Dear god. Alienware of Homebuild...

M

Mikethibodeau

New Member
I was thinking of building a PC for about 2000$ with all the fuss of finding all the pieces and then I went on Alienware and found a computer for about 2000$.

The only difference is that the Alien has a ATI RADEON™
9500 SE 128MB DDR instead of the 6600 GT GeForce that I wanted in my home build. The sale ends tomorrow, think I should go for it? 600$ off...

I plan on building

-AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 512K, L2 Cache, Socket 939
-1 gig Kingston DDR400
-250g Seagate SATA Hardrive
-Geforce 6600GT Pci-e
-MSI "K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI" NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU -RETAIL

Alienware is:

[1] Aurora™ 5500

Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support with Onsite Service
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2
Chassis: Alienware® Full-Tower Case (480-Watt PS) - Saucer Silver
Power Supply: Alienware® 480 Watt Power Supply
Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 3500+ Processor with HyperTransport Technology
Motherboard: ABIT AV8 - VIA K8T800 Pro Motherboard
Memory: 1GB Alienware® Dual Channel Low-Latency DDR PC-3200 at 400MHz - 2 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: ATI RADEON™ 9550SE 128MB w/Digital and S-Video Out
System Drive: High Performance - Serial ATA - 160GB Serial ATA 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache
Optical Drive One: NEC® ND-3520 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Sound Card: Integrated 5.1 High-Performance Audio with Digital Out
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Display One: No Monitor
Display Two: No Monitor
Keyboard: Microsoft® Basic Keyboard Black
Mouse: Microsoft® Basic Optical Mouse Black
Alienware Exclusive Offers: Gamespot Complete - Free 90-day Trial (a $20.85 value)
Alienware Exclusive Offers: 10% off your next EB Games online purchase
Free Alienware T-Shirt: Free Alienware® T-Shirt - Black
Free Alienware Mousepad: Free Alienware® Mousepad
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
AlienInspection: AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection - $99.99 Value - FREE!
AlienWiring: AlienWiring - Exclusive Internal Wire Management - $99.99 Value - FREE!


Any opinion really.
 
Scrat

Scrat

New Member
Just to help you with comparing prices' i bought all the stuff (minus winXP) in my signature and a case with 400W PSU for AUS$1600.00 (US$1200) and put it together myself.
 
Praetor

Praetor

Administrator
Staff member
-AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 512K, L2 Cache, Socket 939
-1 gig Kingston DDR400
-250g Seagate SATA Hardrive
-Geforce 6600GT Pci-e
-MSI "K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI" NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU -RETAIL
Click to expand...
For $2000 you should be able to do better than that....
 
mgoldb2

mgoldb2

VIP Member
If you build your self with $2000 you can afford
athlon 64 3800+
MSI nforce4 SLI
geforce 6800 Ultra
1 gig of ram
2 200 gig harddrives
dvdrw
good case and psu

I manage to fit all this in a $2000 budget just using newegg.
 
TonyBAMF

TonyBAMF

New Member
$1278

AMD 64 3500+ (3800+ for $110+)
2GB Ram (4x512Corsiar 2.5cas)
300GB HD
ATI Radeon X800XL (A X800XT/850XT is 15%-20% faster but 45%-66%+ more expensive)
MSI Mobo
16X Dual layer burner (NEC)
Good Case

All from new egg.

BTW, the price I gave was with tax and shipped Via 1 day. I expect it to arive any minute :cool:
 
TonyBAMF

TonyBAMF

New Member
If you want to spend $2000
Get a 6800Ultra
(2) hardrive of your choice (same kind) Raid them in 0
Get a 3800+ Prosesor
And still have change for a clean pair of pants when you shit yourself when you get your pc.

In my recomandation, buy what I did It's the curent best bang for buck on the market. ( BTW I had a $4000 :p and only spent $1278)
Buy with newegg. www.newegg.com They really are awsome.
 
TonyBAMF

TonyBAMF

New Member
You have $2000
Thats a lot of money for a pc these days (home built)

A Nvidia 6800Ultra is faster, and you can afford it in your budget.

Raid 0, If you have 2 hardrive of the exact same kind, you can Raid them.
Raiding them in "0" will almost double you hardrives speed. the downside is, If 1 hard drive fails all data is lost.
 
Yeti

Yeti

VIP Member
Raid 0, If you have 2 hardrive of the exact same kind, you can Raid them.
Click to expand...
"Just because you can" isn't usually a good reason
Raiding them in "0" will almost double you hardrives speed.
Click to expand...
Depends on your def of "almost"... and only in benchmarks
the downside is, If 1 hard drive fails all data is lost
Click to expand...
Now that's definitely a good reason not to RAID them
Eh, just go to the RAID FAQ :p
 
6

691175002

New Member
Raid 0 will give extra performence in stuff other than benchmarks. Just not a really noticeable difference (~10% in normal applications).
 
mgoldb2

mgoldb2

VIP Member
Raiding them in "0" will almost double you hardrives speed.
Click to expand...

um how about no. You dont even get close to double speed. most people would not even notice the difference. I have raid 0 and I notice little to no difference in harddrive speed from before I had raid.
 
F

Funzo6785

banned
dude, $1875 gets you a system twice as good as that crapmachine you have(still beat mine though). Go to http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/custom/piv.asp?v=d and I assembled a system that shows you how far $2000 goes. Shoot, nvm it doesn't work. But I had you hooked up with a 3.6 Ghz CPU, 2 gigs of ram, dual 200 Gig hd's, and a Geforce Ultra. O, and the hot Asus Vento 3600. Can't forget that. If you put one together simaler to that, you should see how bad your getting ripped off. (Yea, I edited, didn't double post!)
 
Last edited:
R

raidedguy

New Member
RAID is more than its cracked up to be with todays hard drives...
If you have $2000 then dual 6800GTs, or Dual 6800Ultras might be possible, it deppends on the kind of drives you get...

I would also recomend you consider getting a laptop if you like to travel (you can get a 6800Ultra in them now). Also just to spice things up, You could get a Pentium M (Centrino) fast enough for most things, and it runs pretty cold (great for overclocking).

It really just depends on what you plan on doing with it.

Some MUST HAVES in a new desktop:
Serial ATA (i think everything has it now)
PCI Express
DDR or DDR2
socket 939 or LGA775 (depending on what brand, just careful with the LGA775 cause it might be being replaced)
Also, it might be best to hold off a few months as dual core CPUs are gonna be out before 2006 comes from both amd and intel :). Dual core will increase performance on new cpus and drop old cpu prices.
 
F

Funzo6785

banned
Dual 6800GT's or Ultras would be extremely hard to do if you want to also get a good gaming CPU, atleast 2 gigs of ram, and a good hd. I would say that one is good enough. Also, this may be a dumb question, but wha tis raid?
 
Last edited:
R

raidedguy

New Member
there actualy are cards that have daul gpu's i think asus has one out (or gigabyte), and more are on the way, best advise, wait till second half of 2005
 
F

Funzo6785

banned
reciprokal said:
as i always say : alienware's pcs are over hyped and over priced....
Click to expand...

but if i had 5000 dollars I'd easily get a Alienware. They are just so sleek and profesional, and I want one real bad
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top