Thoughts on Alienware X51

[American Gunner]

I am thinking about getting back into PC gaming, and was looking at the Alienware X51. Has anyone gotten one, and does anyone have an opinion on these machines?

 

[KaOTiK]

Able to build your own?

 

[pontifex]

way cheaper to build your own or even look at another company. my friend bought an alienware laptop awhile back. I think he paid a little over $2000 for it.

Around the same time, I bought a Sager with similar specs and only paid $1600.

 

[Eureka]

Alienware build is good, part selection is good, support is amazing but price is high. Unless you get a good price on one (look for 20% coupons or better), you could probably build two machines for the same price. If you must have a pre-built, it is definitely one of the better choices out there, and even better if you can snag an amazing deal (I got an alienware m14x for $750, when msrp for the model was $1300).

 

[Dankk]

I owned one for exactly 1 month, before returning it. Actually, scratch that... I owned two. They were both very short-lived.

I was in the market for a new gaming PC and I was looking at Alienware's stuff. Managed to score a pretty good deal on an X51: I got one of the 3rd-gen i5 models with a GTX 660 and a 2TB hard drive for like $900. Not bad for a pre-built, right? The small form-factor and low power-consumption + low noise were appealing factors to me.

When I first booted up a game (Battlefield 3), it ran fine for exactly one minute (maybe two) before my framerate would shit itself. Performance would literally drop into the single digits and games were unplayable. Even after a fresh install of Windows and new drivers, it would still fall on it's face after playing a minute of any graphically-intensive game. It was awful.

As it turned out, the video card was getting too hot, and it was throttling. I looked at the Dell forums and there were a TON of people having the exact same issue with the X51. It wasn't a problem with the card itself; rather, there was some weird issue with the motherboard BIOS, combined with poor airflow inside the case, which was causing the overheating and throttling. My only solution was to install MSI Afterburner and manually crank up the fan speed.

The PC wasn't quiet. For such a compact device, somehow it managed to sound like an F-16 fighter jet (not in a good way). Especially while gaming. Even with my Audio Technica ATH-M50 over-the-ears headphones, I could still here the fans blasting. I was not expecting it to be so loud.

I eventually called Dell support and asked for a replacement, because of the unacceptable performance issues. They acknowledged the problem and immediately sent me a replacement computer. The replacement, fortunately, didn't have the graphics-slowdown problems anymore. On the other hand, it was much louder than the first machine.... in fact the CPU fan made a loud squealing noise literally all the time. Something was definitely wrong with the cooling system.

It doesn't help that they ship the PCs to you with almost no protective material whatsoever. Other than the cardboard box itself and a thin layer of plastic surrounding the machine, there's nothing else. I wouldn't be surprised if there's tons of problems caused by overly-rough handling from UPS workers because Dell can't pack their machines properly.

So that's two X51's I've owned now. They were both rickety pieces of shit. It's clear that Dell/Alienware manufactures these machines with low-quality components, and they appear to be assembled by Chinese 12-year-olds from a filthy back-alley sweatshop in downtown Shenzen.

I called Dell support complaining about the awful quality, and I returned the machine for a full refund. (On the bright side, at least Dell's customer service is respectable.) I hand-built my own custom PC that same month. I will never buy another Alienware product again.

OP, most forum members here are going to recommend building your own PC. Understandably, some people are not comfortable with that. And that's OK. There are reliable pre-built PC botiques you can purchase from online, they're just a little more expensive, that's all. I would recommend Digital Storm or Puget Systems. They're reliable, American-based PC builders run by people who actually care about assembling and delivering a quality product. Avoid cheap shitty brands like Alienware, Cyberpower, iBUYPOWER, etc, etc.

tl;dr: Alienware sucks. Don't buy anything from them.

 

[American Gunner]

Thanks Lessthandan. I will look into a couple of those sites. I am not too sure about building one myself.

 

[Tweak155]

Thanks Lessthandan. I will look into a couple of those sites. I am not too sure about building one myself.

It's worth it. Sometimes it can cost a little more due to software purchases but you get much higher quality parts and better warranties.

 

[Aikouka]

OP, most forum members here are going to recommend building your own PC. Understandably, some people are not comfortable with that. And that's OK.

Well, I think that depends why they're not comfortable. I knew some people who didn't build a PC before because they thought it would be hard. I told them that it was fairly easy, and at worst, you can almost always reference some instructions for any weird stuff (especially when it comes to cases that can vary wildly). One guy came back and told me that he was shocked how easy it was.

Although, some people just like having support.

 

[smackababy]

While it seems like a daunting task to build your own PC, it has gotten very easy. They have removed much of the dangers of accidentally plugging the wrong power supply cable to the wrong thing and frying everything. Basically, everything has a slot that only it fits in now. Just have to make sure all the parts are compatible.

Oh and buying boutique machines gives you support that building your own lacks. If you buy an Alienware and it doesn't turn on when you get it, you can call Dell and they can assist you. If you buy a bunch of parts from NewEgg and it doesn't turn on, you have to troubleshoot it yourself and find out what isn't working, which can be difficult. And even after that, you have to RMA that certain part and deal with that companies RMA support, which might be a nightmare.

