Alienware vs. home build question

[winkdaddy123]

Ok, I need to buy a new computer....75% for gaming, 25% for work. I do not have the expertise to build my own at this point. I am looking at an Alienware model...though everyone on these forums seems to bust on Alienware due to price, reputation, and really the fact thats its not a home build. Please humor me on this.....I listed the specs below that I am considering....total price is $2,449 with shipping. My obvious questions are:

1. How much profit is Alienware truly building into this price, or roughly how much would an identical home build rig cost?

2. Will the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard support the future 45nm Penryn if I wanted to upgrade myself?

3. Can the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6850 support 4 gigs of RAM?


1] Area-51® 7500

Chassis: Alienware® P2 Chassis with 700 Watt Power Supply - Saucer Silver
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 E6850 3.0GHz 4MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Memory: High-Performance 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2GB - 2 x 1024MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Desktop Tuners and Remotes: Without Media Center Remote Control or TV Tuner
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner w/ LightScribe Technology - View Demo
Secondary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner
Sound Card: High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio
Monitor: No Monitor
Keyboard: Alienware® USB Full-Size Keyboard
Mouse : Alienware® Optical 3-Button Mouse with Scroll Wheel
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mesh Cap
Alienware Extras: Alienware® Mousepad
Alienware Extras: AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection - $100 Value - FREE!
Alienware Extras: AlienWiring - Exclusive Internal Wire Management - $100 Value - FREE!

Your comments are greatly appreciated, and please forgive my simple questions!

 

[turtle1]

I do not know the profit margin for Alienware but would figure at least 15-20% savings by building this yourself. The 680i chipset will support 45nm Penryn (so claims Nvidia). The 6850 will support 4 gigs of ram (your operating system will limit it to about 3.25 to 3.5 gigs if using the 32 bit system).

 

[zenmaster]

Nice Case - $100
Nice PSU - $180
GTX GPU - $530
CPU - $320
Mobo - $160
Ram - $85
OS - $100
HDD - $75
2x CDROMS - $70
Keyboard/Mouse - $25
-----------
Total - $1645

That is a quick glance of prices from New Egg.
In General, I estimated slightly high since I don't think the parts AlienWare uses are junk so I did not always pick lowest price.

I would actually build it a bit cheaper.
I would not spend $100 on a Case when $50 will do fine.
I would not spend $180 on a PSU I could bet by with $120-130 and still have an extremely good PSU.

So, perhaps knock $100 off that total price to build it yourself.


Will it support the upgrade? Perhaps. Some 680i will support the Penryn. No telling about this particular Mobo.

3) Yes. The mobo should support upto 8gb though without Vista-64 you likely will not be able to use more than 3.2-3.5gb.

There is nothing wrong with buying a system like this, just know that you will be paying a handsome price to have it done for you.

 

[uberman]

Yes Zenmaster is right.Put it together yourself for half of the Alienware price or less.It's not that hard if you have all the right parts.E6750 CPU just out on Newegg for just over 200$.Decent PSU 100-150$Use the money saved to buy a killer monitor and still have money left over.

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

But you get a "free" Alienware hat and mousepad.

 

[winkdaddy123]

I bet I could pick up all sorts of hotties with an Alienware hat! HA!

Anyway, thanks for the replies!

 

[tdank]

A few years back I had the extra cash and decided what the hell, I will let someone else build this one. So I went with Alienware.

The machine was fine, it ran great, and was very tidy inside. But, not to the point it justified the price. You are paying for a name with Alienware. Now that the Alienware name is simply an alias for Dell, youre better off elsewhere.

For the amount you spend on an Alienware system you can build a screaming rig yourself.

My 2 cents.

 

[barneybadass]

I contacted Alienware about a year ago for one of their systems.

When I began asking some very detailed questions; IE which MoBo's they used; who's memory; which cooler; the PSU and other things like that; the reply was the MoBo's were developed by a well known MoBo maker but with some "propitiatory" mods; the memory was "Custom built special for Alienware"....

That was enough to cause me to design my own with off the shelf components.

 

[Surferosa]

Ok, I need to buy a new computer....75% for gaming, 25% for work. I do not have the expertise to build my own at this point.

Hmmm. Funny that, about 10 years ago I had just taken delivery of a P1 Dell PC (from memory). About £3000 of PC. Then, a couple of weeks later- a mate came round with his home-built PC that had cost him £1000 less- we benchmarked- I lost. It was the last PC I bought.

You'll not only save money- if you build right- you'll end up with a better rig. The only barrier to doing so is your own ability to read, learn and having a patient approach to it. The best bit? Your opening up a whole new avenue of knowledge- if its something you think you'll enjoy- don't be put off by thinking its too hard. Its not. If theres something you don't know / understand- guess what? You just found the place to ask

 

[spaztic7]

But you get a "free" Alienware hat and mousepad.

You see, you have it backwords. You get a free computer when you buy their overpriced hat and mousepad for $4000.

 

[jwolf24601]

Try www.cyberpowerpc.com or www.ibuypower.com they have much better prices and more component selection.

If I didnt build my own systems that's where I would buy from.

