what if we build a 566$ PC that was faster than the 700$ dell?
8GB ram,FX 6300, 1TB HDD and 7870, faster and cost less, tell him to spend that 200 on a monitor, they make really nice ones
also comes with a free resident evil game
if he can't save up 66 bucks (13.2% of the budget) then he shouldn't be buying a computer
Sounds to me like no matter how much you try to convince him he's deadset on that Alienware. I'd let him do it. Let him waste his money because that way, when he realizes the mistake he's made, you get to say, "I told ya so!"
I'm not sure whether he's AMD or Intel, but from what I understand so far, he probably would like Intel. However, a $566 build that surpasses the Alienware build could probably convince him otherwise. I know that AMD is not bad, it's just not on par with Intel. to increase performance and avoid overclocking, I was thinking that with that kind of by build, you could set up a RAID-0 with two 500gb HDD or SCSI. don't know if it would raise the price much, but it would definitely increase performance. If it was affordable, you could even go with 3 SATA 300GB for a RAID-5 setup. Only problem is that you might need a hefty power supply. Any advice on whether RAID or no RAID considering it's AMD? Note that if 1 of the 2 RAID-0 hard drives die or screw up, your computer is basically a POS and needs to be flashed and reloaded with the OS.
with raid you get increased latencies i.e. the time it takes to find data, the throughput is increased like once it finds it, but 1TB HDD are literally only 10 bucks more
and you don't need a hefty PSU for raid, HDDs use like 30w MAX, I'd be surprised if the system I posted used more than 300w
instead of spending the extra 100 on a ineffecient raid setup just get a SSD, you can get a 128GB for like $100 or 64GB for $64
I guess it eventually comes down to SSDs. Probably just get a 20GB for the OS, with 1TB for storage.