Torn between Maingear X-Cube and Alienware Aurora

[Paine]

First, I guess I should lay out my objective. I'm hoping to game for the next 4-5 years at moderate resolutions with possible DIY upgrades. Also, I'm looking for a computer that will be easy to move when I move out in ~2 years. My budget is a soft $2000.

Detailed specs of the two builds can be found here and here. To summarize the pros and cons:

Alienware Aurora:
i7-920, 6GB DDR3, Radeon 5870
Slightly higher specs, Cool case, X58 chipset means upgradability, Liquid Cooling
Dell Support (?), McAfee 30-day trial, Bigger/Heavier
$1,767.96

Maingear X-Cube:
i7-860, 4GB DDR3, Radeon 5850
Maingear Support, SFF case, No Bloatware
Slightly lower specs, P55 chipset, Air cooled
$1,709.12

Hopefully I can get some opinions.

 

[itadakimasu]

that looks like a good price for the alienware...

If I had a $2,000 budget I'd be building my own. But, that looks pretty good compared to some systems I just looked at.

Dell does sell some of it's systems w\ similar specs, but different case for alot less. You can get one of the "lower end" i7 920 systems for $700 and up...same specs 920,6gb,750gb, different case though... i'm taking my hat off to dell though, for the system you listed. The 5870 is listed as +$330 for upgrade, and the cheapest 5870 newegg has is closer to $400.

of course, a cheaper dell system would likely need a new power supply to handle a big card like that.

 

[geno777]

With the Dell computer you won't get to overclock it much.

 

[alveolus_1]

I went with maingear. If you configured to the x58, with the 5850 comes to 1889. (x58; i7 920 and 6gb DDR3 RAM). The only downside is the power is 550w but for $55 more you can go to 750. As an aside - I priced the same system on ncix and it came to around $1650 so its not like they're making thousands of dollars on this thing. $200 buys me peace of mind, proper tech support, and not having to call 7 different companies to get stuff returned/fixed and each one blaming another company for the failure/error ... The time saved on all that crap is well worth the price of admission.

 

[builderbobftw]

Maybe you could build you're own. I mean, for 2 grand you could proably wait for gulftown and get a hexcore.