And to all of you defending your Dells… Justify your decision any way you must, but please… do not try to compare the quality/reliability/value of a Dell to a custom build… it’s just ludicrous! Building a computer is a rewarding and educational DIY project that anyone (within reason) can accomplish with one minor caveate… you must be able to operate a screwdriver (eeeek!). Sure it takes a little research… but not that much! Besides, all of the information you absorb will be invaluable down the road.

I liked the comparison a lot. that said, i think it would also be helpful to show a high-end build compared to a good XPS system. I just priced one out on newegg (https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/TemporaryWishList.asp) and it’s almost exactly 25% cheaper. I did splurge a bit on some of the components as well as a little extra to make it a good overclocker. One thing is for sure though, the quality of the parts in the build are top notch and futureproof… as far as a computer can be anyway! Custom build was $1,548 after mail in rebates while the XPS was $2,039. Regardless of your budget it seems clear to me that you get higher quality parts and more of them with a custom machine. It’s always worth it! (If you want some funny comparisons try pricing out a system to compete with the Mac Pro desktop… the savings are literally in the thousands of dollars!)

The 8400GS!? It’s what $5 more for an 8500GT 64-bit GDDR2 model that isn’t crippling your comp with the turbocache/hypermemory trash on the cheap cards like the 8400 and possibly the 8300, dunno I’ve never seen anyone talk about the 8300. The 8500GT GDDR3 128-bit version is even faster, but at the price of that you can probably get the 8600GT GDDR3 128-Bit.

The Article also leaves out overclocking, its pretty trivial to get a good after market cooling setup and a decent mobo to take any Conroe based Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs to 3Ghz, even if they where only running at 1.6Ghz as the stock speed. The only reason to spend more is to get a CPU with more L2 cache. Same goes for AMD CPUs as well, but the CPU chosen in the article was the C2D.

I slapped this list together in under 10 minutes http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=8371048
You get a faster CPU with 2x the cache, higher speed and tighter timed ram, a factory overclocked graphics card with after market rear exausting cooler preattached, much better then the reference cooler that only move the air over the card, leaving it to warm other parts instead of getting it out of the case. the HDD is 500Gb with 32Mb of cache to help reduce how often you have to hit the disk itself to grab recent data, a DVD burner that is future proofed by being SATA, it also offers the lightscribe feature. The case itself is a very good cooling case, it has a 120mm rear exhaust and an 80mm front intake as well as having the entire front of the case a metal screen mesh to allow unhindered airflow. The power supply is a no joking around model unlike the one in the dell or the one that came with that case the author selected, its 500 watts, active PFC, 4 +12v rails, 85% efficient at 50% load, modular cabling and has a nice large 120mm cooling fan. An optional part I added is a 120mm “down” pushing CPU cooler to further cool the machine, the “downward” airflow helps cool the MOSFETs and the coils around the CPU which can easily get burning hot, you can add your own cooling to those if you like. My only recommendation is to get some Arctic Silver 5 and maybe some Arctic Silver Adhesive, to at least reseat the North and South bridge heatsinks on the mobo, you can try the graphics card as well but I think the cooler attaches to the ram as well with thermal tape, so thats a tossup. You can replace the North and South bridge heatsinks, Thermalright makes some good chipset coolers and while you can buy MOSFET coolers you really have to do some measuring to make sure they don’t get in the way of your CPU cooler. The backside coolers from Thermalright don’t cool enough to be really worth it unless you’re trying to get you’re comp as cool as possible as you can on air, for most people though they cost too much to be worth the cost and hassle of pulling out your mobo to attach the backside CPU cooler and the GPU cooler only fits so many models of graphics card. As before though, you don’t need the after market cooler, the CPU comes with the stock Intel cooler with thermal grease preapplied to it, just pop it on and go.

