 

luminaris

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Well, just to be fair, his original $1150 included shipping, which your tally didn't. Also, to compare apples to apples, your tally should include:

8 hours building @ $30/hour: $240

4 hours on forums asking questions like, "Why doesn't this work?" and, "Okay, I tried that, NOW why doesn't it work?" @ $30/hour: $120

I'm no Dell fan, and it's still cheaper to build yourself, but for some people it isn't worth the hassle for the sake of <$500 difference.

Well, your right but, Dell is currently shipping machines for free so I didn't include that. I know there are costs associated with building the machines but, that window can vary so greatly, I didn't even want to take a stab at a range. That system will make a good workhorse system for someone looking for that type of machine. All I wanted to point out is, Dell is still making a ton of money on that machine.
 

red_onion

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All I wanted to point out is, Dell is still making a ton of money on that machine.

Absolutely NO disagreement there. Their efficiency and margins are huge. Don't weep for Dell; even their reasonable deals make them money. :p
 

upec

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Dell have quite good deal sometime but I still build my own computers.
I upgrade my computers quite often so it is more flexible for me.
I have been ordering Dell computers for my friends who need ultra cheap computer for office application. I was able to get some Dell computers without OS for about $300 for my friends. The best part is that I do not get any complain when crappy computer start to have problem.