Considering an Alienware...questions

All good questions, I wonder why more folk aren't responding.

1. The case is molded plastic over a more conventional case, chieftec I believe. The finish is smooth paint over plastic, but you really have to scratch the hell out of it to reach the black plastic below. For all intents and purposes you may as well call it colored plastic, very durable.

2. The Predator case is anywhere from moderately un-offending to 747 take-off noisy depending what's in it. If quiet is a concern, you need to water cool it or look for a different manufacture. I have had an XPS Gen 3 in my possession for a couple of weeks and it was only slightly noiser than a Dimension 46 or 4700. The Alienware Predator is at least twice as noisey, but ten times cooler. Cooler as in and

2.5 The water-cooling AW provides for the 5500 and the 7500 is ok for cooling the cpu, but the general concensus is that there is no room for growth, ie dual video card and chipset water-cooling. However, the case is large and there is plenty of room if you add your own water-cooling after your purchase. (Beware of voiding your warentee, ask AW tech support which water cooling units you can install after your purchase.)

3. IMHO, it takes AW weeks to fix anything. My own personal expirence with AW customer support involved a 480W PSU. The system ran fine until I upgraded from a no-name nVidia 5750 card to a 6800Ultra. Then the comptuer would run for up to 45min and just shut off with no warning. There was a known issue with the model of PS I had in my unit and the time frame was right for me to have gotten one from the bad shipment. BUT....... and there is always a BUTT somewhere, since I did not purchase the video card from AW they would not replace the questionable Power Supply. I have been pissed ever since.

4. Typically a month for standard 7500 and 5500s, Longer for ALX machines, just ask SACalx.

Epilogue. I love Alieware Computers, but for me the after purchase expirence is better at Kmart.

I think all your questions will be answered by a little browsing of these forums.

I think Nebulous has done a great job answering the questions but I'll throw in my .02:

1. The outer shell is painted plastic and the paint job is high quality. I have a black Aurora and it looks great. I am going to use some of the car polish that I use on my truck and it should look even better.

2. See my sig for my system specs. I have the AlienIce with the noise dampening option and my system is not silent. Its not the loudest system that I own either, I have a home built system that I put together about 5 years ago and it is very loud, but I wasn't trying to make it quiet. I guess what I am saying is that my 7500 is not offensive but it is not silent either.

3. I have considered myself to be quite lucky. I have had very few problems with either of my systems so I have not used the service alot. My only big complaint was dealing with customer service after ordering my 7500. It seems like I got a different story every time I called, this was very upsetting.

4. When I placed my order the estimated ship date was 1 week from the time I ordered it. I did not expect it to actually ship in that time. I tracked it through the phase game and it looked like it might actually ship on time but for some reason it stayed in phase 12 or 13 for over a week. I kept calling and I kept getting answers that ranged from "oh yeah, your system in done and waiting for FedEX to pick it up" to "oh yeah, I see that you are in pre-production and the system will be built very soon". See what I mean about different answers to the same question.

All in all, I am very happy with both of my systems but that being said I would probably not buy an Alienware laptop again, it just doesn't seem cost effective. I know they are great systems but mine came very close to being a paperweight after only 18 months and I feel that if I am lucky to get 3 years out of it then I will be lucky. As far as desktop systems go, I would absolutely buy another Alienware desktop system in the future.

Good luck with your decision and let us know what you decide.

-Mark

The paint job is awesome I love it man! The finish it smooth. Let’s just put it this way I can see my reflection when I look at it. Noise, yea it’s a little noisy but you get used to it after a while it’s nothing to bad I mean if I could have the same exact specs on a dell that was quit over an AW that was a tad louder I would get the AW. Remember when you have fans that = noise and when it’s quit that = no fans witch means nothing to cool. Was it on time, mine came a day early. My experience with the support has been great the only trouble I have had is sometime not understanding them to well but you get that anywhere. Welcome to the forums man and hopefully a future AW family member

Freak,

c'mon neb. If your going to post comments like that at least explain that your "after purchase experience" is with Ebay. There are a lot of people that use this forum and post experiences they have had with Alienware. If anyone wants to check on those experiences, I suggest looking in the Review section.

Alrighty then,

Here is what I wrote about eBay "after purchase expirence" ...te he

http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...98#post1196298

eBay is what it is, a global garage sale. I have purchased a dozen computer related items from ebay, for a substancial savings over new, and have only been disappointed once. And yes, that failure was that GD "Dented Alienware Case." Regardless of its two dents, when I took it to work to package for return, a coworker was compelled enough to buy it on the spot. I had to notify seller that I would not be using the RMA issued me. So, I'm not impressed by those too pretentious to use eBay




In all fairness, some people get better traction with Alienware support than others. But on principal, I cant see why AW does things like refusing to replace an $80 PSU from a $2000 purchase. I know from vast expirence, well perhaps half-vast, pun intended, that Dell would have replaced the PSU.
__________________

In regards to cooling, it all depends on the components. When I got my system it was loud for my tastes. After modifying some settings in Abit's wonderful uGuru bios, the system was much more to my liking. At that point, the only real noticible thing at that point was the seeking from the raptors.

