Decent build<$3000

[Deadpixel]

Ok.

Alienware is def crap. I'm glad I stopped by. Much better buys elsewhere.

Thanks guys.

Check out my post, 1500 gets you a lot!

 

[neoinarien]

I did, I liked it. I'm gonna have to take some time to poke around between that and a few other options.

Rest assured, I'll be posting here again with round II.

 

[neoinarien]

My only concern, to address it early, of the costco one is the 2GB ram. I hear that on Vista, folks are recommending at least 2GB for gaming and prob more. So I'm looking for something 4GB ram.

 

[Sora]

I selected the 1000 watt. It's not necessary for now, but I'm thinking for the future.

First off it is the amperage on the 12v rails of power source that matter the most, not the actual watts. Second a good 610w PSU from PCP&C can handle SLI 8800Ultra's and a Quad-Core both overclocked heavily...trust me you don't need 1K PSU. Actually in terms of the future GPU's have stayed around 150w for the most expensive model for ever now because they just keep lowering the fabrication size therefore they can use less power but then add more transistors to make it more powerful.

Alienware definitely knows how to make a good PC however you can make a computer that powerful for about 1500 as stated by building it yourself. It is much more highly recommended.

2GB is still enough for vista but your right the standard will go up eventually and if you have the money just get 2 sets of Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800...they have D9 Micron chips which are the cream of the crop right now....top memory modules.

 

[NosBoost300]

My only concern, to address it early, of the costco one is the 2GB ram. I hear that on Vista, folks are recommending at least 2GB for gaming and prob more. So I'm looking for something 4GB ram.

2gb of ram for vista is more than enough, and if its only a 32 bit vista, you can't use 4gb of ram anyway

i ran games, and photoshop and all that stuff just fine on my fx62 (which is way crappier than a q6600) and 1gb of ddr2 800

he doesnt even need to buy that expensive of ram... he won't be overclocking.. he can definitely settle for some value ddr800

and honestly.. ur doing law school.. what could you possible run that is going to be cpu and ram hungry... unless your like... playing 3 games at once, while streaming 6 videos, torrenting, playing 3 different media players for music.. and burning 6 cd's... i don't see any problem with 2gb of ram

i think its way to early to be suggesting 4 gigs of ram.... especially when most desktop pc's at stores use 32 bit windows anyway

 

[neoinarien]

Haha... maybe I like torrenting, 3 games, fps and mmorpg all at once Less free time means I gotta do more with it right?

Are you saying that vista won't support a 4gb set up? or simply that it would only support up to 2gb, somehow, and the extra two would be wasted for now (pending a future patch)?

It's not that big of a jump, from what I've seen, to jump up from 2gb to 4gb... maybe 150-200. I'll check again.

 

[b1gapl]

Are you saying that vista won't support a 4gb set up? or simply that it would only support up to 2gb, somehow, and the extra two would be wasted for now (pending a future patch)?

Vista 32-bit doesn't support 4gb, but the 64-bit edition does.

 

[Sora]

Haha... maybe I like torrenting, 3 games, fps and mmorpg all at once Less free time means I gotta do more with it right?

Are you saying that vista won't support a 4gb set up? or simply that it would only support up to 2gb, somehow, and the extra two would be wasted for now (pending a future patch)?

It's not that big of a jump, from what I've seen, to jump up from 2gb to 4gb... maybe 150-200. I'll check again.

Even in vista I don't know many games that get an increase in performance past 2Gb of ram...actually I can't think of any but i'm sure like Bioshock gets maybe 1 FPS hah.

EDIT: Found a game in Vista heh. Crysis Beta 3 in Vista uses all 2GB, 4Gb would be a good choice for that game. I don't think it would use all 2Gb in XP though

 

[TheOtis]

Alienware is a sound company if you're naive about computers. But I wouldn't suggest Alienware at all, to anybody.

It is highly recommended you build for yourself. That way, you save tons of money, for future upgrades.

You should only SLI with resolutions, such as 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1600.

The Ageia PhysX card is highly unnecessary, as very few games support it. And the 8 series, already have a physics technology, built right in.

With a budget of $3k, I would suggest you spend half on a good gaming computer now, and save the rest for future upgrades.

QFT. Take his advice, best advice I've read for awhile. $1500 is just fine for a rig to play modern day games, it's almost like a magic number. If you could build a rig right, $1500 can take you very far.

 

[veg1992]

if you kept reading tho.. he said he can't build... so he has to buy it online... NCIXus is probably your best bet then..