Alienware Desktop

Obviously all of us here are alienware fans. We all love our M11x, but is your desktop AW too? I am on the verge of either building my own desktop but was considering saving up a little more and going alienware again. What do you guys have for your desktop, Custom or Alienware?

 

I use a custom built desktop machine.

The advantage of buying a pre-built machine is that someone else selects the parts for you (or, narrows the parts list down to a small list for you to choose from), and someone else provides your tech support.

I can select my own parts (it's the best part of building your own machine), and I can provide my own tech support.

I have a friend that only ever buys Alienware. But he doesn't want to spend hours of research into what parts to buy, doesn't want to assemble the computer himself, and doesn't want to have to provide his own tech support when something goes wrong. And he couldn't be happier buying Alienware for his needs.

 

This would be my first time building my own PC. I feel like I can "stumble" through it, as I feel i know the basics pretty well. I plan to use videos and such to help me out. But matching up parts is what I am learning at the moment. Making sure things are going to run correctly.

 

I would like to own a new alienware desktop, but between the house, wife, and soon to be kids my gaming is pretty limited... so I just opted to get a tactx keyboard/ mouse and the alienware 22inch LCD screen. Then I just dock my m11x to that.

I do have a desktop, but its old and only used by my wife when she doesnt want to use her netbook.

 

My suggestion would be to go to a good PC hardware enthusiast site, and ask for advice there. Tell them your budget, what you want to use your desktop for, and what part(s) you have thoguth of already. And people will gladly critique your parts selection, and make recommendations as to things you should consider buying instead. PC hardware nerds LOVE to talk about this stuff. It is the same reason why we come here and post about notebooks.

Some good forums for this are Anandtech.com, HardOCP, SharkyForums. I think that Notebookreview has its own sister site (forum.desktopreview.com) that has people to help you out, but I don't thnk that it is as heavily trafficed as some of the other forums.

As for build guides - there are plenty of guides out there in both webpage and video format. My favorite is MaximumPC magazine... every issue, they have some themed build... budget $700 gaming PC, mid-range $1200 gaming PC, money-is-no-object dream machine, see-through acryllic PC, small form factor gaming machine, etc. If you're just looking for a guide to use as a starting / reference point, I would chekc them out.

 

Thanks for the advice, I think I will check these websites out and build my first PC

+1 rep

 

Nice thing about buying a pre-built machine is the warranty is in one place not with a dozen different companies. Also you get to pre-configure to a point.
Price, well I bought the Aurora for 1257.00 before tax and shipping from the Dell Outlet. It had some problems that could not be fixed by a on site tech, so they upgraded me to the ALX below. Upgrade came with 12g ram and two 500g HD's, Bluray and the 5970 instead of the 460sli which were the problem to begin with. Thats not going to happen with a build it your self.

 

Desktop Reviews - PC Reviews and Desktop Computer Buying Guide is NBR's sister site and is a good place to look.

 

I build my own. Much more control over components and better warranty than, for example Dell. Most of my components are 3 year warranty, my PSU is 7! Hard to beat that in a prebuilt system. Much more custom. I have purchased pre-built Dell's in the past, nothing compared to building my own. Built my wife one, my son one, a server, and a couple of HTPCs. If I could build my own laptop I would. I do love my M11x though!

I built mine in late 2010 (got great black Friday and Christmas deals):
Intel i5-760 Quad Core CPU - OC to 3.6 Ghz
Gigabyte 1156 motherboard
8 GB GSkill Sniper 1866 RAM
EVGA GTX 460 GPU
60 GB Agility 2 SSD
1 TB WD Black HD
850 watt Corsair PSU
Corsair H50 water CPU cooler
Corsair 600T case
Samsung Bluray player
Asus DVD player
Windows 7
Asus 23 inch monitor

1,200 with shipping. This machine rocks. Lowest score on WEI is 7.5 (video card) and this is last year's stuff mind you.

 

Nice system there Tizi I am sure you enjoyed doing it your self. But mI fail to see how it is cheaper or better than the ALX, granted I only have a 2 year warranty. The cpu, ram, bluray are higher end. And the 5970 is going for 700.00 used on Amazon and ebay, 1200.00 new crazy. Anyway I believe there are good reasons for both systems.

 

I built my last system back in 2007 with the intent of not screwing myself again with upgrades. That said I was also single at the time and spent most of my free time gaming. Now I've got a family and the laptop just plain made more sense. However if I were to go back to a desktop build it myself. I like knowing what parts are under the hood.