Lots of Alienwares.

[alienware]

Figured I would post up some pics of PCs I've had over the past six years.

First one was this, my MJ12.

Probably not what you expect to see from an Alienware but this unit was their workstation.

The front wrapped around the side like this.

I got that in 2007. It had the original 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo in with 2gb ram and a Radeon 1600 Pro.

In 2008 I bought this.

Which had a Core 2 E4500 with 4gb ram and a 9800GT

Then in 2009 I procured my first ALX chassis so did a switch over

Which I upgraded at the end of 2009 with a Phenom 2 X4 940 with a Crosshair II Formula and 4gb DDR2 800mhz. I also added the GTX 280 and a Corsair H50.

My next major upgrade was a CFX motherboard and a pair of 5770s. I bought these in January 2010 when my 280 failed.

I also changed the cooler to a Noctua NH-92F or something

Then I managed to bag a silver ALX chassis which I always preferred over the black one as it doesn't show the marks as badly :lol:

This one though I decided to mod quite heavily for better cable management. I also upgraded the motherboard to a Asus MVA32-MVP wifi deluxe. It's about as good as you can get for DDR2 and Crossfire.

This would be the last upgrade for this chassis..

And the outside.

I then upgraded to a GTX 470 as the Crossfire issues finally had me say 'uncle'. Shortly after I realised that the cooling in the Predator 2 was not good enough for more modern GPUs that ran hot and needed cooling..

So in January of 2011 I finally got my hands on one of these.

Which I used my I7 950 that I built a separate rig for. Note how I managed to cram in the NH-D14 lmao.

Here it is with my 6970 Lightning card in that I bought in January of 2012. I usually upgrade once a year, money dictating how much I spend at the time.

And here it is with my 7970 in that lasted for about three months.

Shortly after that a friend of mine offered me a swap for his Lunar Shadow chassis which I always preferred, so it was an easy swap out

Which remained my daily rig until June of 2012 when I got the upgrade itch. I initially swapped the 7970 for a pair of brand new GTX 480s as I was sick of the driver issues and then bought my Xeon 1220 and a new motherboard with some Mushkin Radioactive.

Sadly the cooler sprung a leak so I had to buy a new motherboard and then I sold the 480s (they worked but one had liquid marks). I then bought a new MATX board and my first GTX 670.

Fast forward now to January and I bought my Area 51 ALX with the intention of gaining the space needed to go SLI. Did a few deals and sold some of my old kit (Bose Waveradio etc) and took the plunge.

So now we are onto my latest rig, the Area 51 ALX with the spec in my sig running two GTX 670s. Easily the fastest and most high end of all my PCs

And some pics of it when it was on Ebay before I bought it. I haven't taken any of the outside yet so these will have to suffice

On the right side you pop the door open (it's on hinges) and you're met with the drive bays. These are awesome as the drives simply drop in on mechs and lock in.

Recently my family all got rid of Sky so they donated me their Sky boxes which I pulled apart and got six 500gb Seagate Pipelines

 

[alpenwasser]

Ah, love myself some reminiscing . Especially since I missed most of this PC era due to military service.

That door mechanism on the MJ12 looks neat, as do the HDD mounting thingies on the Area 51 ALX.

 

[alienware]

Ah, love myself some reminiscing . Especially since I missed most of this PC era due to military service.

That door mechanism on the MJ12 looks neat, as do the HDD mounting thingies on the Area 51 ALX.

The MJ12 was a lovely chassis. Sadly its only means of intake is a 92mm fan. They used to fit dual Xeons in there :lol:

I feel your pain on being out of the PC game. From 2001 - 2007 I was married and things were very tight when it came to money so I had a crappy Celeron D rig for about four years.

