Help buying a dell need help configuring

[bondjames]

Help..am on the brink of buying a studio 8100,,,,need help choosing ram, HD, etc

 

[Timop]

What are you going to use the PC for? Budget?

 

[Spiderm0n]

I am a long time Dell buyer. I can't bring myself to do it anymore, and thus am building my own system. Dell's quality and customer support are crap

 

[amdiesen]

Easy, First think of the computer has having three generations. Highly functional yrs 0-3, Functional 3-6, handme down limited functional 6-9. Make the computer work for you for the next three years. At year three re-evalute; either upgrade video, ram and/or hard drive or fleabay and upgrade to new.
Second, recognize intel will release a CPU refresh in a couple of months, but this refresh appears to be incremental versus evolutionary.
Third, what software are you going to use?, if you were going to max out adobe creative suite you would have probably selected a mac anyway so lets assume you are using mainstream software for the first generation. Follow the cost curve on ram and the hard drive, buy on the selection curve just before the price jumps substantially. Windows 64bit, ~6-8gb ram, ~640mb hard drive. (Hard drive makers are likely to be involved in a price war in 2011, lots of capacity, consumer demand is expected to be sluggish, and their stock prices are in the loo.) Newegg will probably pass on incentives from manufacturers / great deals jan 2011 - mar 2011 if you need more capacity or you wish to drive separate the OS and the Data.
Fourth, The video card is game dependant, others here will give you more info than you want to know.
Fifth, A good wireless mouse, everything else is fluff.