 

[Tweak155]

While it seems like a daunting task to build your own PC, it has gotten very easy. They have removed much of the dangers of accidentally plugging the wrong power supply cable to the wrong thing and frying everything. Basically, everything has a slot that only it fits in now. Just have to make sure all the parts are compatible.

Oh and buying boutique machines gives you support that building your own lacks. If you buy an Alienware and it doesn't turn on when you get it, you can call Dell and they can assist you. If you buy a bunch of parts from NewEgg and it doesn't turn on, you have to troubleshoot it yourself and find out what isn't working, which can be difficult. And even after that, you have to RMA that certain part and deal with that companies RMA support, which might be a nightmare.

Anandtech is likely a better support system than AW

Just have a digital camera ready OP, we can fix anything!*

*No we can't. Ok most things. Especially if you have spare test parts.

 

[Dankk]

Well, I think that depends why they're not comfortable. I knew some people who didn't build a PC before because they thought it would be hard. I told them that it was fairly easy, and at worst, you can almost always reference some instructions for any weird stuff (especially when it comes to cases that can vary wildly). One guy came back and told me that he was shocked how easy it was.

Although, some people just like having support.

I agree; it's easy, and I usually prefer building the PC myself too.

Even if it's pretty easy though, I still don't want to pressure someone into going outside of their comfort zone if they don't have to. Say OP has some extra cash, and he wants to simply buy a pre-built PC that "just works" without fiddling with the internal components, or the OS/driver installation. He can certainly do so. I don't see any problem with that. *shrug*

 

[KeithTalent]

It is super easy to build your own and also immensely satisfying, plus it makes things so much easier when you want to upgrade later since you can very easily just upgrade the specic part that may be holding you back.

Trust me, I'm a complete moron and I built my own and have upgraded multiple times over the years. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

KT

 

[Markbnj]

I build my own, but I will present one counterpoint to what others are saying... or perhaps its really just advice.

The assembly of a system from scratch has probably never been easier, but the proper BIOS configuration of that system is not as much of a no-brainer as a lot of people seem to think it is. Specifically in the area of DRAM timings and DRAM read/write optimizations, its easy to introduce intermittent instability by not getting the settings right for the specific combination of SIMs, north bridge, and processor. Specifying those timings for a stable configuration is a big chunk of what system OEMs do, along with power consumption and heat dissipation engineering.

As has been noted, most people here build their own. I build my own, and I've wrestled with the above on a couple of occasions. I have no doubt at all that many of the people who post in General Hardware about occasional blue screen errors are really dealing with incorrect DRAM timings. They can show up as errors in literally any active driver or system component, so they are very hard to track down. If you decide to go this route, then the main thing is to purchase DRAM SIMs from the motherboard vendors approved part list. Those chips should work with the default system timings.

Good luck!

 

[Sidekicknichola]

FWIW buying an Alienware PC similar (still a bit behind my current PC) would cost $1600.

Mine was $850 to build myself.

 

[AustinInDallas]

built it or do a custom builder like ibuypower. I sold computers at Fry's for 2 years and AW are very over priced...

 

[Aikouka]

I build my own, but I will present one counterpoint to what others are saying... or perhaps its really just advice.

The assembly of a system from scratch has probably never been easier, but the proper BIOS configuration of that system is not as much of a no-brainer as a lot of people seem to think it is. Specifically in the area of DRAM timings and DRAM read/write optimizations, its easy to introduce intermittent instability by not getting the settings right for the specific combination of SIMs, north bridge, and processor. Specifying those timings for a stable configuration is a big chunk of what system OEMs do, along with power consumption and heat dissipation engineering.

As has been noted, most people here build their own. I build my own, and I've wrestled with the above on a couple of occasions. I have no doubt at all that many of the people who post in General Hardware about occasional blue screen errors are really dealing with incorrect DRAM timings. They can show up as errors in literally any active driver or system component, so they are very hard to track down. If you decide to go this route, then the main thing is to purchase DRAM SIMs from the motherboard vendors approved part list. Those chips should work with the default system timings.

Good luck!

A motherboard should be accessing the DRAM's SPD for setting the timings. If you go with fairly standard RAM speed and timings (think DDR3-1333 CL9 or CL10), you should be fine. Also, I'd avoid buying RAM modules with different timings.

 

[American Gunner]

A motherboard should be accessing the DRAM's SPD for setting the timings. If you go with fairly standard RAM speed and timings (think DDR3-1333 CL9 or CL10), you should be fine. Also, I'd avoid buying RAM modules with different timings.

See, this is the stuff that goes right over my head and makes me nervous about jumping into PC gaming.

 

[KaOTiK]

See, this is the stuff that goes right over my head and makes me nervous about jumping into PC gaming.

Basically as long as you are not buying fancy stuff with special specifications chances are you wouldn't have a problem and even with the fancy stuff you more than likely wouldn't either.