It was only when we divorced and I came back to the UK that I started to play again

I bought the MJ12 in the USA just before I left and bought it home in a suitcase. Didn't get any issues in customs thank god

That one is with my cousin now who has had it since 2008 when I got my Green one. It has a Phenom X4 9550 in it now

 

[alpenwasser]

Funny thing was, I was actually making some decent money in the service. But there simply was no time. It was the same thing with cars. You should have seen my face when I was behind a new Mercedes R class in traffic for the first time. Had never heard of the bloody thing before :huh:

When I got out it took me a few months to catch up. Suddenly AMD was no longer king (I still miss those glorious Athlon days ), there were multi core CPUs, new sockets left and right, not to mention the graphics cards. And water cooling had made a huge leap forward.

The nice thing was, Linux had become a lot more user friendly in the meantime .

Looking at how much time I invest to keep up nowadays reading and watching reviews (and being here ) it doesn't astonish me that some people have to give up this hobby for time reasons.

One 92 mm for cooling Xeons, that's rather cute :blush:

 

[alienware]

Yeah it's a time killer alright. I don't mess with my PC anywhere near as much now as I did over the past year. Some of that was forced by bad luck though as the Coolit Eco I was using leaked and ruined my motherboard and a GTX 480.

They told me to f**k off in short, refusing to help me out. That was a costly fix which ended up running me in £350 that I hadn't planned on. Thankfully a family member helped me out with a loan.

I did miss one too. When my friend decided he didn't want to build into his chassis as it had some marks on it he sold it to me for peanuts. I bought an I7 920 and built it and used it for surround for a while.

But surround is a pain. I also wrapped it in white carbon vinyl. Ended up selling it for a nice profit which was when I decided to buy a 7970 at launch.

Last time I ever pay that sort of money for a launch product, nothing but issues.

 

[alpenwasser]

They told me to f**k off in short, refusing to help me out.

Well that's not nice .

I once had a leak (custom loop) which shorted out the secondary SATA controller on my M/B. Ruined 4 brand new 500 Gig HDD's (as in, right out of the packaging). Luckily, I got them RMA'd since of course there was no evidence on them that it was my mistake (one of the tubes had cracked due to fatigue). Had to replace the M/B on my own dime of course.

Interestingly, the rest of the board was still running perfectly fine (booting up and everything) even though you could clearly see black burn marks on the SATA controller

I'll probably have to refrain from PC tinkering starting next fall due to college (lack of time and money, as usual for our "profession"), but over the summer I'm gonna do one last build (I hope ).

 

[alienware]

Mine literally emptied and then the system shut down due to overheating. It was literally dry lol..

I'm still digging through photos now, but here are a couple more I missed (god, I've really had some bloody Alienwares lmao).

Was when I had two. One had my 5770 CF set up in and the other had this (this was only for a laugh and to see how utterly terrible Quadfire is !)

I think most of my passion for Alienwares comes from drooling over them for years but being miles away when it came to affording them tbh. I used to work selling the buggers at Best Buy and had to go home empty handed :lol:

That's some geek torture right there !!

 

[alpenwasser]

Mine literally emptied and then the system shut down due to overheating. It was literally dry lol..

Nah, I didn't even notice it until I took a very close look.

god, I've really had some bloody Alienwares lmao).

Bloody hell, you do indeed! Where the heck do you get the space?! :lol:

I think most of my passion for Alienwares comes from drooling over them for years but being miles away when it came to affording them tbh.

That's some geek torture right there !!

Had the same situation with the components I've acquired for my upcoming build. Still earning money to get the remaining parts, but most stuff is here by now.

But the feeling you get when you finally manage to get your hands on the machine of your dreams is so epically awesome :yelrotflmao:

 

[alienware]

Yup it sure is hahaha.

I only ever had two at a time. When I got the black ALX chassis I sold the green case empty for about the same I paid for the entire PC.

The green one was a factory reject that Alienware sold off. I paid £230 for it.

Most of them have been cheap tbh. The black ALX (chrome and black on the inside) was free as it was damaged on the way to me. I soon fixed it though.

The most expensive one was the original Aurora. I paid £320 for that but it did have a 875w psu and a I7 SLI board in it.

The new ALX was £200 for the case with a PSU, DVDRW and BDR. I sold my silver Aurora for more.

