Alienware. Worth it?

There are many reasons to buy a professionally built computer. Some people prefer a high end machine and others prefer the economic version to suit there minimal needs. For some of us who play video games though, the higher end personal computers are much more attractive. Whether it be the casing it is housed in or just the hardware inside, the high end machines like the Alienware ALX X58, a Falcon Northwest Mach V or the VoodooHP Blackbird are just what we need. There is one slight problem though, the cheapest one being the Blackbird cost $1,500 USD. Now, your paying for labor in these machines, but how much are you really being charged for said labor? As a forewarning, all numbers in the post are USD currency and are subject to change. Anyone looking to use these same parts should do the research themselves, as this is just a baseline.


Alienware ALX 58
The standard Alienware ALX X58 will cost you a staggering $3,699 USD. The most notable parts being the Intel® Core™ i7-940 running at 2.93 GHz with an 8MB Cache, one 1,792 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 295, and 3GB DDR3 SDRAM performing at 1600MHz. Since Dell acquired Alienware in 2006 they have been able to buy computer components in massive quantities, and rightfully so, prices have come down on these high end systems, believe it or not. The question is though, if you were to acquire all of these parts and assemble them yourself, how much would you save? Lets list them out.

"All parts are of equal performance to the ones inside said machine."

The XFX GTX 295 will run you $529.99, while the Intel Core i7-940 CPU will set you back $559.99. The set of 3 sticks of Patriot Viper SDRAM DDR3 will put you back only $79.99. Wow, so for the three main components, we've only been set back a third of the price. The ASUS Motherboard that seems to be a perfect fit cost $229.99 and the two hard drives adding up to 1TB of storage space will cost 139.98. A 1200W PSU from from Thermaltake cost $400.00, but in my opinion, this is way to much power needed for this system. Without Tri-SLI, this computer will never suck down enough power, but for the sake of being scientific, we'll go by the books and get exactly what you would with Alienware. Now funny thing here, Alienware requires you to purchase a gaming mouse and keyboard. Gone are the days when they just send you two pieces of junk and you bought your own separately. What I'm saying is, Alienware is requiring me to buy a peripheral that I haven't touched and isn't that the point of a peripheral? With the basic model of the X-58, A Logitech G-15 is included and costs about $80.00 and the RAZER Lachesis costs another $79.99. Now by this point, anyone with any knowledge of a computer is going, "What the Hell? What am I gonna put this thing in a shoebox?" Your right, but Alienware doesn't just sell there cases out to anyone. So a quick stop by eBay has them selling an Alienware P2 Full Tower(the commonly used and sold case for a ALX X-58) at $250.00. Now without tax or shipping(Alienware shows the retail price before both as well), this seriously only costs $2349.93. By ordering the parts, separately you save $1349.07, or enough to go out and buy a nice 1993 Ford Mustang with a 5 litre 8 cylinder engine, AND STILL HAVE MONEY LEFT OVER. This is a no brainer for anyone out there that doesn't have a trust fund. Go online, find a guide on how to build a computer step by step and save yourself the money.

Falcon Northwest Mach V
Falcon Northwest, known best for there amazing flash based website and rediculously cool hand painted cases, actually seem to be worth the cost. To the best of my knowledge, Falcon Northwest is privately owned, and this has drawbacks but at the same time had advantages. First, because they are privately owned, they provide better customer service, for example, they want to talk over the phone before you purchase the machine you built from their website to make sure your getting exactly what you want. There is only one drawback, as being privately owned, they can't tap into a massive pool of capital like Alienware can and buy massive amounts of part in bulk. This may, although not confirmed, drive up the price of their parts.

Now, to go over the prices again would bore you, the gist of this Machine is that it will cost you about $4,900.00, but that includes the custom paint job of your choice. Although, the case painting costs you near $1,000.00, but the main reason you buy a Falcon Northwest in my eyes is to get a custom paint job that looks bad ass that you can show off to your friends and brag about at local LAN tournaments. Obviously, you can't just order a case from them, that would hurt there sales. You end up saving about the same amount of money as you did with the Alienware and same with the VoodooHP Blackbird. It seems for these companies to stay in Business they must overcharge, which I guess is just business as usual these days.

My advice to anyone reading is to go out there, and seriously consider building your own personal computer. For myself, I did it, and I couldn't be happier. I've been using this computer I'm sitting on right now to game and I still haven't had any major problems. OK I switched to Vista, but other than that, no problems! Save yourself a ton of money if your going to purchase a high end machine and build it yourself.

Until next time, Mgrigs is signing off.

Hrm? Haomarush? Not again surely...

So some back story, as your probably wondering what I'm talking about. When I originally started playing World of Warcraft, I switched servers constantly never going over level 15 on any one server. Finally, when the group I started playing with did settle down, we decided for the server Haomarush playing on the Alliance side. I of course as I've stated before played a Warlock. Me being the fastest leveling character in the group left them in the dust and I started playing with people my level. Any who, that's a walk down memory lane that I should discuss later with you. To the original point, after the server basically died because the best guild, and the second best alliance guild (i.e. the guild I was a CoGM) transferred off the server to Kil'Jaeden and Black Dragonflight respectively. Hence the "Not again surely..." But this is different this time, I'm sure of it. I know, your wondering how can going back to the server you despised be different. It's because I'm ditching Stormwind and going to Orgrimmar. Yep, I've rolled horde.



