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Should have started a new thread.
Yea, all the gamers cried out in horror when Dell bought AW... things is... they certainly are still pretty great. Yea, they might be lower on the 'price to perf' ratio... but you're paying a little extra for the name and the support. The support is top notch.
Enjoy the rig, brother. Gaming laptops are so fun with that portability factor.
The reason why I chose Alienware is simply because I have a credit account with Dell. As someone that's mostly played console games, I think even the lower end Alienware system will open up a new world in terms of visuals and framerate. I'm just looking forward to the mods. Seeing that the mod community is remaking Fallout 3 with FO4 visuals clinched the deal for me (not coming out for a while though).
My Playstation will be for PS exclusives, and computer for future games from Bethesda including the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, though makes me think if my laptop would even run those games since they are probably not coming out for another 3 years or so.
Alienware had a great rep in desktops a decade ago or more. Then they were bought by Dell. Dunno if Dell transferred some of the suck to Alienware, but they've never been the same since.
Not meaning to be offensive, but, Alienware laptops have always just been 'Meh', they're OK, but nothing that special. If you look at ratings they're continually out performed in perf per dollar or raw performance by ASUS ROG, Razer, Acer, and even Gigabyte, MSI, and I've even seen HP and Dell's higher.
I think the poster was right, in Laptop land Alienware are so-so reputation.
They're also cost competitive now though. Alienware used to be horrendously overpriced, similar to other boutiques like Maingear or Origin are nowadays. A basic high-end machine, 11700K, 3080, 16 GB of 3200 RAM, 512 + 1TB SSD with, Z590 chipset starts a bit over 3,000 with Maingear versus a bit over 2,500 with Alienware. Basically the same thing aside from the case. There's really no reason to spend the extra 500 for the Maingear if you're just doing their basic prebuilt configs as it's really the same thing.
Of course that's the difference. Basic prebuilts is all Alienware does whereas for Maingear it's really not what they're known for. If you want custom water cooling loops, that's what Maingear along with paint and aesthetic stuff. But that can easily run another couple grand, and that's just getting started. 5950X, dual RTX 3090, 128 GB of RAM, 4 TB fast SSD plus a bunch of spinners for bulk storage, custom hardline loop, braided cables, blah, blah, you can price a Maingear well over 10,000. Back I the pre Dell days Alienware was more like Maingear. Stuff wasn't as crazy then but for the time they made some really cool machines, provided you didn't mind paying for them. Now they just make basic prebuilts. Upside is they're much cheaper than they used to be.
The very meh ABS (Newegg) prebuilt with an 10850 I bought was 2,400, pretty much the same thing as an Alienware as well. I'd like to hope Alienware did some things Newegg failed at like ensuring the default motherboard overclock was actually stable with XMP enabled. Not a big deal to pop in the bios and enable XMP and then do a quick overclock so the machine doesn't crash, but that's really stuff that you'd expect to be done with any prebuilt. Pretty common for that not to be the case though. Case can't be much worse than the $50 Rosewill junk Newegg uses.
They're also cost competitive now though. Alienware used to be horrendously overpriced, similar to other boutiques like Maingear or Origin are nowadays. A basic high-end machine, 11700K, 3080, 16 GB of 3200 RAM, 512 + 1TB SSD with, Z590 chipset starts a bit over 3,000 with Maingear versus a bit over 2,500 with Alienware. Basically the same thing aside from the case. There's really no reason to spend the extra 500 for the Maingear if you're just doing their basic prebuilt configs as it's really the same thing.
See bold, I think you've just rode of to defend the wrong thing.
If I'm not mistaken the 11700K processor is a desktop processor. I'm discussing Laptops, strangely because that's what the poster bought. I said quite clearly Alienware laptops have always been just Meh! Regardless of before or after Dell's acquisition.
So sure you've defended the honor of Alienware Desktops which was never impugned. Congrats.
Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? You're the one said Alienware desktops had a great rep a decade ago. Which that's true of sorts. My point was they also were horrendously overpriced. Alienware when it was Alienware never made laptops. That was a Dell thing. Aside from really being the company that pioneered gaming laptops, Dell/Alienware has made, Dell made Alienware cost competitive. They're no longer a boutique SI. They build average computers at a competitive price, not 10,000 trophy rigs.
