Dell or Alienware?

[Borisan]

Hey everybody, I'm going to be buying a new computer in the next couple months and have been wondering which company do you think I should go with.. Dell or Alienware? Before I go on, I do not want to build my own computer because I do not feel safe building it myself (call me a noob). I also know Alienware is overpriced, but still I'm itching on the two. My last computer was bought from Ibuypower.com, although it was all right for some time, it just kept crapping out on me every year or so, and had to keep buying new parts. My question is which is the most efficient and reliable company to go with? I know Dell is prestigious for there reliability and their knowledge on tech support, and Alienware computers are just damn sexy to the point. My budget is around 2500-3000, and I am pretty sure I can get a damn good computer with that. How are the Alienware computers compared to the Dell XPS? Please no biased answers, and thanks for the help!

[Vertabreaker]

If you have the $$$ I would go with Alienware.

[Zosi]

Alienware is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell now, although they claim that nothing's changed about their quality. Alienware PCs are probably slightly better than Dell's XPS gaming models, but it's largely a matter of taste. They offer a lot of the same stuff, like preconfigured SLI and the physics processing card. They both use pretty much the same basic parts, so I doubt there'd be a large difference in reliability.

I'd probably pick Alienware, but I'm really going to encourage you to look into building your own more. It's such a cost cutter, particularly when you're talking about spending $3k on a system that you want to last for a while. $3k worth of parts on Newegg will get you a LOT more than $3k worth of Alienware or Dell XPS.

[wyrmtung]

Don't forget to save some of that money for kick ass peripherals, like a big monitor. That's going to eat up a grand right there. I'm glad mine is waterproof because I make love to my 30" every day.

[Skyylya]

Alienware is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell now, although they claim that nothing's changed about their quality. Alienware PCs are probably slightly better than Dell's XPS gaming models, but it's largely a matter of taste. They offer a lot of the same stuff, like preconfigured SLI and the physics processing card. They both use pretty much the same basic parts, so I doubt there'd be a large difference in reliability.

I'd probably pick Alienware, but I'm really going to encourage you to look into building your own more. It's such a cost cutter, particularly when you're talking about spending $3k on a system that you want to last for a while. $3k worth of parts on Newegg will get you a LOT more than $3k worth of Alienware or Dell XPS.

I agree with this, even if you pay someone a couple hundred bucks to put it together you'd end up saving yourself money in the long run i think. And it doesn't matter if you're a PC noob you can put your PC together, just do a little research online or go to a PC tech forum where people build computers and ask questions about specs for compatibility and cost:quality. There are a lot of good guides that walk you through it with picture display's. Really anyone can build a PC nowaday's to start out, and it helps you learn a ton about your computer anyway so that you know how to fix things in the future.

There's really nothing negative about building your own unless you don't take the necessary precautions and static fry your parts

My PC that I just built cost me about 2200 all said and done and it is just about as good a gaming PC as you can get right now without just buying ridiculous stuff. I can run any game at full settings flawlessly. My PC is fast, easily OCable and very future proof, it's SLI ready, DX10 ready, DDR3 ready and the only thing I haven't bought yet is a kickass monitor which would pretty much put me where your budget is now. And it was a cinch to put together.

[Robert]

I agree with Skyylya, building your PC in this day and age isn't that hard, with some googling you can probably save yourself some big bucks and get a better ventilated case, I know Alienware used to use cheap materials for their cases, I don't know about now..you could probably overnight parts from newegg and have it put together in an afternoon or so, even as a firstbuild. I went through an Alienware, a Dell, and 2 Gateways before I finally built my own PC and I <3 it, but I guess if you have the big bucks to shell out for an Alienware, I'd go with it over a Dell, despite them being the same company

[Yangsing]

Between the two choices, I'd probably go with Alienware but I've no first hand experience with either Dell or Alienware.

Build your own computer is like playing with lego blocks basically.