Why you might ask? Simply for the fact that I have good old fashioned hordie friends who still play on Hao, and real life friends and family have recently transferred there. Finally, I'm shedding the loneliness of a Warlock on some random server. Yes, I'm leaving behind some good friends on Black Dragonflight, but even they have recently started rolling horde on different servers. Anyways, he next few blogs I'll be posting are going to be about leveling as horde, and playing through the different content that is has to offer. So enough blabbing, lets get some good old fashioned reactions to the zones I've played in so far.

Tirisfal Glades

So for those that don't know The Glades is the starting zone for Undead. I hit level 6 and went off to Brill. As I arrived, a ton of question marks were popping up all over my minimap. But I didn't stop, I was on a mission to hit up Durotar. It's not just me who really dislikes the darkness of the zone. Also, Durotar is a much easier zone to quest in and lessens the travel to the Barrens.

Durotar

Home of Orgrimmar and starting zone for the Trolls and Orcs. I skipped going to Org and went straight to Razer Hill, but when I got there I realized I only had one yellow quest to do. How could this be?! Well I then realized that I would have to head down to Sen'Jin village. Durotar in my opinion other than Eversong Woods might be the best starting questing zone. The quests are relativity bunched together and the mobs aren't too difficult to take down. The barren look it has is such a contrast from the lush forests of Elwynn and the snowy plains of Dun Morogh. I must admit, I do like the Alliance starting zones better, but Durotar isn't far behind.

The Barrens



Ahhhh! The dreaded Barrens general chat... Actually seeming as how Wrath of the Lich King has come out and Ulduar just released, not many people are leveling. It's quite nice, no respawn timers, no craptastic Chuck Norris jokes, no terribad your mom jokes either. As for the quest, Crossroads is filled with them and most of them consist of go kill X for X amount of items. The mobs are easy to kill and the rewarded amount of experience seems to be worth doing them. Being a longtime player, as you and I expected these zones won't give me a problem, but as I progress into the more advanced content of the 30's and 40's I'm quite excited to see how it differs from the Alliance content.

So, as I was running out of easy quests to do at the Crossroads I decided to head over to Ratchet to see what was up at the Goblin HQ of The Barrens. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the quests were just as easy here. I'm beginning to wonder how the Horde "noobs" at 70/80 kicked the Alliance "noobs" ass at bg's. It's quite obvious to me now that they don't get any special training at the low levels. Maybe Orcs just have some sense of battle or maybe its the goddamn racials they had when the best one we had was 5 expertise to swords! Sidetracked again... Well, that about sums up what I've been able to do in my side time.

Keep checking back for my next update! Mgrigs signing off.

World of Warcraft - Patch 3.1.0 (Part 1)

Well, it's finally here... World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King Patch 3.1.0 Secrets of Ulduar. This patch has been hyped up and in the works for a while now, promising many things. Hundreds of changes minor or major have been made to the game for the purposes of balancing classes, making the game tougher, and even making the game more enjoyable.

Heres the question nagging in the back of the minds of those who have "taken a break" or "quit." Was it worth waiting for? I mean, for all intents and purposes, a patch is basically a miniature expansion for the main game. It adds new content that is supposed to appeal to players and keep them from setting the game down and picking up a new game. So what I'm saying is that WotLK was an exspanion we all waited for during the Burning Crusade, and well, hell I've been bored since. So to answer the previous question effectively, it's best to anaylze the updates, and personally ask ourselves if this is what we wanted.

I myself have been playing a Warlock for three years, raiding for 2 and a half, and actively leading and organizing major raids for the past year, prior to the expansion and transfer of course. So, the main things that are important to me are updates to the Warlock class, the major general changes, and changes to raiding/end game content. So lets take a crack and list and grade as we go.

-Raiding/End Game Content Changes-

Raid Dungeon - Ulduar

Now, I haven't gotten the time to blast into the instance guns blazin'... yet, so my knowledge is based off of what other people have said. The content was "supposed" to take much longer to clear through, but it is hard to compare anything to it. 11 of the 14 bosses have a "hard" mode to them. That is, the abillity to change the encounter difficulty by doing the main pull differently. The best way to explain for those who do not understand is by explaining the Sartharion fight.

While clearing the trash, there are three minor drakes that have a significant ammount of health (depending on the ammount of people in the raid) and are usually killed before pulling the boss. This is called Sarth-0 Drake.This is the easiest and most basic encounter of the fight. Now, if you decided to pull the boss without killing the drakes, that would be Sarth-3 Drake, or the "hard" mode of the encounter.

