Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I know theres a few techy types on here so any advice would be appreciated
Im looking to build this purely for hi end gaming and would like to future proof it if possible a bit too.
My budget is circa €1500 so if you can fiddle around and come up with something better, cool!

My main questions are:
Is the gfx card/RAM a powerful one/set?
Is the soundbar any use as a sound system? (never even heard of it since today tbh)
The solid state drvie option only seems to go to 512 gb - are they essential these days or?
it dosent come with an optical drive but are these a bit defunct with everything online now?

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/alienware-x51-r3/pd?ref=PD_OC

Base Andromeda R3 CTO Base
Operating System Windows 10 Home English
Processor Intel® Core™ i5-6400 Processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.3GHz with Turbo Boost Technology)
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 with 4GB GDDR5
Chassis Options Alienware X51 R3 Chassis, Liquid Cooled without Optical Drive
Cable UK Power Cord (240W/330W)
Regulatory Label Regulatory label for 330W
Memory 8GB Dual Channel DDR4 2133MHz (4GBx2)
Hard Drive 1TB 3.5inch Serial ATA (7,200 Rpm) Hard Drive
CD ROM/DVD ROM Optical Drive Not included
Wireless Intel® Single Band Wireless-AC 3165 + Bluetooth 4.0
Keyboard UK/Irish (QWERTY) Alienware Multimedia Keyboard
Mouse Alienware Standard Optical Mouse
Dell 2.0 USB Soundbar AC511

thanks in advance.

I recently got the X-51 R3 myself! It is awesome. You will not be disappointed.

I don't tend to play FPS very much, but Mechwarrior Online I run at its highest settings with no slowdown.

The computer is silent once the gel warms up and it starts running- it does make a very disturbing gurgling sound on start up, before it heats up enough to become more liquid.

I can't remember the last time I used an optical drive- I suppose there must be usb versions out there if you need them.

If you are planning to run multiple monitors, be aware that it only includes one HDMI port- so your monitors need to be USB capable to handle it. Mine were too old, so I'm looking at a new monitor as my next upgrade.

First question: do you have the capability to build a system yourself? If so, that's almost always both cheaper & more effective. Though it won't be as physically sexy as this box.

As to your questions:
1) The 970 GTX is a solid card, at a good price point. I use one to drive a 2550x1440 display, and it has no issues keeping up with most games. Diminishing returns kicks in hard over this level (e.g., you can pay 30% more, but only get another 5% performance).

2) No idea. But if you ever want to change out speakers, that's an easy change.

3) This system (like many) anticipates that you'll use the SSD for the operating system and maybe a few key applications, and maybe load your current favorite game or two onto it for max speed/minimum loading time. You'll use the HDD for most everything else. It's a good combination, as going fully SSD remains very pricey (>x4 pricing multiplier between the cheaper 1TB SSDs and 1TB HDDs).

4) Optical drives aren't obsolete, as sometimes you actually want to create physical backups, or install things like tax software, or watch media on dics. They're also cheap, and easy to install...but not on this custom system, which has no bays for such a drive.

*edit: Good point from Gitzbitah; there are external optical drive options available, should you need them, and this model does have USB 3 ports.

I have to ask the same as Janthkin. Can you build a pc yourself? I ask because for that price tag I'd be looking a bit better. An I5-6600 and 16gig of ram for a start. The graphics chip is good but you've no idea whether it's a good or cheap card they're putting in. I picked up a Samsung external blu-ray player for my itx as there was no room for an optical drive. It's very useful.

You do tend to pay over the odds for Alienware, however these days I think that 'its cheaper to build it yourself' is a myth. There's not a lot of profit in selling PCs any more, and system builders benefit from economies of scale that the guy doing it at home doesn't. I've built several home PCs in the past, I probably wouldn't bother again.

Thanks for the advice peeps. Unfortunately self build isnt an option, I can just about connect a hard drive up!
I agree AW is more expensive but my last one lasted 6 years and ran most games very well, so Im going to stick by them.

