Need help choosing...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883108559


or


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883155199

I need to decide quickly as my desktop actually caught on fire...

Fire? Yikes.

The Dell has a slightly better processor and better audio, but it has a Radeon video card, which I'm not a fan of (although others are). It's also considerably cheaper.

I've bought a lot of Dells over the years (on the order of several hundred for work, and at the moment I have eight dell desktops and three dell notebooks in the house) and haven't had many problems, but I've taken to building my own now that I have time again (my machine and my older son's machines are custom jobs).

If I were in your shoes I'd look at the Dell and see if I couldn't juice up the video card a bit, but that's purely personal preference with new hardware.

That Lenovo was actually cheaper than the Dell last night...

I would go with the Dell and I would buy it directly from them. It is pretty hard to build a price competitive system in the lower end you are looking at. Right now it is impossible since HDDs cost twice as much as they should as Thailand is underwater along with 50% of the HDD factories.

You should go onto the Dell sight and look at the Inspiron 620 models. The NewEgg listing you posted is an Inspiron 620 with a Radeon HD 6450 discrete graphics card. The Inspiron with the exact same spec WITHOUT the card is $200 less. Radeon HD 6450 is not a $200, it is a $40 piece of crap.

To summarize, buy an Inspiron 620 without a graphics card, spend $100 on a decent card from NewEgg. Have better machine than either you linked to for $100 less!

Actually, what I linked was an XPS 8300.

One of the problems I have is that building a custom dell, from the website, leads to the computer not shipping till almost two weeks from now... =(

Klaudandus wrote:Actually, what I linked was an XPS 8300.

Well, aside from the letters XPS appearing on the case, the specs on the NewEgg item are identical to one of the standard Inspiron 620 builds.

One of the problems I have is that building a custom dell, from the website, leads to the computer not shipping till almost two weeks from now... =(

The Inspirons have an estimated ship date of 12/9 on the Dell site, but I can understand that this is an 'I need a computer right now' situation.

If you don't care about the keyboard/mouse http://www.amazon.com/Dell-i620-3790NBK-Inspiron-Desktop/dp/B005KP7HA6 still allows you to get a better card at the same price. If all your gaming consists of is WoW, then the Inspiron 570s all have next day ship out. If your gaming includes things like Skyrim, your are going to need a better video card than the things you linked have and are going to take a beating to get everything fast.

gibborim wrote:

Klaudandus wrote:Actually, what I linked was an XPS 8300.

Well, aside from the letters XPS appearing on the case, the specs on the NewEgg item are identical to one of the standard Inspiron 620 builds.

One of the problems I have is that building a custom dell, from the website, leads to the computer not shipping till almost two weeks from now... =(

The Inspirons have an estimated ship date of 12/9 on the Dell site, but I can understand that this is an 'I need a computer right now' situation.

If you don't care about the keyboard/mouse http://www.amazon.com/Dell-i620-3790NBK-Inspiron-Desktop/dp/B005KP7HA6 still allows you to get a better card at the same price. If all your gaming consists of is WoW, then the Inspiron 570s all have next day ship out. If your gaming includes things like Skyrim, your are going to need a better video card than the things you linked have and are going to take a beating to get everything fast.

I don't know how upgradeable the 620 is, I know the XPS 8300 can be upgraded all the way to 16 GB needed be, not so much for the 620, which can only be bumped to 8gb max