Brandon's Alienware 5550 Review

As you may have seen from the General Thread:Thanks I have had the priviledge of "listening in" to this forum for a couple of months. My wife and I made a decision to buy my son, Brandon, a gaming machine. I often built my own computers in the past, but these days I'm like the plumber's wife when it comes to our home computers. I'll get around to working on them manana! Someone once said that the reason to build vs. buy with regard to gaming machines is because you enjoy spending your free time with the build and the support. These days I would just rather do other things. (Ice fishing anyone?) After all of the reviews, comments, trials, and triumphs I knew that we needed to procure and AW box. Well, it's here and so I get the opportunity to share the good times with this community. Hope you enjoy the pic's and the screenshots!

First things first, we had a vote on the general thread and by a landslide it was concluded by this forum to let Brandon buy a game for his new box rather than confiscate the funds to recoup shipping cost. Obviously I should have published this vote on the Forbes.com forum because everyone wanted him to buy a game. Thanks guys.

Brandon and the game he selected...Drumrolll please..TADA!



He wanted HL2 because it also came with CS:S. He advises me that "Duh..two games for the price of one!"

(Lucky devil got his looks from his mother and his practicality from his ...mother...)

Here's what we ordered:

[1] Area-51® 5550

Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support with Onsite Service
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2
AlienRespawn: Alienware® Respawn Recovery Kit
Chassis: Alienware® Full-Tower Case (480-Watt PS) - Conspiracy Blue
Power Supply: Alienware® 480 Watt Power Supply
Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 550 w/ HT Technology 3.4GHz 1MB Cache
Motherboard: Alienware® PCI Express Motherboard with Intel® 925XE Chipset 1066/800MHz FSB
Memory: 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 GT PCI Express 256MB DDR3 w/Digital and S-Video Out
Chassis Upgrades: AlienIce™ 2.0 Video Cooling System - Fusion Red
System Drive: High Performance - Serial ATA - 120GB Serial ATA 7,200 RPM w/8MB Cache
Optical Drive One: Lite-On® 16x DVD / 52x32x52x CD-RW Drive
Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround Firewire (IEEE® 1394)
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Portable Storage : Alienware® 10-in-1 Digital Media Reader / Writer
Display One: No Monitor
Display Two: No Monitor
Speakers: Creative Inspire® T3000 2.1 29-Watt Speakers
Keyboard: Microsoft® Basic Keyboard Black
Mouse: Microsoft® Basic Optical Mouse Black
Alienware Exclusive Offers: Gamespot Complete - Free 90-day Trial (a $20.85 value)
Alienware Exclusive Offers: 10% off your next EB Games online purchase
Free Alienware T-Shirt: Free Alienware® T-Shirt - Black
Free Alienware Mousepad: Free Alienware® Mousepad
Desktop Enhancements: Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
AlienInspection: AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection - $99.99 Value - FREE!
AlienWiring: AlienWiring - Exclusive Internal Wire Management - $99.99 Value - FREE!

Brandon

I think we did well in the Phase Game

Phase Game Guide:

Phase 1-> 26 Mar
Phase 2-> |
Phase 3-> 28 Mar
Phase 4-> 1 Apr
Phase 5-> 6 Apr
Phase 6-> |
Phase 7-> |
Phase 8-> |
Phase 9-> 7 Apr
Phase 10-> |
Phase 11-> |
Phase 12-> |
Phase 13->8 Apr
Phase 14->8 Apr

Deeeelivery!!!

The FedEx couldn't figure out why I wanted a picture of him, but he was a good sport about it. The only thing he wanted to know was what the heck was in this box anyway. It turns out that he's delivered more than a few of these bad boys over the last several weeks and couldn't figure out what was in the box. I told him that I couldn't be specific, but if he was ever abducted by aliens he might get one too. (I did not go into the specific "Crisco" details ala Darth Beavis... )

A friend of mine who knows what's going on asked "What the hell did you take a picture of the delivery for?" I tried to explain that it is kind of a tradition on these boards to capture this magical event. hehe.

