Do not buy a dell

So many of you know about the computer problems I've been suffering. I finally got my laptop back today after sending it in for repair. I say finally because it's been almost a month. Yeah. DHL lost it in transit to my house. But hey, I got my computer back! I go to turn it on... hey... this is interesting... it still won't work. So I call the phone number they gave me. I get bounced from tech support person to tech support person at least six times before they just plain hang up on me. So, I decide to try Chat Support. I finally talk to a guy who is actually talking to me instead of transferring me. After I give him all of my information and we talk for a bit, he tells me that my computer was not repaired. The motherbord for it is no longer available, so basically Dell charged me $465.00 to do absolutely nothing. I got the money refunded to my account, so I'm happy about that. Just, with all the shit I went through about this, I'd strongly push anyone away from purchasing a Dell. People warned me when I did, and I should have listened.

 

 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Build me a computer for around $500.00. List parts, prices, etc. Do it and I will <3 you forever. Or just laugh at me and tell me to quit being lazy. I dunno, I guess I'm hoping someone is bored and will tell me exactly what I need to purchase. It's 530am. I'm going to bed.

 

-Dez

All I can tell you to build your computer is : look for pieces on the Internet, as they are generally at lower prices than those in shops. (I cant help you much since I live in Quebec and the sites I know for pieces are in canadian dollars, and I dont think youd like to pay your pieces in Canadian)

 

500$... you wont be able to get much in your computer dude.depend if you include the screen, kboard, mouse, etc...

I have a Dell, which I upgraded over the last few years. Yah, tech support? Not a good idea with those guys. Offshoring lead to #1 to craptacular tech support.

Tech support is like a medic. They're only there to make you feel better before you die.

Tech support in general is a crap service!

 

Most of the tech support is outsourced to asia so not much to say there.

 

I recently got myself a dell laptop and the laptop itself is awesome... i had a few problems with logistics (delivered a day late) and using dell support the person who attended to me tracked down my laptop to the very guy who was supposed to deliver... he called me and apologised for the delay and she called back the very next day to double-check if it had been delivered.

 

Sofar i've had a positive experience from dell singapore who handle the tech support in south-east asia... however, my friends and i hv found the logistics firm who dell contracted to be unreliable.

 

Kinda sucks about your situation tho dez... and its the whole automated system and sectioning up departments to the extent that nobody knows what the other guy is up to... so its a pain to really get something done.

 

You're back tho.. thats all that counts =)

My laptop and my Computer are both HP's. They are not the fastest things in the world and they are not the coolest looking things in the world. But they are IMO the most efficient and with minor boosts you can make them just far enough behind cutting edge and do so without spending a arm and a leg.

 

Both my laptop and computer are running a gig of ram. The computer with a custom graphics card and that is all I had to add to these two computers to maintain. Not the best in the gaming world but I still kill and heal with the best of them.

whoa sucks about your perdicament(spelling ftw?). but i have always bought dells and havent had any problems.

Hmm. I've still got a gig of ram, a 100 gb hard drive, cd/dvd burner, a bunch of pieces of this computer that are in perfect working condition. Maybe I should order a barebones laptop and play mix and match =)

Not sure if this is the best system out there but it's in your price range. What caught my eye is the listed items on the motherboard. Looks like a pretty good board for upgrading which the system would need when you got the cash. Sata, PCI-Express < In my opinion your next upgrade would be a Pciexpress card. Also plenty of slots for ram which would be the second upgrade I would do. I have no idea how this machine would run WOW, onboard video , not so sure about it! Anyways yeah my dell broke a few weeks back as well, 6800gt went 2 months after the 1 yr warr. Running a ATi 8600 I think it is now. Well here's the link , hope to see ya back soon.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16883102653

I have Dell. It make noise, a lot of noise. I probably wouldnt have got 1 but they gave me a free flat panal monitor, which was around $1000 retail i think.

Not sure if this is the best system out there but it's in your price range. What caught my eye is the listed items on the motherboard. Looks like a pretty good board for upgrading which the system would need when you got the cash. Sata, PCI-Express < In my opinion your next upgrade would be a Pciexpress card. Also plenty of slots for ram which would be the second upgrade I would do.  I have no idea how this machine would run WOW, onboard video , not so sure about it! Anyways yeah my dell broke a few weeks back as well, 6800gt went 2 months after the 1 yr warr.  Running a ATi 8600 I think it is now.    Well here's the link , hope to see ya back soon.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16883102653

Thats perfect for gamers. Athlon computers are made for gaming. ATI onboard graphic... it sucks at first, cause you need alot of RAM to use it (it shares its memory with your RAM) so ud better get a new video card fast. 512MB Ram, thats not much but good for starting. just buy 512more or 1Gb if you have the cash.

