I have a "Crysis"!

[Pob255]

While I could eaisly spend £3,000 on a self build pc, you better beleave it would be better speced than that, with 3k I'd bee looking at triple sli or a pair of double gpu cards for effective quad gpu
I'd not bother with one of the single slightly faster Hard drives, but build a raid array ( or even go scsi )
For a case, CM Stacker, because I always loved the look of them, but with 3k to play with I'd consider a custom paint job
Cooling, probably dabble with water cooling.

Edit:here's at idea and slight thread derailment.
Spec up a pc for 3k people, lets see what you could get for that.

[NightshadowUK]

I can only second what everyone else has said, ditch Alienware and go with 3XS. Better yet, if you're feeling adventurous, take our hands and let us guide you into the land of custom builds.

[Powderhound]

Is it me, or does everyone's excuse for buying alienware seem to be that the cases are nice? I believe the best acid test for a case that I've come across is one that I saw on here a while back; would you be prepared to show it to a potential girlfriend's parents? In the case [Buddum tchicsh] of Alienware, I doubt you would.
And £3000 on a PC? Are you nuts? It'll be obsolete in 2 years anyway- there rarely much relationship between the price and longevity of a PC once you hit the £1000 mark.

[DratUK]

Is it me, or does everyone's excuse for buying alienware seem to be that the cases are nice? I believe the best acid test for a case that I've come across is one that I saw on here a while back; would you be prepared to show it to a potential girlfriend's parents? In the case [Buddum tchicsh] of Alienware, I doubt you would.
And £3000 on a PC? Are you nuts? It'll be obsolete in 2 years anyway- there rarely much relationship between the price and longevity of a PC once you hit the £1000 mark.

Too right!!!
It'll be obsolete come end October with the arrival of Nehalem.

As you might have gathered Alienware isnt exactly flavour of the month at Hexus. All the people are trying to do is save you some money put it towards whatever and still have an outrageous PC.
If your that desperate the cases turn up on Ebay now and again.

[sleepyhead]

Surprised no-one here has suggested to build the PC for the OP and pocket the cash that could have gone to Alienware.

[Se7en]

So basically you guys are saying if i buy the alienware its going to be obsolete by the end of October.... but wont that be true for any system i buy now????

[Powderhound]

Yes, but why spend twice as much on it? Or why not wait until October (And that doesn't mean get an Alienware then!).

[Se7en]

Yes, but why spend twice as much on it?

Because with the higher spec that i buy it with now the longer in to the future it will last...?

[NovaSphere]

Because with the higher spec that i buy it with now the longer in to the future it will last...?

Okay, lets put it bluntly;

Basicly, seeing what you get at Alienware for that money, it simply sucks.



Every PC, doesn't matter howmuch it costs, will be out-dated and out-performed by any new versions/models or technology (what's the point of bringing out new technology if it can't beat the old one aye?)
You will always have that.

So what everyone is saying, ditch Alienware, go for Scan's system builds, you will save money, get a much better PC and much better customer support.
Or if you really want to go for it, save even more money and build your own spec.

[Airlemental]

Is it me, or does everyone's excuse for buying alienware seem to be that the cases are nice? I believe the best acid test for a case that I've come across is one that I saw on here a while back; would you be prepared to show it to a potential girlfriend's parents? In the case [Buddum tchicsh] of Alienware, I doubt you would.

Thats a nice test. I can see why some people might like the alieware cases.. theyre just a bit too flashy IMO

And £3000 on a PC? Are you nuts? It'll be obsolete in 2 years anyway- there rarely much relationship between the price and longevity of a PC once you hit the £1000 mark.

Completely agree here, & lets say you did spend £800 - £1200 on a pc now, come october you could spend a bit more of that £3000 on upgrading it and you'd still have plenty of change left over.

[moogle]

Because with the higher spec that i buy it with now the longer in to the future it will last...?

No it won't unfortunately

There's a limit to where the performance/price makes it not really worth it.



Like in the quickly put together graph above most people buy their pc parts which are in the green range, Q6600's Q6700 Q9450 Q9550 and the red ones would be Q9650 QX9650 QX9770 QX6850 (still expensive today). A few months back the Q6700 was in that red range too as it was like £400~ and the Q6600 was at £150 and the speed difference was quite small. The parts in the red cost like £500-900+ and they depreciate like mad. You'll buy it now and the price will drop under the £2k in a month then £1k and it'll all go so quick. It's still a dual core system.

Can't remember any graphics cards were in the red area so spending top money on them isn't bad.

The hard drives in that pc are fast but you could raid some drives which would surpass the speed of that drive in the alienware.

Why DDR3 when you can get DDR2 the price you pay for it over DDR2 for minimal performance gains isn't worth it. Yes the new Intel CPU's support DDR3 only but the board you're getting with it doesn't support the new Intel CPU's so you might play the futureproof or upgradeability card there but it doesn't hold when your motherboard will need to go too.

That whole system could be made by yourself (if you knew how) or any others here for much less. Okay so you might not have all those things like the flashy lighting and stuff from Alienware but imo it's not worth what you pay for.

