Help Should I buy this alienware pc?

[Adari]

Hello, hello...

I really need to throw out my old desktop and buy a new one to play games (casually). I've been looking at alienware pc's - appeals because it means no hassle setting it up and i hear dell tech support/guarantee is very decent.

Basically, I'm wondering which of these three models I should pick. Specifically: is the extra € 100 (GBP 85) (second model) worth it, and is the extra 2 gb/ddr3 memory + i5 processor (third model) worth the extra € 230 (GBP 195)? (The models are priced GBP 565, 650 and 760 respectively).

I will use this pc for games such as civ 5 multiplayer and starcraft 2, any bioware rpg and maybe an mmorpg in the near future. Don't play that many shooters at all, other than tf2.

It would be nice if this pc lasted for 2-2,5 years. I'm hoping the second model will do fine, if not the first. But I'm clueless, hence this post.

Any advice of the matter would be very much appreciated! (Please also let me know if I should not buy any alienware products at all.)

Regards,

M

 

[TdC]

your link just sends me to a generic dell page.

re your question tbh I'd never buy a "branded" pc but perhaps that's just me. for alternatives, have a look at Will's thread about buying a new pc. other than that, good luck.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Yeah, link doesn't work and if you want to spend 2 or 3 times more than you need to, then for sure go for Alienware.

 

[Adari]

Oh, well, this is the link: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-x51/fs - first three models basically.

Really that overpriced?

 

[ECA]

Honestly since the dell takeover their more sensible offerings are not that badly priced. They are comparable to most other prebuilt systems.
That said their ram choice on the first two options is retarded as shit. 6gb ram 1x4gb 1x2gb.


Compare the spec from those to prebuilt systems from ocuk:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/produ...=2475&sortby=manual_sort&subid=2486&mfrid=450

 

[TdC]

well they will prolly be cheaper than what you could piece together yourself but I'd still say that what Will was looking at may be worth your while. on the other hand, if you're totally cool with owning an AW then go for it. It won't be terribad or anything

 

[soze]

I got an Alienware Laptop and I am very happy with it. The single point warranty and the ability to extend that warranty need to be considered. While you might build similar with better components for less the fact that you have 10 different places to go should it fail is a pain in the arse. Plus Dell are a big brand the warranty should be good and the extended warranty could save some arse ache if a component dies after 18 months. So if you like the look of the Alienware then check some reviews for its real world performance and then go with what you like.

 

[Raven]

Don't buy alienware, they used to be over priced, now they are Dells.

Either build yourself or buy a ready made system from a smaller outfit. Better priced and better featured.

 

[Aada]

Have owned 4 AW machines 2 laptops and 2 desktops, honestly these days the prices aren't too bad the i7 model in that list is just over a £1000 and pretty much what my current none AW desktop cost except that I have a GTX670 and I have an i5, in terms of build quality AW beats most places hands my current desktop build quality was ok but I noticed the difference in cable management straight away between AW/random smaller outfit.

With Dell you get a great warranty also but the good thing is I never had a problem with any of my AW to use that warranty.

So in my experience of going from AW to a smaller company I would definately consider going back to AW for a future desktop, I have heard good things from overclockers so might also be a place to consider.

 

[PLightstar]

Have you tried http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ always been good for me, building machines for myself and work. Though its already been said, I have always found AW a bit too pricey.

 

[soze]

in terms of build quality AW beats most places hands my current desktop build quality was ok but I noticed the difference in cable management straight away between AW/random smaller outfit.

I do not know where he got it from but my cousin paid £45 for "Professional Cable Management" in his pre built machine. And the guy that built it said it took his 2 hours about about £20 of cable extenders to get it done to a professional standard. It took me a similar amount of time to do mine. With that in mind if they are all hand built you can see why they would be left just as is.

 

[DaGaffer]

Just make sure you're not stuck with AW/Dell if you want to upgrade certain components. I've been caught like that before where I couldn't upgrade a PSU with a standard one because it was a bespoke fit. It never used to be the case when AW were independent, but I've no idea whether its an issue now they're Dell.