 

Only 2 PCI slots and the video slot, beware of this if you need extra slots.

 

Except for this this comp should be nice but Im not some expert guy, I only took a fast look.

I own two dells, they work fine, tech support was actually really good to me when my desktop arrived with bad memory. They sent out a guy to install a brand new mobo and ram for me, no charge. I guess you weren't so lucky >.<

I have a dell laptop and have contacted customer service 3 times since.... first time was to ask about getting a copy of the driver disk. After 30mins of repeating questions being asked of me I finally got it thru their head I needed a driver disk. Second time was to see if it was possible to restore the "Hidden" partition dell puts on their computers so that restoring would be easier next time. after 15 mins of the same questions I gave up and ended the call. Final time was to ask about upgrading the memory in the laptop to which effect I was told I would have to send the laptop to dell to have more memory added...... I propmtly told this guy this was the last dell I will buy cuz their support sux. Anyone that has had laptops b4 knows you can buy the chip and install it with the removal of one simple screw. I have dealt with gateway, compaq, packardbell and Dell support b4 and dell by far is the worst. Best was gateway, but keep in mind dell and compaq was thru a biz account so support tends to be a bit more friendly....

 

All I can say for sure is whatever you go with if it is a pre-man computer make SURE it is upgradeable with parts that are not specific to that company. E-machines is one that comes to mind of having Proprietary parts.

Alienware are custom-built computers, nobody should have problems with them ^^'

 

wooh its a chance I didnt bought my Dell computers this summer

steal gryphs, say gg, enjoy your ubercomputer.

Alienware are overpriced...

 

 

new egg is the best....

 

 

1 Foxconn NF4K8AB-RS Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

$63.00

1 RAIDMAX Astro ATX-268WSP Silver 0.7mm Japanese SECC Gaming Tower Computer Case - Retail

$30.00

LITE-ON Beige IDE CD-ROM Drive Model LTN-527T - Retail

$13.99

VIKING 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Retail

$36.50

COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RS-430-PMSR/P ATX12V Max: 400W, Peak: 430W Power Supply - Retail

$33.95

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ ClawHammer 800MHz FSB Socket 754 Processor Model ADA2800BOX - Retail

$113.00

ASUS EN6600/TD/128 Geforce 6600 128MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

$102.00

 

total is $392 with shipping its $437...

 

and with a monitor

 

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1099396080763

 

its about $540 for a 64 bit computer with 512 ram and a 6600...for the money its okay

Awesome guys, I'm definitely going to look over this stuff. I think I'm just going to wait a few weeks and make some money so I don't have to upgrade later. Feel free to post more ideas.

Alienware are overpriced...

 

 

new egg is the best....

 

 

1 Foxconn NF4K8AB-RS Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

$63.00      

1 RAIDMAX Astro ATX-268WSP Silver 0.7mm Japanese SECC Gaming Tower Computer Case - Retail

$30.00

LITE-ON Beige IDE CD-ROM Drive Model LTN-527T - Retail

$13.99      

VIKING 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Retail

$36.50

COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RS-430-PMSR/P ATX12V Max: 400W, Peak: 430W Power Supply - Retail

$33.95

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ ClawHammer 800MHz FSB Socket 754 Processor Model ADA2800BOX - Retail

$113.00

ASUS EN6600/TD/128 Geforce 6600 128MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

$102.00      

 

total is $392 with shipping its $437...

 

and with a monitor  

 

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1099396080763

 

its about $540 for a 64 bit computer with 512 ram and a 6600...for the money its okay

64 bit cumputer.. you need Windows XP 64bit to use all of its possibilities actually.

 

CD-Rom drive? pff. buy a LG DVD burner and you're in. I bought mine for like 50$ CAN, so should be like 35$ US.

 

Athlon 64 2800+... thats kind of slow. its not even 2GHz (if I remember). Id recomend you to go for a 3200+ or higher.

