19 replies to this topic

[Riogar Daylighter]

I will be purchasing a new computer in the near future. It's been awhile since I built a pc (when AMD sempron was around) So I'm out of the loop. Back in the day Alienware was awesome and since been bought by Dell. Should I look what they have to offer or just build myself with the help of YouTube ?

[Vulpesveritas]

Stay away from alienware. If you are going to get a prebuilt PC, I recommend you go with Cyberpower, ibuypower, or Puget Systems.
Otherwise, I recommend building your own.
guides that may help you here:
http://mwomercs.com/...hardware-guide/
http://mwomercs.com/...herboard-guide/
http://mwomercs.com/...asic-cpu-guide/
http://mwomercs.com/...eral-gpu-guide/
http://mwomercs.com/...r-supply-guide/
http://mwomercs.com/...endation-guide/

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 21 June 2012 - 01:30 PM.

[silentD11]

add digital storm to that list as well, but yeah build your own.

Also the guides on this website are off and contain some factual errors and leave out major information. Go to hard OCP or xtreme systems, the information there is far more correct than the guides posted here wich really suck.

[Vulpesveritas]

silentD11, on 21 June 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

add digital storm to that list as well, but yeah build your own.

Also the guides on this website are off and contain some factual errors and leave out major information. Go to hard OCP or xtreme systems, the information there is far more correct than the guides posted here wich really suck.

Really? I like to techpowerup for most of the information in my CPU and GPU guides, as well as benchmark information, and the motherboard, PSU and case guides are merely my opinional recommendations at prices. That hardware mythbusters guide isn't off at all to my knowledge either, unless you can find something that is wrong there and back it up with relevant sources.

[WardenWolf]

If you have the time and experience to build your own, that is always going to be the lowest price (in terms of money only). If you don't, then some good companies have been recommended above that can help A good service rep at a company should be able to work with you on the sorts of games you play, your budget, any other needs / preferences you have, and work up a system that will best fit your overall situation.

[Antaumus]

Build your own, It's the only option. This seems to be a good guide.

http://www.tomshardw...clock,3106.html

http://www.tomshardw...eview,3107.html

The actual putting together is rather easy. My wife built her last one all on her own. Was so proud

Edited by Antaumus, 21 June 2012 - 01:56 PM.

[Clay Pigeon]

tinyurl.com/falconguide

[razorkill12]

yes building your own is so much better.If you have never done it, anything you need to know about building your own you can find on youtube. I had to re-build the cyberpower I bought a few years ago, and have since built one from parts. Really easy, and had some fun.

http://valid.canardp....php?id=2232032

[McGruff]

Building your own raelly depends on the budget you have. I you were considering Alienware your budget seem to be pretty good .
Consider a fast Intel i5 processor (you may want to get a overclockable version if you are technically fit). 16GB of RAM are not so expensive but of course 8GB would also be ok. Choose a mainboard with Z68 chipset or better if you can afford. Definately get a SSD as a systemsdisk 128GB would be nice but 64GB would also do the trick in speeding up your system.
GET A DECENT GRAPHICS CARD! This is risky territory as a lot of poeple tend either to Nvidia or AMD(ATI) something like a Radeon 6870 is a good start but of course there are a lot of faster and more expensive cards out there .
If you want to get a good overview with nice comparison charts tomshardwareguide see earlier posting should give you some hints.
Hope this helps and my english is ok.

Best regards

[Riogar Daylighter]

Thank for the advice guys. I think I'll build my own. It's been awhile with having kids and a money wise wife the comp budget dried up lol. Now things are stable I'll stick with an intel pro and a nvidia card. I use to be ati/AMD all the way but intel is showing a lot of promise and the nvidia cards are impressive I bout a 9800 gt a few years ago and it still runs most of the games like Skyrim with moderate to high settings.

[Vulpesveritas]

Riogar Daylighter, on 22 June 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

Thank for the advice guys. I think I'll build my own. It's been awhile with having kids and a money wise wife the comp budget dried up lol. Now things are stable I'll stick with an intel pro and a nvidia card. I use to be ati/AMD all the way but intel is showing a lot of promise and the nvidia cards are impressive I bout a 9800 gt a few years ago and it still runs most of the games like Skyrim with moderate to high settings.

Part of that reason that 9800GT is still going strong is most games out there are still only console ports and current generation consoles are around 6-8 years old now. Things will be changing here soon enough, with the Xbox 720 and PS4 incoming next year / 2014.

(edit : looks like I posted in the wrong thread here. lol)

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 23 June 2012 - 08:24 PM.

[cipher]

silentD11, on 21 June 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

add digital storm to that list as well, but yeah build your own.

Also the guides on this website are off and contain some factual errors and leave out major information. Go to hard OCP or xtreme systems, the information there is far more correct than the guides posted here wich really suck.

I wouldn't say Vulpesveritas' guides on the forums are "off" or contain "factual errors". They're actually pretty good guides. But as anything else, take it with a grain of salt because he loves AMD, so there will be some bias in there. Still, he's done a much better job recently in trying to balance things and make it as neutral as possible. And yes, I agree, there are a ton of great reviews and guides on hardware sites, which is really where new-to-hardware people should go first, then come back here for hardware recommendations specific to MWO.

When we get into recommending brands, it's going to be hard to work off of facts only instead of opinions and past experiences. That can be seen in Vulpesveritas' recommendations of AMD, NZXT, Rosewill, and Kingwin brands which pop up frequently. Same would be true for me with NVIDIA, Lian-Li, Antec, and Seasonic.

Edited by cipher, 22 June 2012 - 09:57 AM.