 

[alpenwasser]

I only ever had two at a time.

That seems a whole lot more sensible than the Alienware orgy I had pictured going on in your apartment/house :beer: :downit: :rock:

You seem to have gotten some pretty decent deals from the looks of it. Damn it, I really should go to bed

 

[seumasbeathan]

Wow, those early cases were horrific :O

 

[SeekaX]

the second i saw the title of the thread i knew who started it
unfortunately my connection at school doesn't load the pictures on oc3d for some reason, but i will check back in later

 

[SPS]

Oh god, those cases are ghastly!

 

[iiBetrayforAR]

Ugh. Alienware. Why didn't you build your computer in a bubble.

 

[Crion]

I have mixed feelings about Alienware. I used their laptops for a while while I was in college and they still work great so solid builds.

Lately though, the only thing you seem to get with them is a slick looking chassis. I think they've fallen into the trap that most large PC builders do, mediocrity for the sake of volume.

 

[alienware]

I have mixed feelings about Alienware. I used their laptops for a while while I was in college and they still work great so solid builds.

Lately though, the only thing you seem to get with them is a slick looking chassis. I think they've fallen into the trap that most large PC builders do, mediocrity for the sake of volume.

Well that's business I guess. I was shocked when they stopped doing the Area 51 though.

The 'real' Alienware are still alive and well. They just go under a different name (Origin). Their prices are like old Alienware prices though.

Dell at least made them far more affordable. You're right about their laptops. I have an M11x that I spend most of the day on

 

[Signex]

Awesome videocards, i have one as well.

The temps are very great on it.

The last case is bad-ass man, almost like the one from Acer gaming desktops.

 

[Mgutierrez33]

lol all those feels looking at the old Alienware chassis. Great collection you've had over the years, varied and powerful (for their time). I rock an M11X R2 (640UM tho... I missed out on the 680UM) which I damaged the GT335M chip in and now have to underclock to get it to run properly x-P. Still runs great apart from that tho.

 

[alienware]

lol all those feels looking at the old Alienware chassis. Great collection you've had over the years, varied and powerful (for their time). I rock an M11X R2 (640UM tho... I missed out on the 680UM) which I damaged the GT335M chip in and now have to underclock to get it to run properly x-P. Still runs great apart from that tho.

I've got an M11x R1. I bought it around five months back from the Dell outlet with a 3 year business warranty

I don't have a desk at the moment so I spend most of my time with it on my lap just chilling and browsing

Great little laptop. Not a fan of netbooks as they have no grunt but with the Core 2 overclocked I can play Borderlands 2 and L4D2 etc.

Awesome videocards, i have one as well.

The temps are very great on it.

The last case is bad-ass man, almost like the one from Acer gaming desktops.

Yup very good cards. Even in SLI they behave very well when it comes to temps. Most I've seen them was 72c and that was after forgetting I'd left Valley running for over an hour.

 

[alienware]

So an update. Well, more of a downdate really :lol:

I haven't really posted any shots of my hardware given that it was all in the PC before I bothered getting the camera out

I just wanted to mention one thing. If you don't like Alienware cases? that's cool ! but it kind of irks me when people post just to say "God I hate Alienwares".

I do like them, and I don't go around posting in every thread saying "Well I don't like that and it's ugly because it's not an Alienware".

Any way, earlier I decided to give the case a bloody good clean now that it's all stripped out

Right now the vents are stuck open (they were up when the motherboard died :lol: ) so I can't put them down. What's annoying is the front door is also stuck shut until I can power it on again so I couldn't get any pics of my SSD raid box or my SSDs



My trusty Xeon which I'm hoping to get 4ghz out of



The memory. Even though they don't seem to be cool any more I still love Mushkin's memory. I've got two 4gb Blackline and two 2gb Radioactive.



Also my thermal paste of choice is Arctic Ceramique. Has been for ages.

I cleaned both the Jetstreams too





And then it was all back in the box to wait for the board to be RMA