some advice would be greatly appreciated.....

[olson]

That looks pretty good to me. If you haven't already shop around at places like Newegg or local places like Fry's because they might have equivalent systems for a lot less than Dell. You could probably get a Core i7 920 with 12GB of memory for the same price or get the equivalent for less if you are willing to do a bare bone setup. Its not as difficult as building from scratch, you just install the memory, processor, video card, and drives into a case that has the motherboard and power supply already. Cheers!

[Jettatore]

First what computer do you have now that "won't cut it".

Second how much does that dell you specked out cost?

[gawl126]

I just configured it on the Dell site it comes out to $1268.

If you're laid off and really need to budget your money on a computer, you really need to go self-built.

[Srek]

I would use it myself :)

[Jettatore]

On the surface that is not an entirely terrible price. I'm not too thrilled with the GTS240 (that is a weird card and seems to be only for OEM vendors, not individual sale?? by it's numbers it's old though unless it's something else entirely confusing) and I wouldn't be surprised if there are corners cut all around in the system, like mediocre motherboard, mediocre PSU, mediocre cooling, budget RAM, and so on but I haven't seen it so I don't know.

I also wouldn't be suprised if the thing comes out of the box with an insane amount of bloatware that would require a full re-install and manually installing the non-Dell, manufacturer version of all drivers, at which point you might have well gone out and built your own machine...

[olson]

I also wouldn't be suprised if the thing comes out of the box with an insane amount of bloatware that would require a full re-install and manually installing the non-Dell, manufacturer version of all drivers, at which point you might have well gone out and built your own machine...

Ditto. Though I think the price is very high if its really over $1,200 for that configuration.

[gawl126]

It seems I may have been a bit wrong on the price. There's actually a deal at Dell today that could make this look a bit better.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/days_of_deals?c=us&cs=19&l=en&pid=6&s=dhs

Basically the configuration mentioned above with the addition of a 20" Dell ST2010 HD Widescreen Monitor for $1128. You can upgrade the monitor in the configuration to something bigger such as the 24.0" Dell ST2410 Full HD Monitor which will then cost $1199 total.

[olson]

It seems I may have been a bit wrong on the price. There's actually a deal at Dell today that could make this look a bit better.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/days_of_deals?c=us&cs=19&l=en&pid=6&s=dhs

Basically the configuration mentioned above with the addition of a 20" Dell ST2010 HD Widescreen Monitor for $1128. You can upgrade the monitor in the configuration to something bigger such as the 24.0" Dell ST2410 Full HD Monitor which will then cost $1199 total.

Apples to apples its not a bad deal for the system, unless you already have a monitor. :shrug:

[Jettatore]

Could always sell the monitor it comes with, or the one you already have if it's not as good.

[cementhead]

First off thanks for all the comments and suggestions, they were very helpful. I did some looking around and ended up on AVADirect, where i got my current computer from, I have never had any problems with it but it's almost 5 years old so time for a much needed upgrade. I came up with this, it is about 200$ more expensive but i would feel a little better knowing that some of the components are an upgrade and quality parts, at least i think anyways.......?

the specs:
Tower Cases COMPUCASE(HEC) 6C28B Black Mid-Tower Case, No PSU, ATX

Power Supplies HEC , X-Power 585 Power Supply, 585W, 24-pin ATX12V, Dual 80mm Fans
Socket 1366 Intel X58 Chipset Desktop Motherboards ASUS, P6TD Deluxe, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000 (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail

Socket 1366 Core i7 Desktop Processors INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, LGA1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail

CPU Coolers No CPU Cooling Fan Upgrade (Choose)

DDR3-1066 Non-ECC DIMM Memory KINGSTON, 6GB (3 x 2GB) HyperX PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz CL9 (9-9-9-27) 1.65V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC

PCI Express x16 Video Cards XFX, GeForce® GTX 260 576MHz, 896MB GDDR3 2000MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, DVI /2, Retail

SATA Hard Drives SEAGATE, 1TB Barracuda® 7200.12, SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache

DVD Burner Drives SONY, AD-7241S Black 24x DVD±R/RW Dual-Layer Burner w/ Lightscribe, SATA, OEM

Floppy Drives and Card Readers ALPS, DF354H Black Internal 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive (yes a floppy drive it doesn’t give me the option to not have one,lol)

Sound Cards CREATIVE, Sound Blaster® Audigy® SE, 7.1 channels, 24-bit, 96KHz, PCI, OEM

Speakers CREATIVE, Inspire A200 Black 2.1 Speaker System, 9W RMS (2x2W + 1x5W), Retail


Operating Systems Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition, OEM

Warranties Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)

If you all see anyplace where I might run into problems or any suggestions please let me know.

thanks

[Jettatore]

The Soundblaster add-on isn't entirely necessary, though it doesn't hurt either. That is more of a performance thing, as in, if you doing anything with sounds like a game for instance, the nice Soundblaster will take care of it so the rest of your system (CPU/RAM etc.) is free for other work. In most cases it is not necessary at all. If you can save a good amount of money by taking it out, I doubt you'll ever know the difference unless your into bleeding edge performance. It's your call. You would still have quality sound without it as your motherboard has it built in.

Everything else looks good. Highly rated components from quality OEM vendors.

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