Buying a Dell Alienware X51 is it worth it?

[linnemeyerhere]

Well to me with an upgrade to a 330 watt PSU which is still small, I would think you can hide a SSD almost any where you can get power and a sata cable to go. I like behind the mobo if it will go. Use some velcro dots and the options of placement open up. Regarding the HDD's my guess would be one more and maybe two but I doubt it? Maybe look to a good USB 3.0 or esata if the mobo supports external storage device. This is what I use and it rocks !
Sans Digital MobileSTOR MS4UM+B 4-Bay Tower - 4x Bays, eSATA, USB 3.0, RAID, Black at TigerDirect.com

 

[BomberAF]

Well to me with an upgrade to a 330 watt PSU which is still small, I would think you can hide a SSD almost any where you can get power and a sata cable to go. I like behind the mobo if it will go. Use some velcro dots and the options of placement open up. Regarding the HDD's my guess would be one more and maybe two but I doubt it? Maybe look to a good USB 3.0 or esata if the mobo supports external storage device. This is what I use and it rocks !
Sans Digital MobileSTOR MS4UM+B 4-Bay Tower - 4x Bays, eSATA, USB 3.0, RAID, Black at TigerDirect.com

So the case should be able to hold at least 2 hard drives, I will be able to use one for the HDD that comes with the pc and the second for an SSD, wont need any more than that. they can also handle a Graphics card update to cant they?

Like i said I was told that they are better than XBoxes and PLaystations is this true?

 

[BomberAF]

Was at first thinking of buying an Alienware laptop which would of cost me about £2000 + but I figured out that the desktop was twice as cheap and more powerful.

 

[AstaLaVista]

What I have heard, and this was a little while ago is that I7 are much more expensive than I5 and not necessarily better for Gaming purposes only. i7 have Hyper Threading which a lot of applications can take advantage of it (photoshop etc) but not many (if that) games have HT capabilities. If this has change or will change in the future (doubtful since more and more we have console ports) than sure... go ahead and spruce more money for the i7 or if you also do heavy photoshoping etc, if not, my honest opinion is you are throwing money for no good reason.

Unless your house or room is cold, going with a small case is always going to be a pain in the ass... unless of course, you are handy and know your way around computers.

I, my personal opinion is... if I need to spend that much money for financing, I would try to go with anything else but Dell/Alienware... something that allows me to choose what I want and not run of the mill stuff with nvidia or ATI chipsets (again, this is what they used to do so if that has change sorry). Still, I would prefer to pay someone else a bit more for OEM stuff, bigger case, a few more fans and easier to get to if and when I decide to upgrade... surely, there has to be more options in the UK than just Alienware.

It seems though, like you have already made your mind up so why are you still on the fence?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Looking at the Dell site I think some of these questions should be answered by Dell, I tried to get any expansion info and couldn't find. With the compact form factor adding more drives much less a more powerful GPU you need to ask them. Air flow and heat would be top on my list of questions. Maybe a mid tower rig would suit you better.....IMHO !

 

[BomberAF]

Looking at the Dell site I think some of these questions should be answered by Dell, I tried to get any expansion info and couldn't find. With the compact form factor adding more drives much less a more powerful GPU you need to ask them. Air flow and heat would be top on my list of questions. Maybe a mid tower rig would suit you better.....IMHO !

That would be cheaper than the system I am currently buying but would have a lower spec CPU. If it has one HDD in then I will be able to stick an SSD in it, and the ram will just fit where the current ram is. I am happy with the Alienware and was just wandering whether I could have 2 HDD drives but even if I have just one SSD then that will do.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Understood and I think the next call will to to Dell as I just can't gather what extra capacity it may have. An extra drive bay would be a natural but you'll need to ask Dell.

 

[smarteyeball]

Decent but overpriced.

Look at Clevo

 

[hexaq]

I recently built a couple of mid-upper range gaming desktops and I did a lot of research on the market and various parts performance.
This thread got me interested in what stuff is sold 'ready made' and I had a look-see at the configuration:

Price: 700 USD
Alienware X51........Alienware X51
PROCESSOR ...........Intel® Core™ i3-3220 3.3GHz (3MB Cache)
MEMORY................6GB (1 X 2GB, 1 X 4GB) DDR3 at 1600MHz
HARD DRIVE 1TB......SATA 3Gb/s (7,200RPM) 32MB Cache
OPTICAL DRIVE.......Slot-Loading Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW)
VIDEO CARD...........1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 645
CHASSIS COLOR.....Matte Stealth Black with Dark Chrome Accents
WIRELESS.............DW1506 Wireless-N WLAN Half Mini-Card
AUTOMATIC UPDATES..180W External Power supply (huh ?)

