Im out

[Saxman]

Duuuuude, you're getting an inferior product and support.

Don't get me started on Dell's and their generic off-the-shelf ancient who knows WHAT the hell it is 'cause WinXP sure as hell don't garbage parts.

[OOZ662]

Yeah, I remember building this beaut next to me.

-Set the HD on top of the floppy drive (don't ask, very long story) to find out that little black chip gets hot. Stink when they burn too.
-Burnt the new power supply, the one in my neighbor's computer that I was fixing up, and the one in my old computer in four days.
-Had my WinXP CD blow into a gagillion pieces inside my good DVD-ROM drive.
-RMA'ed my nVidia 6800 early in the build because I was too retarded to notice the power connector on the end of it.
-Ended up deciding that my CPU fan was too small and getting a new one, which I dented the crap out of, but still seems to work better.
-The damn expansion bay slots on the case aren't lined up with the connectors on the MB. If you jiggle the monitor or speaker cables the computer shuts off.
-Almost wet myself on Monday when it just died when I had my feet up on it (It sits on the floor to my right). Turns out if you jiggle the power cable, it goes out too.
-Almost cracked the MB because the freakin' CPU fan clips take three musclemen and the grace of God to clip down.
-Had a power cable grounding itself to the CD drive bay. That was brilliant.
-Ate another HD when something sparked and mauled it. This decimated the original MB too, which I replaced with a much better one.

All but the one on Monday happened before WinXP was even installed. All for 60-120 FR, no studders, all the candy, and blue lights. Lots of blue lights. At least the CPU is cool; has a PSU and 80mm rear fan blowing across the copper heatsink (80mm blows in, PSU fan pulls up off the top and cools the PSU) plus the standard 40mm fan on the heatsink. I can forget to adjust the CPU fan to max when running AH without issues.

Well, there ya go, you got me ranting. Moral: Read stuff before you break things and almost kill yourself. Even after all this, I still saved $$$ for the performance this thing dishes.

[Ghosth]

If your going to do it yourself there is no excuse not to read everything imaginable before you ever order it.

Know what motherboards work best with what cards.

Know what problems you can expect from what chipsets.
The better job you do of researching before you buy, the easier it is after.

When it comes, sit down and read the motherboard manual from front to back.
If you have questions, read it again.

Seriously, on a good motherboard, its all there in the manual.
You just need to edumacate yourself till you understand it.


Next, just because the cheapest possible WD POS hardrive in a dell fails after 8 months. Doesn't mean their better drives will. If your buying parts for a gaming machine accept that your going to work the crud out of it.

Don't buy the cheapest, buy the best quality you can afford.

Buy from a recognised good outfit, Mwave, Newegg, (I'd be carefull of tiger direct)

It may cost you a bit more up front, but if you DO have to replace something, it will pay for itself quickly.


For the new builder you can't beat bundles.

You pick the motherboard, CPU, ram, they put it all together. (and in some cases will test it for a minor fee) They won't let you put together a system that is incompatable.

You take out out of the box, into a good case and you know your going to have something that will work.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

The cheap barebones bundle I built my Mom from a package I bought from TigerDirect will run AH II better than most Dell or Compaq computers I've seen.

About 90% of what Dell and Compaq use is PROPRIETARY. Sure, maybe Seagate or Maxtor makes that HD, but they make it to Dell or Compaq specs. Yeah, Sony might make their CD/DVD/floppy, but not to Sony spec.
The memory is cheaper grade, so is the video card, and damned near everything else. Not only that, but aftermarket parts WON'T WORK half the time, meaning you pay DOUBLE for out of warranty replacements, and you CAN'T UPGRADE, at least enough to make it wortwhile. You can't even upgrade the software half the time. In 6 months, it's THREE YEARS behind the times. Not to mention their modems suck 90% of the time, and a good modem is critical to AH.

Pick up a couple of books on building PC's, there are several on the market. Keep your old clunker up and running until you get the new one rock solid. The old one will take you to any number of BBS's where you can get free help from people who help because they WANT TO. Buy from a reputable company, I use NewEgg, ExcaliberPC, Monarch, and sometimes TigerDirect. Do some research, and know what to buy.