[Skyylya]

Whether you order it complete or build it up there are some parts you should consider over others. Personally I favour intel and nVidia over amd and radeon. don't take my recommendations to mean that they aren't as good, I just don't know much about them personally so don't feel qualified to recommend those parts.

cpu for instance as of today the best value cpu you can get imo is an intel c2d e6600 conroe, if you wanna wait a couple weeks which would be the smart thing you could probably expect to see a little bit of a price drop for the c2d's and even though it's not really necessary at this point wait for a c2q which I think i saw someone post that it's price will drop by about half. And even though you're noob, the e6600 is very easily overclockable and isn't any harder to do than building your PC if you just read a few sites. I went with the e6600, very good processor, 2.4 ghz and can easily OC up to 3.0 and beyond.

MOBO: Mostly I see people offer the p5b or if you wanna get the extra features the p5b deluxe. Since I wanted to be ddr3 compatible i went with the p5k3 deluxe with the p35 intel chipset which is very stable and very good just in case you wanna overclock. the p5k3 deluxe is a great MOBO that i'm very happy with, it's socket 775 so is compatible with the core 2 duo's.

GPU: I went with the eVGA 8800 GTX 768mb card, but the 8800 gts 320mb is also a great card if you wanna save a few dollars and can run anything out right now as well. The 8800's are large cards so you'll wanna get at least a mid-size case or bigger, and steer clear of a min-atx mobo as well. There's nothing wrong with them, it's just easier to work with the bigger mobo and easier to mount in the case imo.

HDD: there was another thread on HDD choices, basically your best bet is to choose between a raptor if you want extra speed and to pay a little more, a samsung spinpoint if you want a little better costerformance ratio or the seagate 7200.10's are also very good HDD's, as far as size goes just pick what you'll need and remember raid0 isn't always better, so don't think you need to double up on HDD's unless you're going to be using applications where a raid setup is beneficial. 1 HDD in most real world uses works just as well if not better than a raid0. For pure speed go with the raptor(expensive) for excellent speed (not as fast) but cheaper get samsung spinpoint.

Case, any atx case will do, make sure you get something that has good ventilation and read the reviews that deal with people who build their own. Some cases while having good airflow might not have good internal drive bay's or mobo mounting area's that are difficult to work with, or might not give a good amount of space for your 3rd party cooler etc.. Remember you're going to be getting your own PSU so you'll wanna make sure you've got room for the cables without blocking airflow as well. If you want LED's and whatnot go ahead but they offer nothing of value to your PC's performance.

PSU: I am a recent huge fan of the corsair HX 620 Modular PSU> It's very quiet, is very stable and as a modular PSU it is very easy to keep tidy in the case since you only use the cables you need. Also the cables themselves are a bit smaller so not quite as bulky. They also have the hx520w in case you get parts that don't require a lot of juice. Enermax and tagen also have good PSU's. I have had bad experience with Ultra, so I would steer clear of them, just my opinion.

RAM: geil ultra seems to be really good for DDR2 ram, which as far as today is concerned is really all you need. Personally for my machine I wanted to get the DDR3 to go with my p5k3 deluxe mobo. I got the corsair xms3 1333mhz DDR3 ram complete with heatsink/heatspreader 240 pin. Its expensive but it's fantastic. Very fast, very overclockable and very stable at higher speeds.

Monitor: This I probably know the least about which would be best. To utilize your new GPU assuming you get an 8800 series i'd say go for something with at least 22'. get something with a contrast ratio above 1000:1 and try to get something with a 2ms latency as that's about the quickest available now, refer to the thread about a widescreen monitor.

for DVD/CD/CD R-WR: get a combo drive, there really isn't a reason to have both a dvd drive and a cd r/wr anymore and it'll save you space on the inside from having to plug in an extra drive.

cpu cooling: A lot of people recommend arctic freezer pro 7. It works really well and people don't really seem to have trouble installing it. Also make sure to get some arctic silver 5 at least for your thermal grease for application of the heatsink onto the cpu.

sound is usually good enough onboard unless you really wanna get something. x-fi is really popular these day's if you wanna get a crazy surround going or something. But it's not necessary.

