So my friend wants a better pc. his is old, slow, Vista (not too bad but...) and is a stinkin' 'all in one'. He needs a better computer to game better. Now, this fool wants to get Alienware,despite my pleas and reasoning, and is too stubborn and impatient to believe that building one is better without solid proof. He knows he can build a much better computer for the same price as a $700 alienware x51 with a stinking i3 and 6gb of RAM. My computer that I built was just above $700, and I had a third gen i5 unlocked with a superclocked gtx 660 and 8GB of DDR3 1600 RAM. Normally I would suggest to him my build which hovers around the price range, and is great for the price, but technology has updated now. Parts are faster, and I haven't been paying much attention to what's new other than the new NVIDIA 700 series. I would like anyone who posts to compile a $700 build (prefferably intel with i5) and a graphics card around the capability of a 660 or higher as well as 8GB RAM. I don't know too much about Radeon, but I know they make decent if not nice GPUs. I really want to help this poor decieved guy from buying an alienware. it's just not worth it. Too high of a price and not customizable. As far as case, a solid ATX case with USB3.0 and the works. Don't worry about OS, because that's separate from the build as far as I'm concerned. Thank you, and help me :D.
P.S.
And I quote that fool, "What I'm gonna try to do is that later see if i can rip out the alienware's parts to try and build a new computter. Much later though. Like five year's time."
Sure, in 5 years nothing will change, not even i3s...
There actually is not much that can compete with the alienware x51 as far as form factor. You'll be hard pressed to find a mini-itx case with a PCIE riser that would allow for that slim of a form factor. It's rumored that silverstone is working on one, but I've only seen rumors.
not a bad build, but the RAM doesn't have to cost that much. Corsair sport balistixx only costs 50 for 8 GB DDR3-1600. Also, I change my mind about i5. An i3 3220 would only cost about 130, with a clock speed of 3.3Mghz (.1 less than i5-3570k). Though the i3 doesn't have 4 cores, it does have 4 threads. the drop in price of the processor and ram would probably allow for a better graphics card. I'm thinking maybe Radeon 7870. It's only $220, and with minor Cpu modifications and RAM mods, it could work
Yeah, but form factor doesn't matter as much. this guy is fine with a tower even if it is bigger as long as it delivers more power. Bigger case allows more room for modifications and repairs
By impatient, I mean once he has the money, he wants the computer. Sure he could go with alienware, but he would have a hard time realising in a couple ofyears that he once again had an old outdated system. Customization is one of my main driving points for building a computer, as well as repair. He's gonna have a hard time messing with hard drives and such in a small case. Even worse, he has no experience in building,so the chances of him doin something bad could be pretty high.
The small difference in clock speeds doesn't mean that the performance would be miniscule. They are different CPUs which means they behave differently. The only time when you can compare the clock speed performance is if you're talking about the same thing. the i5 WILL perform much better than the i3
If one of my friends wanted to buy an alienware after discussing at a reasonable length about just building a custom pc then I'd just drop it the conversation and wish them luck.
He's probably not going to be overclocking, becuase he would be satisfied with a system that ran games fine. I doubt he even knows what overclocking is. I thought the stock fan would probably be better for this build since it's easy to put on the mobo, and comes with therm paste. not to mention it doesn't cost any extra, so money that would normally go towards an after market could go towards a better gpu or possibly even TB HDD
Or go with a 1150 i5 since those have bclck strap and are newer, better, and at around the same price. I can overclock my 4770 moderately to 4.29GHz using a 110MHz bus.
I talked to him again, and apparently he wants alienware because his parents have this $200 dell credit thing. So What? I'm still all for building a computer. He's just too impatient to save money. He should use that dell credit to buy a nice keyboard,mouse, or monitor from the alienware store, or the dell store.
