Thinking about upgrading....

Scott Malcolm · Jan 7, 2012

I know its a lot of cash, but what are your opinions on this......

http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-aurora-r4/pd?~ck=anav

Jim Cole · Jan 7, 2012

The base system is 1,500 pounds? Alienware used to be a good system to purchase as they were all built by hand and custom tuned to get the most out of the system. Now that Dell owns Alienware they are all just like the other computers that Dell sells. For the money there are other options that would be far better in my opinion than anything from Dell.

If you are able to build your own system, I would start by looking at tomshardware.com and find the system builders marathon of the most recent month. Then have a look at what they use to make their system and consider purchasing those items. They build some very impressive systems for their Marathon and try to build the best they can for the specified amount of money.

If you do not wish to build your own, then I can't really suggest any specific company. just shop around and get the best deal for the money you are planning on spending. If you are just going to be gaming, then I would suggest getting a system with an i5 2500K CPU. Anything higher and you are not going to see much better performance in games than what this processor can do. Make sure that if you are planning in using anymore than 3Gb of ram that you get an operating system that is 64bit as 32bit OS's can't see or use any more than that, and that includes the memory that is on the graphics cards.

Daniel Higgins · Jan 13, 2012

I have literally just purchased all of the parts tonight;

Most likely one of the best computers you could get ATM without spending an extra £400 just for an Extreme i7 and only 0.2Ghz more etc.

Still around your £1600 budget
EDIT: The screenshot says the board is £150 from Rebel but I e-mailed them to ask when it was in stock and they said "oh now we have made it available to buy" so I went to buy and it was about £250!