Hot Dell Deal

[uhohs]

Originally posted by: nolovenohope
I seem to be unsuccessful with trying to acquire an EPP coupon. I will probably just go and buy one off of eBay. Anyone having issues with it? I have submitted 2 e-mails from different accounts following the instructions stated on the page.

try a free @msn.com email or a free @writeme.com from mail.com

 

[Chiropteran]

It seems you can't pick the 24" monitor anymore, anyone else able to configure it? You can instead take a 22" and a better video card or large hard drive to get the price over $999 for the coupon, but I'm not sure it's such a great deal without the nice monitor.

 

[Andrew111]

Yeah, no more 24" selection:-( What pisses me off is that I had placed my order beforehand but it appears Dell lost my order somehow cause I called them and they can't track my purchase ID two days after I ordered it. I just went with the 22" monitor and selected Vista Ultimate as the OS and it was like $1,009 so barely squeaked by for the coupons to knock it down to $640 IIRC.

 

[Genx87]

Tempted to do this and use it for an HTPC. But not sure if I can spring 600+ right now.

 

[piotrgurin]

Woot just got mine in!

Time to fire up ebay for the monitor

 

[uhohs]

from fujimitsu on SD

Just to update on my previous post.

The 24" IS available, but not through the link in the first post.

If you select the "upgraded" configuration (somewhere around $600 base, it's got an upgraded monitor) you can still select the 24" and recieve the deal.

edit: actually, the original link still shows the 24" option for me. weird.
link
working for anyone else?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Tempted to do this and use it for an HTPC. But not sure if I can spring 600+ right now.

By HTPC, what do people mean?

If they mean just an MCE2005 box that is a recording device for a few XBOX360s in the house, plus a viewing device attached to a high-def TV, an ancient AMD XP3000 I have does all that. It has a 300GB HDD, a 500GB HDD, a 500GB HDD, a SiliconDust HDTV dual tuner, a Hauppauge dual analog tuner (so it records 4 shows at once - without issue or incident), and it has 1.5GB of RAM. Present value on this hardware is probably around $150 (for the PC itself). For video I have an nVidia 5200, shooting SVideo to a 27" TV, and I have an XBOX360 shooting the highdef content on this PC to a 42" plasma.

Why would someone buy a quad box for a HTPC?

just curious - not criticizing - just mystified at what would require that much CPU power and energy. *Via* markets little C7s for HTPC usage!

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: uhohs
from fujimitsu on SD

Just to update on my previous post.

The 24" IS available, but not through the link in the first post.

If you select the "upgraded" configuration (somewhere around $600 base, it's got an upgraded monitor) you can still select the 24" and recieve the deal.

edit: actually, the original link still shows the 24" option for me. weird.
link
working for anyone else?

Your link lets me get the 24" monitor. Not sure what was wrong with the other link, now that I see it I don't want to mess around and risk losing it.

Thanks

 

[FuzzyWuzzyDan]

I ordered mine the 14th, and just got it in yesterday, so they are reasonably quick on the shipping.

 

[Chiropteran]

Went for it.

Total $639.24

Not bad.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: Genx87
Tempted to do this and use it for an HTPC. But not sure if I can spring 600+ right now.

By HTPC, what do people mean?

If they mean just an MCE2005 box that is a recording device for a few XBOX360s in the house, plus a viewing device attached to a high-def TV, an ancient AMD XP3000 I have does all that. It has a 300GB HDD, a 500GB HDD, a 500GB HDD, a SiliconDust HDTV dual tuner, a Hauppauge dual analog tuner (so it records 4 shows at once - without issue or incident), and it has 1.5GB of RAM. Present value on this hardware is probably around $150 (for the PC itself). For video I have an nVidia 5200, shooting SVideo to a 27" TV, and I have an XBOX360 shooting the highdef content on this PC to a 42" plasma.

Why would someone buy a quad box for a HTPC?

just curious - not criticizing - just mystified at what would require that much CPU power and energy. *Via* markets little C7s for HTPC usage!

