The Shrine

I decided against building one myself like i used to like to do back in college and went with a Dell. I did a lot of research so i knew what components i wanted and luckily they had a build for their Studio 8100 XPS that had it.

1 224-7465 Studio XPS 8100
1 317-2913 Studio XPS 8100, Intel Core i7-860 processor(8MB Cache, 2.80GHz)
1 317-2890 8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz-4x2GB
1 330-3828 Dell Consumer Multimedia Keyboard, US
1 330-3826 Dell Studio USB Optical Mouse
1 468-6229 $25 Dell Promo Gift Card - Arrives in 6-8 wks, carries a 90 Day Exp. Dell.com/giftcard
1 468-6943 20.0" Dell ST2010-BLK HD Monitor with VGA cable (supplied), 20.0" viewable image size
1 320-8408 nVidia GeForce GTX260 1792MB GDDR3
1 342-0171 1TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM
1 421-1603 Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English

I wanted to make sure i got an i7 and didnt mind that this is the lowest i7 you can buy, i wanted 8gb of RAM although i dont really like that it is 4x2gig (oh well), and the GTX 260 is a great upper mid level video card with the whopping 1792mb of vid mem. I had to grab a monitor as well since ive been in laptop land for the past 5 years.

This thing will be a screamer and im real excited to play some of the steam games that my laptop couldnt handle (Portal!!). Once those get boring hopefully starcraft 2 will be out and i can start wasting my life away like its college all over again. I'm happy with this move. I still do not have a next gen console and think a computer will fulfill my gaming desires while also being functional. I still like my PSP so that wont go away anytime soon, but i may *gasp* never really need to buy another console again.

My 5 year old vaio is a rock. Once i move my stuff over i'll probably wipe the harddrive and use it as a netflix streaming box or something and keep it hooked up to the TV most of the time or use it in bed for quick surfing.

I havent bought a large purchase for myself in a while. Fun!

I tried really hard to get all the components on the same level, but i suppose if i had a bottleneck it would be the vid card. The GTX 260 has been around for about a year and a half, but back then it was 2nd top of the line. Its still a favorite among gamers, but on the budget end. Its been revamped a little and the extra mem helps extend its usefull life, so hopefully i wont need a new vid card for a few years.

Nice, how much did all that cost?

I bought a GTX 260 for my computer here last year. It definitely performs, hasn't slowed me down any yet (and my PC specs are about half of what you're getting otherwise) but it does SCREAM when it's running at full blast. Much louder than my Xbox but still not too loud that it can't be drowned out by the game you're playing.

From what i read, the 'old' GTX 260 was released in the 65nm process, it has since been upgraded to the 55nm process. And originally sporting 192 stream processors, it now has 216. The review i read from late last year said the GTX 260 896MB video card is probably the best bang-for-the-buck gaming card deal going. It is a lot of video card for around $175. And the one i opted for has the 1792 of mem as opposed to 896. Hopefully that makes this card a 'new' GTX 260 that can keep up with the rest of the system.

With tax and shipping and all that crap it rounded out to $1350, which could have only been $1150 if i didnt need a monitor. I think thats pretty darn good. The Alienware and other pure gaming companies charge out the ass and i would easily have been spending over $2,000. Granted, they use the best i7's out there.

Performance basically only comes down to processor, vid card, and RAM... which one can tweak to their liking with a standard desktop from dell like this one. What else is Alienware (who dell bought, btw) throwing in these things? I guess they overclock and stress test their comps, but i dont care about that so much unless i have to.

A lot of the reviews on Dell from people have said the case is pretty quiet. Maybe they didnt upgrade the vid card, though... I'm hoping it wont literally scream at me.

Ok, i also just realized this computer has a weak power supply at 350. I will probably need to buy a 500+ one right away (50-60 bucks more). I wonder if Dell will UNDERclock things to get it to work correctly out of the factory. I may be tweaking this thing as soon as i get it.

350watt?? I had to buy a 750w PSU when I got my GTX 260. I know that wasn't the minimum requirements but how the hell would it run off of 350w?

I dont know, maybe they upgrade the power supply when you select this card, too. We'll see what ships. Odd.

Hey flip, do you have steam? If so, we are not friends and I feel snubbed. If not, why not? we should be friends and I feel snubbed.

also sad face

I dont have any steam friends, not sure how that works. Since i can only play the low end non multiplayer games from my laptop, i havent thought much about it.