 

[cory1234]

i agree with jwolf24601. cyberpowerinc is the place to buy from if you really cant/dont want to build your own. Depending on the parts your usually only losing 100-200 from building it yourself, sometimes less. I was considering buying from them but i opted to build mine just because I like to build lol.

 

[spaztic7]

I bought a computer from cyberpowerinc when it was called cyberpowerpc. They do have cheap prices and I can not beat their prices when comparing them to other vendors. I have had a bad experience with them though. When I got my pc, all the parts inside other then the processor looked like they were just thrown in there. Nothing was in their correct socket. Not only they, they were over 1 month late with delivery. I ordered in may and got it at the end of July.

I have a friend who bought from them. His mobo recently blew because of the power supply they gave him. The power supply was a 20 pin. His motherboard was 24. It took it about a year, but it finally broke (both power supply and mobo).

I do recommend them over dell, but i still don't recommend them over newegg/build it your self.

 

[lghtmup98]

I have also had good experience with ibuypower. Their prices are good untill you start upgrading to the top end cpus and video cards. I would recommend them in the $1000-$1500 prebuilt catagory.

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

I contacted Alienware about a year ago for one of their systems.

When I began asking some very detailed questions; IE which MoBo's they used; who's memory; which cooler; the PSU and other things like that; the reply was the MoBo's were developed by a well known MoBo maker but with some "propitiatory" mods; the memory was "Custom built special for Alienware"....

That was enough to cause me to design my own with off the shelf components.

dell owns Alienware and dell has MoBo's were developed by a well known MoBo maker but with some "propitiatory" mods

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

pc world rated cyberpowerinc with a very low rating.

 

[ImajorI]

Hmmm. Funny that, about 10 years ago I had just taken delivery of a P1 Dell PC (from memory). About £3000 of PC. Then, a couple of weeks later- a mate came round with his home-built PC that had cost him £1000 less- we benchmarked- I lost. It was the last PC I bought.

You'll not only save money- if you build right- you'll end up with a better rig. The only barrier to doing so is your own ability to read, learn and having a patient approach to it. The best bit? Your opening up a whole new avenue of knowledge- if its something you think you'll enjoy- don't be put off by thinking its too hard. Its not. If theres something you don't know / understand- guess what? You just found the place to ask

What a great post. I bought my last computer 5 years ago from Cyberpower and was completely happy, but will build my next for these exact reasons. Plus better parts I believe.

 

[pogsnet]

Yeah! building it yourself is much cheaper but thats for the experienced persons only.
Handling and proper assembling is much needed to make a high performance and stable rig. It is not just an ordinary toy to put up with your ordinary hands. It is a static sensitive device. Improper handling may cause unstabilty or may cause your system not to function well. In the end you wasted alot of money.

Even the microsoft guys + the EA games use alienware they are techies already. So why bother? Just a suggestion which include facts.

 

[erloas]

Even the microsoft guys + the EA games use alienware they are techies already. So why bother? Just a suggestion which include facts.

Most big companies use pre-built systems because it is cheaper for them. Since they are going to be buying a lot of PCs it will take a lot of time to put them all together, they also need to source all of the parts from supplier vendors. Its not like Microsoft is going to to be ordering 100 motherboards from Newegg. Also there will be problems with some of the PCs, even with low failure rates if you get enough systems there will be some failing, and it is much cheaper for them to send it to someone else under warranty then to pay an employee to diagnose the problem.
When an individual spends a bit of time putting together a PC and fixing any problems all it costs them is a little bit of time. It actually costs a company money though. They also can get replacement parts shipped in really quickly, where as the normal RMA process is rather long. They also order enough PCs that they pay considerably less for each PC even from someplace like Dell then us individuals would pay from the same company.




As far as which motherboards Dell uses in their PCs, they use Intel motherboards. Maybe not all of them (of course not the AMD based systems) and it is probably less likely at the high end, but the majority of the mainstream PCs they sell use Intel motherboards. I spent about 6 months testing returned motherboards so I've seen them first hand. Gateway uses Intel too. That was about 2 years ago now, and things could have changed, but it is highly likely that they are still using Intel.

 

[uberman]

I disagree.Building your own is so easy a caveman could do it.Also I know some people that you might think are "techie"because they are good with software or know the business side of tech but know next to nothing when they open up the case.They just get the Alienware or the FalconNW,Macs etc. and don't worry about the hardware or the price.

 

[spaztic7]

pc world rated cyberpowerinc with a very low rating.

I agree.

 

[spaztic7]

I disagree. Building your own is so easy a caveman could do it. Also I know some people that you might think are "techie" because they are good with software or know the business side of tech but know next to nothing when they open up the case. They just get the Alienware or the FalconNW, Macs etc. And don't worry about the hardware or the price.

First it was Geico, now you! Will they never leave us alone!!!

 

[grieve]

I don’t like that the Alienware machine has 700watt PSU for a SLI MB... future upgrades may require more juice then 700W.

 

[winkdaddy123]

I don’t like that the Alienware machine has 700watt PSU for a SLI MB... future upgrades may require more juice then 700W.

I think if you select SLI during the online configuration, it actually defaults to a 1000 PSU

 

[winkdaddy123]

First it was Geico, now you! Will they never leave us alone!!!

So once you order all the parts, how long does it typcially take you guys to assemble everything (on average), troubleshoot, and get a rig up and running?