Building a New PC

[species5478]

So if you were to get a laptop with similar specs, it would be twice as much, wouldn't it? About four grand? And if you have Windows 7, how much did you get it for? And can you remove Vista from a P.C. and replace it with Windows 7? Because I didn't see any O.S. pricing in there...

[Vagrant0]

So if you were to get a laptop with similar specs, it would be twice as much, wouldn't it? About four grand? And if you have Windows 7, how much did you get it for? And can you remove Vista from a P.C. and replace it with Windows 7? Because I didn't see any O.S. pricing in there...

A laptop would not be able to come close to the specs of this rig. With a laptop, you really don't have as many options as far as hardware and cooling goes, so a pre-built retail gaming laptop is about as good as you'll get on that end, and really doesn't work too well all things considered

For $4,344 plus shipping and additional cost for extras...

 

SYSTEM COLOR Space Black – Anodized Aluminum edit

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz (12MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB) edit

OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English edit

WARRANTY AND SERVICE 1 Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis edit

In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis: for issues covered by Limited Hardware Warranty, technician and/or part will be dispatched, if necessary, usually in 1 or 2 business days following Remote Diagnosis. During Remote Diagnosis, you may be asked to access the inside of your system (where safe to do so) or to participate in troubleshooting until a cause can be isolated.

VIDEO CARD Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280M, 2GB – SLI® Enabled edit

LCD PANEL 17-inch WideUXGA 1920x1200 (1200p) edit

MEMORY 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz edit

HARD DRIVE 256GB Solid State Drive edit

INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW) edit

Personalize

ALIENFX COLOR Quasar Blue edit

AVATAR Alienhead 3D edit

PRE-INSTALLED GAMES Steam and Portal™ Factory Installed edit

My Accessories

ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM

BLUETOOTH Internal Wireless Bluetooth® 2.1 with EDR

WIRELESS CARDS Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n Wireless with MIMO Technology

Adobe Software Adobe Acrobat Reader

TIME ZONE (GMT - 6.00) Central Time (US & Canada)

WINDOWS STYLE Windows Style, Default

AUTOMATIC UPDATES Automatic Updates ON

POWER PLAN Power Plan, High Performance

RSS FEEDS Alienware RSS Feed

Standard Nameplate Trigger Standard Nameplate (Alienware M17x)

 

Although, on the surface it might look good, being limited to a single solidstate drive would essentially prevent you from shifting around windows temp files and pagefile, limiting the life of the drive. The system itself would also probably spontaneously combust if you tried to run anything intensive on it without some extra cooling systems. And for all that, you end up with pre-installed crap.

 

 

Windows 7 professional cost me about $140 from newegg, but I installed it on a fresh system and was able to use the reduced price of the OEM version since it was purchased with system components. The upgrade from vista costs about that (installs ontop of vista, and needs to be installed after installing vista first if you ever need to reformat), and the retail full version costs about double. http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.as...erating-Systems

 

I would imagine that it wasn't mentioned because either he already owns a copy, plans to continue using XP (64 bit), plans on using Unbutu or other linux, or assumes that this part of the order is pretty much a given and doesn't need to be mentioned. But can only guess. For all we know, his system might simply be too good to need an OS.

[LHammonds]

So if you were to get a laptop with similar specs, it would be twice as much, wouldn't it? About four grand?

As Vagrant0 has said, you are not going to find an equivalent Laptop to this PC. If there was such a thing, I'd love to have the portability. The problem with laptops is that they cannot really be upgraded / expanded like a PC and everything is quite a bit more expensive. I much rather enjoy being able to upgrade the PC as needed rather than buying a whole new rig. I'm also not very "portable" and do not travel with my PC. I do have a laptop (provided by work) which allows me to use VPN and work remotely and such but it is not a "gaming" rig by any stretch of the imagination.

 

And if you have Windows 7, how much did you get it for?

$0.00. I did not have to pay for it. My boss bought a copy for me so we can get familiar with it (going to roll it out at work next year probably). Since I did not have to pay for it, that is why it was not listed here in my research and pricing. My father-in-law also bought 3 pieces of this system for me which was not listed...a UPS, LG BluRay writer and a 1000-watt power supply.

 

And can you remove Vista from a P.C. and replace it with Windows 7? Because I didn't see any O.S. pricing in there...

You can remove any OS from your PC...the question is, can your PC run whatever OS you plan to install. If you have a PC running Vista, you probably won't have any issues running Windows 7...and more-than-likely will run a LOT better with less problems. I have never recommended to anyone to do an in-place upgrade of a Windows OS with a newer Windows OS.

 

I have not handled an "upgrade" version of Win7 but with prior versions of Windows, you do not HAVE TO have the old OS previously installed to use an "upgrade" edition of the OS. When installing an upgrade version on a new/empty hard drive, it typically asked for the prior OS's CD Key on top of the CD Key that came with the upgrade. I would imagine the Win7 upgrade package is the same way. Just make sure you keep your Vista CD Key with your Win7 upgrade package. I typically wrote the key on a sticky note and attached it to the inside of the CD jewel case to keep it all together in case I trashed the old OS.

EDIT: Vagrant0, just for clarification, the WinXP that I'd be using is 32-bit. The reason for having WinXP in the first place is to run whatever that does not work in Win7. The 64-bit version of WinXP would only complicate matters and whatever I have for WinXP will be OK with the 3GB limit since everything I had before ran on a 1GB system. ;)

 

I will update my 1st post with my current design goals such as not wanting to dual-boot to WinXP but instead see if a Virtual PC version of WinXP will be sufficient. Also, since I am making use of my existing hard drives, my drive layout will change a bit (and no RAID usage either)

 

LHammonds

[LHammonds]

The assembly process has started.