[reeb]

Building you own puter is the only way to go...mine is going on 4 years old and only had minor upgrades since then..vid card..memory and it still runs like its new and plays AH with no problem...heck i can run 2 everquest accounts on it at the same time useing wineq 2 uses up a gig of memory but it still does it with no lag or problems =)
The only problem ive ever had with it was due to my own stupidity lol was at my friends house playin and we were drunk and i started deleteing things to you know.....make it faster!....after 30mins of drunken deletion it stoped workin and ended up haveing to write 0's to the harddrive...learned to not do critical things when ive been drinkin:O

[BigGun]

Originally posted by Morpheus
best way to go is build your own.

Only if you like to tinker with that sort of thing in free time. Spare time for me if valuable & have no desire to build something like a computer. who knows, maybe next time around might get the itch, but not now. I would rather pay up for nice box & not worry.

[betty]

i just bought my gateway 825gm from bestbuy back in march, my hard drive took a crap on me a couple months after i got it, thank god for that warrenty i bought for that extra 500.00...hehe

they wanted to send my tower to ohio cuz i had a 250 gb hard drive, then they told me it would b 4 to 6 weeks without my puter....SCREW THAT IF I WILL GO THAT LONG WITHOUT PLAYIN AH....so they then told me that they had a 200 gb hard drive that they could put in and that i could have it back in an hour. well now, i'm the proud happy owner of a 200 gb hard drive...all that matters is that i'm back in that game......wooooot woooooot...

~betty~

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by BigGun
Only if you like to tinker with that sort of thing in free time. Spare time for me if valuable & have no desire to build something like a computer. who knows, maybe next time around might get the itch, but not now. I would rather pay up for nice box & not worry.

Building your own system is far from difficult today. Everything is basicly plub and play. The scariest thing is slapping your cpu on the mobo, and most places you buy a mother board from will do it for you, test it and warrantee it.

The hardest part is figuring out what you want to get. Which isnt that hard because that is dictated by how much you want to spend. Places like Newegg have speicals running all the time. Northgate was another place, but they're gone now.

I know it can seen overwhelmingly difficult to put your own computer together. But once you sit down and start looking at the parts, and at what's needed to put one together its really not hard at all.

I built my first system in an hour. The UPS man came with all the parts at 11am. By noon I had the thing together and plugged in, and by 2:30pm or so I was on line playing AH. That was... Installing the cpu, slapping heat sink on, putting in psu, hard drives, vid car, memory, plugs, wires ect... Everything plugs in where it is saposed to or it wont plug in at all. If you do manage to plug something in to the wrong place, it just wont boot. So you go back and look at what you did or didnt do.

I urge everyone I know to build their own. I hate the comptuer companys like dell. I loathe dell. When I see one I want to break it just because.

[BigGun]

Keep talkin like that & you just might give me the itch. One point I bought comp from compaq, thing was buggy as hell, always a pain. Last computer bought was alienware, and have never had one problem with it in over 3 years. Did cost a little bit, but actually wasn't that bad.  Bought one of the un-used demo machines at best buy when they were bringing in new batch of demos. Total cost with nice nec monitor was about $1500.  Still runs good. Some point sure i will be looking something new. Who knows, might just give your build own theory a try.

[midnight Target]

I have had great luck with e-machines.  Owned 3 starting with a 500mh P3, and none of them ever had a problem... ever. Two are still in use at the house, the other one is in my garage. Collecting dust, but still working.

[Ghosth]

ROFLMAO

E Machines

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by wetrat
Put your own PC together... it isn't hard, and you get a better machine for the same price or less.

Absolutely.

Built my wife a medium end machine last year for Xmas and she and my daughter havent had a bit of problems with it they didnt create themselves
(having 75 processes running and a toolbar full of icons  WILL slow things down)

She can play with her pictures, my daughter can play all her games and I get to keep my machine all to myself

Anyway at the time I built what I would have paid about $1000+ for had I gotten a Dell or other "Name brand" for like $650 including the operating system.

[Lan784]

ok i dont have the money to do that also i really do not care to do so either. All i care about is haveing a computer at this point. I have to use a old computer (Windows 95) to post here, my other computer was a
8400 demision desktop home edition XP, 80Gb hard drive

[Hoarach]

Ive heard many horrors of dell brand pcs.  I know someone that bough a brand new dell laptop and it literally blew up the next week.  Also had a neighbor that bought a brand new dell and the motherboard fried the next week.