Awesome refurb P4 deals @ dell !

[iwearnosox]

Greetings,

Yes, I know most people here assemble their own. But this is a great deal regardless:

Until March 15th Dell is giving $300 off already discounted refurbished dimension 8100 models in their Factory outlet. I'm selling my homebuilt if the unit I ordered arrives in good shape, and I'll probably make money for doing so!

Cheers,

Sox

-------------------------------------
SYSTEM SPECIFICATION
Dimension 8100 (Service Tag No. XXXXXXX)
Dimension® 8100 Mini-Tower: Pentium® 4 Processor at 1.4GHz (Ion Silver Chassis)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

System Price $1,665.00
Promotion Discount ($300.00)
Discounted Price $1,365.00
Promotion End Date Mar 15, 2001

Memory: 128MB PC600 RDRAM (2 RIMMs)
Floppy Drive: 1.44 MB Diskette Drive
Hard Disk Drive: 80 GB EIDE Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
Video: 64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce2 ULTRA GTS w/DVI Graphics
Modem: 3Com V.90/56K PCI Telephony Modem
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP Sound Card
CD Read-Write Drive: 12X/8X/32X CD-RW
Software: Microsoft® Works Suite 2001
Norton Antivirus® 2000
Microsoft® Windows® Millennium (Windows Me)
Software
Misc: Microsoft Mouse
Dell Enhanced Quiet Key Keyboard - Midnight Grey
Shipping Material

 

[Judgement]

Anytime they have refurbs of such new technology it makes me wonder...

If they are still in good shape its an ok deal...kinda short on ram, old hard drive for such a fast system in my opinion but definately worth a look at for some people.

 

[noload]

FYI - I sell Dell computers at my job, and my sales rep let me know that a good portion of these systems are those that the customer sent back (without hardware problems) or those that for whatever reason were built as duplicate orders. On some of them the box was sealed and never opened, but they have to sell it as refursbed or risk sitting on it. You still get the 3 year warranty, right?

Just my $.02

 

[Souka]

128mb ram? What's the cost of upgrading...how many slots still left? 1?

80gb 5400 rpm drive? slow, but do-able I suppose.

Nice video card and CDRW drive...suprised they put these in with the memmory and HD specs.

 

[Flaredair]

Too bad Windows ME, it would be much better to have Win 2000

 

[VisionsUCI]

wow... this is a great deal! i wish i had waited instead of putting together my computer.

 

[iwearnosox]

Yes, same warranty as a new dell:

"Dell Refurbished systems come with the same limited warranties as new systems, and include Dell's award winning technical support for as long as you own the computer."

128mb of ram, yeah. I think it still has 2 slots open, but it's rdram so buy wisely. All configurations are different, just check out their ever changing inventory. A good supply of 8100's right now.
Sox

 

[CitizenX]

It's a shame that I bought one last week...

but at second glance they raised the prices $350 on a VERY similiar model!

I guess that's a good deal

 

[Judgement]

Shame the motherboard's DELL's come on can't be overclocked by any conventional means.

 

[Shmorq]

I don't like the 5400 RPM drive and the PC600 RAM, but I would still jump on it in a second if I had the cash...

 

[slag]

I bet you would find the 5400 RPM 80 gig hard drive will blow away many 7200 rpm drives since the 80 gig drive has much greater aural density--more data per platter than 20 and 30 gig 7200 rpm drives do. Yes, its spinning slower, but the data is closer together so rotational speed isn't as great a factor...

Joe

 

[Cybrwolf]

So, do you think this is a better deal then building your own, A quick check on price watch had just the mobo+cpu+ram+CDRW almost as much as the Dell deal, then you still have to get a case, PS, floppy, Harddrive.
I was just getting ready to start building my own, this deal has me wondering if I should or not.

 

[Shmorq]

Actually, 80 gig isn't faster than a 40 gig since they both use the same 20 gig platters. The 40 uses two 20 gig platters while the 80 uses four 20 gig platters. The aural densities are the same for both...

 

[Cyberian]

<< I bet you would find the 5400 RPM 80 gig hard drive will blow away many 7200 rpm drives since the 80 gig drive has much greater aural density--more data per platter than 20 and 30 gig 7200 rpm drives do. Yes, its spinning slower, but the data is closer together so rotational speed isn't as great a factor... >>





<< Actually, 80 gig isn't faster than a 40 gig since they both use the same 20 gig platters. The 40 uses two 20 gig platters while the 80 uses four 20 gig platters. The aural densities are the same for both... >>



I am now very confused.
I thought 'slag' meant that a high-density 5400 rpm HDD would be real close in performance to a normal 7200 rpm HDD

 

[manly]

Cyberian,

don't be confused; you read it right. I'm not sure the argument holds up because the 7200 rpm ATA drives you're likely to buy new today will have either 15 MB or 20 MB per platter. slag's argument seems to apply to older 7200 rpm drives, but not necessarily the ones in the marketplace right now.

 

[sitka]

ran sandra memory bench on one of these today.
It was a 1.3 gig with the 2 rimm PC600
it was a few marks below (300?) the 1.5gig reference values included in Sandra 2001
Might be playing with it tommorrow and I'll let you know what I find out.

 

[Turkey]

Memory: 128MB PC600 RDRAM (2 RIMMs)
PC600 has been shown to perform worse than SDRAM with an MTH in slower (any PIII) systems.


