questions about Alienware quality/upgradeability?

[asim1999]

dont worry, i am building my own Haswell-E PC, not getting an alienware. i was just curious, how good is the quality of the case, the motherboard, the cooling and the power supply? how far can you overclock with the included cooling? and how good is the power supply? Does if fail easily, and is it 80+ rated? also how easily it to upgrade an alienware desktop and build a new system inside the case? 

[RelentlessAF]

I'm pretty sure you can customize what goes in them, they aren't OEM parts they are just regular components that they build for you.

[DarrenP]

I'm pretty sure you can customize what goes in them, they aren't OEM parts they are just regular components that they build for you.

The motherboards are OEM, usually everything is OEM including the RAM, and GPU. 

 

OP, personally i would build it myself. I mean if you're going to go for a custom desktop. I'd suggest the likes of Digital Storm, Origin PC, Falcon Northwest, any of those make great PC's. Dell's Alienwares just fall behind in, because they OEM everything they can. 

[loccilucas]

dont worry, i am building my own Haswell-E PC, not getting an alienware. i was just curious, how good is the quality of the case, the motherboard, the cooling and the power supply? how far can you overclock with the included cooling? and how good is the power supply? Does if fail easily, and is it 80+ rated? also how easily it to upgrade an alienware desktop and build a new system inside the case? 

Well judging from my freinds old aurora, the included powersupply was absolute shit, the mobo was absolute shit, the watercooler was absolute shit, but the case its self was quite high quality but It would be hard to build a custom pc inside it as the case was very custom built for that specific mobo.   

 

Mabye they are different now though as his aurora was bought in 2009.

[DarrenP]

Well judging from my freinds old aurora, the included powersupply was absolute shit, the mobo was absolute shit, the watercooler was absolute shit, but the case its self was quite high quality but It would be hard to build a custom pc inside it as the case was very custom built for that specific mobo.   

 

Mabye they are different now though as his aurora was bought in 2009.

Not much has changed, Their PSU's are usually bare minimum for the use case, the Motherboards are OEM garbage, and the Water Cooler too. I mean yeah the case is cool. But not worth the expensive price tag in my opinion. 

[loccilucas]

Not much has changed, Their PSU's are usually bare minimum for the use case, the Motherboards are OEM garbage, and the Water Cooler too. I mean yeah the case is cool. But not worth the expensive price tag in my opinion. 

yeah it was all crap, the mobo was a brown PCB lol.

[TheRunningOtaku]

Personally, I'd buy a cheap one and use the parts for a lower end build, and use the case for my build

That's what I do with all prebuilts that my family buys. Prebuilt cases are generally good.

[asim1999]

i am building it myself, ordering my cpu and motherboard and ram tonight, got the case, power supply, cooler,and PC toolkit and anti static strap

[asim1999]

how BAD are the power supplies on the desktops? do they fail quickly and explode like a cheap Alpine unit, or do they come with over-voltage protection and and other safety mechanisms like trusted PSUs from Seasonic, EVGA, Corsair and the like?

[quan289]

Power supplies from these brands generally aren't terrible. While they aren't aesthetically pleasing, may be noisy, and may not have the best connectivity for an enthusiast level build, but they are capable of outputting what they are rated for safely and aren't badly build. likes to put out. For example, the Hipro-build (same OEM that Corsair had started to used in some of their TX and RM line) 305w PSU that had been pulled out of a lower-end computer had shown to be able to output the entirety of its rated wattage and more (up to 400w) safely. http://hardwareinsights.com/wp/dell-h305p-01-power-supply-review/

 

Here's another, better build, 750w PSU with full Japanese cap that had been pull out of a Dell XPS and capable of outputting 900w with still being within ATX specification. http://hardwareinsights.com/wp/dell-h750p-00-review/4/

There are trash PSU that can't even output half of what it is rated for from the likes of Diablotek, Logisy, Coolmax, etc. Even from a more well-established brand such as Thermaltake, Cooler Master, etc (that isn't to say that all of them are like that, but they did release some bad units in the past).

 

What you may see in an Alienware is a Newton Power PSU. Here's a discussion on an older, and you will see people there have confident in this server-grade PSU. http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6817

It's manufactured by Delta - largest PSU OEM. In the consumer, enthusiast market, they make high quality PSU for Antec.

[asim1999]

thanks

[quan289]

thanks

 

You're welcome.

Btw, be wary of proprietary design PSUs. I'm not 100% sure how it is right now, but many company had different pinouts on their PSU, so you can only used it with their computer.

[APrettyCoolWalrus]

Hey OP, instead of buying a pre-built PC why don't you go down to Microcenter or another store like that, pick out the parts you want, and ask them to build it for you?