Building your own computer versus buying one from Alienware. Interesting.

[thelush84]

The goal with this is to configure and Alienware rig much to the same as this one and see what the price difference would be. I am curious exactly what a person who builds their own computer can save as opposed to letting a big company like Alienware do it for them. All products for the following PC were priced from neweeg.com, so with savvy searching one could probably get this same computer for a bit less. Also, no monitor, speakers or peripherals were included. This is just for the PC itself, likewise with the Alienware ALX.


ASUS VENTO 3600 Red Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $139
ENERMAX EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX12V 600W Power Supply 90~265V - $149
ZALMAN RESERATOR 1 Fanless Water Cooling System - $192
ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - $139
AMD Athlon 64 FX57 San Diego 1GHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - $1,011
OCZ Platinum Series 2GB DDR 400 (PC 3200) - $266
BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express SLI - $579
BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express SLI - $579
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 96KHz - $139
Western Digital WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA - $100
SONY 16x DVD-RW / 48x CD-RW - $54

MSRP - $3,347

You can't really get much better for games that this computer right here. I mean really, anything better may lead to essentially just a few more frames per second, but I think we can all agree that this is a damn fine computer.

The Alienware came equipped with pretty much the same hardware as the one from Newegg, save for different brands and the like. It was the ALX series and it came to a total of $4,505, a $1,158 difference in price. With essentially the same hardware and performence, what exactly does that extra grand get you? Well, nothing really. Sure with Alienware you get tech support and a warranty, but those cost additional cash and drive the price up even more, and the optimization they charge you for can also be done by anyone with a lick of sense and Google. Simply put, if you have the time and patience, buidling your own PC is the way to go, which I doubt I needed to tell anyone on this forum but did so to prove mostly to myself the major price difference.

Hell, with an extra grand you could buy a kickass LCD, wireless Logitech keyboard/mouse and a set of surround speakers and still come out under the price of the Alienware which doesn't have any of those yet costs the same. To be honest with you when I started doing this I didn't think the price point difference would be over $1,000 but I was obviously wrong. Alienware is a rip-off - wow.

 

[Xyo II]

yeah, i did this once too, but mine came out to more than $2000 difference! wtf?

 

[thescreensavers]

don't buy Alienware build it your self free your self from techs on the phone that will void your warranty for getting mad at them. Build it your self so you can enjoy a 1-2 week time it takes the parts to get to you. Not half a year to receive your Alienware with compensation they said they were going to give you but did not. Free you self from the horrible and annoying hold music from Alienware. As you can see I had a bad experience. Have the fun and pleasure of building it your self.

PS. Make sure your ready to ship back your comp to Alienware because there is a good chance of it being DOA because of poor packaging and the broken part was something you waited a half a year for the stupid computer to be broken at your door.

To make a long story short Build it your self.

You build+parts+Customizations= :thumbsup:
Alienware+ Bad packaging+ Partial Customization+ possible DOA= :evil: :thumbsdown:

 

[thelush84]

Originally posted by: Einstein Element
yeah, i did this once too, but mine came out to more than $2000 difference! wtf?

Well I did mine really fast and used only Newegg, so like I said anyone that did this may get a bigger difference in price. I bet if I shopped around and took my time I could pull out a difference of close to $2000.

It's a shame people spend that kind of money on their computer when they could build their own, save that money for future upgrades to their PC can stay with the times later on. Makes sense to me.

 

[Sniper82]

unless you don't trust yourself enough to build one go with Alienware but I will build my own till the day I die even if I have to pay more. I like picking each and every part. I enjoy opening each part and putting it all together. Makes me feel like I've done something and when ppl say thats a nice PC, what brand is it/where did I get it and I tell them I built it they are amazed.

Someone walks in and sees a Dell they aren't impressed because they've seen a hundred. Even if Alienware's are much nicer you could always say you built it but you would be lieing.

 

[thelush84]

I know what you mean. Using a PC that you built yourself is satisfying. The one in my sig I built myself and though it's not a power gaming rig I still take pride in it. It's rock solid and does exactly what I ask of it. It's like decent looking women with a good personality that is obedient, you keep her around.

