Would you ever finance a rig like an Alienware?
 

I have been looking for a change. My system seems a bit dated and really, i just want a new toy.

Link to my pc stats (add yours too)

Think its worth upgrading to an alienware or build from scratch again?
I can atleast finance an alienware rig (if they allow Canadians to do it) but not sure if its time yet to pull the trigger.

I dont jack about hardware anymore....

$2200 for a computer? no. just no.
Grab an i5 2500k slap a turbo on it overclock it, new video card, motherboard & ram and maybe a power supply if needed.

I was thinking more about $4000 USD for the machine from Alienware. That means no speakers, monitor as well.

If the finance rate is less than 2% and you were going to take $2200 and buy something with a relatively stable value paying more than 2% income... sure.

Otherwise, no way.

Rule of thumb: never, never, never finance depreciating luxury consumer goods that you would only be able to purchase on borrowed money.

So the answer depends on why you want to finance it. If you have the cash for it already, but they're offering 0% long term financing, then it might be a good idea. If you're wanting to finance to be able to purchase more computer than you can truly afford, then heck no. If the later, keep the money in your pocket, and buy the same computer when the price comes down to what you can easily afford.

I'd like to see a build sheet and/or specs on that $4k rig. I bet similar performance could be had for $2k or less, IF you build it yourself. I built one last year for the 1st time. Execution of the build really wasn't tough. The hard part for me was settling on the components.

here is the parts list


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1326394115
something i observed
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1326394115




Yes Convenient, equal monthly payments over 48 months
Yes Interest rates from as low as 13.99% to credit qualified customers1
Yes Keep your cash and credit lines available for other use
Yes No down payments, no administration fees

I only pay cash, I have a 700+ credit rating...I know that's pissing someone off.

Honestly, Dropping that kind of cash on a gaming PC is worse than buying an Apple desktop. At least with the Apple you are transcending the hardware limitations of Windows and have a legitimate graphics/sound/video workstation.

The difference between a $800 gaming rig and a $2000 gaming rig is surprisingly small when you look at the capabilities of what most people find acceptable (like netbooks and smart phones)

Don't finance that, Rick. Seriously.

You can build something yourself that is at least as fast for half the money, if not a quarter of the money, even if you ARE in Canada. (Actually, more like especially that you are in Canada due to certain supplier events recently...)

I did my alienware laptop on credit, but had the money sitting aside to pay it off just to help build credit. I also use this laptop for work, and have already got my moneys worth out of it.

Alienware (don't call dell number call the alienware one)support was pretty good when I had an issue on the screen hinge, they had a local repair tech out the next day with the part and fixed my laptop.

---- no, jesus hell that's a ripoff.

That is a horrific idea, in my opinion, regardless of the value of the computer. If you absolutely had to finance it, and I think that's a poor idea, you would probably be better off using a rewards-based credit card and setting up auto payments.

fack no way.

Attachment 186127

Same specs, just with 750GB hybrid x 2, instead of 500GB hybrid x 2 (was only $10 difference). AND a full Blu-Ray burner that was on sale. Just need to add a case and motherboard to the entire thing.

$2,758.48 is much more reasonable AND NCIX is Canadian. Just saying...

Why on earth would anyone get something on credit (ie with money you don't have) is beyond me. A car or a house, ok. A computer or other "gadget"? No way...

I am with the guyz above me.

No way finance it.

No way buy Alieanware

Yes way build comparable for 1/2 price.

Yes way build a ~$1200 rig that will be 90% of the performance of the Alienware or $2200 build.

For that money you could build a computer now that is nearly as fast (or as fast), and then build another in 3 or 4 years that will be significantly faster.

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail...os#SuperCombos

Just got this from newegg today - build your own gaming machine for $600

It's a good starting point, swap your optical drives over and be done for now - swap to a core i7 processor and a new video card in 2-3 years.

No motherboard?

Rick, in all seriousness:

No.

$4,500 for a desktop PC? Are you kidding me? This isn't 1978. I can't imagine spending more than $1k for a high-end desktop system, and that's $1k worth of depreciated US money, not the fancy high-value stuff y'all have up there with pictures of ducks and queens on it.

And financing it? I wouldn't finance the purchase of a depreciating asset which wasn't somehow involved in, say, running a business or otherwise paying for itself many times over, even at 0% APR.

(And yes, I'm fully aware of what business you're in. You could do that from a $250 Netbook.)


This thread is just wrong.


Is Scott really kicking your arse this badly in CoD?

That's a quality ass post right there Joe Perez.

my company paid like 5 grand for my desktop. I cant remember all the specs, but its 24gig of ram. windows 7 64 bit.

I still think its MASSIVE overkill and way overpriced. . . but thats what you get from buying it from DELL

Never saw nothin'

tl;dr
Never buy a pre made gaming pc. can build better for 1/4 the price. AMD and ATi is best.

so sad. told wife what you all be saying, hatering. then she asked what was wrong with current system... friggen trick question.

awww well, will just build a system via parts list I suppose. Spending 5k is nuts on a system, but i do use the system for work so ... lol

Scott and I are teammates Joe. We are equal awesome.

