new pc suppliers

BigSteve · Post by **BigSteve** » 13 Feb 2007, 21:21

If I were to buy a new pc who should I get it from?, I don't have the time or knowledge to build my own. I'll probably buy in a month or two when the new nvidia cards come down a bit.
Falcon northwest and alienware seem to get mentioned alot, Im looking for something capable of running crysis, any suggestions?

(Im buying in North America btw)

My budget is around $10000

... I wish hehe, its actually 3000 ^^

REVENGE · Post by **REVENGE** » 13 Feb 2007, 21:32

Both of the builders you mentioned [Falcon Northwest and Alienware] make excellent systems. Voodoo is also good, but you're gonna pay hundreds for them to ship it to you from overseas I think...

And personally, I'd go with Falcon because I don't like the Alien looking cases...

10053r · Post by **10053r** » 13 Feb 2007, 21:36

for $3000, you can get something completely top of the line (I assume you are not including monitors or other accessories in this total). Actually, I would recommend that you buy a $1000 machine three times as often. It will probably lead to higher performance overall. And learning to assemble hardware (it's really not that difficult) so that you can upgrade your machine a little at a time will get you better still performance. If you really insist on buying something off the shelf, I will happily build one for you and take my profit margin out of the price penalty that alienware or whoever would charge you.

AF · Post by AF » 13 Feb 2007, 21:59

60% of a PCs cost is a company ripping you off. The best PCs money can buy are made from parts as it is, and motherboard jumpers are the most complicated part (usually they dont need changing at all and have 2-3 pages of a manual with pictures to help). Its simply a plug in and screw affair.

My PC was ├é┬ú800, the equivilant PC prebuilt by a company is several thousand more, preloaded with allsorts of rubbish sftware, has 10-20GB of hardrive space locked in a hidden partition, doesnt come with a bootable windows CD, and usually has an uncertain mix of hardware.

RogerN · Post by **RogerN** » 13 Feb 2007, 22:38

If you plan on spending around $1000 or more, it's probably more cost-efficient to build your own PC. Assembling your own is not difficult at all these days (with a few exceptions). It's can be a good learning experience. Admittedly, it's a bit intimidating the first time you try it...

SharkyExtreme (a hardware site) has a couple of nice articles that they publish on a regular basis which propose a complete set of components for building your own PC. They have both a Value article and a High End article, depending on your budget. This is the most recent Value article:
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVG ... hp/3649521

There are plenty of other guides out there which walk you through the process of assembling a PC from scratch. As someone else already said, it's pretty much just plugging stuff in and tightening a few screws.

REVENGE · Post by **REVENGE** » 13 Feb 2007, 23:06

Yeah, all of the above is true. It is simply more economical to build your own rig than to buy from someone else, but for a first time builder you need to take time to do a lot of research before deciding what you should really get. Overall, the window shopping is much more time consuming and frustrating than actually building the computer [assembly for me takes about 7 minutes on a good day with a mostly tooless case].

AF · Post by AF » 13 Feb 2007, 23:07

And to be honest if you have ├é┬ú10k then you neednt spend more than ├é┬ú1.5k, because after ├é┬ú1.5k you wont see any difference, and any tech yu buy will be made utterly obsolete in a few months time by orders of magnitude.

Also there'll be nothng that neds that much horsepower.

An example being intel quad conroes, at ├é┬ú800, they're a bad buy no matter how much money you have as the new midrange intel cpus later this year will trounce them, they're designed purely to burn a hole in your wallet.

Also there're no programs atm that will run any faster on a quad intel conroe than a dual core top end conroe half the price.

Also you'll find the best buys on components are when you buy them as parts not in a prebuilt. Some components arent even available in prebuilt PCs, such as the best speakers, monitors, mouse+keyboard, cases, power supplies, amongst other things.

Relative · Post by **Relative** » 13 Feb 2007, 23:37

I would not bother with a pre-built system unless you are looking the low end or laptops. Avoid Alienware, they are known to a highly unreasonably markup and their customer service is defiantly not worth the price tag, and it's not really worth the customs and shipping costs to import something like this. Like AF said, almost all PC builds rip you off.

I'm about to build a new spec (I've been saying that for 6 months now

), so I'm pretty up to date on hardware. This is based on my own future spec with prices and parts listed at Overclockers.co.uk The image is cuts off the total price, which comes to ├é┬ú1,056.14 including VAT and Shipping.

