A little comparison
You have $2500 to spend on a computer. How could you spend it? Let’s find out. I’ll see what kind of desktop I could get from Dell, HP, and Apple for $2500, and I’ll compare it to what I got about 7 months ago. Read on for more.
If you want pictures of my workstation, see my previous post.
First off is Dell. I decided to look around the business desktops and workstations section first. However, everything was under $1000, so I knew I would have a hard time hitting that 2500 budget. So I headed over to their “gaming desktops” section. I started with an XPS 730x and went from there. I did not want vista, but I made me take it anyway. I upgraded to 6GB DDR3 memory, two 1TB hard drive ($300 for a 1TB drive. Looks like Apple’s not the only one gouging people on upgrades). I upgraded to dual 9800 GTs, but then I found that the price did not include a monitor. So I had to backtrack and take out the second HDD. This left me with $200 to spare, so I added a X-Fi titanium, and went to two 750GB drives.
Now onto HP. I started with the e9150t. Unfortunatly, it forced me to have Vista preinstalled, but it would let me downgrade to Vista Home Premium from Vista Business, saving me $50. I saved another $400 by dropping to the lower Core i7 CPU, since I felt the money could be better spent elsewhere. I went for 6GB of RAM, since I rarely use more than 3GB at any one time. I took the 500GB RAID1 option for Hard Drives, since the default was those 1.5TB Seagates that everyone had issues with. The best graphics card I could get was a 4850 with 1GB of RAM. I went for a 21.5″ screen, since it matched the other systems. I went for the X-Fi titanium again, but I was still way under budget. I decided to fill the gap with the 3.33GHz i7, and a screen upgrade. This, however, put me slightly over budget.
Now onto Apple (I don’t know why I’m even doing them). The Mac mini was way under budget, the base Mac Pro was right on budget, but did not include a screen, so I was left with the iMac. I clicked around their 4 base configurations, and found that only the top one was near budget. An upgrade from 4GB DDR3 to 8GB DDR3 was $1000 (WTF Apple) which should only cost no more than $200. The only real upgrade was a $40 upgrade from a GT130 to a 4850, so I was still way under budget, at $2250. I went to the next lowest iMac, starting at $1800. I could get every upgrade except the 8GB RAM, which put me back exactly where I was, at $2250. I could start with the $1500 iMac, and get the $1000 RAM upgrade, but then I can’t get any other upgrades. But then I only get a 9400M, so I did not want that option. Then I realized what I could do. I could get the $1800 model and a refurbished external display. This made exactly $2500.
Here is the table detailing the specs of each machine:
| Computer | My workstation* | XPS 730x | HP e9150t | 24″ iMac |
| CPU | 2.6GHz Quad core (9950BE). Very overclockable. |
i7 2.66GHz | i7 3.33GHz | 2.93GHz Dual Core |
| RAM | 8GB DDR2 800 | 6GB DDR3 1066 | 6GB DDR3 1066 | 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 |
| Graphics | Sapphire 4850 X2, 2GB of GDDR3 | Dual 9800GTs, 512MB | 4850 w/ 1GB | GT120 256MB |
| Sound | SB X-Fi Elite Pro Headphones |
X-Fi Titanium Cheap Speakers |
X-Fi Titanium Cheap Speakers |
Unknown Sound Internal Speakers |
| Hard Drives | 2X1TB RAID 1 | 2×750GB RAID 1 | 2×500GB RAID1 | 640GB |
| Screens | 3×22″, 2×17″ | 20″ | 25″ | 2×24″ |
| Other | Promise TX4650 SAS/SATA RAID Zalman CNPS9700 Cooler XP Pro x64 |
Vista Home Premium x64 |
Vista Home Premium x64 |
Easy to get support OS X. |
| Price** | ~$2450 | $2469 | $2589 | $2500 |
*Please note that my workstation has parts from many different manufacturers and three different vendors (Newegg, CDW, and Fry’s). It was also purchased about 7 months ago, so an equivalent machine would cost much less today.
**Price does not include the cost of the operating system and other software.