Alienware: Worth the money?

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Hi,

I am not really into gaming but I thought I would ask some people who are !

My mate is about to shell out £4000 (about $8000) on a top of the range Alienware system. I have looked at these beasts and they are very nice and appear to be very well put together - but are they worth this sort of money? He earns far too much anyway so it will serve him right if he stitches himeself!

Any advice / thoughts very welcome.

Very kind regards from London UK,

The Trog
 
I direct you to visit this thread I created here on the TS forums a couple of months ago. Basically Alienware was twice the price of building a system yourself. It might be less of a price hike in other regions b (UK, US etc...). I personally think that all you are paying for is: A brand Name, A case ( I personally don't even really like very much) and a warranty and service (I have heard the service is really crap).

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Edit:
I personally enjoy builing PC's, so buying a pre built system of any kind would be no fun for me.
 
I'm going to suggest no...unless your friend has no desire to build a rig. Alienware is expensive because you're paying for the name. My roommate bought an Alienware laptop and is happy with it, but it was really expensive for what he got compared to my Acer, which is a popular yet less known brand.

At the least, I'd recommend you recommend to your friend to shop around a bit, with other names he recognizes for computers. He might be able to buy the same thing with a different company for less.
 
8k to spend? NICE ! i said go for it :D show us your beautifully assemble rig once u receive it. Post it on the screen shot area so everyone can feast their eyes on what a 8k gaming PC would look and feel like : P

be warn through, you'll be getting allot of those cheap build it yourself custom pc advice thats effective as your AlienWar, Don't leensen to them they worship the cheap but solid bargin pc godz!
 
I say build it yourself if you can. Not really that hard, with $8000 you could get something killler.
 
Alienware has a great brand of computers, not that you can really go wrong with one. But like the post somewhere above your paying a lot for just the brand name. You could buy 2x 9800 GX2's, the best quad core, top motherboard, fastest memory, fastest hard drive and 1001 watt power supply for about 5k. Still, from Alienware you do get it all set up for you, water cooling and all, it looks pretty and you do have choice in the decision. Truly its up to you, your right, you can't go wrong with Alienware, but when buying to top of the line stuff you can save thousands just buying it separate.

Just as an example below, most of that stuff is about the best you can get atm, not 100% sure on the hard drive. That processor is also the second fastest but the fastest one uses a 771 slot that only like 1 motherboard supports...
 

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I would spend a good 2000$ on building a good rig then spend 8000$ for one that you wont even know specific parts, or how somethings work in it.
 
kevinOC89 said:
I would spend a good 2000$ on building a good rig then spend 8000$ for one that you wont even know specific parts, or how somethings work in it.

Is it just me or does anyone else fail to understand this 100%?
 
Whiffen said:
Just as an example below, most of that stuff is about the best you can get atm, not 100% sure on the hard drive. That processor is also the second fastest but the fastest one uses a 771 slot that only like 1 motherboard supports...
<example>


The computer parts in your example aren't worth the money at this time, There is almost no point in owning a Quad Core processor since no games / programs efficiently use them at their best. I'd stick with a Dual Core and save $800.

As for the Videocard you chosen, the 9 series is a bad choice right now since they were just released and they suck pretty bad. If you do want a 9 series though I'd wait atleast 3-4 months. The 8 series was $500 or so a few months back, but now you can get it for a few hundred ( $200 ).

The motherboard is a awesome choice though, I'd spend $470 on it!

The RAM is a different story though... It would be a complete waste of money to spend $1000+ on 2gigs of RAM. UPS has a thing for sometimes smashing their boxes, so there is $1000 that could be DOA!

The Powersupply is a good choice, but seeing how you'll almost never need a powersupply over 800w ( unless you plan on going 4x videocards or something stupid like that ) it's better to stick with a good 700w PSU like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341002 ( My personal favorite )
 
jtickner1 said:
Is it just me or does anyone else fail to understand this 100%?

I think what he means is that by builidng your own system compared to buying a pre built system you know the specific parts inside the case and how it all goes together.

