Please Help Me Get A New Computer: A Few Questions

[Brian]

Hi,

I'm looking into getting a new computer. First a little background information and what I have on my current computer:

A friend of the family upgraded my Gateway computer about 4 years ago, and since then he has pretty much been our main technical support/upgrade guy. He seemed to know a lot about computers (but then again, who DOESN'T seem to know a lot about computers when you don't know much yourself?), and I pretty much trusted him 100% to get me what I needed and not to rip me off.

Over the years, he gradually grew to be pretty irresponsible, lazy, full of excuses, etc. It escalated to a peak last November when I told him my computer was running slow, and he recommended more RAM. I won't go into the whole story here, but more RAM grew into new motherboard, which grew into new video card and new processor, which grew into a 4 month long wait because "the factory in Asia where the parts are coming from got washed away by the tsunami". I think I heard just about every excuse out of the guy, and finally in mid-March he came over with all the parts, lost my hard-drive while installing, and I paid him 180 bucks for a new 120gb harddrive. At that point, I was willing to pay him whatever just to get the job done so that I could finally be done with him.

And, now that I am done with him, I am left with this POS "upgraded" computer. Here are my current specs:

Microsoft WinXP Home Edition Service Pack 2
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 1.73 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM
Dual Video Cards:
1) GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
2) GeForce4 MX 4000
128 hard drive
1g of RAM (2 512)
2 21" CRT monitors

Uh, that's pretty much all I know about my computer. It runs pretty smoothely, but there are two problems I am having with it:

1) It randomly reboots or freezes about once a day. This seems to happen most often when I have a lot of poker tables running. It has only frozen once, but has randomly rebooted about 7 times in the past week. If anyone knows how to fix this rather vague problem that I'm sure could be anything, let me know please. Right now I have the case off and a fan blowing on it in case it was overheating, but I'm still having the problem.

2) I have no tech support to call if I am having problems. This is the main reason I'd like to buy from a major company, so that if I have any problems I have a tech support line to call 24/7, and if they can't help me, the company will replace my parts free of charge WITHOUT my having to ship the computer in.

Here's what I want to be able to do:

1) Run 18+ poker tables along with various other programs such as Poker Tracker, Windows Media Player, PlayerView, etc.
2) Play Doom3, World of WarCraft, and other such games at peak efficiency.
3) Have a great technical support/warranty.

I'm considering the following 4 options, but feel free to add your own:

1)
AlienWare Area 51

Alienware is my favorite of the 3 companies I have seen so far, and I particularly like their warranty options (which are quite similiar to Dell's but seem more in-house) and their casing. This is the first of two computers I am considerng from them, and if this one can get the job done, and do it well, then it's definitely preferable to option #2, which is $3500 more.

2) AlienWare Aurora ALX

Much more expensive than alternative #1, but obviously should be much faster, as well as has a bunch of cool extra features, like:

[ QUOTE ]
Personal Touch
Alienware ALX systems are hand-crafted by a dedicated team of hardcore PC enthusiasts that have been trained to build your system as if it were their own. Your ALX sales associate will call you personally to take you through every step of the building process, from helping you decide what components will perform best to recommending what settings to run your games on. Simply tell the ALX team what you are looking for and they will help you configure the system that is right for you.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Private Game Servers
As an ALX customer, you'll also receive exclusive access to Alienware's game servers. Play the latest games against Alienware employees and other ALX customers in a competitive environment. Your ALX password grants you preferential access.

[/ QUOTE ]

And

[ QUOTE ]
ALX Facility Tour
ALX customers receive the ultimate VIP pass to tour the private ALX facilities where each ALX machine is custom-hand-built, performance enhanced, and thoroughly tested.

[/ QUOTE ]

Plus, the show-off factor is cool too. Or is this not really anything that is show-off material?

3)Dell Dimension 8400 Typical Dell computer, seems quite similiar to option #1.

4)NewEgg ABS Ultimate M6
I'm not sure about buying from NewEgg, but this one seems a lot like the AlienWare Aurora but a lot cheaper. Definitely a worse warranty, though.

If you made it this far, thanks for listening to my computer troubles and any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated! Thanks a ton,

-Brian

[EDIT]: Oh, and one other thing... The Alienware Area 51 would ship in about a week and a half, whereas the Alienware Aurora would take over a month to ship. Obviously, the sooner the better, as I am pretty much unable to play poker in the meantime as these random reboots often cause timeouts as well as losing whole orbits right after I have paid the blinds. No matter what I choose, though, I will need to find some way to play poker in the meantime as it is my primary source of income. Does anyone have any suggestions? Buy a huge fan to put right next to the box in the meantime? Toss out this RAM, and get some fresh RAM from Best Buy? (a friend suggested that the RAM may be causing the reboots)

Also, one final thing. I am considering buying one of these:

Command Center

Does that require a seperate video card for each display? Would any or all of these computers be able to run that 6 monitor setup? Thanks.

