Alienware

[Snowreap]

yes, it's a good idea to do your homework if you buy a Dell. or any machine, really. I've been pretty lucky; all the Dells we have have been reliable performers.

I have a number of Optiplex GXa and GX1 systems that are all still working fine (these lines were introduced in 1998/1999 and are based on the rock-solid Intel 440BX chipset).

the Optiplex GX270 is notorious for failures -- this is the line that had bad capacitors and which Dell got sued over. I never had one of these.

in the past 5 years or so we've also purchased a number of Optiplex 745 and 755 systems. none of these have had any problems, except for an onboard NIC failure on one (this failure may have been due to a nearby lightning strike but I don't remember. rather than replacing the system board we just threw a PCI-E NIC in there and the machine has been fine since).

the Optiplex 9010 appears to have had some early problems that have since been resolved. I don't have any of these but I bring it up to point out that it's always a good idea to avoid brand-new models -- give them time to work the bugs out.

here's a likely prospect: an Optiplex 7010 with a Core i5 3550 (3.3GHz 3rd gen), 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, and Radeon HD7570 GPU. Dell Outlet has this model refurbished for $700. the Radeon HD7570 is a Geforce 8800GT class card, so it's not particularly fast by today's standards but you can replace it with a Radeon HD7750 for about $100 (the 7750 will run on PCI-E slot power alone, so you may not need to upgrade the power supply, although this card may push the stock Dell power supply to its absolute limits). it looks like the Optiplex 7010 uses a standard ATX power supply so you should be able to replace that also, and if you can that means you can use pretty much any graphics card you want to put in there.

-ken