I personally love knowing the exact parts inside my case, I even know the latencies for my RAM :p
 
Anything owned by Dell isn't worth the money; they're both overpriced brand names, out of $8,000 - about 4-5 is for the parts, and 3-4 is for the name.

I am about to build a fairly awesome DDR3 system with a 9800 GX2 and a ASUS Striker II Extreme, etc, high end parts - and it doesn't come close to $8,000... don't know what the frig I'd have to add to get a price that high.
 
You could get to 8K with some novelty features like a Blu-Ray burner and extreme water cooling. What I want to get for my next system is a slot loading burner.. They're so cool.
 
We'll put our vote in against anything Alienware. From out clients and service, we find they have as high an expensive failure rate as Compaq, eMachines, and Sony VAIO. They are really trouble. You will find happy users, of course,, but until you have talked to those who have had one failure after expensive failure as soon as the warranty is gone, you don't know what problems they are. Their problems go back to before Dell bought them out. We rank them at the bottom.... especially when you add in the costs.
 
£4000 is better spent on building a PC yourself. You're bound to find good deals on some items, sometimes from eBay, and you also have warranty on each individual part, which is much better compared to the blanket warranty offered by Alienware for the whole PC. Lastly, you don't even need to spend all that money, about half that amount will be sufficient, unless you need a large monitor like the Apple 30" Cinema HD, which I have and highly recommend.
 
Don't Dress Up or Bathe When Shopping for Luxury Items

The higher the price of the computer, the higher the percentage of profit for the manufacturer.

An Emachine on holiday sale might be selling at or near dealer cost, because they'd like to step you up to a more expensive machine. Not quite bait and switch, but not quite NOT bait and switch either.

There is a lower percentage of buyers in the high end, but supply is low also, at which point "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" kicks in, and they can fire you up at almost whatever profit margin they choose. Where else you gonna go?

At the end of the day, they're using the exact same parts that you would.:rolleyes:
 
My PC from PC Specialist was significantly cheaper than the other vendors I looked at.
A quick look at the site shows that maxing out most of the options (with topest range quad extreme, 8 gigs ram and dual 9800GX2's would cost about £4000, so either the price differences at this extreme are minimal, or alienware do not offer as good a system (in my opinion)

Edit: just checked alienware, the configurator goes to £4000 very quickly, with half the ram, no sound card, no blu-ray drive (which the PCS had) etc etc..... I'd go with PC specialist or something similar (if self-biulding is out of the question)
 
TimeParadoX said:
The computer parts in your example aren't worth the money at this time, There is almost no point in owning a Quad Core processor since no games / programs efficiently use them at their best. I'd stick with a Dual Core and save $800.

As for the Videocard you chosen, the 9 series is a bad choice right now since they were just released and they suck pretty bad. If you do want a 9 series though I'd wait atleast 3-4 months. The 8 series was $500 or so a few months back, but now you can get it for a few hundred ( $200 ).

The motherboard is a awesome choice though, I'd spend $470 on it!

The RAM is a different story though... It would be a complete waste of money to spend $1000+ on 2gigs of RAM. UPS has a thing for sometimes smashing their boxes, so there is $1000 that could be DOA!

The Powersupply is a good choice, but seeing how you'll almost never need a powersupply over 800w ( unless you plan on going 4x videocards or something stupid like that ) it's better to stick with a good 700w PSU like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341002 ( My personal favorite )

Oh, I know they aren't all necessary for the money at the moment but I'm giving an example of what that kind of money could get him rather than being spent on the brand name.
 
Whiffen said:
Oh, I know they aren't all necessary for the money at the moment but I'm giving an example of what that kind of money could get him rather than being spent on the brand name.

Oh ok, I was making sure...

You don't want the OP to spend $4000+ on your lists, I just pointed out parts that are cheaper and will do great just incase he / she does end up buying what we suggest.
 
im with the others, hand-build a pc or even post here on the forums and someone will choose the parts for you.

you're better off with better parts than a brand name
 
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