I'd buy it as the combo with the monitor. I want to build a box to be an HTPC. But the price will come out close to this deal. I mean, if I can get a 22 or 24" monitor + box for nearly the same price why not?

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: Genx87
Tempted to do this and use it for an HTPC. But not sure if I can spring 600+ right now.

Why would someone buy a quad box for a HTPC?

just curious - not criticizing - just mystified at what would require that much CPU power and energy. *Via* markets little C7s for HTPC usage!

Depends on the type of HTPC and what you want to do with it. If you also use that PC to re-encode, you would definately want a quad. Of course, if you are looking for a low profile, low power, low heat box to just look pretty and stream content only, then a low power 35Watt celeron will do the trick just fine.

However, a lot of people don't want to run encoding on their main machine, it case they play a game or need to reboot, or something... So, why not have the HTPC take care of it while doing the other functions? Makes sense to me.

 

[imported_OrSin]

Will putting a 7950 or 8800 video card over take the PSU. Also I will be adding 2 more harddrives.

Also can I replace the PSU with any standard one?

 

[dclive]

Even then I just don't see it. I do lots of encoding on that AMD box too. It's on 24x7, so I can run encoding in the background (it sits there twiddling its' thumbs 90% of the day anyway) and nothing is impacted and nothing slows down. It's not as if I'm waiting on the encoding...

Anyway, sounds like this is a 'to each their own' thing, but I don't see the benefit. For games, sure. For video work, sure. But for a box that is on 24x7 anyway, to take an extra 30 minutes per hour of video to encode.... I just don't see why anyone would care, assuming you aren't encoding 18 hours or so per day of shows.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: dclive
Even then I just don't see it. I do lots of encoding on that AMD box too. It's on 24x7, so I can run encoding in the background (it sits there twiddling its' thumbs 90% of the day anyway) and nothing is impacted and nothing slows down. It's not as if I'm waiting on the encoding...

Anyway, sounds like this is a 'to each their own' thing, but I don't see the benefit. For games, sure. For video work, sure. But for a box that is on 24x7 anyway, to take an extra 30 minutes per hour of video to encode.... I just don't see why anyone would care, assuming you aren't encoding 18 hours or so per day of shows.

The first bolded is very true... Each their own. The second is misleading, depending on video size. My AMD X2 3800+ is at least, 4x slower at encoding than my Q6600. That is a huge time savings when dealing with H.264 or even Xvid. That equates into a lot more than 30 minute time savings. Of course, the size of the video and the quality selected changes the actual time saved, but the percentage remains the same.

The important aspect when discussing these items is understanding that even though you or myself do not see a huge need for it, others do. There is always another side and generally, it is also quite logical and sound.

I am OCD, so I would probably never use a Quad in an HTPC because I would want it very quiet, pretty and silent.

Another aspect to view is that some HTPC's are people main machines. So, the extra power will certainly not go to waste.

 

[Synomenon]

Got mine today. The SP2208WFP is pretty nice. The computer is sitting here in its unopened box. Not sure what to do with it...

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

Originally posted by: dclive
Even then I just don't see it. I do lots of encoding on that AMD box too. It's on 24x7, so I can run encoding in the background (it sits there twiddling its' thumbs 90% of the day anyway) and nothing is impacted and nothing slows down. It's not as if I'm waiting on the encoding...

Anyway, sounds like this is a 'to each their own' thing, but I don't see the benefit. For games, sure. For video work, sure. But for a box that is on 24x7 anyway, to take an extra 30 minutes per hour of video to encode.... I just don't see why anyone would care, assuming you aren't encoding 18 hours or so per day of shows.

The first bolded is very true... Each their own. The second is misleading, depending on video size. My AMD X2 3800+ is at least, 4x slower at encoding than my Q6600. That is a huge time savings when dealing with H.264 or even Xvid. That equates into a lot more than 30 minute time savings. Of course, the size of the video and the quality selected changes the actual time saved, but the percentage remains the same.

The important aspect when discussing these items is understanding that even though you or myself do not see a huge need for it, others do. There is always another side and generally, it is also quite logical and sound.

