Building new system... need opinion

[Harrison]

There was a small point in time this year that I had put together and fixed problems with approximately 5 DIFFERENT computers (some multiple times, fixed, case change, MB swap etc). In a week. I didnt want to look at a computer for days.

[kaharthemad]

ok not to rip on anyones choices here but I think I am more than qualified to weigh in on this topic. I have seen first hand the issues with Dell and thier tech support. Quite often the first comment we get from the warranty site when my company(computer build and repair shop in Ohio) calls in a RMA is "it is a power surge, Sorry we dont warranty that". does not matter what the problem is. They have pulled this mantra for everything from a powersupply failure(substandrad being a 275 watt in most systems) to a jump out error on a stick of RAM.

This company was at one time a great company but thier intergration of system components and their belief that cheaper is better is what is dropping them to thier knees in the computer area.

A few other problems we have run into. Dell supports 75 percent of the computers on the OARDC (Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center) campus nearby with a center of nearly 500 pc this leaves alot of ability to look at quality issues. Out of those systems the breakage and warranty repair is about 10 to 12 percent at any given time. Yes these figures are accurate since our company has dealings with OARDC as secondary backup support for their techs. Their servers are still DELL due to the fact they outsource those to another company but most of the techs on campus still have to do most of the repairs.

DELL's are being phased out their due to lack of knowledge with the techs they send out. Breakage is high, Tech support is a laughable joke, and quality is just not their like it used to. DELL is rapidly becoming HP/COMPAQ/GATEWAY.

Parts are another problem, seems alot of the parts they use that come standard with a 1 to 3 year warranty(Hard Drives, Prrocessors, Ram) can only be serviced by dell. Checking into this the common WD hard drives they use are factory refurbs from WD. They refurb them and then pick up the warranty for 1 year as part of thier service agreement. If I buy a new system I want all the pieces to be NEW.

Example of tech support. Had a system about 5 months ago we had to call thier tech support out on. Seems you just cant send a Western Digital Hard drive back to WD to have it fixed when it comes out of a Dell. The tech came out promptly (1week later). He proceeds to take out his screw driver and his little bag with his floppy's in it. Since the drive is already removed all he needed to do is insert the new hard drive, FDISK it, and check for errors, He puts the drive in first BACKWARDS, finally getting that right(10 minutes of looking at a flow chart) he proceeds to insert his diskette. The diskette comes up with a CRC error on it. He sits there stupified on this situation for 5 minutes while me and the other three techs start to get frustrated at him(no tolerance for stupidity) he will not allow us to finish this up. he prompty pulls the hard drive out, says for all to hear "it appears there are more problems with your computer then just the hard drive. I am going to have to escalate this to tier 3.

I know it is hard to train every tech you have but jeez man. This is common A+ cert. Knowledge. We have had to explain why we think a hrad drive is going bad, that ends up in a cluster fornication of epic proportions. I have had smoke pouring out of a hard drive, told the phone support this and their response is "are you sure it is not the cable?".

Pricing is another problem. On the average we can usually outdistance a DELL system for cost 9 times out of 10 when you compare system for system. If you are interested I am willing to post these price breakdowns and parts breakdowns for you should you request it.

Benchmarks are a big thing here. We have stacked up our systems with Dell quite a few times. matching 2400AMD's to theirs, 320064bit AMD's to theirs and each time ours clock out 25 to 50 percent faster.




Sorry for spelling and the such. Hard to type this when I am on my feet

[Diekan]

Everything in this new system IS name brand, and of fairly high quality. Secondly, everything comes with a year warrenty. If you know enough to build and configure your own system - you surely know enough to "troubleshoot" basic problems. Thus, if the vid card goes out - I simply have to remove it, return it and use the warrenty.

I've tried pricing what I ordered against Gateway and Dell, also looked in Tiger Direct and I couldn't find ANYTHING that was remotely comparable for less than 1500.

Vonk makes a valid point with the AMD's being cheaper, but I have heard from more than one source that Pentiums are better for gaming over all. Simply, because the P chips dedicate 60% of their processing to math functions (which is a huge part of gaming) while the AMD's only dedicate 50%. Now, I'm just going by what I heard and don't pretend to be a computer engineer.

This is my new case:

http://www.smksuperstore.com/catalog/vi ... p?ID=11675

All in all I bought an ASUS MB, Seagate HD, ATI vid card, P4 chip, Atlas RAM, Sony CD RW, nice looking case, Sound Blaster card all for less than a 1000 dollars... everything name brand, everything with warrenties and all from the same company.

By not going with Dell or Gateway, or even Compaq I KNOW what I'm getting... I'm also free from paying extra for a huge software package of shit I'll never use, or even want... I don't have to worry about spending 1500+ for a box that has a generic mother board, an on board Vid card, a no name HD... and then have to look at paying an additional 500 to get the name brand stuff... thus end up paying 2000 for the same system.

That's the problem a lot of people face unknowingly. All they see is a computer with a "Pentium 4" and that's as far as they look... they don't realize that having just a name brand CPU and generic everything else is a waste of money.

/shrug that's my opinion on the matter and why I never buy a complete pre-built system.

[Diekan]

New system up and running! Damn it's nice to have a system like this... fast, and stable. Just have to get all the shit installed (DX9 so on).

[Ouchyfish]

Go to hell.



(jk)

[Diekan]

haha

go to http://www.smksuperstore.com they have some pretty good prices and deals.

My *only* semi-complaint with them was that they sent me a different case. Instead of 41 dollar one I ordered, they sent me a free upgrade to a 114 dollar one... made of Alum, which is nice because the case sorta works as a giant heat sink conducting heat from the inside to the outside. When they sent the new case they didn't include a power supply, which pissed me off a little since the old 300 ATX supply I have didn't support the newer MB's - thus I ended up having to go to Best Buy to get a new PS...

Anyway, other than that - it was pretty good service and good prices.