Alienware - ever worth it VS building your own?

Branoic

I built my own rig about 3 years ago and have kept it fairly up to date since with various ram and graphics card upgrades. However, I don't know *that* much about the nuts and bolts of computers, and at this point my system in a bit of a bad place - random crashes, restarts etc, and it can no longer play the most recent games despite apparently meeting recommended (ie, not just minimal), system requirements. For example, Supreme Commander still runs unplayably slow when everything is set to low and it looks worse than the original C&C.

In a year or so I plan on putting the system to rest for good and getting a new one, and was wondering about just getting an Alienware rig? I know they're quite expensive, but I don't really mind about that if they're more likely to be stable and compatible with the latest games. I know a lot of reviewers and companies etc tout the fact that their games have been "Tested on Alienware". Now, this could just mean that they're corporate whores and Alienware have paid them a lot of money to promote their systems, but it could also mean that things will genuinely work a little better on an Alienware system than on a system put together by someone who half knows what he's doing - ie, me. Could they be a "console" version of the PC in that they have standardised specs which games will likely work better on, than on the countless possible variables that building your own system will introduce?

Are they ever worth their price?

Anti

Forget alienware, they are rebadges dells. So all oem hardware.

Id go with www.vadim.co.uk or www.scan.co.uk they can taylor it much more to your needs.

uberpixie

You can build 2 dacent gaming machines for the price of one crap Alienware system.

They are seriously over priced and are no way better than anything I can build myself.

You could also just order the parts from someone like komplett and get them to build it for you.

You do have a lot of choice, TBH forget Alienware.

plonk

Every pc will start to crash and stuff no matter who builds it if you dont look after it.

rlawless

Try formatting and re-installing, always works for me.

8T8

Alienware are definitely overpriced for what your getting in hardware the biggest problem is that we don't have much in the way of vendors like Velocity Micro or MainGear in the US who cater specifically to that market and are much better at it then Alienware (talkin about the whole package in terms of hardware, software, tech support).

I'd go with what Anti suggested if you don't want to pay the Alienware premium.

OcUK also sell nice pre-built systems at varying price points.

Of course unless you do good maintenance then any operating system will degrade over time a clean install may be worth a go or a simple low cost upgrade like for instance putting in 2GB of RAM can do small wonders for some applications.

Branoic

Thanks for the tips and advice - i'll look into alternatives to Alienware.

Regarding crashes and reformatting - I did a complete reformat a couple of weeks ago because there was so much sh1t on the system and it was really really slow, and the crashes only started after the reformat. I'm pretty certain I screwed something up in the set-up after the format, probably in the BIOS, but I've no idea what.

My system is a Shuttle with an integrated motherboard and extremely limited space. When I first got it, it was great cause it was small and neat and for the time, top of the range. But in hindsight it was a mistake. I've upgraded the ram and graphics, but the limited space means its very hard to do so further, and of course the motherboard is integrated and isn't the best, so can't be upgraded. There's little point in continueing to invest in graphics upgrades etc is the motherboard holds everything back. So I need a fresh start.

DanGerMus

hey just throwing this one out there but you might be able to whip everything out of the shuttle case and upgrade from there starting with a micro atx board. Check out your pc's specs and see what size a mobo you can fit in it. Again this is just an idea and i really have no idea if it could work but it would be worth considering if you want to keep everything neat and tidy in a small package.
if thats not really an option then i'd say 8T8 and Anti know best.

8T8

Problem is that Shuttle use custom built motherboards for their cases that do not adhere to any ATX standard so they cannot be re-used in any case.

So yeah up a creek without a paddle on that one, it is possible to get SFF style cases that can accommodate off the shelf hardware like the Silverstone Sugo which takes mATX boards and supports double slot GPU coolers. But that would be a self build as few vendors use that case in pre-built systems.

If you are experiencing crashes I would suggest giving Memtest+ a run.

What do you have now in terms of systems specifications CPU, RAM PCI-e or AGP etc ?