How is this for price (24 hours to decide)

Shoagie

Shoagie

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Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 650 w/HT Technology (3.4GHz,800FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (4x1GB)
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache
Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capability
19 inch E196FP Analog Flat Panel
256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory
Sound Blaster Audigy™2 ZS (D) Card w/Dolby 5.1, and IEEE 1394
Dell 5650 5.1 100 Watt Surround Sound Speaker System with Subwoofer
Dell Wireless Keyboard and Optical Mouse

1187 dollars with shipping.....
just give opinions and ill check after morning classes.
Any comments will be read and advice on what can be changed
 
Seems OK.
If you want a good dell deal, you'll have to keep your eye on fatwallet.com
Every now and then, there is a 40% off $999 floating around or some other crazy deal from dell.
 
Wow. That's a lot of ram. It seems like a pretty good computer except for the sucky videocard.
 
[quote name='wbc1228']Seems OK.
If you want a good dell deal, you'll have to keep your eye on fatwallet.com
Every now and then, there is a 40% off $999 floating around or some other crazy deal from dell.[/QUOTE]


this is with a 40% coupon...thats the best graphics card i can put in it though.
 
No. I'd go with an Athlon 64 processor, half the ram (and do you know what kind of ram? 2 or 4gb of crappy ram is worthless), a much, much better video card, and a SATA hard drive of some sort. I really wouldn't bother with that computer.
 
If you're going to be spending over $1000 on your computer you should just build it yourself. You'd probably end up saving some money.
 
[quote name='Chacrana']No. I'd go with an Athlon 64 processor, half the ram (and do you know what kind of ram? 2 or 4gb of crappy ram is worthless), a much, much better video card, and a SATA hard drive of some sort. I really wouldn't bother with that computer.[/QUOTE]

everything is coming from dell, and i didnt even realize i had 4gb of ram selected, if you take it down to 2, its only 1020 dollars
 
[quote name='2poor']If you're going to be spending over $1000 on your computer you should just build it yourself. You'd probably end up saving some money.[/QUOTE]

im not looking to build a computer as i tend to always screw something up, i just cant help it but i do.
 
[quote name='Shoagie']this is with a 40% coupon...thats the best graphics card i can put in it though.[/QUOTE]

Even with the coupon code, I still don't think it is a good deal. What is costing so much, the RAM? Whatever it is, it is not worth that much. If I were you, I would strip it to about $1000 (get rid of the so call top of the line graphics card that dell is offering). The cost with the coupon would be around $600. Use the $500 and upgrade the computer yourself (a decent graphics card, etc.).
 
My beef with Dell is that you get cheap parts and they have deal with Intel who's currently struggling behind AMD.

But for $1200, you're getting A LOT for a prebuilt computer.

4GB of RAM is currently unnecessary... very few programs will make use of it and 2GB is more than enough for the most resource demanding games. The biggest advantage to having a lot of RAM is if you want multitask a lot and for that, you don't have a processor which could take advantage of all that RAM. But at least you're ready for future applications which will no doubt use more RAM (not for a while though).

But these guys are right, for $1200... you could build a hell of a monster.
 
Cut down the RAM to the lowest they offer and install the rest yourself. Dell rapes you on RAM, badly. What do you want to do with this system? You might want to look into a Pentium D if you're looking to do a lot of multitasking. Also, what base system is this built from? Different PC lines from Dell give you different options at different prices; you might be able to get what you want/need for less if you try a different base system.
 
Another thing to remember about dells for gaming PCs is that often times, they are difficult to upgrade- proprietary parts all over the place. Last Dell I bought was a dimension 8250, with a pentium 4 2.4 GHz.

It used rambus DRAM, which I couldn't upgrade because it was ridiculously expensive due to its proprietary nature. Not really Dell's fault for this, I guess.

I couldn't upgrade the motherboard because the case didn't fit an ATX motherboard. I would have had to saw some things off.

Even the SBlaster Live that came with it was dell specific. I couldn't use Creative's drivers, and when it had a crackling problem for some users, dell referred us to Creative and Creative referred us to Dell for driver support. Needless to say, I ended up getting a retail Audigy.

The OEM windows copy was tied to the BIOS, and I couldn't use it when I built a new computer. Not that I was pirating, I just installed while waiting for a replacement XP Pro that was crushed during transit.

Not to mention all the crap Dell pre-install on the desktop.

You do get a quite a good pricing point when Dell has one of those days of monster coupon stacking. That 8250 cost me something like $170 in Thanksgiving of 2003 (I think). Biggest thread ever on fatwallet. Just remember that getting a Dell has its disadvantages.
 
ive never completely built a computer. I dont know if i even want to. As i said im not too good with these things. Im only looking to play any powerhouse games as of now with school and all. But something i can come home to and play some decent games nothing like WoW. Ideally i would pay about 800 for something prebuilt and i want it asap because the comp im using is an old piece of crap. So if you can find me a great prebuilt comp for 800 that would be great. I basically just threw in everything last night to see the opinions on it because i just got 575 dollars extra from selling an old monopoly games on ebay. Too bad i only got half after fees.
 
If you are really scared about bulding a whole new computer... which I would think the most scary would be the CPU placement... just look for a place to get a bundle off of or a custom computer that way. Those usually work out just fine.
 
Try www.ibuypower.com. They're basically like build it yourself but gdo it for you. It's just a bit more than actually doing it yourself.

The problem is that I've been hearing a lot of bad things about them recently...
 
Here's a tip, stay away from Dell/Gateway. I've been building my own comps , the last one I got for free was a Gateway. Just last week I tried to upgrade my Gateway, from a pentium 3ghz 64bit to an AMD(AMD is way better for gaming than Intel). Found out that their case wouldn't fit any motherboards.

That setup you have seems weak for a gaming machine. Go with AMD unless you want to wait for intel's conroe. I'm not too sure but that video card seems weak.

Either build the comp by yourself or do what Vinny suggested, go with Ibuypower.com . You'll regret buying prebuilt from stores/dell/gateway.
 
I'm not sure what the stigma against Dell systems is. The system I've got here is easily upgradable, especially for someone who doesn't want to build a computer and wouldn't consider upgrading processor+mobo.
 
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