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Alienware?

K

Koudelka

Senior member
Are these a complete rip-off? I'm thinking of building a pc, or just saving myself the trouble and buying an alienware. Anyone had experience with them? ie. how is the airflow? do they need additional fans and cooling? can you sleeve the wires inside? OR.. should i trash the thought and continue to build my own PC with the same hardware?
 
Alienwares are a complete waste of money compared to building your own system. Unless you want to pay the premium for an already built PC.

We can give you a good idea of how much money you'll be spending. What are you going to be doing with this PC? What specs are you looking at?
 
While you can say they are overpriced...You cannot say you get what you spend. Alienware computers are top of the line..and if you pay top money for them that is what you will get. Nice case, Very neat wires, Great support, great cooling, everything optimized so you dont even need to touch it. Its a great system u just have to pay for it. If you have cash to throw around go for it.,..if u dont..build your own.
 
I'm looking to have the ATI Radeon x800, amd64 3500+, ASUS mobo ( will get model # later ), 2gigs ddr at 400mhz, and 120gig harddrive with 650w power supply. I'm not experienced with sleeving the wires for airflow.. or any cooling methods at all. So that worries me alot since hardware is becoming so much more delicate and airflow/cooling a bigger problem. I wouldnt know how to modify my pc case to fit in extra fans, sleeve wires, or add watercooling.

Edit: So, basically, what i'm asking is what am i better off doing? Buying a prebuilt computer until i become more educated with cooling methods, or building my own and using kits and websites to modify cooling/airflow myself?
 
Honestly, with a 650w power supply you can run enough fans to cool your house. I would build it. You can build it with the same parts as alien ware for cheaper, or get better parts for the same amount as an alien ware.
 
Well, I just built your rig at Newegg and the total came to about $2100. Mind you I used dual 74gig raptors and 2gigs of A-Data PC4000. The config at Alienware came to about $2800. IMO, build it. You'll have $500-800 to use to get drives and cool your system. That is a huge benefit.
 
Unless you plan on overclocking that rather expensive processor you shouldn't need any crazy cooling, such a huge powersupply, or sleeved wires. Any decent case and power supply combo should be fine as far as that stuff goes. You also shouldn't need to get too fancy with ram unless you're going to be overclocking.
 
Originally posted by: Koudelka
I'm looking to have the ATI Radeon x800, amd64 3500+, ASUS mobo ( will get model # later ), 2gigs ddr at 400mhz, and 120gig harddrive with 650w power supply. I'm not experienced with sleeving the wires for airflow.. or any cooling methods at all. So that worries me alot since hardware is becoming so much more delicate and airflow/cooling a bigger problem. I wouldnt know how to modify my pc case to fit in extra fans, sleeve wires, or add watercooling.

Edit: So, basically, what i'm asking is what am i better off doing? Buying a prebuilt computer until i become more educated with cooling methods, or building my own and using kits and websites to modify cooling/airflow myself?
Click to expand...

If that is all that you are going to put in the case and are not going to overclock then dont worry about extreme cooling or sleving the cables. Just get a nice heatsink or stick with the one that comes with the AMD 64 those arnt too bad, and put in a few case fans in the system. Most the cases you will find will come with at least 2 fan holes one in front and one in back. My case has two 120mm fans in it and that is all I need.

As for sleaving the wires thats isnt a must do...Most people only do it to improve air flow or to make it look nicer, I mess around so much in my case, the wires are a mess. I am also using 6 Flat ribbin cables that make it harder to improve air flow. For the most part in my experence sleaving the cables just cleans up the mess that is in the case, but has the added bonus of improving the air flow.
 
If you have the money, why not , save yourself the hassle of building one. But i would suggest falcon northwest over alienware
 
I looked at the Mach V systems.. i configured the same one with alienware and Falcon.. Falcon was over TWICE as expensive.. there a reason for it being so much???
 
Alienware is top of the line but you can build pretty much the same system for hundreds less with very good cooling.
 
buyabs.com

they offer very reasonable prices for top knotch systems. i'm very happy with mine. they are one of few consumer PC makers that offer RAID0 too.
 
If you want to buy a system from a manufacturer, then get Dell. I know Alienwares are fast all fancy, but Dell's new XPS systems almost match Alienware. So thats all I got to say. But try to build your own system.
 
AWhackWhiteBoy is right on that one. ABS Computers are very top notch computers, and lets not forget about the relationship to Newegg 😉.

My sister bought a PC I configured for her on ABS a long time ago. It was a 1.2Ghz Athlon (thunderbird core, obviously) and you know what? She's selling it soon to someone cheap and her new Athlon 64 3200+ laptop is coming soon. This PC never had ANY problems. Nothing ever went wrong with it and she never had to replace anything, and she used it a lot every day.

I would strongly suggest ABS Computers' Gamer-oriented PCs over Alienware's. For one thing, you get the same thing for cheaper and you can choose the wavemaster case 🙂 I like that case over the alienware case. Alienware PCs don't suck, but my cousin also got an ABS PC (I could have built them...but like one person said, if you have the money why bother with the hassle?) a while ago. When a friend bought an Athlon 64 gaming rig off of there, it came already optimized as well, but $500 cheaper than Alienware. Either way, you can't go wrong if you have the money to spend on it.

I have built many PCs and I would go with buying it pre-built from either one of those two because I have no time to sit and build a new PC, install OS and programs, optimize if needed, etc. DIY PC, Alienware or ABS-built...you can't go wrong 😉.
 
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