 

[Aada]

I do not know where he got it from but my cousin paid £45 for "Professional Cable Management" in his pre built machine. And the guy that built it said it took his 2 hours about about £20 of cable extenders to get it done to a professional standard. It took me a similar amount of time to do mine. With that in mind if they are all hand built you can see why they would be left just as is.

The problem is a lot of places don't offer cable management as an extra so you don't know what you are getting.

It just annoyed me that both my AW desktops were cable managed and my first small company desktop the cable management was none existent.

 

[Aada]

Just make sure you're not stuck with AW/Dell if you want to upgrade certain components. I've been caught like that before where I couldn't upgrade a PSU with a standard one because it was a bespoke fit. It never used to be the case when AW were independent, but I've no idea whether its an issue now they're Dell.

I can confirm it isn't an issue I upgraded a few things on my last AW such as the PSU and RAM and both took 3rd party stuff.

 

[Raven]

I think that's on older Dell machines. Even my standard work Dell PC is fairly normal inside.

I just dislike these places taking £500 (retail) worth of components and selling it for £1000. You would have to be mad to buy one.

You can even just get the spec list and buy the components yourself, half an hour build time. Done. Also, lack of cable management isn't the end of the world unless you are planning on putting one of those crappy windows on it or overclocking it. The most important thing is a decent case. You can tidy the cables yourself.

 

[soze]

Unless you are well practiced and very lucky "half an hour build time" is very optimistic. That can easily turn in to hours of build time if it does not post and you need to figure out why.

 

[Raven]

Why wouldn't it post? Not had that happen in about 10 years.

 

[Shagrat]

Have to agree with soze. These days I really don't think building your own pc is worth the effort.

I bought my son an alienware pc for Christmas. Reasonably priced in comparison to a few other places I looked, It's well built, runs well once you remove some of the pre-installed tat and plays everything he's thrown at it without a problem (he mainly plays TF2, Planetside2, latest COD, Skyrim and other fluff like terraria, minecraft with millions of mods installed).

 

[soze]

Why wouldn't it post? Not had that happen in about 10 years.

I built 20 pcs last year and had 3 issues. Ram MB and GFX card. If I had not been building them in pairs finding the faults would have meant ordering spares or returning multiple parts. It's not always straight forward.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Have to agree with soze. These days I really don't think building your own pc is worth the effort.

I bought my son an alienware pc for Christmas. Reasonably priced in comparison to a few other places I looked, It's well built, runs well once you remove some of the pre-installed tat and plays everything he's thrown at it without a problem (he mainly plays TF2, Planetside2, latest COD, Skyrim and other fluff like terraria, minecraft with millions of mods installed).

Build your own PC and it'll be well built, run well (WITHOUT having to unsinstall loads of shit) and plays everything thrown at it without a problem. And cost about 1/3 less. The PC I built myself after asking about hardware on this site is still capable of playing everything that comes out, 3 years later. There have been a total of 0 issues with it over that time.

Buy good harware, follow basic LEGO-esque instructions and you have a machine ready to go without tweaking that'll most likely last you a very long time and cost you less. And you learn a little about computers in the process, so if something does go wrong you can actually deal with it yourself rather than having to pay or deal with shit customer services/repair people.

 

[caLLous]

Self-builds are a piece of piss. I haven't had one go wrong this century, I don't think. Every aspect of the build is standardised and production processes are much more consistent and reliable than they used to be. As long as you do everything sensibly (handle sensitive components like the motherboard, RAM and CPU with due care), it's highly unlikely that anything will go wrong.

 

[Jupitus]

I think that's on older Dell machines. Even my standard work Dell PC is fairly normal inside.

You may well be right, and in fact I hope you are, but I had this issue myself and it was nothing obvious at all - but the power connector between PSU and MOBO were not ATX standard so it was really fucking frustrating!

