re: Alienware Computers

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1.5 GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580

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That's a 4 year old card. Not sayings its bad but 4 years is a long time in gpu development.

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thats true..but if you're paying $700 for the system insetad of $3500..that's a lot of room for buying a faster card.

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you claimed to be getting a fully functional "top of the line" alienware for $1000.

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. you can routinely get one from the refurb site ..TOP OF THE LINE..for $1k or less.

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your example is simply not a "top of the line", period. quit moving the goalposts.

its the fricking tech board.
nut up or shut up. guessing and pissing matches are for the OT

tech board is serious business >:|

You're getting a little irrational. We get it. You bought an Alienware and like it, and you don't like people saying Alienwares are overpriced. This is exactly what Mac buyers do. Nobody is saying Alienware makes bad machines or that anyone who buys them won't be happy.

I will concede that, only with a 30% off coupon, the price on those refurbed scratched/dented Auroras are decent when compared to a custom build with brand new components. The reason for that is because the core components in it are EOL. That GPU is Fermi architecture and is nearly 4 years old and is outperformed by basically every mid-level GPU released in the past couple of years. That is the lowest end Socket 2011 CPU you can buy and is outperformed by its Socket 1155, 1150, and Ivy-E counterparts. The vendor prices are nearly the same for all of them, too, because the online retailers don't drop prices on EOL CPUs very much.

For what Dell likely paid for those core components 3 years ago, they are probably taking a small loss selling this refurb. With a coupon, it's priced to move, sort of. The profit margin percentage decreases with price. For a gaming PC, it's configured poorly, but that is common with gaming PC vendors.

If you'd like, I could search ebay for used parts which would still carry a longer warranty than the refurbed alienware.

So, $700 for that build? Fine, for what you get. A better performing PC for GAMING can be built for around the same. However, there is no definition, rational or distorted, that would come close to calling that PC top of the line.

when it comes to pc gaming builds, ilike is yoda and cad is jar jar

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when it comes to pc gaming builds, ilike is yoda and cad is jar jar

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thats not what this thread is about

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ya'll started the pissing match about what constitutes the latest & greatest. of course shite changes monthly and gets better. nobody is debating that.

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We weren't really a fan of the whole "top of the line" phrasing you used, when there is zero truth to it. Not even an interpretation. It's completely false.

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you do understand this is in no way scratched or dented right? they come in a full alienware box (more of a crate for the aurora) and every component is sealed up and brand new. if anything they've had more tested done on them since they had to recondition them.

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Fair enough. I didn't know that in particular about Dell. My interpretation of scratch & dent as it pertains to a number of manufacturers in a variety of industries is that the phrase is used to exclude cosmetic blemishes from the warranty. Refurbished PCs are generally unused builds of various ages that were either canceled orders or customer returns, and may or may not have suffered a blemish along the way. If the refurbed Dells/Alienwares come in mint or near-mint condition, that's great.

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what goes out on a computer?? the hard drive? that's about it. if its not DOA the day you get it..then more than likely nothing will go wrong for a couple years.

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Correct, but I threw the warranty in there because the point here is that if I scour ebay for used parts, the build would be better than the aurora for the same price, and wanted to clarify that it would not be at the sacrifice of warranty/quality. However, I am not interested in splitting hairs about the value. With the 30% off coupon, the refurb Auroras listed are a good deal for what you get. It is absolutely the only scenario in which an unused Alienware is not grossly overpriced. I frequently recommend certain types of users to just buy off the shelf. Despite what people here say, learning to build and then actually building a PC does require a certain investment of time that has a point of diminishing returns, especially if you aren't even buying it for yourself.

It's easy to define "top of the line" when it comes to a specific PC vendor. You find their most current and most powerful brand offering, and tack on all of the available hardware upgrades. The names (Aurora, X51) are more indicative of the form factor than the performance, since the branding may not change for several generations. For example, you can configure a new X51 to greatly outperform an older-gen Aurora R4 or even a current-gen lower-end R4. But a current R4 can be configured to be more powerful than the highest configuration of a current X51, thus the top configuration of an R4 would be considered 'top of the line' (and would be in the $6,000 realm).

For general desktop PC builds, top of the line is open to interpretation, because if you define it as "the absolute best you can get," you still have to tack parameters onto it. Is it the best you can fit in a full-tower? The best you can get without needing two power supplies? The best single-CPU solution? Best single-GPU solution? If you throw out all sensibility, you can end up with dual 12-core Xeons, a couple of R9-295X2's, 64GB of low-CAS DDR3 2400, half a dozen 1TB SSDs in RAID 10, etc. and spend upwards of $15,000.

At minimum, "top of the line" should mean current-generation architecture, maybe with flagship components, or the highest end components that would provide noticeable performance enhancements to whatever will be done with the PC. Though that latter criterion sends us further into the land of ridiculous builds.