Why do these have to be so butt ugly? Also, that weird slope shape? WHY?!!?
An option instead of SSD’s and to still get a lot of storage, is to go Intel and use their Optane 32gb or 64gb cache modules. It gets you to 80-90% of SSD speeds while being able to use a 2TB or 4TB hard drive.
If it helps, I built this for $660 + video card on Oct 2017. I think I cribbed off some ideas from this forum. Everything works.
Seasonic 650 (currently low price of $70). Seasonic is the best.
Gskill 16 GB (2 x 8) PC 2400. Stusser says get faster, but this was the only thing in stock when I bought mine.
Plug headset in front panel, speakers in back panel outputs. Had minor problem downloading BIOS which turned out to be the VPN connection. Otherwise everything fine.
Ryzen 5 1600 $200
As for the video card, I got a MSI Gaming 1070 which is outrageously priced atm. It’s quiet and stays cool. Uses around 120 watts? Fairly low.
Drives, cases I stole from old PCs.
Yeah I recall reading faster memory is more beneficial in gaming vs more memory at a lower speed. But we aren’t talking about huge increases.
I was lucky to build last year when I could get 32GB of DDR4 3200 for $200.
I found a video:
Only really matters with Ryzen, not Intel.
Build a system with a Ryzen 1300x, 8GB DDR4 2800Mhz ram over xmas for my son. It seems to be every bit as good as my i5 3570k (which is admittedly old). Since the CPU was only $99, I’m quite pleased.
Lol. Not only is the big one sloped weird and ugly, it’s actually bad at cooling. I do have the Alpha though and like it a lot as a PC for the TV - but the parts are so dated now (about two years old) it’s hard to understand why Dell keeps selling them at essentially release day prices. They must have a ton of the things in a warehouse.
I’d either get the Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop series or the Corsair One series desktops, if head-to-gun.
Here’s a thought: Buy a per-built system with a nice GPU. Probably run you $1200-$1400? Sell the GPU on Ebay for $1K and you suddenly have recouped 2/3 or more of your cost. Insert your existing GPU and enjoy am mostly upgraded rig for a surprisingly modest price!
Why would you buy an Alienware desktop?
In theory, high-end desktops pay attention to visual aesthetics and balance noise levels with thermal load.
In practice, Alienware devices are fugly and overpriced. With laptops, that’s mitigated by the fact that you can’t build your own. But a desktop?
Just looking around because it’s cheaper to buy a pre-built now than components separately due to the cryptocurrency run on GPUs. Somebody upthread mentioned Alienware, so I took a look.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s realistic to build a new system from scratch right now, particularly if you need to buy a reasonably powerful graphics card, more than a few gigs of RAM, and an SSD, as prices for all of those are stupidly inflated for varying reasons (and may not go down anytime soon. I remember cautioning a friend to hold off buying a new GPU for a couple of months in early 2017. . . and prices are worse now across the board than they were then!).
Overpriced only if you buy new one. Dell outlet sometimes has good deals on those ugly alienware pcs especially with coupon (plus you can chat with rep. after you order and ask to cancel the order, most times, you get some additional $ off from the chat to keep your outlet order)
I bought my son an Alienware Aurora R7 scratch and dent from outlet a week ago, nothing fancy, original outlet price $940 (small SSD + 8GB RAM & 6GB 1060), after coupon, $846, after chat with rep. to cancel order, got additional 10% off to keep the order, so the final PC cost me little over $750 + tax, which is pretty good price.
Also as far as scratch & dent condition go, I received the PC yesterday, after checking it out, there is a tiny tiny scratch on one side plastic panel.
I bought an Aurora R5 w/ 1070 in late 2016 precisely because it was the best-looking thing Best Buy had in stock. I think it’s the best-looking thing to come out since sliced bread. It’s understated compared to many of the outlandish gaming case designs I’ve seen lately.
The negative comments in this thread must all be from Art Bell haters.
More to the point, while it is a bit overpriced (a year and a half later, Best Buy still has my identical model in stock for the exact same price of $1499), it’s been super-reliable, and runs very quiet (aside from an occasional slight case vibration due to the bastards using all-plastic parts on that case, which I can easily silence by giving the side of the case a good whap).
I’ll give you understated compared to many fugly xxxtr3me g4m3 cases, yes. Understated compared to anything else, not so much.
We bought my SO an Alienware from the local Best Buy for cheap ($1200), with SSD and 1070. Actually was not the one we researched but it had the same specs for a little bit less. A year later, it has zero issues and we saved hours of limited free time either building one or driving down to Boston to an actual PC store (hour + in horrifying traffic.) Well worth the cost of admission IMO. The case is also a normal looking one.
I do like the look of this - a pretty high-end but passively cooled system. This one is a higher end kickstarter based on an apparently existing lower spec model.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12453/compulab-passive-cooled-airtop2-inferno
Earlier I talked about my Alienware experience.
As the warranty has expired and I have a snazzy new desktop (courtesy of this thread) that is working wonderfully, and because I needed a toolkit for various other jobs, and therefore got one, I used said toolkit to open up laptop and see what was going on.
It was a ten minute job, open things up, remove fans, clean fans, which had a considerable amount of dust.
I also saw where the obstruction had been earlier.
TEN minutes, for an amateur, working at his desktop, while watching Let’s Plays.
No need to boot anything. I’m truly baffled by the need to downgrade my Windows installation and wipe my harddrive.
Wankers.
I love my Alienware desktop machine to death, but stories like yours is one reason why in 25 years of owning PCs, I have never yet used a factory warranty. For anything. When I buy a PC off the shelf, I pretty much ignore any warranty, and I just assume that if anything goes wrong with the PC, I’ll just suck it up and replace the part myself, rather than go to the trouble of shipping it off somewhere and being without it.
Yours being a laptop changes that scenario, as I wouldn’t have the slightest clue about how to go about replacing parts in those things. Which is why I’m glad I’ve never needed one.
The one time I did attempt to use a factory warranty on a PC, it was in the 90’s, and I had already diagnosed the problem: The plastic switch assembly had broken. I had the PC all apart, and just needed a new switch assembly, which of course was unique to that case. So I called Packard Bell and requested a new switch assembly. Nope. They would not send me out a $2 part, even if I paid for the part myself. They insisted that I pack up the whole machine and ship it to them.
So I super glued the part back together, and it worked for many more years.
I swear when I started this post I had a point I was getting to.
Maybe it was just that in general, dealing with warranties sucks.
My condolences, and thanks for the warning about Alienware’s warranty department. Thankfully, my PC has been rock-solid so far.