I agree with the comments. Right now I run Sony Vaios here. Research shows the Gateways like the 5632e has a 400wat PS and slots to fit the needs. Price not bad. I do most all my machines built up at home but today I usually find I can get a good basic model, ease the price from the mass production side and then build up the rest on my dime. Sorta the home build way but trying to do it on a better price. I'd go Sony again if they still made the boxes like the ones I have. But I do appreciate the notes on like and dislikes and it matches mine.

Gary

Boy, talk about generation gap! When I saw the title, I thought to myself, "Why would anyone want to fool around with Quad Ampex video tape recorders these days?"

The HP xw8400 is a serious workstation to look at. It comes with one or two Quad Core Xeon processors (yes, that's 8 CPU's!!!). Plenty of expansion room for hard drives (5 internal and 3 external facing). It was just reviewed in Studio monthly and got a 4-out-of-5 rating. Since that's a magazine dedicated to video and film they were rating it for exactly how we would use it (i.e., not for gamers, etc.)

~jr

LOL, I am from that generation and used to have an old quad receiver. Still have half speed master records and a quad record. Boy that was a while back. But I also have fully functional and use as conversions in business for RR tapes, 8-track repair and others. There is a need and business for it.

But on the real subject, finding the prices are dropping on some of these and hope to maybe find a decent price on the Gateway 5632E. It fits the bill for the price and needs. This will be a dedicated Vegas machine. Other machines are built to match their need etc. So if anyone has built their own that is similar in design and can give a cost etc. that would be really great. Thanks

Gary
(quadraphonic, 8-track and betamax still rule! - if you have a deaf ear)

I have a cheap hp quad 3 gig ram, 0 problems put a dual ouptut graphics card in and another drive and still under a thousand dollars. The thing is so quiet its amazing,, no overclock though ,,dumbed down bios.

winrock, which machine do you have? $1000 is the sweetspot for lots of us, i'd bet.

I was looking at the HP quads. The 8100 series starting with the 8120 and then the 9040/60/80 series. Issue I had was the PS was a 275w and the graphics cards were not HCDP compliant. Not much expansion room. Upper models sport more drives etc but I use external setups so the main machine only houses the main programs.

Similar in setup were the Gateways with 400w PS and had the 8500 graphics card. Bottom end but I don't play games on mine but fit the need. Now the end of the year, newer models coming out, AMD finally issued their real quad and I see the prices dropping. So a 8120 for around $750 and try to upgrade or something a bit more $ and little upgrade. Two days before Christmas and the question now begs, go pick up the hot sale at stores Monday morning or wait until Wednesday morning. End of year sales for tax inventory will drive the prices too at some store on these models.

I can't help but feel the $1K average model properly used for only what you want works fine. Still the issue then of OS but that is a different problem. I just have not been able to build a similar unit anymore for equal money. I have gone to my local computer parts houses and some don't even try to compete because the mass build on these select models makes hard to beat the price. That is the where the decision comes, which pre-built is really useable or easily made into what you want to make the cost reasonable. But again as some also mention, you build your own you know what you have.

And so the question is still, these pre-builts working for most or is there a serious issue? Thanks

Gary

Hi Gary

A couple quick ideas; I just built 3 quads for under $1000 each. If you're uncomfortable building and don't know anyone well, you might find some younger gamers that build these things all the time. Pay them $100 to build it, and you would still save $300 over buying a pre-built one is my guess.

Here's what I built; you could improve any one of the parts; after researching things for a while I think all of these components hit the sweet spot of price/performance. Prices from newegg.

Intel Q6600 processor. $279
XFX 8600GT video card $130
ASUS P5B-VM motherboard (micro ata, these were small towers) $109
Seasonic SS-430GB power supply $103
In Win IW-V605T2.J350BL mini tower case $60
Samsung SH_S203B DVD burner (sata) $32
Samsung HD501LJ 500gb drive $105
Mitsumi FA404M card reader/floppy $19
Memory A-Data PC2-6400 2 gigs of memory $43

Then if you don't have a spare license, just add Windows XP OEM for system builders and you're set. It took under 30 minutes to build and they run like a champ.

here's the list with newegg part numbers in case it helps:
Item Description
17-151-033 PSU SEASONIC|SS-430GB 430W RT
27-151-153 DVD BURN SAMSUNG|SH-S203B %
14-150-229 VGA XFX PVT84JUDD3 8600GT 256MB R
20-211-066 MEM 1Gx2|A-DATA ADQVE1A16K R
22-152-052 HD 500G|SAMG 7K 16M SATA2 HD501LJ
19-115-017 CPU INTEL|C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M R
21-104-104 FDD MITSUMI|FA404M BK U2.0 INT %
13-131-043 MB ASUS P5B-VM G965 775

one quick suggestion for anyone building: when you get windows running and get all the updates done, use a product like Acronis true image and make an image file... that way if you ever need to re-install windows, it's a 15 minute affair instead of a 2+ hour affair.

Sean