Well, we’ve broken down and ordered a new computer from Alienware. Here’s the specs:
Chassis: Alienware® Full-Tower Case (480-Watt PS) – Saucer Silver
Power Supply: Alienware® 480 Watt Power Supply
Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 3500+ Processor with HyperTransport Technology
Motherboard: ABIT AV8 – VIA K8T800 Pro Motherboard
Memory: 1GB Alienware® Dual Channel High-Performance Low-Latency DDR SDRAM at 400MHz – 2 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 w/Digital and S-Video Out
System Drive: High Performance with Data Security – Serial ATA RAID 1 – 160GB (160 x 2) Seagate® Barracuda 7,200 RPM w/16MB Cache
Optical Drive One: NEC® ND-3500 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Recorder
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive – Black
Sound Card: Integrated 5.1 High-Performance Audio with Digital Out
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Portable Storage : Alienware® 8-in-1 Digital Media Reader / Writer with FireWire
I was torn between the alienware memory and the high performance memory (I think they use Corsair). The high performance has a CAS of 2, the alienware memory had some weird rating like CAS 2-3-5-2. And then I’ve read some reviews saying most of the time you’ll never know the difference.
Anyway, no to finish my paper before the machine shows up (it’ll be awhile).