It makes me laugh though, when customizing the PC it comes with a 750W PSU as standard but to change it to the 1000W you've chosen, it adds on £130 which would seem okay if you were keeping the 750W PSU in your case but you're not. You could buy a whole new PSU for that (Corsair, Silverstone, Be Quiet and Zalman)

Same goes for the hard drive section, going from the standard 250GB Sata Drive to a 150GB Velociraptor adds £132 and for the 300GB one adds £194. You can just buy the drives for this price not for upgrade prices. It could be that they have their system wrong ie, it's meant to subtract the price of the standard item then add the premium price on but it doesn't do that.

Altogether it comes to £2653.80 for the system stated in your first post. Thats quite alot I'd say. Although you're paying for labour and the "pimped" looks and such still way too much unless that is the reason you want the Alienware, so you can stare at it.

I don't have a hate for Alienware, I like others don't really see what the fad for Alienware or it's cases is about. I'm not saying not to get Alienware either because I can't it's just that you'll be getting less for your money.

If it were me I would do it this way. Buy a decent price/performance PC and use that £3000 to upgrade it over the years spending extra on what I've made selling the old parts off, thats the only way to have a up to date performance PC and get the best out of your £3000. If you can't self build though then get a pre-built system, I really don't know who's good seeing as I started building PC's myself after my first Time system but others have recommended some which you should look into other than Alienware.

Hope my long post (not up to Saracen's level yet ) helps you make your mind up and explains to you why spending over a certain amount isn't worth it.

PS - The Killer NIC card is just a mini linux pc running on that network card and doesn't help you very much for pings nor will it increase your netspeed but if you do get it (DONT) then I would really like to see the difference between that and a standard ethernet port/card, as for the PhysX Ageia card that thing went out months ago. People who bought it for £100~ or so can't sell it to many people nowadays (going for £50 or so last I saw) as iirc you can put another different nVidia card in your system to run as a Physics card. Not sure if it's limited to the nVidia chipset only but it's one of the reasons why no one buys or uses them anymore.

[Pob255]

I think moogle has got it right there on the over pricing for little additional performance improvement.
I would add that in the original specs the graphics card is probably in the red zone as the 4870x2 is a bit expensive, it's very fast/powerfull but also costly, a standard 4870 is not half the speed but is half the price.
the other odd thing is the cpu, the core2duo e8400 is a good cpu for them money, it's not the fastest out there but it's great for the price, which is probably the only bit on there that is.
Depending on how much they are chargeing, the 24" dell Ultra sharp monitor is a good one, and should hold it's value well for a good time.

I'd definately have a look at Scan.co.uk 3xs systems http://3xs.scan.co.uk/
And I'm willing to bet that if you'd like an option not on there "configure" list (like a different case that they sell in the main shop) then I'm sure they would help, scan tend to be good like that.

If se7en wants to spend £3k on a alienware pc, then I, as with most here, think he's being ripped off and if he wants to spend £3k he could get so much more.

One thing to note about alienware is that they are owned by dell these days, and dell support is actually quite good (not sure on the alienware side thoe) although dell's support packages are not cheap.
As to thoes alienware cases being ugly . . . each to his own. I don't think they look *that* bad, but not great ether (if all that fancy shaping is plastic then I hate to own one, if it's metal then it's not so bad)
One thing I do wonder about is the internal build quality and layout (but one of the reasons for buying pre-built is not having to dig around inside and it will not be your fingers getting sliced up on burred edges)
With the number of times people in this forum say that case looks are very much a personal thing, so shame on some of you here for being so judgementle.
To say you think a case is ugly and to flat out tell someone there choise of case is ugly is not the same thing.

[Hunkulus]

The system offfers relativley good upgrade options...The processor is a bit ****. The gpu Will be **** quite soon, the other components will be quite **** soon too aswell...I f he/she has the mony tho....let them spend it ...I want to work for alien ware and quality test their gear (lmao) ....

[Pob255]

PS if you do go down the build your self route and you want a really unique case, then there are places that will custom mod a case for you.
http://www.chilledpc.co.uk/shop/index.php do custom window cutting, anodising (a tough shinny gloss finish) power coating (this is how most cases are "painted" when you buy them)
and other fabrications (you don't have to get the case from them, just ship your case to them)
I know there are other places that do custom airbrush paintjobs and ecthing and such (cannot think of any off hand)

[Se7en]

Well i ordered my system this morning, i decided to go against what you guys have advised and went with an Alienware's entry level Intel system, i went with a much lower spec build which should leave me more then enough money to upgrade again in a year or two, here is what i picked

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz 6MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
750 Watt Power Supply
512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800 GT
4GB - 4 x 1024MB RAM
250GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM

All in it will cost me near £900 delivered, i still have to choose a monitor but i believe i will find something a little cheaper then the Dell ones they offer, i will post back when it arrives and report on how everything goes!

[MSIC]

The discussion here appears the have been highjacked into a built your own system, which isnt always wise advice if you are not confident or up for the learning process.

The second Alienware system, as posted, is a better bet than the first, and will certainly play Crysis well. My honest opinion is that Alienware don't give you the best value for money, however you will get a certain kick out of it (the 'show-off' factor). That's your business.

I would however advise buying a bigger monitor now, as 24" isn't too much more that 22" (if you've got space for a 22" monitor, surely you can fit 24"!) however the improvement in resolution is really worth it. Sure, you can upgrade in the future, but since you clearly have the money now, get the best now!

Edit: And well done Se7en for not bowing to the pressure. Too many people here only consider performance graphs, or their own wish lists, without considering what you are asking for. There's nothing wrong with getting a pre-built system.