Well the motherboard in my £3.5k rig went bang. Oddly it was called a MSI Big Bang... I sent it back, no replacements so they're sending me that instead.
Never again dude. I've now achieved my life's ambition of a literally no limits PC. Now I'm back to Alienware (with my GPUs and SSDs and so on).
Talking of which, a small write up I did
So whilst the buzz of buying that PC last year was good it was something I will never do again as long as I live. The good thing is that when all is said and done I have made the switch to the Alienware for not much money. My wife paid a chunk into it and that is basically my PC present for this year. As her kids are grown up and fiercely independent they're no longer a financial cost. I mean sure, we bung them cash and spoil them but they don't come asking for it any more. Couple that with me who has no kids (my choice, not really my cup of tea) and yeah, we're OK.
But as for stupidly expensive hardware and honking, great ugly cases? it's over for me. Up until I bought that hunk of crap I was happy with my Alienware Area 51, which is reasonably smaller than the Cosmos 2 (I would say about 30%). Before that I had the MATX Aurora and again, I was blissfully happy with that (I had that one for nearly three years with my I7 950 at stock).
Money. It's a funny thing. My philosophy is that I hate it, and if I ever get my hands on it I spend it. That's part of my illness but I rid myself of it because I don't like what it does to me. It just makes my bloody head go mad thinking what I can spend it on. Mania, basically guys, it's ain't much fun.
So overclocking for me, benchmarking for me, dumping continual money into computers for me.. It's over. Had I continued on that path I would have been very ill. Instead I've actually stepped back and taken things into account. Realised that I just want a nice looking rig with a decent warranty and that's good enough for me. That's why I returned to Alienware. My friend, my very close friend for many, many years. I'm gutted that I strayed now, but looking back they had nothing to offer me last year (the new Area 51 wasn't out and they had stopped making the old one months before). So I strayed and I stepped into stupid land and I paid the price (three and a half bags of sand to be precise). So what does the future hold? naff. I'm going to keep this rig now, intact, and game. Game game game. Something I've done more of over the past two days than I had done in months. Months of worrying about my temps, pissing around with benchmarks trying to make sure my stupid rig was still competitive. And then Nvidia "reward" me for spending £1400 on two graphics cards by releasing one for £499 not even a year later that's twice as fast as one of mine. Great. See, another trap I won't fall into again...
So now I'm done waffling let me say a few words about what I got, the new Alienware Area 51. Call this a review if you like, call it me showing off (though that would be silly considering it's actually a downgrade to my older rig) call it what you like (just don't call me baby.... )
The outside. Alienware, even under Dell, have always known how to make a stunning looking case. Like a moth to a flame I fall for every bloody one of them and I believe in them like they want people to. Sometimes at first I have to sort of look around it a bit to get my head around it but yeah, usually I give way to the radical pretty quickly. So this time it was no exception. I soon learned that a fool and his cash are quickly parted, and like sod's bloody law Alienware went and released this thing about two months after I'd just spent enough money to buy two. What a prized pillock... So here is the new Area 51.
This time around though the looks are far, far more meaningful than before. Last time there were motorised vents, motorised front panel and god knows what else and none of it actually did anything. This time around though the thermal performance is absolutely stellar. So let's talk about that a bit first before anything else. It won't take long. This rig is so quiet that even in the weather we have been having I have not heard the fans spin up any more than their idle speed. Not once. The thermal performance is so good and gets the heat out so well that my GPU fans hardly even spin up, even on a pretty aggressive fan profile. That means I have done about 20 hours of gaming since I got this thing and throughout it has made barely a whisper. Compare that to my old rig where I had to run most of the fans on 12v just to keep the cooling in check and yeah, silence is bliss. Here is how it all works.
There are two intake fans and one exhaust, which also doubles as the fan for the AIO that cools the 5820k. Again, I have not heard that fan spin up. I have not aggressively overclocked the rig as I don't need to. Stock performance is far better than the 3970x and I don't need to make it rev its guts out in order to cool the CPU properly. This is nice, very nice. So yeah, a rig as bold and as powerful as this running on three very quiet 120mm fans. Compare that in contrast to my old 3970x rig which ran nine fans and you can understand, the ALXman is in heaven right now.
Storage. You get room for two 2.5" drives and three 3.5" drives. What with there being 6tb hard drives now and possibly more this is more than enough room for storage. Gone is my old 4 60gb RAID 0 SSDs and they have been replaced with my Asus RAIDR PCI Express drive that offers the same storage space. I'm currently running two old 500gb laptop drives I use for downloads and stuff, a 600gb Raptor for my music films and games as well as a 2tb drive the system came with.
What Alienware don't tell you when you buy this rig is that the motherboard has a Killer E2205 network card, Intel pro wireless set and Creative Labs Soundblaster Recon. That may not mean much to some, but it's allowed me to basically rid myself of three add in cards I used to use. I like Killer NIC, I really do like the software they provide it's excellent. Here is my storage layout.
More than good enough really. So let's move onto the fun part, the controls. Firstly there are nine lighting zones. Each is shown in the picture. These can be changed between any colour you like really, as well as being made to flash, change and morph.
And then there are the thermal controls. These are to adjust fan speeds on the fly, or, you can leave that down to the computer itself.
And then of course, like most other Alienware computers there are the overclocking options.
Summary.
Well obviously as you guys will know I had a bit of a pig recently. I found out that no matter how much money you throw at a computer there is still a high chance something will go wrong. And when it does you are not covered well enough. £3500 was a lot of money to spend and I will never get anything near that back. I also learned that high end hardware is also incredibly difficult to sell on should you wish to. People are just not in the market for that sort of stuff.
Now with the Alienware you are getting a full, proper warranty. Alienware are not as fickle as other companies and do keep spares for their computers long after the sale date. I paid a total of £1298 for the Alienware, but, managed to claw back £100 from the GTX 960 I did not need. TBH? for £1200 it's a lot of computer. If you went elsewhere for the same spec (will list that at the end) you would not get much change from that including a GTX 970 or something of that ilk. However, where the Alienware shines is through its case and design, as well as the plethora of features it offers in lighting, cooling and overall solid build quality and looks.
This isn't quite the Area 51 we have seen in the past. The build quality is beautiful but it's no match for the quality of build that the last iteration of the Area 51 had. Gone are the motors, gone are the vents, gone are the large lit panels. However, let's not be too harsh here. Just look at it.. Look at it ! it's as stunning as you would expect for an Alienware.
Another nice thing to bear in mind with Alienware computers is their resell value. Right now I could probably go back on Ebay and sell this PC for £50 less than I paid for it. Apple are very similar in that regard so if you are ever thinking of selling your old hardware on you will always get a much higher price for it being an Alienware or an Apple.
Spec. Here is the spec of the system I ordered.
CPU - 5820k factory overclocked to 3.8ghz, bumped to 4ghz by myself
8gb 2333 DDR4 memory
MSI Alienware motherboard, Quad SLI capable, triple SLI capable
850w 80+ silver Delta power supply
GTX 960 2gb (replaced with my Titan Blacks)
Soundblaster Recon 3d (onboard)
Killer E 2205 network card
Intel Proset wireless
2tb Toshiba hard drive