In short: is labeled as a gaming computer, but it barely qualifies.
Don't know if is a web glitch but the configuration has listed a "180 W external PSU" under "software". I do hope is a joke or a glitch of some sorts since true medium range gamping desktops are typically powered by 600W+ power supplies. And top of the line gaming desktops reaching 1200W+

Anyway, moving on, notice how they don't list the motherboard name, or the DDR memory name, or the HDD name... . This is rather standard practice for system builders to not show the full component list and get away with stuffing the cheapest and feature-less stuff that "people in the know" wouldn't look at into ready made systems labeled as "gaming" or "office". Is a good way to clean out old and obsolete stocks.

Next: CPU
While the i3 cpu is "ok", I wouldn't include it in a gaming computer. Most current games have started being CPU bottlenecked, and the lower computing power of the i3 will show in lower frames per second rendered. To put things in perspective, in my system a i5-3570k OC to 4.4 Ghz can still act as a bottleneck in certain high action scenes of multiplayer games, i5-3770k was also a option, but the extra hyperthreading was not a sizable performance boost for the price in games that don't even use all 4 cores...
If I had a non overclocked i3 the game perhaps would be much less playable.

"But why a i5 and not a i7?" you may ask. Well, the i5 k series, and the i7 k series actually have rather similar single thread performance to i5, within a few %. But the price tag for the k series i7 doesn't justify the plus of performance when most games run their main thread on 1 core. Overclocking the i5k yields a sweet-spot of price vs performance.

Video card
From my understanding, the Nvidia naming scheme goes something like this:
Nvidia [generation][rank], as in Nvidia 645 = Generation [6], rank = [45]
The ranks are something like this:

x20 - web browsing, movies, office use -> games? are those the stuffs you copy-paste into Excel ?
x30 - web browsing, higher resolution movies
x40-x45 - web browsing, higher resolution -> HD movies, blue ray, light gaming - needs a good lowering of graphics to maintain FPS in current games, some may not run satisfactory even with lowest settings.
x50 - start of lower mid-range gaming
x50ti - a bit higher performance than x50
x60 - mid range gaming -> plays all current games, but some of them need to lower some graphics settings to maintain FPS
x60ti - upper mid range gaming
x70 - lower upper range
x80 - mid-upper range
x90 - screaming eagles premium flagship product -> holy cow! triple monitor gaming with ultra resolution/effects/eye candy

replace 'x' with the generation, currently is 6.

With this in mind, the chosen video card is "meh" for a gaming desktop. Well, if one plans to only play games that are 3-5 year old, then I guess is no problem.

Bottom line, Alienware X51 is a desktop for office, blue ray viewing and playing old games. In the grand scheme of things is already outdated and the chasis/PSU combo means is not upgradable. Would not touch it with a 15 ft pole for gaming use. Custom build > all

 

[logicearth]

hexaq, I'll like to point out, you are looking at the low tiered Alienware x51. It has far more powerful configurations that you can get. Also, the 330W PSU that comes with the unit is more then enough for an i7-3770k, 16GBs of RAM, 1 HDD and 1 SSD along with a GTX 670 or the ATI equivalent with still plenty of overclocking room.

As of now, Alienware just refreshed the x51 using the new Haswell Processors i7-4770 along with a GTX 670 for the top tier.

(BTW, the PSU is not integrated into the chassis, it is external. Which makes it very upgrade-able.)

 

[hexaq]

Sorry, my bad. When I opened the Dell Alienware x51 page and the low tier was displayed as the default and went from there.

Still, personally I wouldn't trust any pre-built computer unless it displays the full component list. Motherboard especially is a big thing since it dictates future upgrade paths and is usually where the prebuilt computers skimp at.

The 330 w external PSU is also quite limited. There are more powerful and cheaper internal PSU's that can be used and that provide a better upgrade path. Also depending on how the power is split among the 330W, in some usage scenarios there may be some strain on the PSU reducing it's service life or the system will throw a fault when underpowered under transitory loads. That's one of the reasons why the custom built gaming computers typically go with 600-800W PSU's for single video card configurations when typical system loads don't go above 300-400W.
I may be mean here but to me it looks like the PSU maybe is designed to fail in 2-3 years or so to generate future business.

The non 'k' i7-3770 is put there just to be a eye-catcher with it's "i7" promo behind it. A cheaper i5 'K' series overclocked to over 4Ghz would pass over it at game performance. But of course, that would need a good aftermarket cooler, which I doubt the case can accommodate (heck..they even took out the PSU from the case...).

GTX 660 video card is ok. Will play the latest and greatest games at medium-to-good graphics and should suffice for a couple of years.

All in all it looks like a non-optimized system, with some marketing attached to it. Personally, stay away from the 51.

 

[BomberAF]

Sorry, my bad. When I opened the Dell Alienware x51 page and the low tier was displayed as the default and went from there.

Still, personally I wouldn't trust any pre-built computer unless it displays the full component list. Motherboard especially is a big thing since it dictates future upgrade paths and is usually where the prebuilt computers skimp at.

