Originally Posted by
Mourneblade
I'm going to assume this thread was moved from the 360 forum to the PC forum, but if it wasn't, the above poster is an idiot who should learn to navigate the internet.
I also see no one actually answering the OPs original question. Keep your garbage biased opinions and your poor-man's alternatives out of it. Yeah, we all know you can build some strange mutt system out of an amalgamation of budget parts for cheap. That's not what the OP asked, so if we could all just take a moment, remove our heads from our own *****, and try to answer the guys question without bashing a PC company because we can't afford one of their "overpriced" machines, that would be great.
In any case, all these "PC elitists" are either too broke to afford an Alienware or they have no idea what the hell they are talking about. I've owned 2 Alienware PCs, the first being an Aurora and the second being the beefed up X51. Both have been phenomenal systems, with the Aurora having built in liquid cooling for overclocking, and the X51 rather chilly and quiet for all of it's packed in power. Both systems are alive and kicking, with the Aurora being more than 3 years old with no hardware failure after thousands of hours of raiding and gaming, intensive GPU usage, and general purpose use.
I love my X51, and traveling is super easy with it. It is roughly the size of a standard Xbox 360 or PS3, and the mid and high tier versions pack a powerful punch as far as processors, RAM, GPU, and hard drives. The slot loading optical drive is really nice as well.
If you wanted to go all out, I'd recommend the higher end X51, with either 8GB or 16GB of RAM, the core i7 processor, the Nvidia GTX 660, either a hybrid SSD/HDD for multipurpose, a 256GB SSD if it's only for games, or a 1TB if it's your main PC. Also, if you plan on turning into an entertainment console, a BluRay optical drive is a must have for watching movies in HD.
It can also function as a set-top-box of sorts, and setting up Netflix, Amazon Prime, or On-Demand services is as simple as opening a web browser. Also, using the new Steam gaming UI, navigation and gameplay can be handled with any current controller, provided you have the cheap wireless peripheral or have the controller driver for direct-connection.
The Nvidia GTX 660 is insanely powerful for it to be such a low wattage card, and is super-efficient if you're the "green" sort of gamer who likes to conserve power. I personally have not had any graphical issues and every game I play runs at a beautiful 60 FPS with full V-Sync. Defiance is no exception.
In summation, ignore the nay-sayers and folks talking out of their *****. People like to pretend that the Alienware isn't using premium hardware, and that it's "garbage" because they aren't willing to give an AW rig a chance due to a price tag. Not everyone has the time or patience to sit down and build a PC from scratch, and some folks can afford convenience and quality. The X51 price range makes it a great out-of-the-box PC, and after two years, you can re-sell it back to AW for a nifty discount on your next, more cutting edge rig, if that's your thing.
The idea of it is simple: A small, efficient, console sized powerhouse that is easily 2-3x more powerful than even the next gen consoles, and allows for far more freedom when it comes to gaming and entertainment than a console or full sized tower.
The tech specs are on the AW site, so you can compare and build your own from there to see the price ranges and get what you want. I hope this information was useful to you and I hope to see you on the AW Arena forums in the near future!