Overall do you think that build will handle the newer gen of games (GTA5, F4, DS3) etc and is somewhat future proofed too?
thanks again.

Yeah, I'd stay clear of any PC where you don't know what brand of GFX card or motherboard is going in it. It's all very well saying GTX 970, but there are load of those on the market and I'd be massively peeved if I got one and it only had a single output! It pays to do research into these things given the total cost of the system is not insignificant.

Rather than entirely building one yourself, you could buy a bare bones bundle that would allow you to fit in things like hard drives, GFX cards etc of your own choosing. I'd strongly recommend that over a prebuilt system like this one, which is going to be using very low spec important components.

I've just clicked on the link and seen that these are some sort of strange tiny form factor machine, I'd stay well away if I were you.

 Ratius wrote:
Overall do you think that build will handle the newer gen of games (GTA5, F4, DS3) etc and is somewhat future proofed too?
thanks again.

I'd want double the RAM for a new system. Not essential now, but it's the sort of investment that pays off (3 years ago, you could do just fine with 4GB, but 8GB is pretty much minimum now; I'd expect a similar doubling sometime in the next couple years).

Generally, that's a decent pre-built, which I'm kind of surprised about. Doubling the RAM would be a good start, but that's easy to do later.

For the record, for the same price, I roughed out a build with an i5-6600, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD/250GB SSD, GTX970, and a bunch of solid Corsair peripherals (K70RGB, Sabre Mouse, H2100 headset).

You'd be surprised how easy self build is these days. A few cases are screwless now, and the manuals for hook ups are no more complicated than putting together IKEA furniture. It only gets complicated when you start adding LEDs and water cooling.

If you don't want to build, you could see if there are any good computer stores in your area. If yes, order all the parts online, bring them to the store, and pay for them to assemble.

But, if you're set on pre-built, that looks decent and shockingly doesn't try to upsell you on an i7 but compensate with a 950.

 Blacksails wrote:
Doubling the RAM would be a good start, but that's easy to do later.

Given the liquid cooling and the custom form factor, I wouldn't want to assume that upgrading the RAM would be easy later. No idea how many DIMM slots this motherboard has.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Doubling the RAM would be a good start, but that's easy to do later.

Given the liquid cooling and the custom form factor, I wouldn't want to assume that upgrading the RAM would be easy later. No idea how many DIMM slots this motherboard has.

Hmmm, fair point.

In the options section, there's a drop down for RAM. Has options for 8GB (base), 12, and 16. The 16 option is an additional 150(symbol for euro), which considering that 16GB can be bought for ~70Euro, is quite extreme.

Safe to assume there's at least 3 slots if they're offering a 12GB option though.

Yeah Im a bit torn now, asked a few other techys and theyve all said overall its overpriced but to be fair to Dell, I've had zero issues with them over 15 years of buying so am sort of going down the safe route.
Leaving aside the value for money aspect and assuming I splash the cvash, otherwise ok you think?
I might upgrade the RAM though.

I've just clicked on the link and seen that these are some sort of strange tiny form factor machine, I'd stay well away if I were you.

Can you explain? I thought its just the chasis thats "funkied up", the internal components should be good no?

 Ratius wrote:
Thanks for the advice peeps. Unfortunately self build isnt an option, I can just about connect a hard drive up!
I agree AW is more expensive but my last one lasted 6 years and ran most games very well, so Im going to stick by them.

Overall do you think that build will handle the newer gen of games (GTA5, F4, DS3) etc and is somewhat future proofed too?
thanks again.

It's seriously easier than you think. For the vast majority of parts they only fit in one slot, one way and won't break unless you go full gorilla grip with them. If you can fit together lego or use a cartridge based video game system you've already got all the skills you need to do your own build.

Folks are usually intimidated by it but really it's the kind of thing a 10-year old could do with relatively minimal guidance. Give your self a bit more credit man.