The 330 w external PSU is also quite limited. There are more powerful and cheaper internal PSU's that can be used and that provide a better upgrade path. Also depending on how the power is split among the 330W, in some usage scenarios there may be some strain on the PSU reducing it's service life or the system will throw a fault when underpowered under transitory loads. That's one of the reasons why the custom built gaming computers typically go with 600-800W PSU's for single video card configurations when typical system loads don't go above 300-400W.
I may be mean here but to me it looks like the PSU maybe is designed to fail in 2-3 years or so to generate future business.

The non 'k' i7-3770 is put there just to be a eye-catcher with it's "i7" promo behind it. A cheaper i5 'K' series overclocked to over 4Ghz would pass over it at game performance. But of course, that would need a good aftermarket cooler, which I doubt the case can accommodate (heck..they even took out the PSU from the case...).

GTX 660 video card is ok. Will play the latest and greatest games at medium-to-good graphics and should suffice for a couple of years.

All in all it looks like a non-optimized system, with some marketing attached to it. Personally, stay away from the 51.

Dont have the money to build from scratch so I am having to buy on finance.

 

[BomberAF]

Would you suggest buying a Dell Auara or would that be overkill and a waste of money? I know people will say build your own but as I have said I need to get one on finance.

 

[BomberAF]

Just checked the Dell website and they are now shipping the X51 with the 4th generation i7 cpu.

Gone up in price also.

 

[paulpicks21]

Hi Bomber, I fully understand you cannot afford to buy all the parts to build your own hence you are looking to buy a ready made Dell, but are you aware that most etailers offer finance now, places like Ebuyer, Aria and Overclockers all offer finance, often at very low rates depending on your credit rating.
If you were to go for that then you could order all the parts in 1 go from one of them and build your own. Then you can choose exactly what parts you want and it may be better value for money.

Just a thought.

Paul.

Edit: The finance is not as low rate as what I thought, the lowest can be had from Overclockers at 16.9%
Edit 2: Scan computers do it for 15.9%

 

[hexaq]

Dont have the money to build from scratch so I am having to buy on finance.

That's the catch. The parts can be bought from the major resellers on finance too (personally I hate to pay interest. I save for my computer parts and pay in full at purchase), and custom build will make your $ reach further:

If you were to buy the exact same parts that come with the alienware and 'glue' it together yourself, you'd save money since you don't pay for the Dell profits.

Looking at it the other way around, if you take the exact same budget for the alienware and build a custom desktop, you can 'glue' together a better and more powerful configuration than what is offered.

But I guess building a custom desktop isn't for everyone. Just to mention it: custom build requires lots, and lots, and lots of research and tech know-how for optimum results. If you are not confident with taking the custom build plunge then the alienware will serve you well for the next few years, as long as you don't expect too much from it.

 

[BomberAF]

Dont have the money to build from scratch so I am having to buy on finance.

That's the catch. The parts can be bought from the major resellers on finance too (personally I hate to pay interest. I save for my computer parts and pay in full at purchase), and custom build will make your $ reach further:

If you were to buy the exact same parts that come with the alienware and 'glue' it together yourself, you'd save money since you don't pay for the Dell profits.

Looking at it the other way around, if you take the exact same budget for the alienware and build a custom desktop, you can 'glue' together a better and more powerful configuration than what is offered.

But I guess building a custom desktop isn't for everyone. Just to mention it: custom build requires lots, and lots, and lots of research and tech know-how for optimum results. If you are not confident with taking the custom build plunge then the alienware will serve you well for the next few years, as long as you don't expect too much from it.

What do you mean dont expect too much from it?

 

[Stephanie]

custom build requires lots, and lots, and lots of research and tech know-how for optimum results

Compatibility is a big part of building your own rig but if you was to list your chosen parts I'm sure members here would help, or you could try This compatibility and price is done for you when you build a virtual Computer, its handy as a guide

 

[hexaq]

What do you mean dont expect too much from it?

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

..then you may be a bit disappointed. If the above don't ring any bells, then by all means the 51 will be an ok machine.

custom build requires lots, and lots, and lots of research and tech know-how for optimum results

Compatibility is a big part of building your own rig but if you was to list your chosen parts I'm sure members here would help, or you could try This compatibility and price is done for you when you build a virtual Computer, its handy as a guide

That's only the starting point. For each and every part (starting with the CPU and going down to the cooling fans) one must look at the tech specs, features, reviews, compatibility, reliability (for instance, a part may be having a great price, great performance, great 'official' reviews, but quite a lot of reports on hardware failing). Price vs performance. Best place to use the available funds to maximize the performance in the chosen area of interest. All this while having a eye out for the future upgrade path.
All in all the actual putting together of the parts is the easy bit.

That being said, once it's up and running is a very nice feeling to know the machine you built down to the last part, as per your personal and informed decisions, runs better and for less invested cost than the off the shelf stuff.

 

[BomberAF]

What do you mean dont expect too much from it?

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

..then you may be a bit disappointed. If the above don't ring any bells, then by all means the 51 will be an ok machine.


I will always be able to upgrade the graphics card on that machine.