I am OCD, so I would probably never use a Quad in an HTPC because I would want it very quiet, pretty and silent.

Another aspect to view is that some HTPC's are people main machines. So, the extra power will certainly not go to waste.

Absolutely agreed to all - I'm envisioning a computer sitting under a plasma TV that sits idle 99% of the time, and is only used when recording shows or when watching shows. To me, that's most of what a HTPC is. If the needs really are that simple, there's no reason to have anything but a $150 computer hooked up to that TV.

What encoding do people do these days? Do codecs not allow you to play anything anywhere? I get some MKVs, and so I encode them into WMVs from time to time so my XBOX360 can play them from my WHS; do people do much more than that?

 

[nolovenohope]

Originally posted by: uhohs

Originally posted by: nolovenohope
I seem to be unsuccessful with trying to acquire an EPP coupon. I will probably just go and buy one off of eBay. Anyone having issues with it? I have submitted 2 e-mails from different accounts following the instructions stated on the page.

try a free @msn.com email or a free @writeme.com from mail.com

Thank you so much. The @writeme.com one worked perfectly! I tried the @mail.com and failed there, but @writeme.com was gold!

Also, regarding people being able to add the 24 inch. I noticed too that they did not have 24" LCD option availible anymore, as of a few hours ago it came back and I just put in my order <30 minutes ago. I went to show a friend it, and the 24" inch is no longer there again.

 

[TDH]

Has anyone tried memory in this box at over 1.8v and had it work?? I'd really like to order 4GB of Corsair DDR2 800 from NewEgg (four 1 GB sticks) but they run at 2.1v.. Don't want to waste my money if they won't work...

Thanks in advance!

Originally posted by: ActiveX
if you can't get the 10% coupon, set up a free email account here. total system costs including shipping and 4% dpa is around 660, sell the lcd for 360+ on fleabay. and ya got a quad core system for 3 bills. upgrade ram and video and your all set. might have to replace ps-standard atx for a 8800gt.

this should be the mobo you get, 2 pci, 1 pcix, 1 pci16, 300w ps. ram included is 1.8v, not sure if getting 1.9 or 2.2 wont make it boot. no options in bios for this.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: TDH
Has anyone tried memory in this box at over 1.8v and had it work?? I'd really like to order 4GB of Corsair DDR2 800 from NewEgg (four 1 GB sticks) but they run at 2.1v.. Don't want to waste my money if they won't work...

I'm curious what memory upgrades people are doing myself. I typically go with crucial, which would be $88.18 for 4GB, but if there is a cheaper option even better.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: TDH
Has anyone tried memory in this box at over 1.8v and had it work?? I'd really like to order 4GB of Corsair DDR2 800 from NewEgg (four 1 GB sticks) but they run at 2.1v.. Don't want to waste my money if they won't work...

I'm curious what memory upgrades people are doing myself. I typically go with crucial, which would be $88.18 for 4GB, but if there is a cheaper option even better.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=40&threadid=2116041

Two of these 2GB modules will run perfectly. Or one of the 2GB kits linked there as well.

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
Got mine today. The SP2208WFP is pretty nice. The computer is sitting here in its unopened box. Not sure what to do with it...

If you are reasonably cheap with it, I might buy it off ya. PM me if your interested. My wife could use a new computer.

 

[piotrgurin]

i got the gskill 1000 2x2 for 99 bucks at newegg

 

[Synomenon]

Originally posted by: sourceninja

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
Got mine today. The SP2208WFP is pretty nice. The computer is sitting here in its unopened box. Not sure what to do with it...

If you are reasonably cheap with it, I might buy it off ya. PM me if your interested. My wife could use a new computer.

Tried to PM you, but it looks like you don't have it enabled.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: piotrgurin
i got the gskill 1000 2x2 for 99 bucks at newegg

Why? The Q6600 doesn't need anywhere near that much bandwidth. The motherboard won't even recognize it past 800mhz anyway.

Edit: If you mean this,...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231145

... then good luck with it. The voltage is kinda high. Should be running 1.8V DDR2 in Dell systems.