They're fine, but they're just a laptop. 10870/3080 is 2,600. MSI version of the laptop is 2,700. The major difference is MSI uses the 16 GB versus Alienware 8 GB. That's really only useful with a 4K display though. Again, it's cost competitive. Nothing really amazing about them. But then an Origin 3080 8GB with slowskey RAM is 3,000. It's a worse laptop for more money. Although to be honest specs don't really matter on laptops. A lower spec laptop is often faster than a higher spec one. Alienware doesn't have the best thermals, but Origin EVO 15S has some of the worst. Asus TUF series is the only thing that comes immediately to mind as a worse laptop than Origin. At least it's cheap though. Alienware, better laptop for less money. Origin, worse laptop for more money. Get the Alienware. I'd take an MSI or Asus over Alienware though. The Asus, if you can get it and you can stand the clickety clack with the 5900, 16 GB 3080, 32 GB of RAM, but no MUX.. Awesome workhorse/gaming laptop.
Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? You're the one said Alienware desktops had a great rep a decade ago. Which that's true of sorts. My point was they also were horrendously overpriced. Alienware when it was Alienware never made laptops. That was a Dell thing. Aside from really being the company that pioneered gaming laptops, Dell/Alienware has made, Dell made Alienware cost competitive. They're no longer a boutique SI. They build average computers at a competitive price, not 10,000 trophy rigs.
They're fine, but they're just a laptop. 10870/3080 is 2,600. MSI version of the laptop is 2,700. The major difference is MSI uses the 16 GB versus Alienware 8 GB. That's really only useful with a 4K display though. Again, it's cost competitive. Nothing really amazing about them. But then an Origin 3080 8GB with slowskey RAM is 3,000. It's a worse laptop for more money. Although to be honest specs don't really matter on laptops. A lower spec laptop is often faster than a higher spec one. Alienware doesn't have the best thermals, but Origin EVO 15S has some of the worst. Asus TUF series is the only thing that comes immediately to mind as a worse laptop than Origin. At least it's cheap though. Alienware, better laptop for less money. Origin, worse laptop for more money. Get the Alienware. I'd take an MSI or Asus over Alienware though. The Asus, if you can get it and you can stand the clickety clack with the 5900, 16 GB 3080, 32 GB of RAM, but no MUX.. Awesome workhorse/gaming laptop.
IIRC, Alienware, back in my day, used the huge Chieftec Dragon cases. They seemed to have a monopoly on the "lime green" variant.
I would love to get back into PC gaming. I've had an iMac for years now. I work off of a 5K, 27" iMac. I still haven't seen a PC monitor that, in person, would beat the display on this 2017 iMac for day to day telecommuting business. With the current parts shortage, building my own PC is cost-prohibitive, even if I could procure parts.
A tricked out Alienware I-9 with a 3080 starts at $3,100. I paid something $1,899 for my AIO top level off the shelf iMac back in 2018. It's a huge sunup and I'd still need a display.
At this point, and with these costs, I'm perfectly fine keeping my iMac for casual gaming like WoW, Hearthstone, remoting into my corporate laptop, and general business usage. I have a Series X in my living room for bigger gaming.
IIRC, Alienware, back in my day, used the huge Chieftec Dragon cases. They seemed to have a monopoly on the "lime green" variant.
I would love to get back into PC gaming. I've had an iMac for years now. I work off of a 5K, 27" iMac. I still haven't seen a PC monitor that, in person, would beat the display on this 2017 iMac for day to day telecommuting business. With the current parts shortage, building my own PC is cost-prohibitive, even if I could procure parts.
A tricked out Alienware I-9 with a 3080 starts at $3,100. I paid something $1,899 for my AIO top level off the shelf iMac back in 2018. It's a huge sunup and I'd still need a display.
At this point, and with these costs, I'm perfectly fine keeping my iMac for casual gaming like WoW, Hearthstone, remoting into my corporate laptop, and general business usage. I have a Series X in my living room for bigger gaming.
And a vaguely comparable iMac, i9, 32 GB of RAM, 5700XT, 1 TB SSD is... wait for it... $3,999. Ouch.
And for that you get a 10th Gen i9 (honestly no big loss there), slow RAM, no HDD, and an outdate $400 video card roughly equivalent to an RTX 2060 Super. You can get a very good 27" 2K G-Sync high-refresh rate monitor or 4K general purpose monitor for $500. With the extra $400 you can buy some games!
Alright guys and gals, I know you're out there! I am an avid PC gamer and love my FPS games (quake, left 4 dead 2, portal, TF2 etc).
Personally I haven't been able to thoroughly enjoy a console game since after Nintendo 64 because I really just can't stand the controllers on consoles. I've been looking at the PS4 and Xbox One to see if it's really worth a jump and I'm having a hard time with the whole going to a controller bit.
Are you PC or Console or both??
Let's hear it!
I'm more of a PC guy since I don't own a console anymore. However, I hate using the keyboard & mouse for some of the games. Thankfully, they make controllers for PC too. Anyways, I think consoles will be about dead here soon and PC will take over.
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