I will always be able to upgrade the graphics card on that machine.
As it was said, thermals are a concern for one. The air flow seems quite constricted.
Alien Autopsy: We Look Inside the Alienware X51 | Maximum PC and slide 2 ... The video card fan is sucking in warm air (that has bounced off the HDD's) from the sealed case. And this with a low clearance between the fan and the warm HDD. That can't be good.
Also slide 0, it looks like the CPU cooler is taking in air from the closed side panel (no venting orifices), that also doesn't look like is good for the system.
And PSU needs a look at.
For instance the latest GTX 770 that came out this week (i.e. lower upper range video card) I saw it powered by 2x 8 pin pci-e connectors from a couple of manufacturers.
The 6 pin pci-e connector is rated at 75w. The 8 pins connector is 150w. Pcie specs also allow up to 75w of power to come from the pcie slot.
Hence, the max. power going to feed the GTX 770 is 375W. In reality, the card (alone) draws about 270W in gaming sessions according to reviews, hence at the minimum the PSU will need to have 1x PCI-E 8 and 1x pci-e 6 pin to feed the card (75+75+150= 300w vs 270-280 max power draw). And no, the 6 to 8 pin pci-e adapters are not a good thing to use here.
AnandTech | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review: The $400 Fight notes total system power draw being about 370W, a PSU for that system will need to have minimum 500-550W range to power it safely without straining the PSU.
The power consumption of the cards doesn't look like is going down any time soon. The transistor manufacturing technology is stagnant at around 22-28 nm for some time. For the significant power savings this needs to go down, but is already pushing the the physical limits of the process.
For the newer cards to be commercially successful they'll have to increase performance, and with the transistor size staying like this, the only way that is happening is with architecture improvements and/or bigger dies. Power draw looks like it will remain like this or get higher.
And by the way. The components inside the x51 are no different then any custom build computer. Saying a i7 3770 or i7 4770 is not going to amount to much? Are you kidding?
There is a difference between "amounting to much" and "better part for the purpose of the build"
Have a look at:
PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance
At stock speeds:
i7-3770 has 2070 performance points and a cost of 289 $
i5-3750k has 2012 performance points and a cost of 219 $
making some percentages: ~3% increase in performance over the i5k costs ~30% extra $.
The i7 4000 series is too fresh to consider at this moment since their price will go down in a few months.
In many games, single thread performance is what drives the game FPS. The "k" CPU's will however overclock higher than the non "k" CPU's, and will end up giving a higher single thread performance than non k's. And this with lower cost (even after factoring in the extra aftermarket cooler).
That is the difference.
http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html shows that even in high performance hyperthreaded "k" series i7 CPU's, the FPS can still be influenced by single thread performance. The graph shows that the same i7k CPU, overclocked at different levels, yields better and better FPS.
Here is the problem I hate. Bias, without even a thought you assume its a horrible machine because it is pre-built.
Bias goes both ways.
Much as in if you plan for:
* multi-monitor gaming
* high to very high settings on the latest and greatest generation of games with acceptable frame rates
* 3D gaming gimmicks
* games 3-4 years from now to run at high graphical settings with acceptable frame rates
* gaming on PC monitor with higher than 1920x1080 or so resolution without sacrificing eye-candy
You do NOT need a monster of a computer todo any of that. I have a high end gaming machine
...
I barely use a quarter of the power of my machine to play Crysis (1, 2, & 3).
Define quarter: is your GPU below 100% usage ? are the game settings maxed ? is your gaming resolution in the 2500x1400 range ? is the game FPS in the 60's range ?
If all of those are "yes" and the system is still "quarter" used, then do tell the guys that made the
Single-Card Results: Crysis 3 - The GeForce GTX 770 Review: Calling In A Hit On Radeon HD 7970? crysis 3 benchmarks a call since they are clearly not knowing what they are doing and are spreading false information.
If "quarter" means CPU utilization, then you'll be happy to know that most games saturate 1 core. In a quad CPU that means 25% overall cpu usage, however the FPS of the game is driven by the single 100% used core. That's where the single thread performance kicks in.
In your case I expect the cpu to be overall 25-35 % loaded, consistent with 4 crysis threads not saturating their respective cores. But this is only because crysis 3, along with battlefield is one of the few games designed with multithreading support.
Other notable games (especially MMO's) use 1 or at most 2 threads, and can saturate the core they run off at times, thus acting as a bottleneck.
Benchmarks for the alien's 660 card:
Crysis 3 Performance Test: Graphics & CPU > High Quality Performance - TechSpot shows the performance of the gtx 660 in crysis 3, at 1900p with good graphical settings the FPS is in the 30's.
Crysis 3 -gtx 660 on very high graphics @1900p, the FPS drops in the 15's range.
For the record, 50-60 FPS is what is considered to be smooth gameplay.
So bottom line is the alien 51 is ok if you don't expect too much from it.
