Buy or Build

[Conifur]

Here is my situation. I am stationed in Saudi Arabia and based on the time change am not on much when my friends are; and I don't want to change servers because sooner or later I will move back. So I have taken up trying to dual-box but am currently runing off a laptop that I think will implode if I try more then two. Since I have to go back over the ocean I also have bad latency but it is not local, it is the jump back across the ocean (500+ normal sometimes peaking over 1,000). This is also a reason I have decided to do this myself, so when I kill someone due to latency issues it is myself. So my question is should I try to build a machine or just buy one and have it shipped over? I just went out to the local computer market and found the following items:

Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 1.0) - motherboard - ATX - iX58 - LGA1366 Socket

Mushkin Enhanced SP 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model 998586

Seagate 250GB 7200 RPM

Gigabyte nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1 GB PCI-Express Video Card GV-N98TSL-1GI

Gigabyte

700W Power Supply

DVD R/W

All for about $1020 which is just a tad more then what I found the same for searching the internet. Or should I just buy one from the states and save the hassle and if so any recommendations? I don't want to spend thousands of $ on a nice one that will just get ruined in the dust over here, but want one to be able to possibly 5 box if I ever get good enough. Also the issue I have buying over here is the whole authentic or not. The one question they ask when you talk about Windows is hacked or original version so I am wondering if the same is not true for the hardware.

I hope this all made sense.

[kate]

Believe it or not, Gateway makes some pretty good machines these days. $1299 gets you some pretty substantial improvements over the specs you listed (memory, drive, HUGE improvement on the video card):

• Intel® Core™ i7-860
• Genuine Windows® 7
  Home Premium
• 8GB DDR3 memory (max 16)
• 1.5TB hard drive1
• ATI Radeon™ HD 5850 w/1GB
• 750W power supply

I'm liking mine quite a bit - it's REALLY quiet, handles 5boxing extremely well, and any other games I've thrown at it. The only updates I'm making are the installation of an SSD for the OS and game installs, and possibly 8GB more RAM once the prices on memory drop a bit.

[Conifur]

So your talking the FX6831 series. Thanks a lot. Will look into that as well.

well I looked into it and it says computers can't be shipped to an APO

[kate]

So your talking the FX6831 series. Thanks a lot. Will look into that as well.

well I looked into it and it says computers can't be shipped to an APO

Newegg sells them as well as Gateway - Newegg might ship to an APO. If not, do you have anyone stateside who could buy it and ship it to you? It seems like there's got to be a way to get things out to you guys over there.

[JoeWunsch]

I used to always buy the parts from newegg and put them together myself, however last time I was doing a full system upgrade, I found an amazing offer from HP for a steal of a price. I don't remember them offering these types of high end systems in the past, but I was extremely happy with it. I just threw in a better video card, and was happy not having to go through the trouble of putting it together myself.