Would it make a difference if they started with an off-lease Dell
workstation from http://www.dfsdirectsales.com/, or are those too
old?
They have some drawbacks as gaming machines, to put it
charitably. Principally in the areas of graphics capability and
power supply. Not to mention proprietary parts.
I hate to say it but those machines even in their youth weren't
designed for the mission. They're nearly identical to the issue
HP machine I use at work. Perfectly good for what they were
made to do (somewhat overpriced IMHO since you can get a
new "barebones" kit at say Tiger Direct for less money with a
dual core processor and much bigger hard drive).
One of the advantages of "rolling your own" is that you get
to make the decisions about what is important and what isn't.
And you can spec industry standard parts from known
sources that are separately warrantied, or you can go OEM
and save money. You'll know exactly what's in the box.
It isn't necessary to mortgage the farm to build a decent
gaming computer, though. Well under $1000 will get you a
high end mobo, a mid range graphics card, big SATA hard
drive, optical drive, and a big, name brand power supply
with all modular cabling, Windows XP Pro SP3 (still the
best gaming OS) and all the bits (case, keyboard, mouse,
etc).
Monitor not included.
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