As for labor, you can get that info from any tech form in under 20 minutes, actual build time of the computer is about 1 hour, most of that is trying to free the parts from those dam hardshell plastic cases without eviscerating yourself, putting all the guts in the box takes only a few minutes to ensure you have the standoffs placed where they should be in the case before you bolt in the mobo, attaching the CPU, CPU cooler, ram, graphics card, power supply, hard drive and DVD burner is very straight forward, just tab A into Slot A kinda stuff, it only fits one way. The only time you should even need to look at a manual is to attach the power, reset and HDD notification lights to the headers on the mobo, but even this can be done blindfolded with some cases today. At that point just power it up and run Memtest86+ and ensure your parts are at least running at their rated speeds in the bios, you may not need to, do so, but you may have to update the bios to get everything right, but most mobos these days will boot a flash stick to load new bios revisions. Last thing to do is install your OS of choice, Ill assume mine of Ubuntu Studio 7.10, so 20 minutes to install then maybe an hour to install all the apps, drivers and updates from the Ubuntu repositories, most of that is waiting on my slow connection.

As for the comments about games on Linux, lets see, I can play Regnum Online http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/ Penumbra: Overture http://www.penumbra-overture.com/ Nexuiz http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/ Tremulous http://tremulous.net/ Flightgear http://www.flightgear.org/ Alien Arena http://alienarena.org/ Sauerbraten http://sauerbraten.org/ Warsow http://www.warsow.net/ and lets not forget the awesome titles by ID like Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory all run natively on pretty much every OS out there. You can also pick up a few here http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ things like Postal 2 or Majesty.

Other games and apps can be forced to run via Wine http://www.winehq.org/ Crossover http://www.codeweavers.com/ or Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/ pretty trivial to get WoW and a few others to run with them, hell, games like Spore and Eve Online took the half *ss way of supporting Linux and OS X by releasing their windows version with Cedega as their Linux and Mac clients. I don’t like this personally as there is often a performance hit, but I’ve seen anecdotal reports of some people getting games like WoW to play better on Linux then on windows.

What about labor?
and training
and looking at catalogs
and figuring out where to get the tools to make a computer out of a pile of gravel!!!!!

This is a very geeky article.

As for the comments about games on Linux, lets see, I can play Regnum Online http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/ Penumbra: Overture http://www.penumbra-overture.com/ Nexuiz http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/ Tremulous http://tremulous.net/ Flightgear http://www.flightgear.org/ Alien Arena http://alienarena.org/ Sauerbraten http://sauerbraten.org/ Warsow http://www.warsow.net/ and lets not forget the awesome titles by ID like Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory all run natively on pretty much every OS out there. You can also pick up a few here http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ things like Postal 2 or Majesty.

Other games and apps can be forced to run via Wine http://www.winehq.org/ Crossover http://www.codeweavers.com/ or Cedega http://www.transgaming.com/ pretty trivial to get WoW and a few others to run with them, hell, games like Spore and Eve Online took the half @$$ way of supporting Linux and OS X by releasing their windows version with cedega as their Linux and Mac clients. I dont like this personally as there is often a preformance hit, but I’ve seen anecdotal reports of some ppl getting games like WoW to play better on Linux then on windows.

I personally prefer the best of Ubuntu, combined with Debian, and the 20 thousand+ free programs, applications, games, that are in SimplyMepis 7.0!
Been building my own desktop and server systems since 1997. When I purchase the least expensive motherboard combos, separately purchase memory and PSUs, and buy my cases locally, or reuse some component parts from abandoned systems, I find the savings to be over 60%, not counting the savings by avoiding proprietary software rip-offs, and the Million Microsoft Virus/Malware/Worms/Trojans and exploits!

Each revision of GNU/Linux actually runs my older hardware faster!
True multi-tasking, multi-process GNU/Linux in comparison to Microsoft is like replacing the single security screening gate at a major airport with 4,000 parallel portals!

That the public accepts marginal, almost non-functional, products like Microsoft and the cartel of robber barons also known as “Trusted Partners”, only certifies the low intelligence of the consuming populace.