Also, most good mobo's nowaday's have onboard LAN, but if you have an old card or want a new one just look one up, i don't really think this is all that important to get a special one.


I know i mostly told you what i got, but your budget is about where mine was and even if you order something like what i got as far as parts go you're only at around 2200 or so, if you put it together yourself you save time and learn something, if you pay someone to put it together it'll only cost you a couple hundred bucks more at least. Also I already had an OS and just re-installed it. I don't recommend getting Vista as I personally think XP works better for the time being while a lot of kinks are getting worked out. It'll also save you from buying a new OS if you already have xp discs.

With all that typed out, there are many more possibilities to get whether you order parts and build it/pay someone to build it or order it built from the factory. These are good quality parts that'll push you well into the next generation of gaming and keep within your budget. Note that things like SLI and DDR3 are not really necessary at the moment to see real world gains in performance. Generally one 8800 series card will perform with today's software just as well if not better than 2 cards of equal value. DDR3 also doesn't really show worthwhile gains in today's gaming world, but I got it because I wanted it, and it's also going to keep me compatible through the next few years when it is incorporated into hardware to see performance gains. Right now though DDR2 will be just as good, make sure you get a compatible MOBO though.

Goodluck in getting your new PC it's a lot of fun and very exciting getting a new one especially if you take it upon yourself to build it yourself. a huge sense of accomplishment and also a huge influx of knowledge that you'd really never otherwise get.

If you want to ignore everything else i've typed, i really have no experience with dell or alienware as i've never bought a pre-built PC and mine have alway's been custom built since my very first one. But these parts should at least give you a starting place when looking at a pre-built one as well.

[Odesseiron]

I actually just got a Dell XPS 710 (2 weeks ago or so), and I could not be happier with it.

Here's the basic specs.

XPS 710 Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB)

Memory 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs

Monitor 20 inch UltraSharp™ 2007WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

Video Cards 768MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX

Hard Drive 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache

SYSTEM DETAILS 2.5MM aluminum thickness Chassis with front & back customizable LEDs
7-slot, BTX design motherboard
750-watt Power Supply
Tower Six-heat pipe, Copper base Heat Sink with aluminum fans
Two 120mm x 38mm front fans

This thing is a fucking BEAST. I know FFXI isn't all that intensive on hardware.. I used to be able to run full settings on my old system. With FFXI Behnchmark on my old PC, I got around a 2500. On my new PC, I scored over 9000... (I am not kidding, and I lol'd) Everything else runs beautifully too. I can run FEAR, Half Life 2, basically any game at completely full settings with no problem.

I did look up Alienwares as well, since this was a big purchase. Honestly, Alienware, you are getting less for your money, and paying for a name and look. Alienware has some Slick chassis, but not much more than that. You get a cheaper CPU, and memory with Alienware, while you're paying more. Some people swear up and down by them, and I'm sure they're not bad PC's. I however have always had Dell. I personally think you'll get more for your money with Dell. With some simple comparisons in seperate windows, try and build the same system. Alienwar will always run you a few hundred dollars higher.

I've never experienced any problems with Dell. I've heard horror stories about their Customer Service, but whenever I had to call (the few times I have had to) it was a good experience.

The total for my system ran for $2,649.39. It would have been closer to $3000, but I had a discount through my job. Always check if your job offers a discount through computers, usually they do. I chose to have the 3 year extended at home service/warranty, and I recieved a whopping 12% off my total. Which is quite a good sum.

Like others have said though, you could build yourself a better system cheaper. I however am lazy when it comes to PC's. I just want to turn it on and it's set. I configure certain things, but this was just the quicker way.

The chassis itself is fucking HUGE. It dwarfs my old tower by at least 1.5x the size. It's all heavy gauge aliminum. The machine weighs a good 50 lbs or so. It barely fits into my PC desk. I honestly love it though. I haven't had any problems with it, and couldn't be more pleased.

Like Skyylya said, the c2d e6600 is amazing. It overclocks easily, but you really won't need to do it anytime soon with this system.

