New PC: Build myself vs. prebuilt (and a few other questions)

[Havok]

Ok, I know most around here are going to say build your own, but prebuilt does have some attractive perks. Best Buy offering 18 month payment with no interest is pretty attractive to me, as I'm not that comfortable dropping $1200+ all at once.

Anyway just wondering, here are 2 from best buy. To me they do seem like very good prices for prebuilt systems. They could be a lot more expensive. A friend has the Dell and is very satisfied with it. How would the performance of these 2 actually compare? Really a $210 difference?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....at200200050004

And finally, how much do you think I could actually save building something comparable (or better?) Unless it's a dramatic amount I'll probably go with one of those above just because of the nice financing offer. I need to tack a new monitor onto the price also.

I'd like to be investing in something that's going to last me quite a while. I'll probably end up playing starcraft 2, diablo 3, FFXI... maybe some other games if they catch my interest. Probably also be using it as my DVD player.

As always any ideas are appreciated.

[Sieg]

The $1100 one is much better as a gaming PC, mainly due to the 5450 in the $900 is a POS. Worth $210? I want to say yes, again, mainly due to the 5770 is a solid GPU, while the 5450 is not going to drive what you want to play. However, overall, $1100 for that PC is pretty high.

Pre-built you could probably drop $750-900 and get something comparable. Will save a bit more if you squeeze as much as you can from BCB.

[Olo401]

That XPS system actually looks like a pretty good deal. There are two things to watch out for tho..

- The power supply is only 350W, which is not enough to run most newer games at light settings, even on a power-sipping card like the 5770. Dell and most pre-builds always do this shit, and it is one of the main reasons I refuse to recommend any of them.
- I've seen the cooling system that Dell uses in the XPS (on the C2 Quad systems), and it's a fucking joke. They have a giant heatsink with no fan on it, and no fan on the back of the case for exhaust. They might have changed it for the Core i5/i7 tho since they put of much more heat, especially the i7.

[Agito]

Definately not a good choice. Dell uses really crappy memory, power supply, motherboard and hard drive that don't even have a brand name.

Go to this website: http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ and see if you can lease a computer here. These computers have named brand hardware and they don't rip you off. You'll have to customize one of their offerings though with good hardware or you could end up with something crappy.