I know this post is almost 2 months old, but because it was recommended to me from Google, I feel that I need to update it. The XPS 7100 us a great choice for all of your games! It comes with a nice 460W that can probably amplify 500W. It also comes with a 2 year hardware warranty, to guarantee it will last 5 years. When you return to Dell, they will give you parts to an equal or greater value.. so in 2 years, if anything ever broke or didn't have the expectations you expected; you could simply return it and more than likely Dell wouldn't have the products anymore, forcing them to give you increased stats.. think of it as a free upgrade if anything ever went wrong. Beyond that, the 1055T or 1075T is perfect for gaming.. and that fact you get a price decrease for combining it with the 5870 is phenomenal. Dells motherboards are where they go wrong, but they are certainly not the worse.. you may have to add a USB 3.0 slot or something equivalent later on.. but I don't see the whole world upgrading from USB 2.0 for awhile. The hard drive, although not 6gbps technology, is still a great hard drive. Soon, like when DDR2 came out, SSD will overrun HDDs when the prices drop to an affordable rate; but you won't have to upgrade for another 2-3 years. Everyone that's saying you need to have a motherboard that offers Crossfire / SLI is wrong. Most people, including myself, prefer only one graphics card.. when you get 2 it turns out to be the main graphics card + half the other one (just a simple FPS increase it seems). I would personally prefer to upgrade the 5870 when needed (another 2-3 years) and not worry about Crossfire. The i7 is definitely the choice if ALL you do is gaming, but the Phenom II X6 is more futuristic, especially when newer games start offering multicore processing. Finally, all these people saying "man up and build your own": after the operating system, and all the hardware it's about the same price (if not more) than a Dell.. and that's getting all the same pieces with a little better motherboard. Sure you have each individual hardware warranty, but with a Dell you get a free 1-2 year entire computer hardware warranty. This means the Dell will work 100% perfect for 2 years, and I'd imagine you wouldn't have to upgrade for another 5 years or more.. I don't see games being hugely dependent on computer hardware within the next few years without offering multicore performance.. which will take the heat off the GPU for up to a year before you have to upgrade (the 5870 is still a great card to this day). Also, to all you people saying "look where technology was 5 years ago" is wrong. Before I built my build that I have now (which is brand new, 3 weeks): I had an older computer I had built previously. It had a Pentium 4 @ 3.0GHz, 8800GT @ 512MB (which is great, but definitely bottle necking it with the P4), 1.5GB DDR1 RAM, 120GB 3gbps (I think), and finally a 550W PSU.. It's still running strong, I'm able to run Starcraft on all high with a solid 25FPS and because the human eye can only see 20-23FPS, it looks very solid. I might mention that this resolution is on a 32" 1080p TV (1600x1200) because I'm running DVI. If this computer is just now starting to "not be enough" I'm sure the Dell has a good 7 years in it before it becomes "not quite powerful enough," simply because with future games, they'll offer multicore technology and that alone will keep the computer alive for a long time. I wouldn't go with the 8300 for the i7, I'd go with the 7100 and save some money while looking ahead in the future. Finally, as tough as these guys sound, when they built their first computer they were very nervous that they would mess something up and highly considered just buying prebuilt. Anyways, I have a XPS 7100 in my living room as a media center and Blu-Ray player, and I couldn't be happier.. it's dead silent, and great for gaming (I play my FPS on my TV in the living room, while I play all of my serious games - WoW / Starcraft 2 in the living room). The stats I chose were: 1075T @ 3.0GHz + HD Radeon 5870 @ 1GB GDDR5, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB 3gbps 16mb cache, and bluray.. I also ordered their Bluetooth option, looking ahead in the future: I can see this computer lastly my media center at least 10 years along with running my games on max/high settings. Go for the 7100.. and for the next few months they have 30% off with free 3-5 day shipping, which makes it all the more reason to buy it now. Good luck.
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