- Admin
- #26
HP always pulls out the most generic parts possible, often grabbing things on the sly from either producers they have exclusive contracts with, or producers who are getting kick backs for keeping various hardware/software limitations that work in other company's interest. You'll note that they never give the name brands, or even the model numbers, of any of their parts - but if you crack one open it's always the lowest of the low, coupled with 'nerfed' models produced exclusively for HP.
If you need an office desktop, just for web browsing, HP's and other such prebuilts are hard to beat in the $150-$400 range, but when it comes to gaming and the higher end desktops, said companies usually depend on a combination of brand loyalty and ignorance. In either case, they always cut every corner they can.
Alienware, and similar companies that dedicate themselves to high end and gamer systems, are a bit better in that regard. They'll *usually* get quality brand name parts, and *usually* make sure that each component is optimal for the chipset, and thus are both much more broadly compatible and much better integrated than any of the HP/Compaq/Dell/Gateway/etc designs. However, as others have stated, most of what you're paying for there is the brand. You could easily put the same quality parts together for half the price, and said combination will inevitably be more optimized for your specific use. (You wont, for instance, get stuck with an ATI card.)
In that last system's case... That design is just retired. Why, the hell, would you install a liquid cooling system, and then just refrigerate your CPU on any modern system is beyond me. The i7's don't run hot at all - indeed, you pretty much have to go back to the Prescott before you find a CPU that does - unless you overclock the sh*t out of them - which will do you no good on a gamer machine with an i7. Liquid cooling is over-hyped in general (I'd say overrated, but no one in the OC biz gives it very high marks these days), but if you're going to cool something, it has to be your GPU, as that is by far the hottest thing in the system. So there's no reason for it, the way this system is setup, other than the gimmick, "Look at me! I'm water cooled!". ...and similarly to the HP, it'd be quite easy to build that system for a third of the price, and you'd then know where all the bits came from.
If you need an office desktop, just for web browsing, HP's and other such prebuilts are hard to beat in the $150-$400 range, but when it comes to gaming and the higher end desktops, said companies usually depend on a combination of brand loyalty and ignorance. In either case, they always cut every corner they can.
Alienware, and similar companies that dedicate themselves to high end and gamer systems, are a bit better in that regard. They'll *usually* get quality brand name parts, and *usually* make sure that each component is optimal for the chipset, and thus are both much more broadly compatible and much better integrated than any of the HP/Compaq/Dell/Gateway/etc designs. However, as others have stated, most of what you're paying for there is the brand. You could easily put the same quality parts together for half the price, and said combination will inevitably be more optimized for your specific use. (You wont, for instance, get stuck with an ATI card.)
In that last system's case... That design is just retired. Why, the hell, would you install a liquid cooling system, and then just refrigerate your CPU on any modern system is beyond me. The i7's don't run hot at all - indeed, you pretty much have to go back to the Prescott before you find a CPU that does - unless you overclock the sh*t out of them - which will do you no good on a gamer machine with an i7. Liquid cooling is over-hyped in general (I'd say overrated, but no one in the OC biz gives it very high marks these days), but if you're going to cool something, it has to be your GPU, as that is by far the hottest thing in the system. So there's no reason for it, the way this system is setup, other than the gimmick, "Look at me! I'm water cooled!". ...and similarly to the HP, it'd be quite easy to build that system for a third of the price, and you'd then know where all the bits came from.
