Alienware ?

[Prophet4no1]

 

 

Careful. Wiser to you maybe, but not maybe to everyone. Some can't or don't want the hassle of making a computer to squeeze an extra 15 fps out of a rig. Perhaps the new Alienwares are not what they used to be, but there are a lot of companies that produce pretty damned good rigs for a price, for those who have the money and do not want to do what you are doing.

 

 

Even at that rate, there are WAY better system builders than Alienware. Darkside PC's, Voodoo, Falcon Northwest, just to name a few. Alienware has a bad rap now as crap systems. They have for a few years. You pay a lot and get little return compared to other rig builders. You only have to do a quick bit of research with some of the PC testing sites. Back in the day is was Alienware and Falcon Northwest at the top. After the buy out of Alienware everything went down the drain. If bound on buying a system, it would be a good idea to do some reasearch and NEVER go by the company site for details other than the order sheet. They all claim to be the best.

[S77th-konkussion]

Quality goes beyond the specs of the components themselves. It's about breathing and cooling. It entails cable routing (breathing & cooling) It's about genuine hi-end refrigeration or other systems- not just about cool looking neon green fluid hoses. It's about extensive testing & benchmarking at each stage of production, and after the build, but BEFORE you EVER see it.

 

As far as cost- I'll grant you that Alienware has become more competitive in my quick comparo last evening- but this is a FIRST. They easily exceeded a VM system by well over a grand for a long time. Their silly looking cases just don't reel em in like they used to, I guess.

 

So- speaking of juvenile- instead of getting smart ass with people after YOU asked for an opinion- why don't you simply read those opinions, look into it, and decide for yourself. I'm not even close to alone when it comes to my disdain for dell/ Alienware for GOOD reason. If you want one- then get it. I really couldn't care less now.

[Prophet4no1]

Mine has been fast enough to pimp slap every game I've tossed at it. Only odd balls are FSX and the occasional slowdown in Empire Total War. But hte Total War one seems to be from lack of cooling. It makes my overclocked GTX260 get really hot. Around 65-70. That's the point it starts to artifact and can lock up. Also, I can push 3ghz on the CPU, but cooling is again an issue. That's why I orded the new case. I'm going water cooling so I shopuld be able to do 3ghz+ with no issues. Right now on air cooling, 2.69 is about the limit.

 

Since my rig runs all my stressing games at 30-40 fps and everything else from 60-200 fps I feel little need to do a full upgrade just yet. The Hyperthread ability of the i7 is totally useless right now since ther is no software that even fully uses my Q6600. The Q6600 is the overclockers best freind. For a LONG time it held the top of the speed charts on the Futurmark benchmarks. The cooler running i7 is capable of running much faster though on water. As for ram, mine is overclocked at 950mhz right now, so about the same as yours. Don't need 8gb because I do not do video editing. Again, I have never seen my log file have a full 4gb in it, so why get more? It's pointless. Maybe in a couple yers it will be needed, but whil games are still using 32 bit code, it's pointless because the keep in mind that ony 3.25gb is usable in the system.

 

So after all that, I put my over 10 years of of experiance into answering the OP's question. In the end, Alienware is only worth the extra cash if you feel you need a bigger e-penis or REALLY love the case. Otherwise DIY or buy a rig from a better company.

[Prophet4no1]

I'm running Vista 64 so I can use all my ram. Never said I was on 32 bit.

 

Crysis runs fine on my system on maxed settings. No issues. The fact you have an alienware over an other system has nothing to do with it. You have SLI, I don't yet. Your processor is a little faster. My rig 3 years old now and is still hanging just fine. And it only cost me $1100 to build. Inclusding swapping vid cards.

[hitman]

no one is saying alienware is crap, just that alienware is really wasting money "nowadays".alienware isnt what it used to be, but what it is now really is over priced for what it is. look...if you want alienware because of who they are, thats fine. belive me when i say this, hiring a professional ma and pop computer store can build you a highER end pc than alienware for the same price. we're talking up to 1000 dollars in parts alone! that quad sli gtx295 alienware they sell (hypothetically speaking) sells for 4500. you can have one professionally built same specs but maybe with mad water cooling for the same price. see what im saying?

[Prophet4no1]

My point is in an apples to apples comparison. By crap I mean you are not getting the bang for your buck. You pay Porsche prices and get Mustang performance. Sure it's fast, but not as fast as the other option. When compared to similar rigs from other builders, the performance is lacking on the Alienware side. There overclocked systems suffer of stability issues the other guys do not have. In many cases the high priced systems on air cooling you can get one on water with faster overclocks for the same price or less. That is a crap system from a performance builders stand point. Again apples to apples is what I am talking about. I should hope your system is a bit faster since it has higher end parts and SLI. The badge on the case is not the reason why it's faster. The fact is, I could build that system for less and probably get better performance. Or, buy one from one of the more pure performance PC builders out there and still cost less or at least get more in it for the same price.