 

[Azndude2190]

Originally posted by: thelush84
The goal with this is to configure and Alienware rig much to the same as this one and see what the price difference would be. I am curious exactly what a person who builds their own computer can save as opposed to letting a big company like Alienware do it for them. All products for the following PC were priced from neweeg.com, so with savvy searching one could probably get this same computer for a bit less. Also, no monitor, speakers or peripherals were included. This is just for the PC itself, likewise with the Alienware ALX.


ASUS VENTO 3600 Red Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $139
ENERMAX EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX12V 600W Power Supply 90~265V - $149
ZALMAN RESERATOR 1 Fanless Water Cooling System - $192
ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - $139
AMD Athlon 64 FX57 San Diego 1GHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - $1,011
OCZ Platinum Series 2GB DDR 400 (PC 3200) - $266
BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express SLI - $579
BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express SLI - $579
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 96KHz - $139
Western Digital WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA - $100
SONY 16x DVD-RW / 48x CD-RW - $54

MSRP - $3,347

You can't really get much better for games that this computer right here. I mean really, anything better may lead to essentially just a few more frames per second, but I think we can all agree that this is a damn fine computer.

The Alienware came equipped with pretty much the same hardware as the one from Newegg, save for different brands and the like. It was the ALX series and it came to a total of $4,505, a $1,158 difference in price. With essentially the same hardware and performence, what exactly does that extra grand get you? Well, nothing really. Sure with Alienware you get tech support and a warranty, but those cost additional cash and drive the price up even more, and the optimization they charge you for can also be done by anyone with a lick of sense and Google. Simply put, if you have the time and patience, buidling your own PC is the way to go, which I doubt I needed to tell anyone on this forum but did so to prove mostly to myself the major price difference.

Hell, with an extra grand you could buy a kickass LCD, wireless Logitech keyboard/mouse and a set of surround speakers and still come out under the price of the Alienware which doesn't have any of those yet costs the same. To be honest with you when I started doing this I didn't think the price point difference would be over $1,000 but I was obviously wrong. Alienware is a rip-off - wow.

Personally I value ones own self accomplishment from building a custom computer then buying a prebuit one...and dont Dells have much better prices?

 

[thelush84]

Originally posted by: Azndude2190

Originally posted by: thelush84
The goal with this is to configure and Alienware rig much to the same as this one and see what the price difference would be. I am curious exactly what a person who builds their own computer can save as opposed to letting a big company like Alienware do it for them. All products for the following PC were priced from neweeg.com, so with savvy searching one could probably get this same computer for a bit less. Also, no monitor, speakers or peripherals were included. This is just for the PC itself, likewise with the Alienware ALX.


ASUS VENTO 3600 Red Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $139
ENERMAX EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX12V 600W Power Supply 90~265V - $149
ZALMAN RESERATOR 1 Fanless Water Cooling System - $192
ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - $139
AMD Athlon 64 FX57 San Diego 1GHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - $1,011
OCZ Platinum Series 2GB DDR 400 (PC 3200) - $266
BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express SLI - $579
BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express SLI - $579
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 96KHz - $139
Western Digital WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA - $100
SONY 16x DVD-RW / 48x CD-RW - $54

MSRP - $3,347

You can't really get much better for games that this computer right here. I mean really, anything better may lead to essentially just a few more frames per second, but I think we can all agree that this is a damn fine computer.

The Alienware came equipped with pretty much the same hardware as the one from Newegg, save for different brands and the like. It was the ALX series and it came to a total of $4,505, a $1,158 difference in price. With essentially the same hardware and performence, what exactly does that extra grand get you? Well, nothing really. Sure with Alienware you get tech support and a warranty, but those cost additional cash and drive the price up even more, and the optimization they charge you for can also be done by anyone with a lick of sense and Google. Simply put, if you have the time and patience, buidling your own PC is the way to go, which I doubt I needed to tell anyone on this forum but did so to prove mostly to myself the major price difference.

Hell, with an extra grand you could buy a kickass LCD, wireless Logitech keyboard/mouse and a set of surround speakers and still come out under the price of the Alienware which doesn't have any of those yet costs the same. To be honest with you when I started doing this I didn't think the price point difference would be over $1,000 but I was obviously wrong. Alienware is a rip-off - wow.

Personally I value ones own self accomplishment from building a custom computer then buying a prebuit one...and dont Dells have much better prices?

I'm not sure, but configured right their XPS can fetch quite a few bucks. I was looking at the XPS GEN2 Inspiron laptop and the way I wanted it was almost $5000.