And no, i couldnt use a $250 desktop.. I actually need some power for photochopping and other stuff.


and how can quote NCIX system with no MB???

This should be tattooed on the forehead of everyone who has declared bankruptcy because of CC debt.

Intel is clearly superior over AMD right now, don't be a stupid fanboy. I love AMD but Intel is kicking their ass right now. ATi Vs. nVidia is a closer battle I suppose.

Mid to high-end, Intel's been kicking AMD's ass for...years, admittantly.

On the other hand, on the low-end, I'm unable to think of a time in the past decade where AMD has not at least been able to hold their own.

(Although, since we're talking about gaming, I'm not certain why low-end is coming into it.)

Price to performance amd is better. Not paying $500 for a chip that matches the specs of a $300 amd.

Use to always go AMD/ATi. But I have to agree, seems right now Intel is favored.

Yeah...me too. On the first desktop I built (5-6 years back now), AMD seemed much more desirable. I threw up an old 1.4ghz processor on Ebay and it got like 30 bids...at which point I found that people had ben overclocking them to 1.8-1.9ghz with watercooling at the time. I took it off, bought the watercooling accessories, and sure enough it lasted me a few more years.

I'm so far out of the loop that I don't know what's quality and reliable now. I just hear coworkers recommending Intel chips a lot.

Sounds like my first build. That was back when the Athlon XP 1800+ was all the rage. But yeah, since the Core 2 came out it's really been Intel's game on the performance side. Also used to be a strictly nVidia guy but I did recently buy my first ATI card and am so far satisfied. Price was the deciding factor.

Oh, and Rick, just so you know, a 16GB RAM, Core i7, GTX 580 rig can be built for under $1500. And then the question becomes not what is it capable of, but for nearly all intents and purposes, what isn't it capable of? Also, overclocking and CrossFireX/SLI.

Rick, I view you as an above average person in terms of intellect, mostly b/c you created this wonderful place for me to learn about turbo witchcraft, read p0z stories, and crap on people/things/ideas that I do not like, and not so much b/c you buy 6.0 diesel Ford trucks. So I've got to ask, why do you want or need a $4,500 computer?

I'm thinking Rick was trolling.

BTW, Rick, if you do go top-of-the-line cards, go with a single 7970 instead of a 580 or an SLI/Crossfire platform.

Don't think he was trolling. Maybe on the 4k thing.

But srsly $1500 is about the max that should be spent on a desktop these days. That will get you right to the point of having a fully updated system that will last. Anything beyond that the price to performance ratio goes waaaay south.

Good point, maybe he just priced a Alienware as high as he could and decided to make a troll thread...

I'll spend >$500 on a laptop when I get out of bootcamp, maybe get a refurbished one with a good graphics card and upgrade the hard drive and ram, then dual boot Win7 & Ubuntu :brain:

Well, I think Rick was trolling on that part Gearhead, not so much on getting spec advise for a new PC.

I just spent $345 out the door for a more than capable laptop for anything but hardcore gaming. It could probably handle SC2 at low graphic settings, which is all I would ever need. With tablets out now I see laptops dying out in the next few years. Desktops however, will be around forever I think.

I certainly hope not.

Tablets have their place, but even if they started shipping with "real" operating systems and capable processors, a touchscreen interface isn't the greatest thing in the universe if you're working in a big database app or drawing stuff in AutoCAD. And that's pretty much what I do with my laptop when I'm using it for work.

At best, maybe a dockable tablet such as the Asus transformer, but even that concept just adds weight and fragility for something that I don't care about in the least.

It's funny that you say this.

While I agree that there will always be a small market for desktops (eg: administrative workers who do lots of text-based computing) I am already seeing a shift away from desktop PCs in pretty much every other area.

At CBS Radio's newer facilities, for instance, virtually nobody has a desktop PC outside of the actual studio / newsroom environment. Everyone else gets laptops. And even at our office, our biggest heavy-hitter CAD guy gave up his desktop PC a couple of years ago for an uber-laptop along with a docking station. I never had a desktop PC the whole time I worked for Harris. Going all the way back to '99 when I started, I always had a laptop and a docking station.

You make good points as usual. I may have jumped the gun on laptops. I forgot about the business world. They may be a bit slower to adopt. I think the ASUS Transformer, as you mentioned, once geared a bit towards the business end will provide a suitable opponent to the laptop. There is a huge market to be had with business tablets.

As for desktops, there is no death to them. They are everywhere, from point of sale type environments, to school labs, to community hotel desktops. Obviously the home and work environment as well.

I see tablets removing the laptop from the market, and desktops being more sync friendly with tablets. Probably via some sort of cloud/docking station.

Yeah, we've started to see this already in the engineering business. I know a couple of market chiefs who, in addition to their regular computers, now also own a tablet PC which they use for nothing other than keeping all of the manuals and wiring documentation for their facilities on. It's a convenient form-factor when you are working inside a rack.