 

[Syri]

Just make sure you're not stuck with AW/Dell if you want to upgrade certain components. I've been caught like that before where I couldn't upgrade a PSU with a standard one because it was a bespoke fit. It never used to be the case when AW were independent, but I've no idea whether its an issue now they're Dell.

I'd echo this. Mostly they're not too bad, but the models on that page look like they're using slimline cases, so it's possible, even likely, they're using laptop components. This could mean that upgrades could be impossible in some areas, or just a lot more expensive in others.
Not sure what they're like now, but the Dell PCs at my uni tend to have non-standard motherboard layouts too. They have the CPU right at the front of the case, so they can stick a big custom cooler at the front.
Personally I'd rather build my own, or at least get one from somewhere that uses off the shelf components, so that I know it can be worked on easily or upgraded easily at a later date.

 

[TdC]

tbh pre-installed software is another thing. I got in a rage when my programming IDE broke and reinstalled my Vaio from the rescue partition. THAT part took 20 mins. Uninstalling all the gubbins Sony sticks in their OS image took over an hour and making sure it rebooted after pulling in 500MB of windoze patches took another two hours :-/

 

[BloodOmen]

Giving money to Dell is like pissing in a tramps gob.

 

[Cadelin]

I recently (2 months ago) got a new desktop and decided to build my own. It was the first time I had built a machine but it was something I had wanted to try for a while. If this is something you are using casually have a one year warranty is a very nice thing to have.

Let me compare what I brought to one of those AW machines. Somebody might say I could have done better, but the point is if you were building a machine for the first time you might not buy the optimum parts either.

My machine brought in March:

Liteon Ihas120 20x Dvd±rw (dual ±r)/ram Sata Drive
Coolermaster Elite 330U Case With Coolermaster elite Power 500W PSU
Intel Core i5 3450 3.1GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H Socket 1155 VGA DVI HDMI 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz i5 Memory Kit Non-ECC CL9 1.5V
Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit DVD - OEM
TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Wireless-N450 Dual Band PCIe Adapter
Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card with FREE ASSASSINS CREED III Download Coupon + Free to Play bundle
SanDisk 256GB Pulse SATA-III SSD
Dyanmode SSD Fittings Kit
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total: £760.19
-----------------------------------------------------------

If you compare that to the similar priced AW machine:

Windows 8 64bit, English
Intel® Core™ i5-3330 (6M Cache, up to 3.2GHz)
1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660
8192MB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory
1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm)
DVD+/-RW (Read/Write)
Internal High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio
Integrated 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Wireless LAN
1 yr Next Day In-Home Hardware & Premium Software Phone Support
Alienware X51 : Matte Stealth Black Chassis (ConfigC)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total: £798.99
-----------------------------------------------------------
I have a slightly better processor; 6085 compared to 5900 in the benchmarking:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
We have the same graphics card although mine is slightly flashier as it has more memory and is OverClocked.
I got myself an SSD which is pretty awesome but it does lack space so I have another old drive for storage.
Everything else is basically the same. The AW will play everything you can throw at it currently and you don't need to worry about it not working. Shop around but don't feel you are being scammed going for an AW. There are several happy customers on this forum.

 

[soze]

tbh pre-installed software is another thing. I got in a rage when my programming IDE broke and reinstalled my Vaio from the rescue partition. THAT part took 20 mins. Uninstalling all the gubbins Sony sticks in their OS image took over an hour and making sure it rebooted after pulling in 500MB of windoze patches took another two hours :-/

Sony are the fucking pits for this. I recoverd a laptop yesterday and it was 3 hours to get it back to the "just the software i want stage" and I still have not fixed the USB 3 Cannot Start problem. It is doing my head in. Seemingly Intel are aware but not interested in fixing it.

