Dell XPS 700 or Build My Own?

Just remember that Dell case may look pretty but there's little chance of you being able to upgrade the motherboard or PSU if you need to :)
 
Had ago at another setup opted for pentium D has I use a pentium now and find them pretty good, also opted for the new NVIDIA card.

Would all this work together and would it be better than the XPS700 I was looking at in performance?:

Logitech MX 5000 Laser Cordless Bluetooth 2.0 Desktop Combination - Retail (KB-075-LG) - £93.94

CA-009-TT Thermaltake VA7000SWA Shark Aluminium Full Tower - Silver - £69.95

CA-011-TG Tagan TG900-U95 900W ATX2.01 Turbojet Quad SLi Silent PSU (CA-011-TG) - £139.95

Silverstone FP54 Silver Aluminium VFD Display (BB-000-SV - £56.34


XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 XXX Edition 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT71U-ZDD9) (GX-085-XF) 527.52

XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 XXX Edition 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT71U-ZDD9) (GX-085-XF) 527.52

Asus Ageia PhysX Accelerator - Retail £199.69

Intel Pentium 4 955 Extreme Edition Dual Core "LGA775 Presler" 3.46GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-115-IN) - £672.04

Abit AW8D Intel 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-102-AB)
- £151.52

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-092-CS) - £156.22

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-092-CS) - £156.22

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM at £275.01 X 3 = £825.03.

SC-034-CL Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - Retail (SC-034-CL) - £66.95

Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - Retail (CD-020-AS) - £30.49

Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive - Black (HD-002-MI) - £15.22

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) - £17.57
 
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No offence but you've got more money than sense. Do some research into Aegia Physics cards, you'll soon seen that £200 is a waste of money. I would put that £200 into a UPS instead. It's protect your expensive system from brown outs. The Aegia card however just is waste. If it's a gaming rig a dual core FX-62 will outperform that Pentium.
 
DobieMan said:
XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 XXX Edition 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT71U-ZDD9) (GX-085-XF) 527.52

XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 XXX Edition 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT71U-ZDD9) (GX-085-XF) 527.52

Asus Ageia PhysX Accelerator - Retail £199.69
Click to expand...

No point in them.
4 GPU =/= good gaming rig. Pure willy waving with poor driver support = You game with a lot of problems. Just a simple crossfire x1900series will be good enough. Better iQ too.

DobieMan said:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) - £17.57
Click to expand...

I like how you've got so much money to spend on CPU/GPU and you come up with AC Freezer 64. Try Scythe Ninja or perhaps, Water Cooling :)
 
As mentioned Aegia Physics cards are a total waste of money at the min as no software supports it yet (Well hardley any). I should imagine in a years time they will be really big once software support them.

Also as mentioned two of them Nivia 7950 GX2 cards are a total waste of money too just the one will do the job or to ATI X1900s in crossfire.

Unless your using Windows pro 64bit I would not recommend using 4 Gig either as the 32 bit version is supposed to support upto 4 Gig but it does not do it very well at all and you will have loads of problems from what I have herd.

If your after performace I am supprised you have not picked the Western Digital Raptors for HDDs. They are noisy but hey with that PSU and top end graphix cards wirring away your not going to hear them anyways.

Also me personally I prefer Asus boards for Intel rigs too.
 
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johneva said:
As mentioned Aegia Physics cards are a total waste of money at the min as no software supports it yet (Well hardley any). I should imagine in a years time they will be really big once software support them.

Also as mentioned two of them Nivia 7950 GX2 cards are a total waste of money too just the one will do the job or to ATI X1900s in crossfire.

Unless your using Windows pro 64bit I would not recommend using 4 Gig either as the 32 bit version is supposed to support upto 4 Gig but it does not do it very well at all and you will have loads of problems from what I have herd.

If your after performace I am supprised you have not picked the Western Digital Raptors for HDDs. They are noisy but hey with that PSU and top end graphix cards wirring away your not going to hear them anyways.

Also me personally I prefer Asus boards for Intel rigs too.
Click to expand...