Now, in Ulduar, they have put 11 of these bosses in as I have said before, allowing you to change the difficulty, and from what I've been able to deduce, going through the instance with the basic pull is, decently difficult seeming how Yogg was downed yesterday. Congratulations to Ensidia a from a EU server named Magtheridon by the Way. I mean it took SK-Gaming 2 hours to clear Sunwell when it was released. Overall, I think they did a nice job turning up the heat on end game content. I'll be into it more this weekend, and get back to it.

-Warlock Class Changes-



Affliction PvE Warlocks were hit hard, but it's yet to be seen as an improvement or nerf. They basically took out 2 DoTs from our rotation, but added the abillity for DoTs to crit. In my oppinion, they took our identity of being a DoT class seeming as how a shadow priest has a rotation like ours now. Oh, did I mention that when WotLK was released, they tried to strip warlocks of the Shadowbolt spam DPS, and now they five us an incinerate spam spec that seems to DPS the best? WTF!!!!! Overall, Blizzard screwed this one up bad for affliction warlocks, guess I'm respeccing back to Destro... oh wait Dual specs... I can't even rank this im so perplexed by this that... I need to stop talking about this before I get angry. :)

-Dual Speccing-

So for a small fee of 1000 gold, you can purchase the abillity to switch speccs for free between two different specs. Sounds great, except for, it seems kind of worthless for us "pure" classes who don't respec to tank one day, and heal or dps another. Now, if you raid and PvP, its a no brainer to get, I used to blow through about 400-500g a week back in Season 4 respeccing for raids and then respeccing again to do 2v2s in the 1900 bracket. So right now, I'm giving this a solid "upgrade" to the game, no matter how you play, it will affect you in some way.

-General Changes to the Game-

-Vanity Pets-

So I've been collecting these for god knows how long, before the expansion was released, I had my 50 achievement. I got my skunk, which I was unimpressed with and kept asking myself,"why the hell would I have this out when I've got 25 better ones?" But now they've added about 21 new pets, so seeming as these will be easy to get, I'll be able to get the last pet achievement I know of and get the Salt Lick. This, sadly enough for me, is a "MAJOR UPGRADE" to the game. This'll give me something to do for a day or two...

Well, I'm running out of time here and this is becoming monstrous, just the like patch. So heres part 1, expect more to come in the following days.

Good Luck! Mgrigs signing off.

World of Warcraft - Status Update

Quite recently, I have taken a break from playing World of Warcraft. While the game has been fun for the past three years that I have been playing, it seems to have lost that factor with me. A lot of people have asked why and I've had to give them very non detailed answers, so here goes a few major reasons for my hiatus.

1. I had recently transferred off a small server were I was very well known and had "pull" with a lot of people. As being a high ranking officer in the best alliance guild, I was pretty well respected by everyone. As for raiding, I was one of the best geared and highest dpsing warlocks on the server. A large part of our guild decided to transfer off when recruitment went stale and people kept quitting the game. I eventually followed a week or two after only to find that everyone had joined separate guilds.




2. Wrath of the Lich King - The expansion that was highly anticipated turned out to be a cakewalk in raiding, and a completely unbalanced PVP system were DK-Pally rules the brackets. There was one thing that kept me playing, and it was leveling characters. Going from 70-80 was the only thing relatively close to the Burning Crusade. I say this because raiding in Burning Crusade, the game was difficult when you raided, Karazhan used to be hard, with Serpent Shrine Cavern, killing Vashj made you want to quit, Archimonde being the same way in Hyjal. Now though, the end game content was cleared within a month of it coming out, and even though PVP wasn't completely balanced in Burning Crusade, it wasn't as out of control as it is now.



To wrap this up, I feel the game has been geared more towards the casual player, even though there base, and most devoted fans have a mindset more geared to the hardcore play style. Gold is easy to make, gear is easy to get, PvE is a breeze, and PvP is unbalanced, but I guess I should take advantage of it before they change it and I'm left behind.

Hopefully, the new patch will fix most of this, with the release a new end game instance is coming out called Ulduar, and it will be on the same difficulty scale of how the Burning Crusade used to be. I'm back off to Azeroth, until next time...

Good Luck, Mgrigs Signing off.

Left 4 Dead Game Review

So, Left 4 Dead is a Valve/Steam game, that was released in Q4 of 2008. It runs off the Source engine, so I was somewhat skeptical of the game thinking,"Oh this is just going to be another Half Life 2 or Counter-Strike: Source." Wow was I wrong. The game does remind me a lot of Counter-Strike source, the cross hairs are exactly the same, and it is running off the same engine, but excise both of those, and you've got a completely new game with an old idea that is just fun to play. From the massive hordes of zombies to the interactive AI that judges your skill, its a fun shoot em up with tactical play involved. It doesn't require a super quick reaction time or the skill to place a headshot, only the ability to be a team player, with either three computer AIs or 3 other players linked through a dedicated Valve server. Now, an interesting part of the game that they added in was while moving through the acts, you would get upgraded weapons, which was amazingly fun, seeming as how a pump shotgun or weak SMG would only get you through a few zombie hordes mauling your face off. All and all, the game was fun to play through, and the game, and its not just a game you play through once, I keep wanting to pick it up with different friends and try different strategies.

Good Luck! Mgrigs signing off.