I have had no experience with the XPS, but my previous system which was a Precision 650 went from quiet to annoingly loud depending on how warm it was inside the room.

Ahem....
nebulous,
I respect you, and your posts to this community. I mean no disservice to you and I just had to get that out of the way, because of the following:

It has been almost a month, and I still don't have the power supply that should have been sent to me within two days. I have called, e-mailed, wrote, and still no power supply. They shipped one out, but they shipped it to New Jersey even though I live in Napa, CA! Mind you, I have nothing against New Jersey. It's a beautiful state once you get away from the city, but I have never lived there, and yet Dell is insistent on sending the warranty items to N.J. The reason for this boils down to Dell not following through with my request. After repeated attempts to try and get Dell to update my address, they still have my system listed as being owned by AAFES. Yes, I bought the system new through Dell's website via AAFES, as they have a contract set up with the US Military to offer special discounts to US Military members. However, I can't believe that they still don't update their systems after I called, e-mailed, wrote, and explained the situation. This power supply issue has gone from bad to worse: I have lost part of the mobo, and it has damaged 512mb of my 1GB of RAM. Anyway, that's my .02 worth, and I can't ever recommend Dell again after this issue.

mb67,

We're in the same boat. Funny it's over the same component. At least Dell tried to send you a psu; too bad they were too thick to send it to the right place. Alienware makes great machines, I just wish they were not so strict about their warrentees and a little more generous with spare parts.

I'll get over the PSU issue, some decade.

Got any potted meat with that PSU?

I gotta say nebulous is cool and is a great contributer to this Forum, but I've never understood the trip that nebulous had with the AW PSU and the weird GPU(s) thang.

Yes, AW admitted that they had a bad batch of AW Branded PSUs that went out the first of year and AW was proactive on correcting that issue. The few people that apparently received those faulty PSUs were taking care of on warranty.

You keep bringing it up nebulous...

Zoid

neb has been cool here but the issue is with the warranty that is only available to owners that buy an Alienware from Alienware Corp. He does have a good point that maby these parts could be made available in the Alienware Gear Shop. I doubt that an Alienware branded PSU will ever be found in the AW Gear Shop but maby they could put a different one in the online store. Everything recieved from Alienware is documented.

Darth,

A, my A51 was a purchased directly from Alienware. I have since upgraded everything, But at the time of the PSU snafu, the only thing that wasn't from AW direct to me was the BFG6800U that I put in it.

Ok, now even I am tired of talking about this psu thing....

That is a tough situation. I agree if AW aknowledged that the PSU didn't perform to standards, it should be replaced. However, if it worked with the machine they sent, and the problems occurred due to a third party piece of hardware, then the problem isn't with AW.

If you buy a Ford Taurus, and take out the tiny motor, and put in a tuned one, and the transmission fails due to the extra power, it's not Ford's fault.

I suppose if you could show the psu didn't perform to advertised voltages, then you'd have a pretty good argument, but with the raised psu requirement for the 6800 ultra over previous cards, I'd have to say the situation isn't clear cut.

sorry neb I forgot about that. Dam, I thought that was resolved. All you had to do was reinstall the AW vid card and send it in for repair. Thought you were going to return your new v-card and buy one from AW. Then if the power supply had issues it would have been covered by Alienware as a forced upgrade. what happened to that plan?.

That plan was done and done. I purchased a BFG6800U from AW and in stock form (400mhz/1000mhz if im not mistaken) it performed as advertised. My next step was going to be to over-clock the "AW" 6800U to 425/1100, the BFG "Overclocked" speed, but I called Monarch about returning the first 6800U and was informed that it was day 32 and they would not be taking the card back. My Fault, I should have OCd the AW card and watched the PSU fail, but I didn't. I returned the AW 6800U, and paid the 15% restocking fee. I didn't have an SLI mobo at the time, they where going for about $269, so keeping both 6800s didn't make sense. I ended up buying a PcP&C Turbo-Cool 510 SLI PSU($239) and the spontanuous shutdown problem went away. (15% x $425 + $239= 1 unhappy AW customer)

With all that, it really depends on what side of the table you want to view it from, I could certainly argue Alienware's point that they are not responsible for the consequences of 3rd party hardware. But, From my perspective, an $80 powersupply changed entirely my after purchase expirence with AW. Finally, the thing that keeps me angry is that Dell wouldn't have even asked; they simply would have sent me another powersupply and I would have duely sent back the one I was having problems with.

well neb, I remember we spun that AW warranty upside down and inside out to put that plan together in order to have that psu replaced with a forced upgrade because the issue was found by using a non-AW part. sorry it went down like that. Alienware agreed with the way the failure was explained but it just needed to be reproduced using the AW card. well, thanks for the update. it sucks to hear about **** hapening to one of our own.

Don't tell anybody, but even though I've been irritated for months over the PSU I still have an Alienware License Plate Frame on my car. Wouldn't want anybody thinking i was an AW fanboy or anything.