[Nfinity]

Your current PC doesn't seem to bad, in fact it is amazingly similar to my own. Your problem is most likely a cooling issue, and I know from experience that the box fan next to the open case is rather sub-optimal. Try getting a bigger case and some more fans, if this doesn't solve the problem it certainly won't hurt.

However,

I'm not sure if this will be peak performance for all the things you want to do.

Alienware PC's are some of the best IMO. They are custom built, and their customer service is astounding.

And there is a show-off factor, i have friends who will gladly give up digits for one.(Though obviously not the thumbs.)

[Brian]

Hi Nfinity,

Yeah, this huge fan right up next to the box doesn't seem to be doing me much good. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] But getting a bigger box for more fans is pretty much impossible for me, as I know I would screw something up when changing boxes. So I'd have to hire someone to do it for me, plus buy a new box and some fans, and even then, there's no guarantee it would solve my problem. And I'm pretty much done throwing $ into this computer anyways. I would certainly spend the $ on the fans/box/installation if I *KNEW* it would solve my problems, but I'm sure some other problem would crop up a few weeks later, and then I'd be even more pissed at myself for not going ahead and ordering a new computer.

This computer I have here started as that original Gateway oh so long ago. Virtually nothing is left of that original PC, but I think that the frankenstein it has become over the years is probably contributing somewhat to the problem. I'm no computer expert, but it seems that just throwing all these neat parts together into a box and praying is sure to lead to problems sooner or later, and in my case, it's always sooner.

I am definitely open to ideas for some sort of a short-term fix, as long as it doesn't involve cutting back on tables. I'm really leaning towards getting the AlienWare Aurora, but that would mean going over a month without poker, which is pretty much undoable for me. I suppose I can continue playing and pray for no outages (I played for 6 hours straight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning without any outages whatsoever), but they seem to always eventually come, and when they do, so does come the Wrath of Brian. Not only do they waste the time I spent loading all the tables, getting on wait lists, positioning them correctly on my monitors for minimum overlap, etc., but also I'm sure they cost me $. I used to have a tilt problem about a year and a half ago, where I would crunch mountain dew cans in my hands, bang the computer desk, and even slam the keyboard onto the table. Once I began to understand mathematical expectation and hourly rate, the tilt problem evaporated, but I'm afraid I'm still throwing things across the room whenever the computer reboots mid-session. Yeah, I need to seek anger management. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Thanks,

-Brian

[otctrader]

I'm not sure if they have changed, but I'm using a $3500 Alienware now, and have found their customer support about as helpful as Partypoker - their call desk is based in Miami and staffed by "natives" who are quite English-challenged. Also about one year post-purchase (and about two weeks after my one year warranty expired), my motherboard got fried rendering the computer useless, and was basically told by support "no warranty, f-off." I had to fix it myself which took about 2 weeks, and it required an obscure part which I was very lucky to find on Ebay. F them and their overpriced rigs.

Most important question you can ask yourself is what do you need the computer for? If the answer doesn't include cutting edge graphics-heavy computer games, you don't need one of these souped up PC's with $1000 graphics cards and cooling systems. If you DO want to play games, and money is no object, then take a look at Alien's main competitor - http://www.falcon-nw.com 100% American, no outsourcing, rave reviews, but you pay a ridiculous premium for it.

Personally I don't think it's worth the premium you pay either of these guys; any of the major companies (i.e. Dell) mass-produce high end machines now, the quality is great, and you'll pay significantly less.

[Brian]

Hi otctrader,

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure if they have changed, but I'm using a $3500 Alienware now, and have found their customer support about as helpful as Partypoker - their call desk is based in Miami and staffed by "natives" who are quite English-challenged. Also about one year post-purchase (and about two weeks after my one year warranty expired), my motherboard got fried rendering the computer useless, and was basically told by support "no warranty, f-off." I had to fix it myself which took about 2 weeks, and it required an obscure part which I was very lucky to find on Ebay. F them and their overpriced rigs.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is quite disheartening to hear, especially as one of the main reasons I liked them (from what I have heard from others as well as what their site says) was because of what seemed like phenomenal customer support. I don't think I could bear to deal with anything even remotely resembling PartyPoker. That type of support is unacceptable for a $5000 machine. I plan on calling up their customer/technical support lines today, and if I get some foreigner, the deal is definitely off. For some reason I thought they were run in America.