 

The PSU my father-in-law purchased for me did not quite have enough watts that I calculated as necessary for a dual-video setup so I went to BestBuy and purchased the Corsair TX850. While I was there, I thought I should also pick up a new game: Arma ][ ... and since I did not purchase any speakers, I thought I should pick up a comfortable headset while I was there if they had one. I got something called the Razer Carcharias. Sadly, I must admit that I chose the headset purely based off seeing the very comfortable-looking foam at the top where it rests on your head. :whistling:

 

Here's to hoping I don't screw anything up and fry this computer too!

 

http://images.zaazu.com/img/cheers-anim-cheers-champagne-wine-smiley-emoticon-000272-medium.gif

 

EDIT: Everything went well! Yippie!!!

 

Without even going into the BIOS, the PC booted the hard drive that already had Windows 7 (32-bit) already installed.

 

Once it came up, it had to re-adjust all the hardware and re-activate.

 

Without any drivers installed, I was curious to see what the performance level looked like so I ran the rating tool that comes with Windows 7. Here are the initial numbers with the PC that just booted up on a scale from 1.0 to 7.9:

 

Processor: 7.5

Memory: 7.7

Graphics: 1.0

Gaming Graphics: 1.0

Hard Drive: 5.4

 

I then installed the Video card drivers that were on the CD and the motherboard drivers that was on its CD, rebooted and ran the rating test again to get these results:

 

Processor: 7.5

Memory: 7.7

Graphics: 7.8

Gaming Graphics: 7.8

Hard Drive: 5.4

 

It doesn't look like overclocking the video card will improve "these" numbers but I do plan to push the CPU and will re-evaluate what it cranks out in this test again later.

 

As for the hard drive, that is to be expected from an old 40 GB SATA (1.0?) drive which had been laying around for some time. I will just have to deal with slow drives in this system until I can get my hands on an SSD drive that utilizes the SATA 3.0 spec which will shatter the speed / bandwidth of any mechanical drive out there...which is why I did not go for purchasing any mechanical drive right now and waiting for the new SSD to come out next year.

 

LHammonds

[Thor.]

Agian nice setup you have, i always buy more wattage then i need. I have a 1000 msi sli ready psu, and i haven't had to change it or replace it because it didn't meet the system requirements. Its always better to get more then you need, especially for that time when you want to add that led light or overclock your system.

[LHammonds]

Oversight

 

Well just great. I was playing Arma ][ last night (straight through new years for about 5 hours straight) but found that I really have to use a joystick to control the aircraft. But all of my joysticks require joystick ports. Seems I am in need of an upgraded joystick unfortunately. Time to let go of my favorite Sidewinder Forcefeedback, the original Sidewinder and the ancient Thrustmaster + Weapons Control System. Good bye fellas, you served me well.

 

Noise Level

 

Even though I have 7 fans running, it is extremely quiet...especially compared to my last PC. I am very pleased so far!!!

 

I initially used a 40 GB drive with Win7 (32-bit) already installed. So now I will be dropping that drive in favor of one of my newer and larger drives to install Win7 64-bit OS. TTFN!

 

LHammonds

[Pronam]

Could you drop a pic of the case? 7 fans!? How did you get those in ;D.

Have fun with your new system, it's time for you to put the sliders up to max!

[Thor.]

Even though I have 7 fans running, it is extremely quiet...especially compared to my last PC. I am very pleased so far!!!

 

I initially used a 40 GB drive with Win7 (32-bit) already installed. So now I will be dropping that drive in favor of one of my newer and larger drives to install Win7 64-bit OS. TTFN!

 

LHammonds

 

That's good to know, I've already unpacked the case and ready to take my motherboard out and everything. Quite is always good, if only my hard drives where the same, man they are noisy, except my ssd of course :thumbsup:

[LHammonds]

Could you drop a pic of the case? 7 fans!? How did you get those in ;D.

Have fun with your new system, it's time for you to put the sliders up to max!

Technically, there are 9 fans running. 7 fans on the case (room for 3 more), one on the power supply and one on the video card. ;)

 

I took a few shots while building it but I am not finished yet so there is no "finished" pic just yet.

 

This is just a visual test of how much room the video card has after being placed in the case. As a note, I moved the mount for the hard drive case fan you can see sticking out at the bottom-left side to the slot aligned with the video card. I then installed a fan in that position to help push the air directly into the intake of the video card. ;)

 

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/Conan_Lon/NewPC/IMG_3209.jpg

 

This is just after I got the CPU water cooler installed. The water radiator requires the air to be pulled in from outside the case which meant I had to reverse the direction of the two back fans to blow inward and the 3 fans at the front to blow outward. The oddball of the bunch is the HD fan that I have sitting behind the videocard which is blowing air towards the back and directly into the video card.

 

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/Conan_Lon/NewPC/IMG_3218.jpg

 

The PC has been running for several hours (not gaming) and EasyTune is reporting that the CPU temp is 91 degrees Fahrenheit. ATI Overdrive says the temp on the GPU is 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing is overclocked yet.

 

LHammonds

[Thor.]

WOW that's a tight fit, imagine a 295 in there, hmm, now that's a close one.

 

with my 9800gtx's they probably would just fit to, they are huge cards, barely had room in my med size case. In fact cables got in the way, man that was a challenge.

 

One thing about the Phenoms they run very well on stock fans, i haven't had a bsod yet. Fantastic Processors they are :thumbsup: . Easily overclocks to 3.50ghz without a problem, even 4ghz if you know what your doing.