It's official, I've been surpassed...

First thing my younger son says to me when I brought this in was:
"So this is a way better computer than what you have, heh?" Crap, crap, crap...yes...crap, crap.

I've tortured him enough, now for his moment of shock.

I picked up Brandon from school. The first thing he asks me is "has it come in yet?" I reply "what the heck are you refering too?"

Yes, I feigned ignorance and mumbled something about the fact that the storm must have delayed the shipment or something. Meanwhile, I had the whole rig tucked away up in my office.

Boy was he suprised!

"It's mine, all mine...get away from it...can you help set it up?"

I'm worried that he's not going to be able to hold a steady girlfriend now. Ah, crap. Maybe my other boys will give me some grandkids someday...

"Yea dude, no I'm not joking dude, it's really rad, dude..."

Bragging to his buds...oh how I remember doing the same with regard to my acquisisition of my spankin new Commodore 64...er..Apple IIe? Crap, I'm getting old.

The obligitory goody close up.

Man, notice how the kid is starting to drift out of the picture? (Ooooooo, what is that...hmm...hey who the hell are you and what are you doing in my office!)

What the hell? This thing is absolutely HUGE!

No really, this is the biggest chassis I have ever seen outside of a datacenter. I haven't seen anything this monstrous since I looked down during a water skiing trip and noticed that I'd lost my trunks somewhere!

Up close and personal

So cool. More to come as we get the thing set up and rolling!

Father of the year award anyone?

The dishelveled, vacant appearance is contrived. I asssure you.

Just before his Mother made him come down to help cook dinner! Sweet!

Well it's all set up and rolling. The only problem so far is that the Alien Eyes are definitely NOT glowing! [This has been fixed, see post #23 in this thread if you want to see some amazing cusomter service.]( ) I'll put a multimeter on and see if we just have a lose connection. I can't imagine shipping this guy back though, just to fix that. Loaded HL2...five frickin CD's? Are you kidding me? The machine responds fast to everything. Kinda reminds of driving a real performance car for the first time, just seems to "corner" like a dream and has some heavy acceleration. The sound is awesome and the Benq FP71E LCD looks crisp and sharp. The LCD is advertised with a 12ms response time, so I'm curious to see if there is any shadowing or phase issues. He'll be out tonight on the CS server. Not sure what his name is, but I'll just have him announce himself as Brandon. Do me a favor and kick him around some.

Funny you should say that, I'm thinking about asking Brandon to buy me an AW SLI rig for fathers day so I don't have to keep getting on his machine! (Course, he would have to get a special June allowance "bonus" from his mother for this to happen. Keep me in your prayers, fellas!)

Plain, it does help. I'm on it this evening, cause I gotta have those glowing eyes. I'll take a picture in the dark and post.

Everyone on this board has helped. We made out like bandits because I got to learn from you guys.

Yang88She even showed my son a cool new hand gesture! (Now I just hope that he stops using the "old" cool hand gesture that I taught him while I was in heavy traffic...)

MJDart, You may not realize how much you did for me. The watercooling pics did far more to help me select AW than you know. The cooling was cool, but the up close pictures of the layout and internal components gave me so much information. I didn't realize before then that these things are not proprietary. They are comprised of quality components from brands I could recognize. That if Brandon decided he wanted to geek out his box, he could. (and hence the simple "one year" warranty...since he will void it soon I hope) They are well built and, as I saw yesterday, frickin massive.

Seriously, all, this chassis is so damn big. It was the most surprising thing of the whole experience. Litterally overwhelming for a home machine. Look at the picture of Brandon at the desk. This is a BIG desk, that is a 17" monitor, Brandon is 6'1" tall. What is the biggest thing in the picture? Warning, don't drag this thing to a LAN party without a 3/4 ton truck because it's heavy too.

(BTW, how is the baseball going this year, MJ?)

In short, we're having a great time and you guys are primarily to blame!