Anyway a 970 isn't going to get you 60FPSSuperMax forever but so long as you don't need to run at high resolutions and don't mind playing at less than max settings it should serve you well for a few years to come.

 Ratius wrote:

I might upgrade the RAM though.

Through the website/pre-built option? If so, they're gouging you, hard. Like charging nearly quadruple what it would cost to go from 8 to 16GB.

Bummer.
This is harder than I thought it was gonna be.....

 Ratius wrote:
Bummer.
This is harder than I thought it was gonna be.....

I'm telling ya, if you've built lego, can read, and have another computer to either look up something you can't find in the manual or watch one or two assembly walk throughs, you can build one yourself in less than two hours start to finish.

If you do, you get a better product for cheaper, know exactly what's in it, and you won't be afraid to upgrade as you know it literally inside and out.

All that said, the base one you posted first isn't terrible, honestly. Its a decent processor matched to a solid card and a respectable amount of RAM. No real bottlenecks, just not as overall powerful as you could go with a custom rig.

As a comparison however, you could build a rig (roughly, using PCPartpicker) for ~1300 (give or take 100 based on shipping and local price fluctuations) that has a significantly better graphics card (980ti) and 16GB of RAM with an overclockable i5-6600k. The downside are that it would be a larger case than the X51, and it doesn't come with peripherals, not that I'd want the Dell/Alienware peripherals anyways.

Its the age old debate of effort vs. outcome. The easier solution here is to buy pre-built, which will get a decent rig, or you could spend the same dollar and invest some time to get something a decent margin better.

 Ratius wrote:

I've just clicked on the link and seen that these are some sort of strange tiny form factor machine, I'd stay well away if I were you.

Can you explain? I thought its just the chasis thats "funkied up", the internal components should be good no?

Sometimes, to make odd form-factor boxes, the manufacturer gets some custom pieces made (strangely-shaped graphics cards & cooling solutions in particular). Because they are essentially one-off pieces, support can be a bit trickier. The fact that they advertise the graphics as "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970" in particular makes me suspect they've gone this route, as NVIDIA usually doesn't sell consumer GeForce products themselves; they sell chips to Asus, EVGA, etc., who then produce graphics cards. If it is in fact NVIDIA-branded, then it's probably more like the work they do with laptop manufacturers, where NVIDIA produces the whole module. It's not a bad thing per se (same chip, same drivers, generally solid quality), just something to understand.

I'd also expect the HDD to be a laptop drive (2.5 inches), rather than a desktop drive (3.5 inches), to save space. For that matter, they might be using laptop RAM as well (which doesn't fully excuse the price-gouging, but is slightly mitigating). I wonder if anyone has done a tear-down on this machine?

Think about it this way: if you buy this machine, you're essentially buying a PC console; you probably won't be able to upgrade or modify it in any significant way. You'll get 2 years of great use (settings mostly maxed out at 1080p), and another 2-3 years of pretty good use (no more maxed out settings, but games will still look very pretty), and then it will be time to throw it away.

If you built your own, you'd have an extra 4-6 hours of headache up front as you picked components & learned to build the machine, and you wouldn't get the form factor, but it would cost you at least 33% less. Again, you'd get 2 years of great use out of it; at that point, you could invest in a replacement graphics card (bringing you closer to the original cost), and get another 2 years of great use out of it; you might be able to repeat that cycle one additional time, before the tech has shifted enough to require building a new machine again. (These days, games tend to be GPU limited, rather than CPU; I haven't upgraded my CPU in 5 years, but I'm on my 3rd graphics card.)

 Ratius wrote:

I've just clicked on the link and seen that these are some sort of strange tiny form factor machine, I'd stay well away if I were you.

Can you explain? I thought its just the chasis thats "funkied up", the internal components should be good no?

How could you tell if the components are good? The brands aren't listed (which is an immediate no-no for me). I'd actually suspect quite a bit of cost saving going on wherever they can get away with it so I'd expect fairly mediocre performance from the heart of the machine.