[cipher]

Riogar Daylighter, on 22 June 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

Thank for the advice guys. I think I'll build my own. It's been awhile with having kids and a money wise wife the comp budget dried up lol. Now things are stable I'll stick with an intel pro and a nvidia card. I use to be ati/AMD all the way but intel is showing a lot of promise and the nvidia cards are impressive I bout a 9800 gt a few years ago and it still runs most of the games like Skyrim with moderate to high settings.

Yup, I'm a fan of Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs for personal reasons as well as past experiences since the early 90s. Markets change, and corporations change with them, so what might be horrible products one year are good products the next. Nothing wrong with AMD, but I personally dislike a lot of their driver releases. The AMD hardware is almost always very good these days for GPUs. For CPUs, I'd also personally avoid AMD.

[NorthernB]

I agree with cipher. Intel makes very stable CPU's. no need to go to i7 unless your folding or into rendering real-time. With video cards I've found NVIDIA to be more stable, as well as quicker driver releases.

[Woopass]

I like Intel because you cannot get better performance. But with that comes a hefty price. I have been using AMD for several years now and had a great experience with it. So I buy AMD due to great performance and good price. I love Nvidia due to better experience than I had when I had an ATI card. I am sure ATI is a lot better now, as I hear good reviews from their cards.

Best way to go if you dont really care about warranties is to build your own PC. Also, Alienware is now owned by Dell. Only difference is the case and maybe quality of parts.

[Dark Fact]

I would only suggest you build a PC yourself if you have tech-y friends IRL who could help you troubleshoot if/when things go wrong. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, like a certain part that arrives defective, or breaks down later, you'll probably get frustrated in trying to figure out what the cause is. It's even more of a pain in the *** when you don't have spare parts from older computers lying around that you could use for testing/isolating the cause of the fault.

I've helped a friend build a system and he was really happy with how it turned out. But a few months later, he started getting crashes in some games. I helped him troubleshoot and it looked like the RAM went bad. So he had to send it in to get serviced under the warranty, which left him without the computer for about a week while the new RAM arrived. The crashes became less frequent, but they were still there, so we isolated the issue to what looked like an AMD 6950 card gone bad. He sent it in, again left without a computer for around a week. The new card didn't seem to crash in games anymore, but a month later his OS stopped booting. We thought it was an Intel SSD gone bad due to not having the latest firmware or some random glitch, so we updated the firmware, did a secure erase to reset it, ran the disk diagnostic scan, only to find that it worked fine because we tested another drive and it had the same issue. So he sent the motherboard for warranty service. If the board comes back and the issue remains, then it's probably a bad power supply and he will have to send that in too.

Granted, this is a pretty bad example, but it's not that uncommon.

That said, if you love digging your way around your computer case like some people love to fix their cars themselves, (or in your case, if you want to get into this sort of thing) then that's a non-issue.

Edited by Dark Fact, 22 June 2012 - 10:48 AM.

[FrozenWaltDisney]

I build my own and I own a Alienware laptop, and never had an issue with it.

Just remember, calling dell will get you big discounts on Alienwares! I got over $500 just for asking!

[Zalikar]

I've always prefered building my own system. I personally think that most Alienware machines are over priced for what you're getting. If you're willing to do a little leg work, you can build almost the same system for much less. Of course, working for a store that deals in computer parts, I can do a custom build even cheaper, but that's beside the point .

[Woopass]

Dark Fact, on 22 June 2012 - 10:37 AM, said:

I would only suggest you build a PC yourself if you have tech-y friends IRL who could help you troubleshoot if/when things go wrong. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, like a certain part that arrives defective, or breaks down later, you'll probably get frustrated in trying to figure out what the cause is. It's even more of a pain in the *** when you don't have spare parts from older computers lying around that you could use for testing/isolating the cause of the fault. I've helped a friend build a system and he was really happy with how it turned out. But a few months later, he started getting crashes in some games. I helped him troubleshoot and it looked like the RAM went bad. So he had to send it in to get serviced under the warranty, which left him without the computer for about a week while the new RAM arrived. The crashes became less frequent, but they were still there, so we isolated the issue to what looked like an AMD 6950 card gone bad. He sent it in, again left without a computer for around a week. The new card didn't seem to crash in games anymore, but a month later his OS stopped booting. We thought it was an Intel SSD gone bad due to not having the latest firmware or some random glitch, so we updated the firmware, did a secure erase to reset it, ran the disk diagnostic scan, only to find that it worked fine because we tested another drive and it had the same issue. So he sent the motherboard for warranty service. If the board comes back and the issue remains, then it's probably a bad power supply and he will have to send that in too. Granted, this is a pretty bad example, but it's not that uncommon. That said, if you love digging your way around your computer case like some people love to fix their cars themselves, (or in your case, if you want to get into this sort of thing) then that's a non-issue.

Yes I know that feeling well. Your right, you should only build a PC if you have a few Techy friends out there that can help you. Some companies RMA service can leave you stranded for more than a week when it comes to warranty. If I have the money I will usually get my parts from Best Buy or a place that has a really good in store warranty. Granted you may have to pay a little extra for it. But then if you have an issue. Bring your item back in and if its in stock they will hand you a new one. If its not in stock or no longer carried in their store they will give you the next equivelant thing they have.

[Lakevren]

Here's some guides to build a computer.

It's fairly complete. The only thing I disagree with is the thermal paste application:

• Part 1
  
• Part 2
  
• Part 3

As for the thermal paste application, do it this way:

It's the Pea method you are looking for. Remember that the glass plate there is just a replacement for the heatsink for presentation purposes. You don't actually use a glass plate =P.