My first ALIENWARE. Overkill? Maybe. Advice?

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Your first and main concern is that you want this PC to be able to run under heavy loads in a "Business" environment. That Alienware PC you listed is a gaming machine A Stated a few times in this thread.

IMO - If you are willing to spend 3,000.00 for a business PC, you should rethink you buy.

I built a PC for a client that cost them 1,300 with monitor and keyboard/mouse. Here's what they use that PC for. They use it as a P.O.S system, Use it for Data Entry, Email, Internet, Web Design, Photoshop, All Office Products, they use the DVD burner to back up data on their server, the ATI 9800 pro is also hooked up to a 20" TV in their lobby playing Promotional DVD's. This PC handles multitasking extremely well. This PC normal operates using 25-40% of it's system memory. It's fast and very reliable. ZERO COMPLAINTS!!!

Here's the Specs:
Intel (LOL) P4 3.2GHz 540J LGA775 OEM
Zalman 7000 HS & Fan
MSI MOBO
500W PSU
(4x512MB) Corsair VS DDR400 2gig
(2) Seagate 200 gig 7200rpm SATA in RAID 1 (Parity)
DVD 16x
DVD Burner
ATI 9800 Pro w/ TV out
6in1 Media Card Reader w/ Standard Floppy
17" Flat Panel Monitor
Wireless Mouse & Keyboard

It really does pay to know how to build. Buy yourself a good A+ Certification Guide and read the 1,200 pages, take the practice tests, visit this forum three times a day, ask as many questions as you can, building a PC isn't hard at all. It's like learning to ride a bike. You may fall a few times, but once you get the hang of it, you can pop wheelies with your eyes closed!
 
Some great advice here.

Yeah, I want the ALIENWARE. What else is there
unless I want a Dell, Compaq or systems I have been
trying to get away from.

A few things....

ALIENWARE does offer a 74 GB drive that I will
use as the host. I am going to add a 250 GB 72,000
as the slave. Neither of these cards has 16mb cache
and I wish I could find a system that does have these
cards since I see how access time would greatly improve.

I'd even consider SCSI if ALIENWARE offered. It doesn't.

The difference in price when it comes to ALIENWARE
cards is nominal. When looking at 256MB, the ATI
RADEON X850 is the cheapest. Not sure I want to go
with 128MB of ram when powering a Dell 24" display
unless you think I should.

What it comes down to is that I don't want to build
my own. I don't want to go with any of these
"customize yourself" companies that get bad consumer
feedback. Even a company like ABS gets a lot of
bad press if you look at the reviews. ALIENWARE
reviews are not perfect either, but the worst seem
to come from those that don't own.

In any event, thank you all for your help here.
 
Man. Depending on how much this guy makes on his "day" job, it wouldn't be practical for him to become an expert in computer building :). Unless he wants to pick it up as a hobby.

Time = $$ man. And if you earn a shit load of $$ with whatever it is that you do, it is better to relegate these "building"/car repair duties to someone else and pay them 1/10 of what you are making :).. Don't u think?
 
Gents,

I own a business. I am not rolling in dough
but because the business is related to the
Internet my computer is a tax write-off.

This is why I am willing to spend a little more
and have someone else do it who has more
time than I.

This should hopefully help you guys understand
why I can't be bothered with building myself.

I just wish there was another highly reputable
company out there that would build me a more
business-specific computer with either a SCSI
setup -or- have the 16mb cache hard drives
available in their configuration.
 
ALIENWARE does offer a 74 GB....
Yeah, I think that would be a good upgrade for you. I looked and I guess they don't offer the 2 Raptors in RAID anymore. I am almost positive that back when I was checking out Alienware they did. You could always call and ask. But either way it will be nice even with just the single Raptor.

Not sure I want to go with 128MB of ram when powering a Dell 24" display
I am sure you could step all the way down to the 6600GT and still be fine, which would be almost $300, but if you want the big boy, go for it! Who knows, you might find yourself addicted to FPS after a few months with this machine :p

One last thought: You want that machine, get it!!! Everyone has their own ideas on how they would spend their money, but this is your money. That system will KICK ASS, you definately won't be dissapointed. :D
 
The 16 meg cache hard drives are ALL made by maxtor. Maxtor is terribly unreliable. It's worth it to sacrafice a tad of speed and buy western digital (alienware uses WD) or seagate

And a 6600GT will do you fine, ima hardcore gamer and it works perfectly for me :) Dont worry about only having 128meg of ram, as their is more to worry abotu than that
 
When it comes to HDD, Seagate is the only answer. Seagate. Trust no other company for your hard-drives.
 
I think the only place that the SCSI showed a significant advantage was in boot up
Hmm isnt that exactly what i said? I told oyu lol but thast ok and scsi is older than IDE by far lol. BUUUT im out of htis arguement cause its pointless. :p
 
16MB cache versus 10,000RPM drives are no competetion, the faster RPM is the better solution. Yes, the cache will be faster than accessing files directly from the platters, but you have to realize it'll only benefit 16MB worth of data. The rest will still be accessed at 7200RPM speed.

10,000RPM drives means that all data on the drive is accessed faster. Yes, it won't access it as fast as the cache but you'll be able to access all all of your files faster rather than just a small chunk.
 
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