 

[pikeh]

Not read any of the other posts but please god-damn don't buy Alienware. Building your own is cheaper, you know whats going in it and its not filled up with malware shit like Dells.
Building your own is piss easy, just a case of putting the right connectors in the right pins in your mobo.

https://www.aria.co.uk/myAria/Wish Lists/PC

Thats £833 in the basket, 7950 is a great card and 4 free games! Not done any shopping around but thats a good site with an easy to link to 'wish list!'.
You may want to check the ram clearance on that heatsink. Will you be overclocking? if not then you could go for a low profile heatsink or maybe even the stock Intel one that comes with the CPU. I picked out generic ram but if you get a big heatsink like that, its always worth getting lower profile ram. Picked a generic good case, pick one you like the look of. You have 1tb of storage and 120gig SSD which is pretty much the best upgrade you can do.

To be honest, Haswell chips are out soon (the new Intel chips as opposed to Ivybridge etc) so some would argue that that CPU (a socket 1155) is dead. However, its likely to run everything you want it to for the next few years at least, and you don't have anything to worry about with that gfx card. Its a brilliant chip anyway, but if you wanted to upgrade in the future it would probably mean a new mobo and a new cpu.

If you wanted to save some pennies, you can knock the SSD and upgrade later, go down to a 7870 (Tahiti LE) gfx card (which gives near 7950 performance) and if you aren't overclocking, go for an i5 3570 (non K version - the 'K' just means voltage unlocked AFAIK so you can overclock it).

Will you need a copy of windows as well? Thats something to factor into costs as well.

 

[Aada]

I recently (2 months ago) got a new desktop and decided to build my own. It was the first time I had built a machine but it was something I had wanted to try for a while. If this is something you are using casually have a one year warranty is a very nice thing to have.

Let me compare what I brought to one of those AW machines. Somebody might say I could have done better, but the point is if you were building a machine for the first time you might not buy the optimum parts either.

My machine brought in March:

Liteon Ihas120 20x Dvd±rw (dual ±r)/ram Sata Drive
Coolermaster Elite 330U Case With Coolermaster elite Power 500W PSU
Intel Core i5 3450 3.1GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H Socket 1155 VGA DVI HDMI 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz i5 Memory Kit Non-ECC CL9 1.5V
Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit DVD - OEM
TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Wireless-N450 Dual Band PCIe Adapter
Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card with FREE ASSASSINS CREED III Download Coupon + Free to Play bundle
SanDisk 256GB Pulse SATA-III SSD
Dyanmode SSD Fittings Kit
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total: £760.19
-----------------------------------------------------------

If you compare that to the similar priced AW machine:

Windows 8 64bit, English
Intel® Core™ i5-3330 (6M Cache, up to 3.2GHz)
1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660
8192MB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory
1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm)
DVD+/-RW (Read/Write)
Internal High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio
Integrated 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Wireless LAN
1 yr Next Day In-Home Hardware & Premium Software Phone Support
Alienware X51 : Matte Stealth Black Chassis (ConfigC)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total: £798.99
-----------------------------------------------------------
I have a slightly better processor; 6085 compared to 5900 in the benchmarking:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
We have the same graphics card although mine is slightly flashier as it has more memory and is OverClocked.
I got myself an SSD which is pretty awesome but it does lack space so I have another old drive for storage.
Everything else is basically the same. The AW will play everything you can throw at it currently and you don't need to worry about it not working. Shop around but don't feel you are being scammed going for an AW. There are several happy customers on this forum.

People say it's cheaper building you're own but when you add everything up it isn't a lot cheaper and you've pretty much proved that.

AW used to be very expensive but these days they aren't and you can usually pick up a online code to reduce the price by anything up to £150, but as always shop around on 5 different websites check customer reviews and make a choice.

 

[TdC]

Sony are the fucking pits for this. I recoverd a laptop yesterday and it was 3 hours to get it back to the "just the software i want stage" and I still have not fixed the USB 3 Cannot Start problem. It is doing my head in. Seemingly Intel are aware but not interested in fixing it.

yeah man. started the bugger up again today and bam! another 600!!! MB of patches. that's over a gig in two days 0o