I was extremely excited when I got my new PC.. I was off from work that day, and was tracking the order. When the Fedex truck pulled up, I was giddy. Just so you get an idea of how big the Tower is, I got 2 seperate shipments. The Chassis came in the overnight truck, because it was so bulky and heavy. The monitor came in a second regular truck.

Good luck, and if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask me, as I just got this PC :D

[Korietsu]

I recently bought an alienware, and the customer service as well as the time in which they built and processed my system was astounding. And to top it off, they were amazingly enough cheaper, for a system with higher end parts than the dell counterpart. I've yet to get the system, but my friend loves his XPS and when my system gets here a full two weeks early, this friday, I'll be more than happy with it I'm sure. And for a gaming system, I'd say either build your own, or go with alienware. My friend's XPS has been sent in due to a faulty graphics system, but other than that, it's been fine.

[izembo]

ive owned both a dell and an alienware, current pc is alienware, and im typing this on the dell. when i went to buy a new pc i priced the same/similiar setup on both and the alienware actually ended up about $100 cheaper.

ive been very happy with my alienware since i got it, i will say though, that i had about 3 delays till i called and bitched them out and they sent the system the next day.

[Skyylya]

Is there somewhere other than alienware.com to go and build/customize the PC you want, or dell.com? I just went to their website's and there are like 4 options for building PC's 2 intel and 2 AMD, then when you even want to customize it you get like nothing to choose from, it's crap. I just tried to build a modest machine and I came up with something on the area 51 chassis that is not nearly as good as the specs on my PC but costs over 1k more.

[1] Area-51® 7500

Chassis: Alienware® P2 Chassis with 700 Watt Power Supply - Space Black
Chassis Customization : AlienFX™ System Lighting is not available with the Alienware P2 Chassis with 700 Watt Power Supply.
High-Performance Liquid Cooling: Alienware® Standard System Cooling
Graphics Processor: Single Graphics Processors - 768MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800 GTX
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz 4MB Cache 1066MHz FSB
Memory: High-Performance 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 1GB - 2 x 512MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
Tuners and Remotes: Without Media Center Remote Control or TV Tuner
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 16MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner w/ LightScribe Technology - View Demo
Sound Card: High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio
Monitor: 24" Dell 1920 x 1200 UltraSharp Widescreen Flat Panel - Supports Blu-Ray!
Keyboard: Logitech® G15 Gaming Keyboard
Mouse : Logitech® G5 Laser Gaming Mouse

This all came out to like 3300+ before tax, before shipping etc.. and while it has some good parts I wouldn't buy it in a million years. You don't really get good options of hardware to choose from, they don't even offer the e6600 or many core 2 duo's at all for that matter.

Dell wasn't all that much better, for a decent PC I was able to get something at about 3400+ before tax, shipping etc..

My Components
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB)
FreeDOS™ included in the box, ready to install
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 4 DIMMs
500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable
24 inch UltraSharp™ 2407WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
768MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D) Sound Card
My Accessories
No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
No Keyboard
No Mouse
3.5 in Floppy Drive

Not really a great computer for a 3400$ price tag. This was even built off the lowest xps model. I really don't know why people build their PC's like this it's such a waste of money. You don't even know what kind of MOBO your'e getting, what kind of PSU you're getting, you don't have much, if any freedom to choose your chassis, they give you seriously limited options for RAM and GPU and Monitor among other things.

This is just a collossal waste of money to build through one of these company's, either one unless you can get some serious deal and drop over 1000 off the listing price, even then it'd be a stretch.

[Sonomaa]

maingear.com

[Skyylya]

they were just as, if not more, expensive for the same basic components.

[Panella]

Does Dell still use mostly custom parts? If so I'd stay the hell away from them if you ever have any intention of upgrading it in the future ._.

