Dell Prices

[jfweaver]

Yesterday I checked Dell's prices on my "dream" Trainz computer. I looked at both the XPS 630 and XPS 720 and congigured them as close to equal as possible. The only differences were in HDD size and manufacture (320 Mb unnamed for the 630 and a 250 Mb Seagate for the 720), memory bus speed (667 Mhz for the 630 and 800 Mhz for the 720), and the case (the 720 is slightly fancier).

The price for the 720 was $220 higher! I certainly can't see any reasonable benefit in paying the additional $220. Can you?

Jim

 

[Larrymc812]

I suggest u consider building one. You get a better machine for less money. And u select each component as you wish. I did it- and many others. I don't doubt u can do it too.

 

[SuperFudd]

I may have a local shop put one together for me. That is what I did on this one (see below) in Dec 02. I have upgraded it a bit since then but still same MB and CPU.
I also priced a Dell 630 two days ago for price reference. $1300 would do the trick, w/o monitor.

The diferences between a 630 and a 720? I didn't price the 720 but it could be a better power supply, better M.B. and pure gold case. ;>

 

[Ferngren]

When I looked, the 720 had a Raptor HD of 10.000rpm, a SoundBlaster X-fi Extreme Gamer card and 3year warranty. Maybe that stands for the additional money. Unnamed HD's in Dell computers are usually Seagate... Other from that the two seem pretty equal. Go for the one that has some overhead in the PSU for future upgrades.

 

[jimisham]

Have you taken a look at the Dell Factory Outlet?
I don't see any 630's there, but there's over 100 720's listed. Except for 1, they're listed as 'Certified Refurbished' and have the same warranty as a new one.
I bought a 'Scratch and Dent' XPX 410, that had everything I wanted in a new one, last September for about 70% of the cost of a new one, and haven't had any problems with it. As to why it was a 'Scratch and Dent', I have no idea. I couldn't see anything wrong with it.

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnline...line/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

 

[JimDep]

Has anyone visited Ihatedell.com? (not sure if it's still around)
It was very uplifting if you don't care for Dells.

 

[jfweaver]

And We Have a Winner

SuperFudd had it doped out pretty good. The 720 case is a full tower as opposed to the 630 mid-tower. The 720 momo Northbridge is a 680i as opposed to thr 630's 650i. Thr 720 PS is a top brand 750 watt; the 630 has a lesser brand 750 watt PS.

Jim

 

[Xcom]

I didn't see what MB they use. Also, they don't offer any DDR3 memory.
If you're going to upgrade, get the most advanced basic system you can and sweat the upgrades as you need them. I just had my system (see below) built. No sound card, or extra fancy graphics card. This was an upgrade from a P4 3.0 Ghz. machine and so far it handles everything I throw at it.

Should have waited and went for the following MB.
P5E3 Premium Wifi Intel Core2 Duo & Quad X48/ICH9R Chipset, 1600FSB, DDR3(4), SATA(6), E-SATA(2), RAID, ATX, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Firewire

http://www.jncs.com/php/sys/index.php?id=sys-as-p5e3-premium-wifi

 

[saintjimmy]

Also, they don't offer any DDR3 memory.

Actually, check again! They just rolled out the XPS 730, with DDR3 1600MHz, liquid cooling, Overclocked Intel QX9770 on 45nm (to 3.8 GHz), 1 KW PS, Dual ATI radeon HD 3870 X2's, 4 seperate 1 Terabye hard drives, 30 inch monitor, Bluray burner, it's the works!! :udrool: :mop:

To be honest, I have always found Dell to be a little pricey, like $9000+ :'( for the system I just described above!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ninailer]

Custom built

I'd suggest looking into having a system custom built. I just received mine two weeks ago. The specs are: Intel core2 duo E8400, 2G RAM, 160Gb SATA HD, nVidia 9600GT 512Mb video, LAN and sound on motherboard. I'm getting about 100 fps at 1680 x 1050 resolution with "full sliders". Cost delivered was under $1100. I did it entirely on line at: http://www.pcsforeveryone.com/ You can navigate to spec a custom desktop and choose options and see the actual cost. The system I bought was to replace the one I bought from them six years ago. They seem to have been around a while and did pretty good on taking the credit card by phone instead of on line.

 

[omber]

I must agree with the suggestion to have a custom built computer - you pay less and you get exactly what you want and none of those pesky bonus things they add . I've built my own computers for last 7 years (been through 4 now) and I've almost always been happy with the results.. except for my last graphics card.. avoid any Overclocked/Superclocked out of box cards - the one I bought is supposed to run 123 MHz faster on the core and 200 MHz faster on the memory but the memory cannot handle this speed and unless I take it down to factory specifications it will freeze the system - apparently according to manufacturer's forums this is a problem that is more then common...