 

You obviously missed the whole point of this argument.

[Prophet4no1]

Again you miss the point. My rig is 3 years old now. When I built it, it was near top of the line. Yours is obviously a little newer. Comparing my older rig to a newer one is not apples to apple. My rig to yours is not apples to apples. Comparing yours to say a Falcon NW sestem of simaler specs is. And in that case, you get more PC. Stop being so fixated on my admittedly aged system. This is where you miss my point entirely. Like a said, twice now. If you compare the performace of all the "performance" rigs you can buy for the various builders, the Alienwares fall short. If you go that route. I've sad this a few times and you keep missing that. You call me arrogant when I am only telling the facts and I've already had at least one other person back me up on this.

 

Let be put this in a differnt way.

 

Alienware - Fance case and mass produced. Esentially stock performance on the hardware provided.

 

Other performace brands - More bang for your buck for the most part. Many are hand built to spec of the customer to a larger degree. You get higher performance per dollar spent and still get a pertty nice case to look at.

 

Mom and pop super PC - Less costly yet and if they know what they are doing really high performance for the buck. May be lacking on prettiness but will pack a punch in the raw power department.

 

DIY - As good as your wallet and skill can take you. No limit other than the hardware limitations. Genrally the least expensive and most flexable. You get any case you want and can mod like crazy. All you need is some paint, a dremil, and some skill.

 

Now do you see what I am saying? My point in simplest terms, dollar for dollar you get more bang for your buck with just about any other builder or going DIY. I'm not being arrogant. I'm just telling like it is. I know my rig is aging. No dought about it. I know there are faster systems out. So again, forget about my system vs your system. That's not what this is about. Mine has older hardware in it. We know this. If I was to do out and build my own version of say the Area 51 system now, I could build it cheaper and faster than what they are selling. Or, I could buy one from Falcon NW, Voodoo, or Darkside PC's and spend a little less and get better performance. Better yet, use the cash save for better cooling and up the overclock more, even buy it maxed with the better cooling. If you still do not get what I am saying after this, it's a true facepalm moment.

Edited February 19, 2010 by Prophet4no1

[XLR8]

My 3 year old Dell PC,ran crysis,blackshark,lomac,anything I threw at it with no problems. By todays standard it old and abslete. C2D 2.4,8 GB DDR2 800 mhz,768 MB gforce 8800 GTX,Raptor HD ,750 watt PSD.

 

The one thing that I hated about Dell was the ability to OC. Thats the reason I was going to build my own. I asked people at places like Tomshardware,Overclocker.com and a few people who built them. It pretty much was an even split on the pros and cons of building myself. Some said it would be easy to build,and with the ""right "" parts to OC. The other said that there are things to look at ,like parts compatability,setting up BIOS,and the dredded DOA parts that would drive you crazy after building it and the PC would not work.

 

My first 2 PC were custom built by a relitive of mine that did it for years. He built them ( at the time ) state of the art. They lasted me years.

 

But the one thing I did not miss was when it broke. It was a change the part out and hope and see it it worked. I had no Tech. support to call,and the parts came out of my pocket.

 

There are a few post over at Tomshardware that people said that you could not build a comperable PC for the cost of a Alienware.

[Prophet4no1]

I swear by EVGA. there hardware is built with gamers/tweakers in mind. Awesome BIOS for tweaking and overclocking till your eyes bleed.

 

Biggest factors in building a rig. Get quality harware. I use eVGA mobo's and vid cards. If you are cutting cost and going with the older LGA775, make sure you get a good chip. The Q6600 is a great one for overclocking the crap out of, but is a big heat builder. The "extreme" chips are a little more userfreindly and the larger caches make for slightly better perfromance. The new i7 chips are a lot easier to overclock. Especially on the new X58 boards. Regarless of the hardware the biggest factor is cooling. You need to make sure you have a high end cooler, either really good air cooler or water cooling. Also a case with very good ventalation. I've rescently started using Cooler Master for my system builds I do for people. They have some classy looking cases like the 690 II Advance but still provide massive amounts of cooling. If you want the more crazy looking cases, well, they have those too. Genral features across the board are great ventalation, really good cable managemnt, dust filters, toolless cases.

 

Basic build I use with exact components varied depending on budget of who I am building for:

 

Cooler Master case

eVGA Mobo

eVGA GPU

OCZ ram

Everest PSU

WD or OCZ HD

DVD drive varies on what Newegg has a deal on. Most are about the same as long as it's SATA.

