The Alienware Difference?

[csuzw]

I'm persuaded - I'm going to build the beast. Mixing & matching from overclockers and ebuyer atm.

Thanks for all the advice.

[demon9k]

Woo!

Oh best tell you, you probably won't find an x800 XT around for a while although if you do stumble across some give me a PM

Hopefully they will be out soon but I can't seem to find them any place.

[csuzw]

According to EBuyer the HIS Excalibur X800 XT IceQ II is available in 5 days. I've seen a very good review of it but I'm not sure I trust ebuyer on the timescale.

Thats another good reason to go Alienware - at the moment they are the only people supplying X800 XTs. I could have a PC from them in 10 days!

Also I'm having trouble knowing what PSU to get that will have enough SATA power connectors (may need 5 (DVD drive is SATA too!)) but have only seen ones that say they have 2. The Antec site doesn't seem to say what connectors it has.

Also motherboards are another issue. I'd like the Asus A8V but their site is down and I can't tell how many SATA devices can be connected. The other boards I've looked at have anything between 2 and 8.

[replicant]

do not buy alienware. they offer nothing better than quality off the shelf components. over priced, over hyped. a waste of time, cash, and energy ordering one of them up.

Also Alienware DO not have XT components. They did the same when they didnt have 6800u components. There is a get out cause covering them for delay in there t&c.

Oh,and u'll never get the HIS XT. Limited to 2000 units aint they. Still no proper ETA for them either.

[demon9k]

According to EBuyer the HIS Excalibur X800 XT IceQ II is available in 5 days. I've seen a very good review of it but I'm not sure I trust ebuyer on the timescale.

I have that exact product on order, only been 2 working days since I ordered it. Hopefully it will come on wednesday but I doubt it.

Also I'm having trouble knowing what PSU to get that will have enough SATA power connectors (may need 5 (DVD drive is SATA too!)) but have only seen ones that say they have 2. The Antec site doesn't seem to say what connectors it has.

My hard drives have both normal and SATA power connectors plus you can buy convertors, very simple.

[Mr Ono]

Don't get a CRT, they'll burn cancer into your eyeballs and grow tumours in your brain.

Get I nice clean LCD instead. Prefereably a really really really really expensive one that gives off minimal radiation, toxic lead emissions, dry air and brain destroying electro magnetic fields.

http://www.eizo.com/

If you can afford a wallet busting TFT than go for it, but, and this is a big but, any TFT 19inch or below will be restricted to a max resolution of 1280x1024.

Now what's the ****ing point of buying a **** hot PC with a **** hot GPU that can run everything at 8484484884 x 45645464546 when your TFT can't handle it?

My budget allowed for a 19 inch TFT but I chose to go for a 21 inch CRT instead and still had money left over.

[csuzw]

I eventually scaled back on what I wanted after shopping around quite a bit.

Going for AMD 3500+ Socket 939 with Zalman HSF, Asus A8V WiFi MB, 1GB Corsair XMS PC3200 memory, 2x200GB drives (for RAID 0) - I may add another drive or 2 later. NVidia 6800 GT 256mb with Arctic Rev 4 VGA silencer. Plextor 12x DVD +/- RW. All in a black coolermaster wave master case.

Got everything from Overclockers in the end - ebuyer/Komplett would have saved me a couple of quid but not much. The RAM was the only thing ebuyer was quite a bit better on but I don't trust them at all so I went all Overclockers just for a bit more peace of mind

Should be able to OC it a bit now as well.

[Super Stu]

Now what's the ****ing point of buying a **** hot PC with a **** hot GPU that can run everything at 8484484884 x 45645464546 when your TFT can't handle it?

Because it'll only run things at that res for a wee while. When games catch up, you'll be back down to 1024 before you can say "my pc is ghey".

[fifty?ballz]

Because it'll only run things at that res for a wee while. When games catch up, you'll be back down to 1024 before you can say "my pc is ghey".

Additionally games are designed for the commonest resolutions i.e 1024 x768
upto 1280 x 1024. You'll know what I mean if you've ever had to distinguish
the your rare item icons in Lineage 2 or any other MMORPG at 2048 x 1500 resolution , I tell u it's not easy no matter how big the screen, those tiny
32x32 pixel icons tend to just get smaller and smaller until they end up looking
like single pixels themselves.

Bear in mind that TV & DVD movies look pretty ok, even when running on
the sharpest computer monitor they look great, so maybe the argument
for higher resolutions isn't that important as games having life like high
res texture mapping instead.

[Mr Ono]

That still doesn't justify the cost and the, whether you use it or not, ability to ramp up the resolution.

It all depends on your desk space of course

[demon9k]

I eventually scaled back on what I wanted after shopping around quite a bit.

Going for AMD 3500+ Socket 939 with Zalman HSF, Asus A8V WiFi MB, 1GB Corsair XMS PC3200 memory, 2x200GB drives (for RAID 0) - I may add another drive or 2 later. NVidia 6800 GT 256mb with Arctic Rev 4 VGA silencer. Plextor 12x DVD +/- RW. All in a black coolermaster wave master case.

Got everything from Overclockers in the end - ebuyer/Komplett would have saved me a couple of quid but not much. The RAM was the only thing ebuyer was quite a bit better on but I don't trust them at all so I went all Overclockers just for a bit more peace of mind

Should be able to OC it a bit now as well.

Sounds good, that must have been a lot cheaper than first expected then.

[NeilMcRae]

I wouldn't buy an eizo for games - they are business screens with really laggy response times.

[csuzw]

Yes a bit! Less than ?1500. I've just asked Overclockers to change the case from the Wave Master to an Antec 160 - they're cheaper and much cooler solutions and take 120mm fans rather than 80s.