Hi, I've been looking to buy a new computer and have settled on scan as the place to buy from. Unfortunately it seems like now isn't the best time to buy one with the new conroe chips coming out in a couple of months. I absolutely love the heat reactive paint and the cut out Chameleon on the side panel so would love to go with this machine.
I wonder if you can answer a few questions for me.
1) Currently the Chameleon only comes with a choice of AMD chips. Current benchmarks seem to show that Conroe (released in July) will be around 20% faster than the FX60 and thats the midrange $300 conroe. Assuming that the benchmarks turn out to be correct Conroe will be THE chip to buy for most situations. Will Scan offer a version of the Chameleon with a conroe processor?
2) I don't plan to go top of the range in every component ie just one high end graphics card and a mid range conroe chip (which is hopefully more powerful than the fx60). I'm also not hugely interested in overclocking. With this in mind would I be better with the watercooling or air cooling (with a zalman for the cpu and graphics card). Volume is very important to me since my current alienware is so offensively loud. I want the pc not to be noticeable if its on in the same room while watching the TV. I'm sure that this would mean the temperature would be a little higher in the case, would this actually be a benefit in getting value from the heat reactive paint?
3) is there somewhere I can see a few more photos of how the Chameleon looks when hot and cold and maybe how it looks in the dark. I've searched the net and only found 2 photos. Pete the painter seems to have a site showing his work but its down. Is this site temporarily down or permanently so, does the site have pictures of the Chameleon anyway?
4) regarding the internal UV spray, is this worth it? Is it possible to see some photos of how this improves how the case looks at night? Would the light coming through the Chameleon on the side look just as good with a couple of cheap cathodes in the PC instead of a 264 pound internal paint job that I'll never see.
5) if I end up spending 3.5k-4k on a dream PC would it be possible to send the invoice at a different time to the PC so the wife doesn't see it? My wife is happy for me to buy an expensive PC but I think she considers that more like 2grand but she wants me to buy the Chameleon, every other PC I've showed her she says yeah thats nice but I prefer the lizard (Chameleon) one, you should go with that, she just doesn't realise that the paint job costs about a grand.
Thanks for your time, no worries if the answer to the conroe question is simply wait and see, I look forward to hopefully buying from you, though it will be a few months yet.