Video: 64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce2 ULTRA GTS w/DVI Graphics
:Q Yow! The guys at Dell know how to pick video cards!

 

[Cybrwolf]

Well, I ordered one. Seem a good deal to me. I priced out the exact same system on their website and it was $450.00 more, so this is like 20% off a top of the line system. I had priced a 1.4 P4 system (on pricewatch)that I was planing to build and it was already close that that price without a case and with a OEM processor. and I DON'T have to deal with putting it together and fighting IRQ conflicts and hardware incompatiblities.

I got this one: (I had 3 picked out and 2 sold while i was looking at them!!)

1.5 p4
256 mb ram
64mb Creative Labs GeForce 2 ULTRA
12x DVD
60gig 7200 HD
crappy modem that will go in trash as soon as I get it
win ME (will be reformated and loaded with win98SE ASAP).
all for $1735.00
this includes a 3 yr Dell warrenty and support.

I'll put my 12X VeloCD burner in it, and I think I'll be set for awhile

Did I do Ok?

 

[jonnyfin]

^

 

[In_Ur_Face]

Turkey:

PIII systems do not show much of a performance with RDRAM b/c the system bus is 8 bytes x 133 MHz = 1.064 GB/sec. On a P4 the system bus is 8 bytes x 400 MHz = 3.2 GB/s. With the dual channel RDRAM found on both 820 and 850 you get 2 bytes x 800 MHz x 2 channels = 3.2 GB/s. PC600 will give you 2.4 GB/s. So the P4 can take advantage of the higher bandwidth memory with its much faster system bus.

Also, all 850 boards ( P4 motherboards ) have 4 RIMMS. So the max you can put in right now is 512x4=2GB. Dont forget to upgrade in pairs.... 128MB of PC800 is approx $140ish now

The 80GB HDD is ATA100.

Note my roomate has one of these systems. I highly recommend it.

 

[LuZeR]

no monitor??? nuff said.

 

[squirrel dog]

I have the 80 gig maxtor in my system,with two 7200rpm 10 gig drives also(they are c,d).I cannt tell the difference.I store vids&amp;mp3's on the 80 and it plays both,no prob.And it runs cool and quite.

 

[sitka]

not too much in the bios of the 8100 P1.3G at work.
Couldn't find anything, but I may be wrong. bus set at 100MHZ not adjustable? No mem tweaks but maybe they aren't applicable. From what I know Rambus runs at CAS 2.5, fixed.

ran spec viewperf as I was leaving on an MX 32MEG and it appeared dead slow, but I didn't stick around to see the results. I'll post them tomorrow. Got some Radeon 64's there too but you know the Win 2K thing.

Wouldn't boot unless the Western Digital Hard drive was set on the end of the ATA100 cable and set to Cable select, which is the spec anyway so no surprise, but someone obviously didn't know that.

Really weird IRQ assignment in BIOS. Two lines...

First one for IRQ assignment and in pre boot it assigned
AGP video 3
Nic 11
Sound 11
etc
Then the next line is IRQ reservation which gives each IRQ in sequence but there is no legacy ISA/PCI-ISA automatic definition. Could just be a different way to do the same thing.

ACPI takes over in Windows

The two fans. Power supply and case mounted CPU ducted are real quiet (silent) and I was impressed with the amount of air flow from the back of the power supply. But gosh that bight green fan duct just about makes me puke. Power supply hinges out and up. While the case splits in half, clamshell style, one side plus half the top.

5 1/4 drives use sliding clips like Antec but a little more complicated.

There is a horizontal bar that runs across the case half way up as you look at the side with the case off. It includes an AGP retainer on it.

It definitely looks good but feels a little tinny.

Sandra 2001 wouldn't complete a drives bench. I've had this happen before when chipset drivers weren't installed.

Sorry this is so sketchy I've just been stopping in on my way out the door to help with the benches.

 

[Cybrwolf]

Me again, found a even better deal, so canceled my first order. Got the exact same system, except no winmodem and 125 mb PC800 instead of PC600 for $300 less! I'm happy now ;-)
my sys:--------------------cheapest price on Pricewatch:
1.5 P4/mobo-------------------- 779
128 mb PC800 ------------------ 153
12x DVD------------------------- 55
7200 60 gig HD----------------- 197
floppy-------------------------- 14
case/ps------------------------ 175 <-- a good case is alot more.
OS------------------------------ 79
TB Santa Cruz SC-----------------70
CL Geforce2 Ultra---------------399
TOTAL:
1440 ------------------------- 1921

AND with the dell I get 3 yrs warrenty and tech support (the pricewatch cpu is OEM - 90 days warrenty)and a bunch of other software

looks like a killer deal to me!

*** Update **** LOL! I forgot to include the Video card in the prices!! Added now. savings of almost $500!! not including the time to assemble it!

 

[Punamo]

Ordered one:

-P4 1.4GHz
-128MB PC800 RDRAM*
-40GB 7200RPM drive
-TNT2 M64 (weakest link, but I was gonna swap it with Matrox G450 anyway)
-3Com Modem
-Turtle beach Santa Cruz DSP soundcard
-48X CD-ROM drive
-12X/8X/32X CD-RW drive*
-Windows ME &amp; Software

* those were the things that made me bought the system.

Did I get a bad deal?

Oh well, at least I won't have to worrry about stability issues.