[hitman]

honesty im kinda down about building my own anymore. my last one was a maintenance nightmare and wound up building my own water reservoir out of pvc, and rma'ing parts left and right. took me 2 months to build my rig even though i had all the parts there. my rma on my rpsu was really what set me back because coolmax didn't test it and said it was good...which cost me money to send my 2 supposedly doa boards back to newegg.

 

2 lessons i learned there...buy your parts locally (that way you dont waste 10 days between rma , and making sure you have the parts you need are within 5 minutes of where you live. sometimes radio shack is a life saver.

[Prophet4no1]

If you guy high quality parts, these issues are few and far. Make sure you are buying form good companies. As for water cooling, aDIY system is fine but NEVER build your own components. Buy the parts form a company that specializes in water cooling. Otherwise you are asking for some very expensive trouble.

 

ASUS and eVGA are propbably the two best companies to get things like motherboards from. Very high quality. PSU, make sure you get ones with Japanise compasitors. They are better and last longer. When you go DIY you have to do some research. If you just through the system togethor from random parts, you will proabably have issues. If the parts are high quallity the RMA's will be few and far.

[hitman]

I have Asus, their customer support is lacking seriously. I just had a nice chat with a tech guy at microcenter and he had some choice things to say about alienware, to my surprise...since Dell took over Alienware, they have been puttiong inferior BIOS programs into their motherboards and a lot of customers have been returning them lately. I can relate to the guy, I got my tax return today and I saw one there for 1000 dollars. I WAS going to get it today, but after the horror stories of people returning them a lot lately I think Ill stay away from alienware forever too. Their demo computer failed at the store too while I was test driving it.

 

Icarus, if your going to get an alienware, I suggest asking someone at the computer store about their first hand experience with dell/alienware. Spend the extra 150 bucks at a computer store and have one custom made...youll have your choice of parts, higher end parts at cheaper prices, and they usually warranty their work as well, as they built it, they fix it too. Its a good deal dude.

[hitman]

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0314584

in case you are wondering which one I am referring to, this be the one.

[herig2]

Not all Alienware builds are bad, see my post #8, but I did buy it in the first week that it went on sale. I haven't had any of the BIOS problums that the later units had. But over at the Dell site there is updated BIOS downloads for those who did. Plus I have the ALX model, and there tech support phone menu has a number just for ALX support. From what I read the ALX units have better quality componets, so the extra money I spent on the ALX build is maybe why I'm not having any trouble.

[herig2]

The Alienware shown in the microcenter link, has the case that was used before Dell took it over.

I order the Aurora ALX and the next week the Area 51 came out, its a different case. Would have order it over the Aurora ALX, mainly because it had SSD options, but Dell advertise it as coming soon. Not knowing when soon would be here, I could't wait.

Edited February 20, 2010 by herig2

[herig2]

Check out this Dell link.

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19320696.aspx

[emenance]

It makes me so happy I can build my own computers. My last build is going 2.2 years strong. I had to RMA a video card recently and that was painless through asus. Anyway it does pay to have a backup computer. I have a laptop I use when main rig is down or getting worked on. Plus I am setting up a desktop in my living room that will run a touchscreen monitor with jukebox software and next to that will be a laptop stand for whatever occasion.

 

Sorry, but sooner or later they will be everywhere :) http://www.amazon.com/Dual-Desk-Mount-Arm-Black/dp/B000GGY8W4/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1266637411&sr=1-5 This is going on a coffee table.

[sweinhart3]

Ive been building my own rigs for almost 15years. I stand by own quality lol. With the exception of 2 HD and a bad series of Crucial Ballistix memory that I had to rma 3 times, most of the pcs Ive built over the last 10 years are still running. I would never spend the money on an alienware for reasons already mentioned. Beating the dead horse some more. I have only ordered from dell twice in my life. First time was several years ago and I had a pretty good experience from it. Last time was just this last December for a family member since I get discounted pricing and I can say I will never buy from them again. The techs are non native english speaking folks that dont know their ass from a hole in the wall. It really sux when they prove they know less about pcs then you. The order was delayed 3 times and took over a month to fulfill and they actually sat there and blamed Microsoft for not getting enough copies of Windows 7 when you could walk down the street and buy it. Dell is not making a lot of happy customers.

 

If you plan to use a water cooler do some research before the investment. I once implemented a high end water cooler system onto a dual cpu system and even without overclocking it frequently overheated. I had to use a 9" fan blowing directly in my case. Admitted this was in the days of Athlon XP and I lived in Phoenix, AZ with a non functioning Air Conditioner. That sucked ass. Water cooling used to be the shiznit tho. But read reviews on them cause nowadays a top quality air cooler can give the same and in some cases even better performance than many of the stock water cooling systems for half the cost and without the mess or fuss. TomsHardware and Anandtech have good reads on cpu cooling. Also dont underestimate the importance of a high quality PSU. Get one with a guarantee. CoolerMaster and OCZ have some good ones. Shy away from the cheaper off brands cause a bad power supply can kill your whole system.

