As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been playing PC games a lot lately, including World of Tanks and Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Disappointingly, even though these games weren’t the most demanding out there as far as their system requirements, it just seemed like my 2 1/2 year old Alienware M11x was struggling to keep up. I had to run these games at fairly low settings, and even then they didn’t run all that smoothly.
Here is my new gaming rig, in the office at our new house in Suffolk.
So, this started me on the path of looking for another computer. The first choice I made was that I would go for a desktop this time around instead of a laptop. There were two main reasons for this decision:
- Easier Upgrades: In order to pack a reasonably powerful gaming computer into a laptop form factor, just about every part has to be custom-made. This means that options for replacing a video card, upgrading a processor, or adding another hard drive are extremely limited.
- Higher “Power to Cost” ratio: Partly because of the specialization mentioned above, a gaming laptop tends to cost more than a desktop with comparable specifications.
Another thing I should point out is that I had originally started down the path of gaming laptops with the idea that they could be taken underway with me on a submarine, since they are more portable than a desktop. However, as I discovered during my first tour there is precious little time for such things, and I never actually used my laptop for this purpose.
Alienware vs Doghouse
The next decision I had to make was which company to go with. Alienware seemed like an attractive option, since I had good experiences with two of their laptops. However, after doing some comparison shopping, I came to the conclusion that I could get the same or better system for less elsewhere. This is what got me on the track of looking at Doghouse Systems, a custom gaming computer company that I had first heard about a few years ago thanks to their adds on the D6 Generation podcast. I was able to find consistently good reviews of their systems and, more importantly, their customer service. From what I was able to gather, there has been a steady downward trend in Alienware’s customer service since the company was acquired by Dell. The key difference in price came mainly with the warranty; Alienware wanted hundreds of dollars more for the same warrenty protection that was included in the base price of the Doghouse rig. Sold!
Specifications
I decided to go with an Armor ES system, which is the mid-range desktop offering. Based on my discussions with the Doghouse staff, we determined that this system would meet all my current gaming needs, while being easy to upgrade in the future. I can’t emphasize enough how pleasant it was working with these guys; they were very helpful, and at no time did they pressure me to upgrade to a system that was too powerful for my needs.
Here is the list of specs for my rig as ordered:
[Armor ES – GPU:1 x NVIDIA GTX 670 Video Card]
[Memory Armor ES:8GB DDR3-1600 Kingston HyperX Memory]
[Armor ES – Bay 1:Default 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA Drive]
[Armor ES – Bay 2:120GB Intel 520 Series Solid State Drive]
[Optical Drive – Bay 1:Default DVD +/- RW Drive]
[Optical Drive – Bay 2:10x Blu-ray Reader DVD-RW Drive]
[Accessories:20-in-1 Card Reader]
[Operating Systems:Windows 7