Well it all comes down to personal opinion. Would I get an Alienware if I were rich or had rich parents? Of course - who wouldn't want to try out a top of the line PC?

Some people consider building PCs a fun hobby. You save a lot of money and if you bought the best parts, end up with a fantastic PC. You come out of the whole experience proud that you accomplished something while saving dough.

Thanks for calling me a fag btw.

FAGZ

i'll admit, in my younger years i bought an alienware. why? i was juvenile and i really didn't know any better. the thing is, it didn't come with top of the line shit, it was just a basic pc dressed up in makeup. fast forward; i've rebuilt and replaced everything. the only thing that is still alienware is my mousepad and primary harddrive. imo, it wasn't worth it. this was way back also, now i believe alienware have all these crazy space technologies that actually serve a purpose in helping your pc; i bought mine when they only dressed up boxes with crazy logos.

For me building PC's is the absolute most dreadful thing I could ever be put to work doing, and I would never do it as a hobby.

I just don't appricate people seeing my computer and assuming that because I was "naive" enough to fork over the 2k for someone else to do it for me that I don't know jack shit about computers or that I'm any less competent, or to assume that the only reason I have my computer is because of a rich daddy who bought it for me because I liked the bells and whistles of its case.

The bottom line about my computer is this, It kicks ass. There's nothing else to really say about it. I'm completly satisfied with the 2000 *I* had to spend to buy it, and I don't regret it.

I don't know about any space age technology, but I know that during the creation process of my comp they overclocked all my components to about as close as they could go before it could start causing damage, so if you buy an alienware it's at least a bit more powerful than if you were to buy the parts stock.

I think we're all fags. Inside.

happy:

I feel like that loney:

Fuck this post, I meant to edit my old one.

[quote="Mr.Buttocks":75caa]Himmler.[/quote:75caa]

plzdie: I haven't used mine in over 6 months, built my own this time.
But, for pre-built PC's they are amazing. Their tech support is 1000% top notch.

I consider it to be a hobby. I enjoyed picking the parts i wanted, buying them and building my PC.

You spent 2k on a machine that could have cost you probably half if you'd have built it yourself. If you dont like building it yourself, having someone build it for you for an extra £50-100.

That way you could have had an IDENTICAL system, with a different case, for a hell of alot cheaper.

I guess I dont know much about what alienware does to their comps, but I'd assume they do ALOT of research into what exactly to tweak for optimal performance after simply dropping hardware into a crazy case. Then you will also get their tech support and whatever warranty's and other goodies come with ownership as opposed to tweaking your own hardware and perhaps voiding the manufacturers warranty... Whether that is all worth the price will depend on the person, I just think you guys are trying to simplify it too much, maybe I'm wrong.

I think they're ugly

Then again, all computers are ugly so I could give a shit

The pros of building your own pc far outweigh the cons.

Oem's are renound for using propriatary components like motherboards that usually screw you over for overclocking and have little in the way of bios updates. The warranty on oem pc's is usually voided the minute you open the case, so instead of being allowed to open the case to fix a simple problem likea cable that may have come loose you have to call the vendor, explain the problem and probably wait any amount of days for a "technician" to come and fix something that would have taken less than 5 minutes.

Cost cutting is also a factor, especially when it comes to memory, a lot of sites will let you select ram speeds and amount (obviously) but rarely do you see what the cas latencies are or even what the memory brand is. You usually end up paying a premium on what is nothing more than generic memory which offers little in the way of headroom for overclocking your pc.


Companies like dell and alienware usually are ripoffs when it comes to their pricing, a lot of the cost is due to the case, dells cases are now brushed aluminium on their xps range, alienware are (still) using their cheiftec cases with a ton of plastic slapped ontop of it for their predator style look. They just seem to slightly modify the look every now and then.


I pretty much prefer to build my own, as you know what components are going into it and what type of headroom you have to speed the pc up. Not so with oem pc's as you're restricted to what theyre flogging on their website.

Hard ocp has a section on oem pc's and them evaluating the systems, seems companies like maingear and velocity micro come reccomended even though theyre not exactly big names.

http://consumer.hardocp.com/reviews.htm ... NvbnN1bWVy