Go watch a few videos/tutorials on how to put a PC together. It is really really easy nowadays. Pretty much everything has its own slot plug that can only be for that so you can't fubar things up. Long as you buy the correct items for motherboard (cpu and ram really) you can't screw it up.

On the off chance you do have a problem, there is a 99% chance you can find the solution online and total worst case scenario you put it together and still can't figure out the problem, you could take it to a local PC place and they can diagnose/fix it for pretty cheap and even if that extra cost put into the build it will still be cheaper than buying an Alienware.

 

[Craig234]

See, this is the stuff that goes right over my head and makes me nervous about jumping into PC gaming.

Without taking sides, I think you will find a bias in this forum for 'build it yourself'.

I'd say, get informed about your choices. You're right that there are a bunch of non-trivial issues that come up. Just how much stuff should you put on the CU to mount it?

Heck, I recently just tried to upgrade RAM in mine, and then it wouldn't boot; put the old RAM back, still wouldn't boot - had to play with it an hour to get it working.

There's a reason there's a market for pre-builts - it may or may not be right for you.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you want to run everything at stock speed, then building your own takes an hour and you just need one phillips screwdriver.

It's usually only when you decide to overclock the CPU or video card that you run into stability problems.

If you post a thread in General Hardware and answer the sticky thread questions there people should be able to give you a good set of parts to buy that will "just work" with no tweaking required.

It's a pretty small list, too:
Case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card, DVD drive, boot and current games drive (SSD for speed), platter drive for bulk storage if you don't have one already.

 

[Josh123]

You missed out OP. You could have got a nice XPS for $550 but they are sold out now.

http://slickdeals.net/f/5975938-XPS...HD-Blu-Ray-AMD-Radeon-HD-7770-535-refurbished

 

[cmdrdredd]

The bonus with building is you know the parts so if something happens it's an easy fix. Don't need to spend an hour on the phone with some tech support to determine your HDD is bad or something.

 

[smackababy]

The bonus with building is you know the parts so if something happens it's an easy fix. Don't need to spend an hour on the phone with some tech support to determine your HDD is bad or something.

Yeah, you need to spend hours tweaking parts to determine exactly what went wrong and then spend another hour on the phone with whoever manufactured the part determining if they will RMA it or you get to buy a new part.

Don't get my wrong, I advocate building your own most of the time, but if this is not a hobby you enjoy doing, it is not worth the lack of real support.

 

[Aikouka]

See, this is the stuff that goes right over my head and makes me nervous about jumping into PC gaming.

The SPD is essentially a memory bank on the memory module where it stores the speed and timings that it should be run at. For the most part, if you just buy memory from a good manufacturer at a fairly standard speed (i.e. DDR3-1333 not DDR3-2166), you will pay less and probably have far better compatibility. Also, Anandtech ran a test awhile back and showed that most computer-oriented tasks weren't memory-intensive enough to have those high speed modules matter. If I remember correctly, encoding (memory intensive) and a system using an integrated GPU saw the biggest benefit from higher RAM.

For the most part, you don't need to know anything about the SPD or stuff like that.

Heck, I recently just tried to upgrade RAM in mine, and then it wouldn't boot; put the old RAM back, still wouldn't boot - had to play with it an hour to get it working.

I guarantee that it would have booted right up if you reset your CMOS. If you have a fancy motherboard, all you need is a button press to reset it, or you can just pull the watch-style battery.

You missed out OP. You could have got a nice XPS for $550 but they are sold out now.

http://slickdeals.net/f/5975938-XPS...HD-Blu-Ray-AMD-Radeon-HD-7770-535-refurbished

Damn, I wish I saw that. That's a really nice deal given that CPU alone is about $280!

EDIT:

Yeah, you need to spend hours tweaking parts to determine exactly what went wrong and then spend another hour on the phone with whoever manufactured the part determining if they will RMA it or you get to buy a new part.

Don't get my wrong, I advocate building your own most of the time, but if this is not a hobby you enjoy doing, it is not worth the lack of real support.

I've never had trouble with RMAing a part before as long as it was in warranty. Unfortunately, some companies have some fairly lame RMA processes, but others are fairly automated.

 

[KidNiki1]

i bought an alienware way back when because i didn't know better. i got some serious crap from my 'tech friends' at the time for it because as most people here are saying, building your own is loads better.

when i finally decided to upgrade my pc, i spent about the same as my old alienware to get WAY better gaming parts and put one together myself. if i can do it, you certainly can.

as far as what goes well together, i didn't know any of that either. i made a post in the general hardware section here on AT using the form they have in the stickied thread. i got a ton of helpful responses and people who pointed out that this ram wouldnt go with that motherboard or what have you. i ended up with a parts list, bought it, and watched a few pc build tutorials that NewEgg has on Youtube. voila, gaming pc!!

i have since built 4 more other pcs ( for work) and it's actually kinda cool to be able to say i put my awesome pc together myself.