Look what I saw at Fry's today!

Oh yes I did!!

 

Ugly

 

The most expensive space heater I've ever seen.

 

awesome it does look great, how about a pic side by side with the aurora?

 

I think it looks "kinda" neat.

 

Pay $3279.99 to Fry's and get it today, or pay $3049 to Dell or $3299 for the 1.5kw PSU included and get it some days later and maybe a 5% cash back egift card ($165 at most). Maybe I could haggle...
Decisions (I'm not being serious here. Just pointing out the price differences).

 

I will take pictures of it side by side with the Aurora soon.

 

I do like the design of the new desktop systems what we're the exact specs?

 

I have "loved" this design since I first saw it at Pax Prime 2014 in Seattle. I have been thinking about buying it ever since. So when I saw it at Fry's I had to have it! It took me about 30 minutes to get my wife to agree, she truly is the most amazing wife ever, but I digress, lol. It has an Intel Core i7-5820K processor with 16GB DDR4 at 2133MHz and 128 SSD + 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s storage, Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 graphics with8GB GDDR5 and Windows 8.1.

Oh and by the way my wife is excited that she is getting my Aurora R3 Desktop

 

Didn't expect it to have 16 GB of RAM.
Hmmm....

 

I just unboxed it and took it up two flights of stairs, oh my is that a heavy desktop!

 

Only 4 RAM slots, Alienware cheaped out.

 

Um 4 DDR4 RAM slots.

DDR4 supports something like 16gb per stick and is expected to go all the way upto 64gb.

The alienware website will let you select upto 32gb but the motherboard can handle 64gb if you're willing to buy 4x 16gb DDR4 sticks (very expensive btw).

 

And that's why you have 8x DIMM slots, not 4. Most motherboard with price range 250usd to the RVE 400usd have 8 dimm slots in exception of some mATX ones.

Alienware cheaped out with their new motherboard giving only 4 slots, even though their OEM (MSi) have 8 DIMM slots on all their X99 boards.

 

For people curious on what it looks inside. I saw the unveiling of that model at PAX Prime 2014.

Yes, the motherboard inside is a Frankensteined microATX setup. So four RAM slots and only room for 3x SLI.

 

I wouldn't say that's cheaping out. 16gb ram is expensive now sure...but that's only because it JUST came out. Give it a couple of months and it won't be so expensive anymore.

Then there are other things to consider too:

1. Intel consumer processors currently only support 64gb ram.
2. Its quad channel. So even though you can use 8 sticks and nothing will go wrong, it's a little bit more beneficial to go with 4 sticks. Basically if you do go with 8 sticks then thats a little bit of extra load on the CPUs memory controller so it may cut down on your overclocking headroom a little bit. The CPU can only access 1 stick of ram per channel at any time. So if it's quad channel then it can access 4 sticks at the same time.
3. Space. That's a micro ATX board, there's simply no way for you to fit 8 DIMM slots.
4. What the **** are you doing on your gaming PC right now where you need more than 32gb of ram? I've yet to see my computer use over 10gb, let alone 32. By the time you actually need the extra ram I'm sure 16 or 32gb DDR4 sticks will be just as cheap as DDR3 4gb ones are now.
5. You'll always get far better bang for your buck on building your own PC vs prebuilt ones regardless of who makes them.

 

I didn't realize that the motherboard is mATX, it looked ATX to me.

I know that the price will be higher than building your own, but I would prefer it if Alienware had used an X99 retail board such as the X99M from Gigabyte.
Alienware used to do this in the old days, I don't see why they can't do it again now. *unless it's for gimping upgrades*

I'd just wait till a dead unit of the Area 51 end up on ebay, I'm in just for the case.

 

Haha I don't blame you, the case is very nice.

Youd probably be able to order thr case directly from dell parts. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to, what if you bought one and dropped it by mistake and the case cracked?

The only problem would be the cost of it haha...I doubt its cheap.

 

It's a smart design and definitely has a coolness factor to it, but the Dorito-shaped chassis looks too small to comfortably handle an EATX mainboard and all the other amazing guts I would require if I found myself having to go back to a desktop. I will have to stop by Fry's to get a closer look at one. Photos seldom adequately represent any product. Awesomeness is usually muted and garbage is easily camouflaged by photographs.

 

I actually like the design, but I still prefer the previous Area 51 ALX design. I'm still waiting to see a cheap chassis on ebay, amazon, etc. I really want one

 

Motherboard is ATX not mATX.

Officially 32GB of DDR4 ram is supported (4x8GB). A single 16GB stick cost nearly $400 so doubt anyone will be trying that soon to see if 64GB is supported, although 32GB is plenty, 16GB seems to be the sweet spot now.

I need to get that SLI bridge. Getting Titan X(s) soon.

Does anyone know if it's special or I can order the ones nVidia directly sells? http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli/bridges

 

Does anyone have their "Triad" sitting atop their desk? Mine is to big to fit where my Aurora R3 currently sits. My desk is quite sturdy. It took 5 movers to put it in my upstairs den lol.

 

I remember reading something at Dell Community about the spacing between GPU(s) and PCIe slots is not industry standard, so the SLI bridge is a proprietary Alienware form factor.

 

I remember reading something like that as well.

Worse case scenario I buy one of those flexible bridges. Not like the Area-51 R2 has a side window, it'll be hidden.

For Area-51 R2 owners out there, the SLI bridge (3-way) part number is: GYN70

 

I think you can also get that bridge on nVidia's store. This was a nVidia developed SLI bridge that they use to demonstrate their latest GeForce GTX cards with.

Also, the case can fit an ATX motherboard but if I recall back at Prime when they were talking about the case, you need to mod the case a bit to get it to work with a standard ATX motherboard. The case was designed for their ATX motherboard, which did end up having a proprietary shape (hence the lack of 4 RAM slots).

The motherboard is basically a hybrid of mATX and ATX.

 

We can't use the nvidia ones, they are spaced for standard 3x40mm. The alienware one requires 3x60mm spacing. Funny thing is, you can use the evga one for 2-way sli. It has 2x60mm spacing.

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-Bridge-2-Way-Graphics-100-2W-0021-LR/dp/B00F93S5DM

 

It astounds me how many people are on the Alienware forums who are haters. I mean unless that is what your life is all about. Truly sad if it has come to that. Oh and for the people that talk about the cost, well that really is a non issue since clearly the person that spends the money doesn't have a problem with it.