Yeap sorry I forgot to mention I put the Aegia Physics card on my rig to make sure it would be compatiable with the setup I have picked? I am not acutally going to get one until they are more supported.

Also I am not confortable with water-cooling it might be something I would look at later on but not something I really want to try just yet.
 
for the love of god don't spend that much on a PC now. DX10 and Conroe will be coming soon.
 
Just want to say thanks for all the feedback so far I am still very tempted by the Dell XPS700 I understand all the worries about them but they do reckon that with the new XPS700 you can change the components later on. However I am intrested to see if I could build a better system myself. I have given it some thought and come up with a new config. Few things I added a physics card only to see if you think it is compatiable with this config it does not mean I will add one straight away. Also I need to know what cables, etc I would need to put this system together all is there enough cooling in the setup. The room it will be in has air-conditioning so it is fairly cool throughout the day. This is the config so far:

Logitech MX 5000 Laser Cordless Bluetooth 2.0 Desktop Combination - Retail (KB-075-LG) - £93.94

Icemat - Black 2nd Edition (GS-001-IC) - £19.62

Thermaltake VA9000SWA Kandalf Aluminium Full Tower - Silver = £132.26

Sapphire PURE RD580 CrossFire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (PC-A9RD580) (MB-005-SP) - £164.44

Soundgraph iMON VFD - Silver (BB-001-SG) - £69.27

CA-011-TG Tagan TG900-U95 900W ATX2.01 Turbojet Quad SLi Silent PSU (CA-011-TG) - £139.95

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 2.8GHz Socket AM2, 2MB, BOXED w/fan - £795.01

Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT) - £29.32

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-108-CS) - £211.44

Sony DWG120A 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-048-SO) - £26.97

Sony DDU-1615 DVD-ROM (Silver) - OEM (CD-015-SO) - £14.10

Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive - Silver (HD-000-MI) - £14.04

Icy Box MB-122AKGF-S 3.5" IDE HDD Caddy - Silver (HD-008-BT) - £28.14

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM at £275.01 X 3 = £825.03

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X BLIZZARD 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-123-SP) - £411.19

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X BLIZZARD 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-123-SP) - £411.19

Asus Ageia PhysX Accelerator - Retail (GX-100-AS) - £199.69

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition + HS600 £29.99 Gaming Headset Bundle - Retail (SC-041-CL) - £145.11

Grand Total: £3730.71
 
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Three points.

1. Wait for Conroe.
2. Don't get the Physics card.
3. Don't EVER get dell.

You would be MAD to spend £3k on a PC when a £1k Conroe rig will kick your FX-62.

CR.

Edit: For Crossfire you need a master card + a XT slave card (Xt-X is abit of a waste as it will clock down to XT.
 
Can't wait for Conroe has I need a system before end of July. Also whilst I love the look of Conroe it will not be out now until August or around that time. Also the FX62 is a good processor and will suit me fine for a while. I am not the sort to change processor every year just to suit the latest release.

I assume if I want to at a later stage I could just alter the motherboard and Conroe processor and use the spec I have chosen?

Not 100% sure where to find a crossfire X1900XT or XTX card setup any links?
 
Concorde Rules said:
Three points.

1. Wait for Conroe.
2. Don't get the Physics card.
3. Don't EVER get dell.

You would be MAD to spend £3k on a PC when a £1k Conroe rig will kick your FX-62.

CR.

Edit: For Crossfire you need a master card + a XT slave card (Xt-X is abit of a waste as it will clock down to XT.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth.

I just had a look at the xtremesystems forums and was amazed at what they were achieving with Conroe. Also look at the benchmarks between Conroe and current AMD set ups. Difference is amazing :O. Conroe 4tw!! :D

Just a month and a bit to go :)
 
Look I know Conroe is a great processor and it is something I will upgrade to in the future if possible with my current config just need to change motherboard and processor.

For now I need a system that will suit is the config I picked OK. I assume the Dell XPS700 is not Conroe compaitable?
 
Unlikely that the dell is, but please dont buy the dell. If you are not going to build your own then at least buy one of ocuk's pre built machines
 
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