Don't waste your money. Alienware is far too over rated. This is as first hand an experience with them as you'll find.
I convinced a friend of mine to buy one because I didn't want him calling me all hours of the night and day for support. At first I felt a little guilty because of their rediculous cost. But considering that when he first got it, he didn't know how to turn it on and what a mouse was, and that 2 months later he was on a personal first name basis with all the reps on their free 24 hr tech support, I didn't feel so bad any more. I think they ended up in the hole on that one.
Then within the waranty period, the motherboard went bad, and it took 3 months and numerous phone calls to get it replaced. They sent out a contracted tech to do it that was not too bright. They replaced the motherboard with a used one. If I remember correctly, I think the cpu slot had changed on their current models and instead of doing the proper thing and explaining the truth and offering a later motherboard and cpu even if it was slower, they just kept stringing him along for months.
The really sad part is we only live 20 miles from where Alienware is located, (in the middle of little cuba on Miami (Kendall)). It's really not that big an operation. Just in the middle of some rented warehouse park. My friend offered to drive there to drop it off and pick it up etc and they refused repeatedly.
He was really pissed and kept records of it all planning to take legal action. Today we have replaced everything again but still use the original Alienware case. I think it's an Antec.
Another thing they used to do is make a big deal about your personalized Manual. What a joke. My 10 year old neice coul put together a more professional manual (just a 3 ring binder). This thing had about 4 pages printed on a really poor color inkjet with diagrams that were unreadable.
As far as I know they still use off the shelf parts, that anyone can order themselves and the bit about the systems being optimized and designed for best performance is just a bunch of hype. Any 13 yr old can do as good a job these days.
The good part is that if your unsure of what components to get and if you dig deep enough on Alienware's website you can find listings for all the parts in their systems and just order the parts at discount dealers on the web.
For a couple of hours work you can easily save over a $1000.00
Perhaps your father could give it to you for assembling a comparable system.
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