Dec 22 2007
New Computer
About a year and a half ago, I went ahead and bought a Dell. The last big manufacturer I went with was Gateway and that computer lasted a very long time compared to my first PC, a 350MHz beast from HP. 😛
The Dell that I’ve currently got is my only PC and I need another to take some of the load off of this one. I don’t want a gaming PC, but if I did, I think I’d hire Ogre to build me one. 😉 And since I don’t want a gaming PC, I felt like Dell would be a good choice, especially considering cost and reliability. I’ve been quite happy with my cheap little Dell PC. The only major problem I’ve had with it was the main cooling fan (over the processor) died. And since Dell has proprietary hardware, I couldn’t go out and get a new fan at a local electronics store. But it got fixed in a short period of time, and with just a week left on the warranty. Now that’s nice.
Well, the new PC that I ordered this morning won’t be here until after the first of the year. I should have ordered it a week ago, but live and let learn I say.
Here are some of the specs on the new PC:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5000+
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
20 inch E207WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Windows Vista® Home Basic
16x DVD+/-RW Drive
Price: ~$710 after taxes
It’s not the best PC on the block, but it’s what I need, plenty of speed and a big hard drive. I wasn’t too thrilled with the Windows Vista, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I love Win XP on my current system.
And I’ve yet to have an SATA hard drive or an LCD monitor.
I have to admit that this thing is much better than my current system:
Celeron 2.53GHz
256MB Ram
80GB IDE Hard Drive
My only concern with the new PC has to deal with the power supply. Dell tends to use a lot of wimpy power supplies (250Watts, I think) and I would like to add another hard drive to the existing 500GB. I’m not sure if the PS will hold up, what do you think?
The computer seems fine. Though, I think I would have chosen Windows XP Pro. I despise Vista at the moment. I’m sure they’ll work the bugs out of it eventually, but I don’t think it’s all that great right now. I do think, if the PS is 250watts, you could go with something bigger. However, it might be too much of a hassle to even try replacing it. It might look standard, but the connector to the mobo might not be. You said it yourself, Dell likes to use proprietary things. IE The CPU fan connector 😉
Overall, though, I think the computer sounds good. My parents just got a new Dell slim line–at my recommendation–and they like it. The only thing I didn’t like was the mouse and keyboard, but those are minor. They got XP with it, too. My mom’s work has had all sorts of trouble with Vista, and she refused to get a computer with it on it.
WinXP is only available on certain models, but I don’t think I’ll have a problem with it as it won’t be my main PC anyway.
As for the PS, I think it may be a 300W, but we’ll see. I’m aware of the odd connector. Some companies have actually been developing PS replacements for Dells because of the fact that a regular ATX PS won’t work in a Dell.
A hard drive uses about 10W, so if you don’t have a hungry video card, it should be fine. They probably use the same power supply if you get a second drive from them when they build it.
Yeah. That’s probably true. I think it should be fine. Is it a slim line model?
Just 10W? Wow, I figured it would be double that.
Ogre, no, it’s a regular one.
Here’s a pic – http://i.dell.com/images/global/products/superview/sv_inspndt_530.jpg
Also, according to Dell’s website, it’s a 300W power supply. And since I’m using onboard video, I don’t need to worry about a power-hungry video card.
Yeah, onboard video isn’t going to take all that much power. You should definitely be fine with what they put in it, even if you add another hard drive, or put in seperate video card at some point. If you started to have reliability issues after doing something like that than a bigger PS might make sense.