BTW, what kind of warranty did you have with them? Just 1 year? I plan on getting the 4 year warranty, but again, if all that means is I get to listen to foreigners who can't speak English for 4 years instead of 1, then screw it.

[ QUOTE ]
Most important question you can ask yourself is what do you need the computer for?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't use it for graphics design or anything high tech like that, but I do play Doom 3 and World of WarCraft, and having some nice video cards for those would definitely improve gameplay. The main reason I'm looking for an upgrade, other than having a computer that has good tech support/warranties, is so that I can run a lot of poker tables, which eats up quite a bit more system resources than I thought, especially when combined with PokerTracker/PlayerView. Opening 18 tables on 5 different sites eats up over 50% of my current system's resources, and adding PokerTracker into the mix maxes things out. So I think I do need something a bit high tech.

[ QUOTE ]

Personally I don't think it's worth the premium you pay either of these guys; any of the major companies (i.e. Dell) mass-produce high end machines now, the quality is great, and you'll pay significantly less.

[/ QUOTE ]

I couldn't find anything at Dell that was similiar to the Aurora. The best system I could find was the Dimension 8400, which is pretty much the same as the AlienWare Area 51, both in specs and in prices.

-Brian

[mc1]

[ QUOTE ]

Over the years, he gradually grew to be pretty irresponsible, lazy, full of excuses, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

With comments like this you dont deserve help, It sounds like your friend was only tryng to help you and get you start getting very ungrateful.

Your existing setup looks fine to me, I would blame your freezes on an under speced power supply as dual VGA are very very power intensive. If that fails that I think only a full operating system re-install is the answer. It could also be a corrupt display drivers to blame.

You have a complicated setup and still diss your friend for trying to help you. It sounds like the issues with your system are beyond your friends capabilities but faults like you describe are very common and very difficult to diagnose.

What happens when someone on this forum recommends something for you and it is not suitable - I look forward to the negative feedback that is your style.

[Brian]

Perhaps I wasn't clear:

[ QUOTE ]
A friend of the family upgraded my Gateway computer about 4 years ago, and since then he has pretty much been our main technical support/upgrade guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

His services were not free. I paid him $50/hr.

Though I appreciate your comments, even if you decided to flame me despite being ignorant of my exact situation, I do not wish to turn this thread into a flame war. I'll look into the power supply. Thanks,

-Brian

[NoTalent]

Brian

From what you have said, it looks like you want and need the best. Get a top of the line Alienware or similar system (that one from newegg looks great) and you will be happy with it. I would recommend an AMD system since they have a better price/performace ratio.

Get at least 1GB of memory and a top of the line video card.

[Brian]

Hi NoTalent,

Is there much of a difference between 1GB of memory and 2GB, or 1GB and 4GB? If I'm getting a new computer that's "top of the line", I figure I may as well go ahead and upgrade it to the max, especially seeing as how I have 1GB of RAM right now and it's not quite getting the job done. However, of the few people I have spoken to about getting a new computer, none of them seemed to emphasize RAM, mainly just processor and video cards. And I think that right now I have a pretty decent processor and video card...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, is the AlienWare Area 51 that much of an upgrade to my computer? Or even the AlienWare Aurora for that matter? I ran the "PC Test" on AlienWare's site, and they said that the Aurora ran 4x faster than my current computer, but that "tests may be inaccurate".

Also, do you have any personal experience with AlienWare, Newegg, or others?

And, finally, does anyone have any input on the Digital Tigers Command Center? I'm unclear about whether or not I need a seperate video card for each monitor, or what, and whether or not the Aurora/Area51/Dell Dimension/etc. would be able to run it.

Thanks,

-Brian

[illunious]

[ QUOTE ]
And, finally, does anyone have any input on the Digital Tigers Command Center? I'm unclear about whether or not I need a seperate video card for each monitor, or what, and whether or not the Aurora/Area51/Dell Dimension/etc. would be able to run it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Each screen has DVI inputs, so you will probably want to get one dual-head card for each pair.

Alienware is probably the only place on your list that would custom build a 3 video card system.

Maybe going with a Digital Tigers workstation would be a good idea, they have some real sexy high end systems and of course they know what their doing when it comes to multi-multi-display systems.

For the problem with your current setup, if you want to get it running immediately, mc1 probably is right about power, try taking out your secondary video card (as a test and temporary fix).

Edit: With the crazy amount of multitasking you do, I'd recommend dual hard drives (raid 0), 2 GB RAM and dual processors in that order, but a new system in your price range would run fine without any of that.