Well, im the proud owner of a fucking monitor. I knew i wasnt going to be home for Fed Ex today (work) and so i left a note that said, 'please take this note as me allowing you drop off the boxes in the bushes or on the porch' and i signed it. I came home from work and they left a note back saying they were worried it would get stolen if they simply left a computer box and monitor on the porch but i can come by the fed ex warehouse today after 5 to pick everything up.

Fine. I dont have a car but the fed ex warehouse in DC is a few short metro stops away and i figure i can take a cab back with my two big boxes, not a big deal. So, i travel my ass over there and wait 30 minutes for the warehouse people to look for my packages and then come back to the desk with only one box. 'Sorry, the other box accidentally got put back on the sorter and it can be taken down so youll just have to wait for it to be delivered on Monday.'

Fucking shit. I wanted all weekend to play around with this computer! If they had to lose one box, why couldnt it have been the monitor instead, i have a few of those i could have used if need be... Now, it will get unsuccessfully delivered on Monday because ill be at work and ill have to deal with the warehouse fucks again.

I'm going to leave another note on the door and plead for the fed ex guy to leave the computer in the bushes. It wont get stolen and i dont feel like wasting my time and metro/cab money again because fed ex sucks.

Adding insult, i got my Starcraft 2 beta key today, haha. >:O

That blows, Flip. When reading your post I imagined the guy at the warehouse was Daryl from The Office. You know, because you're Jim Halpert.

My MBP shipped from China a few days ago, to Japan, to Alaska, and then to Kentucky for some reason. Doesn't make sense to me to fly it from Alaska to Kentucky when shipping to Nova Scotia. I bet it will have to go to Ontario first too so my hope of seeing it on Monday may be crushed.

This thing ought to run Starcraft 2 well enough. If not, there's always Bootcamp.

I'm sure we all have had our issues with delivery companies. I usually call the delivery service and tell them just to drop it off at my work, as when I am employed that is where I usually am.

Blotus wrote: My MBP shipped from China a few days ago, to Japan, to Alaska, and then to Kentucky for some reason. Doesn't make sense to me to fly it from Alaska to Kentucky when shipping to Nova Scotia. I bet it will have to go to Ontario first too so my hope of seeing it on Monday may be crushed.

UPS? We are a major UPS hub. Which makes it nice when we order things from UPS. Gets here VERY fast.

Yeah, UPS. From Kentucky to Buffalo to Mount Hope, Ontario and hopefully to me tomorrow.

So what's the story Flip? Finally get it?

Yes! I picked it up from the Fed Ex warehouse on Monday. When i got there after work it was 630 and the lady said it wasnt in the warehouse, yet the system says the driver was supposed to back at 600. I rolled my eyes and thought, here we go again, another Fed Ex fuckup, but when i got some food and came back 30 min later they had it for me. The people were nicer this go round.

I was so excited while hooked things up, but of course the first thing i did was pull off the side panel to make sure Dell put in everything i told them to and even then i ran CPU-Z and looked at the BIOS to make doubly sure. It does only have a 350watt power supply but eveything is set to stock and is running just fine. Temps are low and the case is quiet. I've read on forums and stuff that the one thing Dell does well is with their power supplies so hopefully i wont have issues. The GTX260 is the newer 55nm process one and they didnt turn things off on the i7 like turbo mode or hyperthreading which i thought they might to save power or heat because i also read that Dell errs on the safe side of things assuming their customers dont know jack shit.

Monday and Tuesday i spent mostly downloading, updating, and configuring, but i did get in a lot of rounds of Starcraft 2 late last night. Probably too many, as im really tired at work today.

I think ill order an extra monitor to match the one it came with and rock the double screens. They are only 1600x900 resolution, so not true HD (more like mostly HD), but its beautiful, cheap, and better than anything ive ever had before. I'm actuially glad i went with the 20 inch because anything bigger would be too big to be right in front of my face.

I'm looking forward to late weekend nights where i hardly move an inch from my desk, serial experiment lain style.

I opted for a high def upgrade on my 15" mac, so it's 1680x1050... on 15". I probably didn't need to do that.

Considering that i think the 1600x900 looks phenomenal on a 20inch screen, then probably not

But what the hell do we know.