[XLR8]

Well I have had my Alienware Aurora for a couple of days now,and all I can say is WOW !!!!! This thing Rocks. No problems what so ever,stays cool and pretty quet. You do hear the cooling speed up under load.

 

I loaded FSX,LOMAC,Crysis,MW2,COD4 and all on the highest settings. Not a single issue.

 

As far as the inside of the case its well laid out nice wiring plenty of room . The case before I bought it I had my doubts on the looks. But I have to admit it looks even better than in the pics.

 

I have not tryed to OC it yet,running at 3.6 ghz right now,and can't imagin what thing is going to do when I OC and upgrade the RAM to 1600 mhz.

 

In all honestly for a prebuilt this is awsome.

[sweinhart3]

Glad you like it. Im not gonna knock it. Also check reviews about ram. As it turns out there are sweet spots on memory speed that give the best real life performance that arent the fastest Mhz rated. 1600Mhz might give you better theoretical memory bandwith, but testers have found lower speed lower latency sticks to perform better in real applications. Also realize that upgrading your memory will not give you any perceived or noticeable performance advantage. You will be lucky if you increase your fps by 1. Read up a bit before you change out your memory and dont get cheap stuff. Often times 1333 low latency will give you the best performance. Back in the pre Nehalem days, running memory and FSB in a linked and synced manner gave higher performance than running in higher memory speeds in unlinked manner. Not sure how it is with the Core i5/i7 line since I dont own one but I do know they dont use a FSB anymore. Core i7 has integrated memory controller on the cpu so memory latency becomes more important.

Edited February 20, 2010 by sweinhart3

[Prophet4no1]

Yes Alienware has a fancy case, you got that correct. But wrong on the other points. Yes they are hand made. Yes mine is OCed. No its not stock performance.

 

Thank you for trying to be more civil this time. It needs a little more work though. You are repeating your point over and over and saying I don't get it. I do get it. I just don't fully agree with you and you are not listening to me.

 

As I have said several times, yes you can get a bit more out of a DIY, but my point is that not everyone wants to DIY. Do you understand that point. You like making computers. I and many don't. I have the money to buy a top of the line prebuilt computer. Maybe you don't want to spend the money and have the time to build, that's ok. But it is your opinion, not the only opinion or the smartest opinion.

 

There is nothing I cannot run with my computer so why would I waste my time just trying to squeeze out an extra 8fps for no reason building my own when I don't have the time or inclination. Top of the line Prebuilt is for those people.

 

The difference between DIY and top of the line prebuilt is negligable except price. If price is less of a worry than time, a prebuilt top of the line is the way to go. Most of them you get to choose your parts anyway. Its not about smart/stupid its about priorities. You are assuming people are buying prebuilts, because they would rather build their own and save money but are too stupid. That is where you are missing my point. Not everyone wants to build there own in order to score higher 3DMarks and brag, they just want to run everything and not have the hassle of building.

 

End of discussion.

 

 

But the other part of my point was there are other prebuilt systems that are better. Or at last more bang for your buck. Let's say the other one is $300 cheaper but both have CPU water cooling. I can then upgrade the other to water cool the GPU/GPUs and have them overclocked even more. This iwill in most cases get you more than just 8fps. It will most likely add a year to the expected "life" of the PC. Meaning the time before you need an upgrade. So, at this point I have spent about the same mony with company X on a faster system, prebuilt. Just add power and go. I've never orderd a PC with water cooling on it already so I would unhook all the power in the PC ecept the water cooling system and doo a leak test to be safe for 24hrs. Just incase something got loose in transit.

[herig2]

Icarus2, In your post #61 you said it all, just the way I felt when I determined that I needed to upgrade, not having the time to research the components, and how they work with each other,or the time to build it. I look at all the prebuild units, Cyberpower, Falcon, and a host of others. I settle on the Alienware Aurora ALX. Your statement "they just want to run everything and not have the hassle of building." Describes me to the tee.

A proud Alienware Aurora ALX owner.

[herig2]

To Prophet4no1

There are people that do not look at a price tag, or consider bang for the buck, on there purchases. I am one of them. I know what I want and I am going to buy it, whatever the price. At times it might be foolish, but as a good friend told me. Who dies with the most toys wins.

A person sees a system that does what he wants it to do, and then buys it. Simple

[herig2]

I know what you mean, when Fed-Ex pulled up and said they had a 85 lbs. box for me it was heaven.

[XLR8]

Just an update here. I got my Aurora overclocked and stable at 4.0 GHZ. Still runs cool. My next overclock (even higher) needs some tweaks before its stable.