I'd go with one of these instead personally, they're probably going to be as expensive if not slightly more so but they give you significantly more control over what you are building. They also come with good records of making quality systems with exceptional customer support. You're call though, but I would go for a little higher quality over saving a few bucks if I was about to drop $3000 on something.
http://www.avadirect.com/ (I think this is the cheaper one but I forget)
http://www.velocitymicro.com/
http://www.maingear.com/(I see this get reccommend on here a lot but they ARE expensive, even more so if you try to build a system off their upper end system instead of the lower one. I believe it's because it comes with a paint job or something. They come with amazing support and build quality though.)
http://www.vigorgaming.com/
I'm sure there are others that are just as good or better but these at least give you a lot more control/information about what you are buying. Go look on newegg and you'll find there are a lot of differences price wise as well as review wise between a lot of parts such as ram if you're just looking at the mhz or whatever. Dell in my experience seems to make a point to hide every bit of information possible from you on several parts.

Dell is really great IMO if you're only going to spend ~1000 or so and you buy a computer when they have a really good deal going. Around that price level or so is generally where you don't save much money vs building it yourself so you may as well just go ahead and buy it from them. However, their upper end stuff is kind of... lacking. From reviews I've read on the web they can stack up decently versus the upper end builders but they are usually noticably more expensive. Not to mention, unless there is some kind of upgraded tech support now(and you pay for it) their tech support is no longer as good as it used to be.

Also, if you use someone else and they give you an option of cases get one with good cooling. A $3000 computer is no doubt going to include a space heater graphics card, or two, and Dells don't have a particularly great track record of keeping the system temp at low levels.

Out of curiousity, what part of building one by yourself scares you? Is it just a particular part or just the entire thing in general? If it's just a part like, the cpu or something you can find "barebone" systems on the web that will basically just be a case/motherboard/cpu installed and then you're basically just "upgrading" the rest of the computer. I believe you can even get them at various levels of completion aside from just the cpu/motherboard installation if you want to do all the number crunching to get the most bang for your buck.

Edit; err, no experience with alienware but they're probably just as good as the Dell :\ Personally, I'd go with the Dell since I'd be embarrassed if anyone saw my computer... good lord alienware is ugly. On a more serious note, this is from April and not an omg expensive system but hardocp's last review on alienware: "The customer pays a premium for an Alienware system, and that premium is for the Alienware brand. We were happy to see that there was some time and effort devoted to the wiring and integration so that upgrades and servicing could be accomplished easily. The company’s technical support isn’t currently going to win any awards with us, but it’s passable." Also said "A similarly-configured machine at AVADirect is $700 cheaper." If you want to take that into consideration.

[wyrmtung]

Another thing you need to consider in pre-built vs build-you-own is software. That's going to take a big chunk of your budget too.

[Robert]

since when does anything besides your win xp cd(if that) cost money

[Isiolia]

Really consider building your own machine. If you buy good, brand-name parts and don't do anything whacky with them, it's hard to screw it up. If you have a bit of experience swapping parts out, that's all it really is. Just all of them >_>
Given your budget, you can easily accommodate doing that. Though really...$2500-3000? You could build two solid gaming rigs for that. Personally I lean towards spending a reasonable amount per machine and simply upgrading more often. 'course it depends on your financial situation too. If you can afford to drop that much on a new rig every couple years, then go for it =P

[evilbau]

expensive PCs lol

my very uncool advice is to buy cheaply (cost/performance sweet spot) which will save you $1k+ and invest/save the rest. Top of the line PCs seldom stay 'sexy' for longer than 6 mo-1 yr but fat savings or brokerage accounts are always sexy 8)

[Skyylya]

If, you are going to definitely just order a pre-built one and are not gonna attempt to build your own go with this site, http://www.avadirect.com over any of the other ones listed. They have the most options for customizing your PC as well as better company's that you can use for your parts instead of having very limited options. Also the price is very good. i built a pretty sweet PC on there with good parts that ran about 1900 and change before tax and shipping.

i have no idea anything about their customer service, or shipping quality or whatever, but their pricing is 10x better than dell, alienware, or maingear of the 4 that i built PC's on all with the same basic hardware.