 

ASUS 6600TD... definitively not. If you are to go with a Nvidia card, get a 6600GT, or buy a ATI x800 GTO and mod it to a x850XT for more power.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overcl...ing/vidcard/127

Since these 2 cards (x800GTO and x850XT) uses the same chip and card (if I remember) you can mod your chip and overclock it so it will be just like a x850 XT card

 

Here are the benchmarks for the x800GTO base, modded (16 pipelines) and overclocked to a x850XT

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overcl...g/vidcard/127/3

 

 

Hope it'll help you!

Dude... why did you buy a dell ??

Not that this matters to much , but I was wrong with what I posted for my replacement video card. It's not an 8600 it's an ATI XL-800 which is running games very well. I didn't run any FPS tests but it seems to be running well.

Alienware are overpriced...

 

 

new egg is the best....

 

 

1 Foxconn NF4K8AB-RS Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

$63.00      

1 RAIDMAX Astro ATX-268WSP Silver 0.7mm Japanese SECC Gaming Tower Computer Case - Retail

$30.00

LITE-ON Beige IDE CD-ROM Drive Model LTN-527T - Retail

$13.99      

VIKING 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Retail

$36.50

COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power RS-430-PMSR/P ATX12V Max: 400W, Peak: 430W Power Supply - Retail

$33.95

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ ClawHammer 800MHz FSB Socket 754 Processor Model ADA2800BOX - Retail

$113.00

ASUS EN6600/TD/128 Geforce 6600 128MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

$102.00      

 

total is $392 with shipping its $437...

 

and with a monitor  

 

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1099396080763

 

its about $540 for a 64 bit computer with 512 ram and a 6600...for the money its okay

64 bit cumputer.. you need Windows XP 64bit to use all of its possibilities actually.

 

CD-Rom drive? pff. buy a LG DVD burner and you're in. I bought mine for like 50$ CAN, so should be like 35$ US.

 

Athlon 64 2800+... thats kind of slow. its not even 2GHz (if I remember). Id recomend you to go for a 3200+ or higher.

 

ASUS 6600TD... definitively not. If you are to go with a Nvidia card, get a 6600GT, or buy a ATI x800 GTO and mod it to a x850XT for more power.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overcl...ing/vidcard/127

Since these 2 cards (x800GTO and x850XT) uses the same chip and card (if I remember) you can mod your chip and overclock it so it will be just like a x850 XT card

 

Here are the benchmarks for the x800GTO base, modded (16 pipelines) and overclocked to a x850XT

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overcl...g/vidcard/127/3

 

 

Hope it'll help you!

 

im just specifying for the budget of 500 dollars. The card is like a hundred and the cd drive is 14 dollars. You can probobly pirate 64 bit windows, don't really know. And then theres the monitor. If it was 700 dollars you could spec for a nice build like that but for 500 and a complete PC you won't get a lot.

I totally understand this

 

but if you buy this come then you want to upgrade it, youll notice you boughta 100$ card for mostly nothing and a cd drive that will be mostly useless later since everything is coming on DVD...

 

between a 500$ comp that I will upgrade later and having useless pieces and a 1000$ comp that I wont upgrade for a while, Id choose the 1000$ comp...

Chances are I'm going to wait a little bit, I just started my job again so I'll have some money in the bank soon. $500 is what I got refunded from Dell, so that's my currnet budget, but I'll probablly wait until I've got 1000-1500 before I make a purchase.

Yeah I know, I myself have saved up some money for a while and in about a month will go dual core amd with a 7800 GT. It's not the best setup but for about 900 dollars it's workable.

my PC.... no monitor.

 

AMD 64 3700+ = 250.00 (235)

Nforce 4 PCI-Ex Mobo + Aspire case w/ Temp + 4.1 Speakers = 175.00 (65+73+27)-20(coupon)

Aspire 520W. Power supply + DvD - ROM + 1GBRAM = 172.00 (56+24+86) - 10(coupon)

X850 XT 256 MB Video Card – 215.00 (199.99) this was a hard to find deal.

 

 

Parts = 766

Shipping = 76 – 30$ discounts….

 

Total = 812.00 after everything. Add 2 hrs to put it all together…

 

 

so yea 812$ for the monster PC i have is nothing. by the way the X850 XT is prolly one of the best cards untill the new 1800s and soo forth come out.

 

 

 

Nomad.