New computer on it's way.

Just bought this off Dell Tonight.

Alienware

Windows 7 64
Core i7 2.66GHz Quad
640 GB HD 3GB/S
12GB RAM DDR3 1333MHZ
Nvidia 240 GTS 1GB.

How should this work with Trainz?

Fantastic I presume. Though the video card (as with all OEM machines) doesn't really do the rest of the hardware much justice. But still a killer machine no doubt. How much did this cost you?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

Sounds like a very nice machine - I'm looking to buy something similar very shortly. Although I've decided on the nVidia 275GTX gfx card - from most of the reviews I've read it seems to strike a good balance between $ and power.


Cheers - Brian

Congrats Engineer_Brouse and welcome to the club. I ordered my new Dell a couple of days ago.
Yours is a step above my Studio XPS 8000 and I am certain yours will be excelent at Trainz.:udrool: :mop:

Hey thank you guys!

I am certainly looking forward to this.. And the cost actually wasn't that bad. It was only $1800. A better graphics card would have been nice, like a 1.8Gig, but this was already pushing the budget. I'm guessing this low price was due to the down economy?

And once again, thanks for the reviews. I'm certainly hoping this will work great! Oh! And I forgot to mention that this was liquid cooled :udrool:

Enough gloating..Haha. And btw Superfudd, my computer apparently won't be shipped until Dec. 22. What about yours? Any ideas why?

Happy Railroading:

Andy

Engineer_Brouse said:

Hey thank you guys!

I am certainly looking forward to this.. And the cost actually wasn't that bad. It was only $1800. A better graphics card would have been nice, like a 1.8Gig, but this was already pushing the budget. I'm guessing this low price was due to the down economy?

And once again, thanks for the reviews. I'm certainly hoping this will work great! Oh! And I forgot to mention that this was liquid cooled :udrool:

Enough gloating..Haha. And btw Superfudd, my computer apparently won't be shipped until Dec. 22. What about yours? Any ideas why?

Happy Railroading:

Andy

Click to expand...

Liquid cooling introduces expense, complexity and has the potential to cause problems if it leaks. Normally air cooling possibly with heat pipes should do fine.

Cheerio John

Come on John, you're about as envious as I am of Andy's new rig.
OEM proprietary design can really be a pain in the neck, but they're reliable enough.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

$1800?!?!

For $1300, in October 08, I got my new rig, operating system, and a 22" Samsung LCD Monitor...

Windows Vista 64bit

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz
500GB Seagate HD
ATI Radeon HD 4850
4GB DDR2 RAM <--- need more...

Then all the other goodies that don't really effect performance toooo much.

nicky9499 said:

Come on John, you're about as envious as I am of Andy's new rig.
OEM proprietary design can really be a pain in the neck, but they're reliable enough.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

Click to expand...

12 gigs of memory? This machine is not about price performance nor does it appear have the reliability that I like. Now 6 gigs of ecc memory, i7 920 combined with a SSD for the operating system, a green terabyte hard drive, diskeeper 2010, an external USB terabyte drive for backup and the Directx 11 nVidia video card they haven't announced yet then you'd see me drool.

I have this thing called a B.Sc. in Chemistry, some of the time was spent studying corrosion. If you don't have water inside the case to start with it can't possibly leak and cause damage. In the case of PC cooling there are air cooled systems that are more than adequate. I don't believe in overclocking unless you have a major performance problem that cannot be addressed in any other way, and even then I'd be inclined to go for liquid nitrogen. If you get a leak no big deal. Certainly no corrosion potential over time.

Cheerio John

Engineer_Brouse,

I don't recall the "ship date" but, with standard "5-7 day delivery" the projected delivery date is December 29th. I suspect/hope Dell is being a bit conservative on that. I suspect Dell's elves are working overtime. They may also have some parts shortages.
I correct my previous post. Yours is TWO steps above mine.
:udrool: :udrool: :mop:

Ah John, I'm not a fan of overclocking and have never done so before. As for the corrosion, while I don't have a B.Sc. in anything yet, I'm pretty sure it's a known fact circuits do operate better under lower temperatures (and last longer).

So while in certain aspects it may not be the most practical, it's still a clever bit of tech and if someone is willing to go to the expense, I'm sure they'll take good care of it.

And yes, OEM machines have never been good "price : performance" stuff.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

nicky9499 said:

Ah John, I'm not a fan of overclocking and have never done so before. As for the corrosion, while I don't have a B.Sc. in anything yet, I'm pretty sure it's a known fact circuits do operate better under lower temperatures (and last longer).

So while in certain aspects it may not be the most practical, it's still a clever bit of tech and if someone is willing to go to the expense, I'm sure they'll take good care of it.

And yes, OEM machines have never been good "price : performance" stuff.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

Click to expand...

I would agree with your comment about circuits in theory last longer under lower temperatures and the chemistry side backs that up but Google have stats on their hard drives which show that the failure rate does not correlate with temperature. Operate better? dunno basically there are two states to a memory cell, on and off its a bit black and white to say works better. I prefer ecc memory but if you run non parity memory then yes I'd agree the cooler you run it theoretically the fewer errors you should get, so possibly better, ecc memory though does a better overall job in my opinion.

I'm not quite certain what you call OEM machines. Companies such as Dell offer reasonable value for money machines but you have to be a bit selective about what you buy to get the best price performance.

Trainz will use a maximum of 4 gigs under win 7 64 bit, Win 7 64 bit can use about a gig for overhead any additional memory isn't being used and just adds to the heat in the case. 6 gigs is just the rounded up number.

On cooling the requirement to me is to make the computer last say eight years. If with the stock air coolers 98% of the cpus last that long why bother going to liquid cooling. All it gets you is 99% of cpus lasting eight years and even I don't run computers that long. One of the problems is how long will the cooling system last without leaking? You can estimate but without a sample that has been in the field for ten years it is really difficult to say with certainty that it will last ten years without a leak. I can however guarantee that any system without water cooling will not have a leak.

Remember that water is known as the universal solvent, there is practically nothing it won't dissolve. H2O, the hydrogen atom is tiny and can penetrate practically anything, the oxygen bit is quite reactive. Nitrogen is much less reactive so liquid nitrogen is a much more interesting cooling agent.

Cheerio John

007007 said:

$1800?!?!

For $1300, in October 08, I got my new rig, operating system, and a 22" Samsung LCD Monitor...

Windows Vista 64bit

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz
500GB Seagate HD
ATI Radeon HD 4850
4GB DDR2 RAM <--- need more...

Then all the other goodies that don't really effect performance toooo much.

Click to expand...

But with the i series processors you get alot more performance. They use smart cacheing. I have a similar machine myself bought in summer, with the i series processor, they work wonders!