In terms of form factor, what I mean is that this is a really small PC. I'd assume it's using a lot of laptop components. I appreciate that liquid cooling means that technically you don't need to worry about air flow around components, but it's not just that. It won't be using standard sized components, which probably means that you'll never be able to just drop in your own upgrades. If you're concerned about it being futureproof then that's a big deal. I just don't know why people would spend a lot of money to avoid the modular benefits you get with PC gaming. When I wanted a better gaming experience from my machine a few years ago, I could just spend a bit of cash on a new GFX card. Turned out I needed to upgrade the power supply (went from 300 to 850W). Buying some funky little Dell thing would make all that impossible.

You can buy 'barebones' bundles these days which usually include an assembled motherboard, CPU and RAM already in the case, selected to be compatible together. You just drop in the GFX card you want (and you even get to choose the exact make, compare reviews etc so you don't get lumped with a turkey), an appropriate power supply and connect your SSD/HDD/optical drives as required. If you can use a screwdriver and understand that different shaped connectors probably don't go together then you should be fine.

 Janthkin wrote:
I wonder if anyone has done a tear-down on this machine?

2mins of google searching found me this. Its a late 2015 review with a 960 instead of the 970, bit gives you an idea.

If you are looking at specs, the GTX970 is min-spec to run an Oculus Rift setup.
Solid state drives are essential these days, if only for fast-boot-up. Install Windows on that, and only system stuff like antivirus. All installs with an optional install path go on the big drive. If one drive ever fails, you have the option to have copies of important stuff on the other.

Unless you have an odd requirement (mine is 3 monitors), pick something you know you want to use, and find the min and recommended specs for that.

As for self-build, there's nothing to it these days.
Download a random motherboard manual, and have a quick read. Ignore the lists of options, as everything works out of the box these days, and just needs slotting together. If it doesn't scare you off, go for it.

'All' you need are:
Case (with fans),
PSU,
Motherboard,
CPU and fan,
RAM (use a pair of sticks, and no more than that),
Video card,
HDD (I always use a fast HDD for boot and OS, and another large HDD for installs),
Optical drive, usually shared between machines.

I would avoid both Dell and Alienware, both are overpriced for what you get.

I recently built my own PC and it was much cheaper than what I could get at Dell and it was very easy to put together.

Newer motherboards actually color code and label all of the paces you need to connect things and my power supply had everything pre-bundled and labeled for me. I have one of those screwless cases as well.

 Blacksails wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Bummer.
This is harder than I thought it was gonna be.....

I'm telling ya, if you've built lego, can read, and have another computer to either look up something you can't find in the manual or watch one or two assembly walk throughs, you can build one yourself in less than two hours start to finish.

If you do, you get a better product for cheaper, know exactly what's in it, and you won't be afraid to upgrade as you know it literally inside and out.

All that said, the base one you posted first isn't terrible, honestly. Its a decent processor matched to a solid card and a respectable amount of RAM. No real bottlenecks, just not as overall powerful as you could go with a custom rig.

As a comparison however, you could build a rig (roughly, using PCPartpicker) for ~1300 (give or take 100 based on shipping and local price fluctuations) that has a significantly better graphics card (980ti) and 16GB of RAM with an overclockable i5-6600k. The downside are that it would be a larger case than the X51, and it doesn't come with peripherals, not that I'd want the Dell/Alienware peripherals anyways.

Its the age old debate of effort vs. outcome. The easier solution here is to buy pre-built, which will get a decent rig, or you could spend the same dollar and invest some time to get something a decent margin better.

This. I built my own system and all the computers for my family. It literally takes 30 minutes to assemble the parts and put it together for a standard PC used by someone who doesn't power-game. My system took about 2 hours because I added liquid cooling and dropped a screw

There are tutorials online, instructions come with the case, moboard, etc. If you're feeling particularly antsy; you can look into a local class. I don't know about your location but we have adult ed centers (sometimes Career-Tech centers or libraries as well) in the US which offer free or cheap classes on this type of thing.