A far more disturbing trend which I have noticed of late is that whereas it was quite easy 3 or 4 years ago to purchase an ultra-small, ultra-light laptop (10-12") which still had a "real" CPU and was architecturally unencumbered by artificial software licensing restrictions on things like memory size, the recent rise of the netbook-class machine has created a sort of rift, wherein manufacturers now seem to be dividing their efforts between creating ultra-powerful "desktop replacement" laptops primarily in the 13" and up range, while delivering only relatively crippled machines to the crowd desiring an 11" computer. This Dell E4200 which I am using right now was, quite literally, the only computer I could find in this size range last year which wasn't a horrible piece of crap, and even it has been discontinued and replaced with a physically larger (12.5") successor.



Ah, indeed. In considering the workplace, I was thinking mostly about the traditional office / laboratory environment where there exists a 1:1 ratio of users to computers. You're certainly correct about the continuing need for "fixed" installations in markets such as POS, public access, libraries and so on.

I would, perhaps, argue against the home environment. Outside of my own "geek" social group, and excluding gamers, I actually know of relatively few households which still have a traditional desktop PC in them. Increasingly, one laptop per family member seems to be the trend which I am seeing. Stop by Best Buy, for instance, and compare the number of desktop PCs offered to the number of laptops. A few years ago, the desktops outnumbered the laptops by perhaps 2:1, whereas today I suspect that ratio has roughly reversed. I do expect that tablet sales will soon do to laptops what laptops did to desktops in this arena.

Are you serious????

Regarding the parts list listed earlier: Don't do crossfire. Get the best single GPU you can afford.

Yes, I am completely serious. Dell no longer manufactures the Latitude E4200.

Funny, I switched back to a desktop after 9 years with a laptop. No laptop can quite match a good desktop workstation's capabilities.

Gotta disagree, Joe. My desktop is not going to be replaced by a laptop, either here at home or at work. Both are CAD workstations. The reason? Absolutely no need for portability. I do have a laptop, but that gets synced with the desktop, and is only used about 5% of the time or less.

Dollar for dollar, desktops still have better value than laptops (in high end systems). More horsepower for less money. If you don't need the portability, there's no reason to pay that premium.

For Rick:

Here is an awesome link: http://www.hardware-revolution.com/m...-january-2012/

Gaming rig builds from $800-$1500.

1. Use this guide.
2. Build awesome rig for cheap
3. ???
4. PWN NOOBS

PS The longer you wait to build the cheaper the hard drive will be. Hard drive prices are really high because of Thailand flooding. As production is resuming, prices will continue to fall back to more normal levels. I don't think it's worth waiting 3 months to save $40 on a hard drive though...

Being that I am a geek and work with a bunch of geeks, we argue the tablet vs laptop thing constantly. Tablets are cool and make great ebook readers but they are in no way replacements for a laptop. Too slow and the OS's suck for real use, ie anything besides fagbooking or twating

iPads have taken over my house, people love them. Sit in bed, read etc. Heaven forbid you need to do any real work though they are useless. I dont even know if you can ftp, photoshop or do an real coding on one. I guess if you could add a keyboard and mouse to an iPad you could get by.

Laptops are ok, I have had my fair share. I certainly prefer a desktop over all. I like to game and I need to be able to work on a decent machine too. Loading 200 images into photoshop is the ultimate test for me. lol

As for the alienware. I have built all my machines to date, since I was 14 years old in fact. That was many moons ago, some may claim 20 years ago (486 turbo...).. lol
Anyhow, its not so much that I dont want to build, I am thinking about simplicity. I like the idea that if the deal breaks I have someone I can call and cry to, hopefully they come and fix it.

The price. Yea, its retarded. I know. This current machine I am on when brand new was around $2200 and it still hauls ass. Enough ass that I dont need a new machine let alone a $4500 machine. Wanting is something different. I would love to spoil myself.

That being said, financing a $4500 rig is wrong. I know, i get that. I have been pricing stuff out on tigerdirect / canadacomputers and newegg. I could build a decent rig for far less, i think thats what I am going to do in a month or two.

I assume this thread is a joke?

We should do some BF3 action later tonight!

Alienware is over priced dell with neons and and a glowing logo. It's the ricer of the computer world. My last build I spent about $700 got an amd quad core, 4gd stick of ram, mobo with hdmi optical and usb 3.0, 1gb ddr3 gpu, and all the other essentials. Threw on a corsair liquid cooler overclocked from 3.2 to 4.1 stabley, ocerclocked the gpu and called it done.

Just say no. There is no reason for anyone to have a system with a $1,000 USD processor in it except for e-peen purposes. And you don't ever finance e-peen.

Money spent on computers needs to be disposable income unless it's for a business purpose and the business is financing it.

I have built all of my systems for the last 20 years excepting laptops. There's no need to spend more than $1,200 or so on system components.