Quickie opinions on 2 pre-builts

[Ninjahedge]

A friend of mine asked me my opinion on two systems, so naturally I turn to all my techie BBS's to see what my opinions are!

I told him to do a simple build, but he is techno-phobic in that regard, wo...


Here are the systems he is looking at:

Dell/Alienware gaming/media sets:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...=6099&model_id=xps-8300&link_number=17967581&
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...&model_id=alienware-x51&link_number=17967581&


HP: The link he sent was a local customization link. I will post details later.


Your opinions on the two above? The 51 system seems to get fair ratings and is a nice compact system. he has plenty of external storage, and can always get a raid box later if he really needs to....

Any input is welcome.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

alienware? dear god no

 

[Phynaz]

Either is a fine choice for a pre-built. The 51 is getting good reviews for what it is, a quite small gaming system. You can read Anand's review of it.

 

[Phynaz]

alienware? dear god no

Care to flesh that out with any facts?

 

[Ninjahedge]

He is going on history, which I agree with. Alienware WAS good when it started, got Phat, and then Dell bought it.

But this did not look that bad, and the reviews were pretty good. I would still say you could build your own for ~$100-$200 less, he feels more secure going for something with a guarantee and some tech support better than me on the phone!

 

[DaveSimmons]

$250 to add a Radeon 6870? Yikes.

Aside from that, the XPS is not terrible - i7-2600, 8 GB, 1 TB drive will work fine for gaming.

But with a screwdriver and an hour or two he could have an i5-2500 with SSD boot drive, 1 TB data drive, and something like a Radeon 7850 or Geforce 560 ti 448 instead.

 

[Ninjahedge]

Preaching to the choir Dave.

 

[Pardus]

Any reason you don't want to custom build your own desktop? Dell, HP, etc parts are generally junk.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Any reason you don't want to custom build your own desktop? Dell, HP, etc parts are generally junk.

See OP, his friend wants a prebuilt.

We get Dells at work, like it or not, and they are perfectly decent PCs. You just can do better for a gaming build by picking a better mix of parts such as less CPU and more GPU.