Author: Jeremiah Penery
Date: 22:39:52 02/22/03
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On February 23, 2003 at 00:37:56, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On February 22, 2003 at 02:01:30, Jeremiah Penery wrote: > >>You're making some seriously unfounded statements about these issues, that have >>absolutely no basis in reality. > > >There is a _lot_ of reality in his statements. To wit: The unfounded assumptions I was referring to were that using 'cheaper' parts means your machine will be less reliable, and that using those parts necessitates exotic cooling methods in order to get good performance. I have said absolutely nothing referring to any of the below. >1. If he has a failure in the hardware, Dell will have it fixed _tomorrow_ >with no questions asked. Nearly everything they ship comes with a three year >warranty that includes next day on site maint. > >2. If your bolt it together yourself machine dies, tomorrow you will be >sitting on the phone discussing the problems with a variety of vendors, >having to justify why _they_ should replace your CPU when you obviously >bought a MB capable of overclocking. If you build your machine yourself for 1/5th the price, you have a lot of extra money to replace the broken parts yourself and not worry about the cost. :) But seriously, most parts you order come with some kind of 90-day warranty from the store or perhaps 1-3 year manufacturer's warranty. Some parts even have lifetime warranty from the manufacturer. Last year, I had a video card fail. I called the manufacturer, sent the card in, and had a replacement within a week, for free. Most of the time, it's not much more of an ordeal than it would be with Dell. >3. He also bought a _bunch_ of disk performance. Which will cost the same >whether the MB is cheap (as you have to add a decent U320 SCSI controller) >or not (MB comes with onboard U320 SCSI). I never said one word about the disk performances or cost of anything. >For someone with a machine that _has_ to be up, there is absolutely no >comparison between a do-it-yourself overclocker and a commercial off the >shelf with onsite warranty system. I work at HP. I build computers every day. I would place _far more_ trust in a computer I built myself to be fully reliable than the 'commercial off the shelf...' system - onsite warranty or not. If I had to have absolute reliability or whatever, I wouldn't overclock. I don't overclock now. I just don't hold the paranoid view that overclocking will absolutely cause failures. >Not everyone just uses their machines for games. Some do real work. Some >depend on them for their very livelihood. No matter how careful you are, failures will happen. How many disk failures have you had in the past few years? I can remember at least twice. I've _never_ had a disk failure of any kind. Does that tell much? Not really. I could say you're treating your drives badly somehow, but I'm sure that's not the case. Every single person I know who has a Dell/Gateway/HP system has had nothing but problems from day one with them, with one exception for a friend of mine who upgraded the machine himself.
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