Well he got what he wanted. Doesn't matter if he gets a Dell, HP, Gateway, or even building it himself. It'll still turn out to be the same to him.

So Alien, tell me your price range and whether you want a desktop or laptop. I'll try to find a good deal for you. FX is a gaming model, but Gateway isn't really known for its gaming computers.

i've seen your current computer, unless your talking about like good graphic games, your computer is fine

Well actually my dad and me priced out a computer already and it still tunred out to be $2000
so well so far i think its cheaper to buy a pre built one than to build one

Well if your getting an intel processor in it then that's probably the reason why it's so expensive, you could save off upto a couple hundred dollars by getting one of those quad core amd phenoms. amd's are cheaper then the intel processers are, although ands are a little slower then the intel quad core processors, it's not slower by much, maybe 10-15% slower.

And what was he planning on buying for the computer, did he make a list of hardware for it?

you won't need a quad-core unless you wanted to have 3 different copies running at the same time with no lag
which i'm pretty sure no one would do that cuase its pointless
so all'l you'l really need is atleast a core 2 2.8ghz for intel and the amd equivelant which i don't know what one is the same for amd

$2000? You can get a pretty neat platform with that.

This deal is just a little over $2000, I had to throw in the AGEIA PhysX graphics accelerator card, and the mouse/keyboard. For some reason, Dell seems to be handing out 27-in and 30-in monitors free. Awesome. You could take all three of those things above out though, if you don't need a graphics accelerator and already have a good keyboard and mouse, saving you around $300.

Dell XPS 630 - Build

SYSTEM COLOR------------Black Bezel Chassis
PROCESSOR---------------Intel® Core™2 Q6600 Quad-Core (8MB L2 cache,2.40GHz,1066FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM-------Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Service Pack 1
MEMORY------------------4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz -4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE---------------300GB WD Velociraptor 10K RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache
OPTICAL DRIVE------------Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
MONITORS----------------I will select the 30in wide flat panel monitor from the large display section
VIDEO CARD---------------Dual nVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512MB
GAMING ESSENTIALS-------AGEIA® PhysX® physics accelerator
SOUND CARD--------------Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
SPEAKERS-----------------Dell AX510 10W Attached Speaker for UltraSharp™ Flat Panel
KEYBOARD-----------------Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard (ships separately)
MOUSE--------------------Razer DeathAdder Gaming Mouse (ships separately)

Subtotal: $2020
Subtotal without AGEIA PhysX physics accelerator, Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard, and Razer DeathAdder Gaming Mouse: $1730

That HD cost over $300, you can get a 7200 rpm 500gb hd for around $100, and you could shave off another 200-300 dollars by going with one gfx card instead of two.

My builds go for speed rather than value. =P It is a 10000RPM hard drive, after all. I think there was a solid state option, that was even more expensive.

And there isn't an option for a single Graphics card, or if there was one, I didn't see it.

10krpm hd's do have a pretty high failure rate, quite a bit higher then the 7200rpm hd's. and using 2 gfx cards will pull a lot of power, probably up to 500-600 watts, it would put a dent in the monthly power bill for having a comp that uses that much power.

Does he really need a top-of-the-line PC?

Well my mom saw a alien ware computer that is going on sale for $1000 on november 1st my dad says the computer we put together would out performe the alien ware computer instantley but me and my mom are going to go to costco and check what it has in it. Also cartman the one computer we put together did have a amd proseccor computers are jsut really expensive :/

Build one together with your dad. It will be a good learning experience.

i saw a 160 for $60

Heres the link to the specs to the Alien ware computer.

http://www.alienware.com/products/area- ... KU-DEFAULT