A few weeks ago, I basically wrecked Alienware's pricing.
Basically, the only differences between those machines and a built machine are increased performance for the built machine (less crapware, if any) and some minor hardware changes (Different (likely worse) power supply, Alienware case, maybe different manufacturers)
In this article, I will mainly be talking about the unique cases that Alienware provides and the cooling factor, as well as other things because I wanted to say them but they're small.
COOLING FACTOR
I owned an Alienware Aurora 7500-R4 in 2008. I never bought another again. Why? Because it got too hot and blew up in my face, that's why.
See, here's the thing. Alienware cases are pretty stylish, and they most definitely keep the dust out, but the reason they do that so well is because IT CANNOT BREATHE!
That is the Alienware Predator series of case right there, that came with my Aurora 7500-R4. It might not look that bad, but let me explain some things to you :
- There are ZERO vents near the top of the case. Hot air will always be up high, right there with your CPU because it can only exhaust out of the low parts of the case - it physically cannot go there.
- What ventilation there on the bottom of the case is a grille. This was probably intended for less dust, but truth is mine was super dusty anyways. Not big enough to stop dust particles, but small enough to minimize cold air intake.
- There are some unnecessary fans inside that just blow already hot air around. The image I put below doesn't accurately describe it, but instead of making airflow go simply front to back, Alienware made the most complicated airflow that works very ineffectively.
This is a basic diagram of the airflow in my Alienware from 2008.
So let's stop venting about my old, irrelevant Alienware and see if Dell improved the case design at all.
Here's an Aurora from 2014. Looks even worse than mine from '08 in the ways of airflow.
This "Area-51" actually looks kind of promising. I dunno if those holes are particularly wide but it looks like an improvement over other things they offer. This time, bunched up air at the top can mostly make it's way out of that vent.
BUILD QUALITY
Remember what I said about that case being promising? Sure, it's got some pretty good airflow compared to other Alienwares (nowhere near great overall) but look at the shape.
Good thing is, most Alienware buyers probably do not routinely maintain / upgrade their systems, they'd probably just buy new. This case looks like it would be an absolute pain to build inside, especially for a new builder.
Let's not forget though, that every case so far has been primarily made out of plastic. Plastic = cheapo and not good for quality. You especially want a metal interior if you were gonna poke around in there.
Beyond that, though, there are actually some pretty nice things about the quality of the building.
This is AlienFX. It comes preinstalled on most new Alienwares that have multi-color LEDs installed around the case, laptop and desktop. From here, one can change the visual appearance of their tower without needing to touch anything inside it. Mine from '08 simply had blue LEDs around it, which looked quite nice on it's own, but this is even cooler.
Thumb screws : These are really nice, actually. I wish every case maker did this. All you have to do is slide this knob back and your case was open, no screwdriver required. This was useful for simple changes, like cables, or adding/removing drives.
Cable management ; my Alienware had a backplate for the motherboard that had several holes all around so that all the cables were tucked away from the rest of the system, at least helping to prevent obstruction of the little airflow it did have. My Corsair Air 240 that I have today has a similar system, but really ANY case can have good cable management by simply tying down your cables properly.
Visual appearance ; these cases are actually quite nice to look at, AlienFX included. If you like a cool, LED gaming setup, the customizable lighting of this Aurora tower would complete the look.
That said, you can also buy LED strips that you can manually (and pretty easily change) for VERY cheap on Newegg and other PC part vendors. I like the NZXT HUE+ lighting system, it looks absolutely amazing and you don't need to buy an Alienware case to have lighting like it.
BONUS ROUND : MORE TO CONSIDER ABOUT ALIENWARE
At the beginning of this post, I linked my first article I wrote about a month ago called "Is Alienware Really Worth It?"
The article was looking at Alienware's Area-51 desktops and comparing the machine to the actual part value if you were to build it. No machine came within $500 of it's TRUE worth. I was able to beat some of them by over $1000, the largest gap was $1,400 that could be cut even more depending on your preference as a PC user. (Because that's what building is all about)
1. They're not worth their price
Another point is, the components are downright EXCESSIVE!
The cheapest Area-51 I reviewed in that article checked in at $1700
The one I could build was $1.1k (fyi)
Anyways, the machine featured Intel CORE i7-5820k. That's really unbalanced for the rest of the components being NEW in the system, but also a more simple gamer would probably need a STRONG quad core CPU, like an i5 6600k or i7 6700k, not a weaker and older 6 core CPU. Most programs don't even use that many cores!
Even in other machines I looked at, nearly EVERY time, Alienware spent a very high portion of their budget on the CPU. There's a thing called bottlenecking, it's when you pair good components with components that aren't in the same performance ballpark. You can have an amazing CPU but have a terrible graphics card, and it will severely limit your game capabilities. That's basically what happens in their most expensive Area-51, which features one of the latest, Intel CORE i7 Extreme 6950X 10 Core, 3 GHz CPU. They pair it with a SINGLE NVIDIA GTX 1080, which is a bottleneck for sure. That CPU deserves a Titan X, at least, or multiple 1080s / TITAN X cards.
Even my 2008 Alienware had at least 33% of it's cost on the CPU (AMD Athlon 64 X2) It was significantly better than other CPU's at the time, because it was one of few multi-core processors out, but today, buying top of the line CPU's with mid range parts is totally not needed!
Other examples of overdoing it :
-8 TB of hard drive space. HOW MANY GAMES DO YOU HAVE, MAN?
-Most of these featured TWICE the power supply wattage that was required. Even my machine took up 400 W, but they included a 1200W power supply!
2 & 3. Alienware includes either Excessive components, or Unbalanced components
I'm not done yet, Dell.
I wasn't even done with my 2008 Alienware before it blew up on me.
The power supply sucked. It was not of good quality, and I don't even think it had an 80 Plus rating.
Long story short, it blew up my chipset. No more display for me, I either had to do major repairs, or get a new PC. I was fed up at that point, so I got a new one.
If you build your own, you are in control of the parts you pick, down to said power supply.
You never want to cheap out on a power supply. It can cost you the whole system.
Plus, buying a good power supply also usually means it comes with a high 80 Plus rating, that is, how efficiently it converts power. A better 80 plus rating means less on your electrical bill versus a lower one, and these likely have low ratings or none at all.
4. Bad power supply (at least for me, hopefully)
Conclusion : Building a PC is better than buying from Alienware in nearly EVERY way.
Thanks for reading!
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