Pretty slick if I do say so myself

Cabbage · Post by **Cabbage** » 13 Feb 2007, 23:38

Just ship a Mesh over

Peet · Post by **Peet** » 13 Feb 2007, 23:50

That processor overclocks stably to 4.1 ghz, btw.^^

edit: nevermind, I'm thinking of the pentium D 805

Relative · Post by **Relative** » 13 Feb 2007, 23:53

P3374H wrote:That processor overclocks stably to 4.1 ghz, btw.^^

edit: nevermind, I'm thinking of the pentium D 805

With air cooling I have heard up to 3.5Ghz stable on stock voltages on the E6600.

AF · Post by AF » 14 Feb 2007, 00:48

wow an extra 1.1Ghz on one machine, and the oen next to it an extra 1.3Ghz, why do I not OC my cpus? =s

mehere101 · Post by **mehere101** » 14 Feb 2007, 01:17

At one point I saw (online of course) an Intel processor overclocked to 8Ghz, it was being cooled by liquid nitrogen of course...

Lost Ninja · Post by **Lost Ninja** » 14 Feb 2007, 04:08

AF wrote:wow an extra 1.1Ghz on one machine, and the oen next to it an extra 1.3Ghz, why do I not OC my cpus? =s

More sense than money perhaps.

My friend who lives in NY, built a gaming PC just before Christmas he was a complete Nebie at hardware side of PCs. But with only a very small amount of help from me over MSN he got it working within a couple of hours. He seemed to get a very good system, for considerably less than you have to spend.

He got his bits from Newegg.

REVENGE · Post by **REVENGE** » 14 Feb 2007, 04:11

Those parts are pretty good, though I would go for a more robust power supply.

Actually, I wouldn't use less than 650 W and would use 750 W if you think you might ever upgrade to SLI.

BigSteve · Post by **BigSteve** » 14 Feb 2007, 08:18

Well well well, it seems you guys know what your're on about and have possibly just saved me wads and wads of Benjamins...

I just worked out the cost of buying a top notch alienware compared to building an identical desktop with components from Tigerdirect.ca

3109 with shipping and taxes from tiger

3786 with shipping and taxes froma alienware, well about that after I did a rough conversion from USD to CND

Looks like its time to get my hands dirty, wish me luck hehe... Im probably gonna need it ^^

Thanks for the help, much appreciated, imaginary beers for you guys on me!

REVENGE · Post by **REVENGE** » 14 Feb 2007, 08:49

Good luck BigSteve but wait...uh oh...you chose TIGERDIRECT?

J/K, I don't think TigerDirect is bad, but their reliability ratings aren't as good as Newegg's, and I'm not sure about the pricing either but I hope you got the best deal. Enjoy.

Deathblane · Post by **Deathblane** » 14 Feb 2007, 12:01

Just make sure you read a tutorial (or two) on pc construction. Either from the site already mentioned or Toms-Hardware.
It's never been easier but you still have to be wary of static and make sure you install the cpu cooler correctly (did you budget for some thermal gell?) and probably a number of other things that an experienced person would do automatically.

Relative · Post by **Relative** » 14 Feb 2007, 12:20

BigSteve wrote:Well well well, it seems you guys know what your're on about and have possibly just saved me wads and wads of Benjamins...

I just worked out the cost of buying a top notch alienware compared to building an identical desktop with components from Tigerdirect.ca

3109 with shipping and taxes from tiger

3786 with shipping and taxes froma alienware, well about that after I did a rough conversion from USD to CND

Looks like its time to get my hands dirty, wish me luck hehe... Im probably gonna need it ^^

Thanks for the help, much appreciated, imaginary beers for you guys on me!

I still don't get why you are importing from the Americas

Some UK suppliers I can think of off hand:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
http://www.overclock.co.uk/
http://www.misco.co.uk/

The first two I listed also have some helpful hardware and software forums.

REVENGE wrote:Those parts are pretty good, though I would go for a more robust power supply.

Actually, I wouldn't use less than 650 W and would use 750 W if you think you might ever upgrade to SLI.

Lolz. 650 W I might understand if you are a little paranoid, but 750 W is just overkill

tombom · Post by **tombom** » 14 Feb 2007, 12:34

Relative wrote:I still don't get why you are importing from the Americas

Because he is currently in Canada.

BigSteve wrote:(Im buying in North America btw)

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new pc suppliers

new pc suppliers