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Alienware Area-51 7500 Desktop
Processor: Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz 2MB Cache 1066MHz FSB
Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
Chassis: Alienware P2 Chassis - Space Black
Chassis Customization : Alienware High-Performance Liquid Cooling
Motherboard: Alienware Approved NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Memory: 1GB DDR2 Performance SDRAM at 800MHz
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache
Primary CD ROM/DVD ROM: 18X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner
Graphics Processor: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
Power Supply: Alienware 700 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
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SubTotal: $1,867.00
Shipping: $99.00
Discount: $0.00
Tax: $117.96
Order Total: $2,083.96

I went with a base package for this system, as I had a strict $2000 budget. I actually ended up going over budget by $83.96 because of shipping and tax, but it's all good. Anyway, I figure this review might be helpful to those who are on a budget and want to see how a base config does.

So let us begin.

The order took about two weeks to ship and arrive. The big(very big) black box was delivered to my desk at work, and my supervisor being off for the day, I opened her up. Inside, I found another box. The top box contained the leather-bound manual for the system, the applicable software CD's, a pair of Alien head stickers, the card, and a CD with a Star Wars battle audio track on it. Also in the box was the standard mouse and keyboard, t-shirt, VGA to DVI connector, SLI bridge-thingy, and a nice sturdy Alienware mousepad.

Beneath this box was the rig, lying sideways within a soft cotton shroud to protect it from scratches.

Once home, I pulled it out, hooked up my cables, got a drink, ordered a pizza, and locked myself in my office. Push Alien head. Wow does this thing push some air. Yeah, it's loud, but I can set my speakers at a comfortable volume and as long as there is no pause in the music or sound, I can't hear the PC. After my first boot, and after turning off the onboard sound in BIOS, I opened up the box and took a look inside. Quite pretty, I must say. The blindingly bright blue mobo LED lights up the interior nicely, and the greenish cooling tubes react interestingly as well. Everything is of course nice and clean inside, wiring managed well, and it is definitely made for maximum airflow. I couldn't believe the size of the case intake fan, as it is rare to see them that large in a prefab PC. Also, the liquid cooling is definitely a closed loop system. I was worried momentarily because I couldn't see a reservoir, and it looks like there was nothing in the tubes. While inside, I installed my Audigy 2 ZS. I did need a philips head to tighten it down, so not completely tool-less, but I prefer it this way anyway. Once done, I closed everything back up and booted back in, downloaded the appropriate Vista drivers, and restarted. Ahh, beautiful 7.1.

From there, I started customizing and tweaking Vista to suit my needs. I would like to thank TweakGuides for their excellent Vista guide, it helped my quite a bit.

After finishing up with playing with Vista, I installed Doom 3, as I have been on a zombie kick lately, so I was in the mood. Installed the patches and expansion. I did do the INI tweak for cache size, but that is all. I've been running the game in 2048x1024 at HIGH texture size with 4xAA, and everything else turned on. I had to set the machine from 7.1 to 5.1 surround to get surround working in-game.

The Doom 3 FPS report given by Alienware was 111.something. So there you go.

The game looks fantastic, and plays extremely well, better than I had really expected. I have to note that when I had XP, I turned off all of the visual effects, to cut down on the OS using resources while gaming. I was happy to learn that this is not an issue for Vista, so I've kept all of the new Aero effects on, with no impact on game performance. I did NOT have it run in XP compatibility mode.

So, after seeing how Doom 3 was handled so well, I decided to install TES IV: Oblivion. I installed the game, the expansion, and all of the official mods, and patched as necessary. No other mods were used. I did do an INI tweak for caching, as I did with Doom 3, but nothing more. Resolution is set at 1024x768, and all other settings were maxed, except for AA which is unavailable with HDR in vanilla Oblivion. I may locate and install a mod that allows for this however. Framerates indoors are beyond belief, and I honestly had no idea the game could look so good. I didn't have any savegames available, so I ran through the intro dungeon as quickly as possible, in an effort to see how things went outside.

Outside, the maxed shadows were killing me, so I dropped them a bit, to the bottom 1/3. After this, everything ran smoothly. Occasionally I get a stutter, but I think this is from the AI scheduling scripts. Seems to happen most often in Imperial City, and lasts only for a moment, going back to being fast again. The game plays well, and looks wonderful. I think I can probably up some settings once I receive my RAM upgrade, but things are amazing as is.

FPS for indoors was around 80 most of the time. Around 70 or so when inside a walled city. Around 40 or so when outdoors. I've tweaked the Oblivion.ini further, and have turned off character shadows as well. I've noticed that I don't notice the shadows unless I'm intentionally looking for them, and I don't do that often, so why take the fps hit for something I don't even notice? Game runs extremely well.

I'm a modeler and animator, so I loaded up Max 9 with the Vista extensions and got to work immediately. Since I was working in Vista with DX10, and Max 9 with the productivity extensions supports DX10, so I used DX as my renderer instead of OpenGL or software. Render times were fantastic, and as can be seen, quite high quality.

The below scene took 20 seconds to render fully. Renderer is Mental Ray, with one light, raytraced shadows. 61,792 polys.

I have not yet installed any Adobe Suite products, but I will be shortly. I can only assume the performance will be excellent, considering the performance in Max. I may or may not post video render times for Premier and After Effects.

I don't know my 3DMark score yet. I don't really feel like installing apps that I'll not use but once. Sorry.
Vista score is: 4.5

My Vista score will likely go above 5 once my RAM upgrade arrives.

One gripe, and it is insignificant. The Alienware keyboard has bright blue LED indicator lights for the lock buttons, CAPS/NUM/SCRL. INSANELY bright. I ended up putting some electrical tape over them, as they were blinding me, shining on my monitor, and lighting up my ceiling. I'm using the AW keyboard because my Saitek backlit was acting up, so I likely won't be using the AW keyboard much longer, and thus this gripe is of little importance.

More Pics.


But Wait, there's more! New and Improved Formula! For entertainment purposes only!

I'm happy with my purchase, no regret.

nice review! And thx for the pics. But with that beast you atleast gotta get an LCD lol

But one beast compliments the other so well.

Anyway, I have the real estate(it's a 21" by the way. The rig makes it look tiny on the desk,) and then some to spare, no native resolutions to worry about, and I haven't seen an LCD to match it yet (I had the 17" UXGA+ on my 7700, and as pretty as it was, my CRT is prettier.) There's no motion blur, not even on fast moving images, DVD's look better, much more clarity, brighter whites, blacker blacks, no fading backlight, No need for a glossy sheen to bring out color.

Cost WAS a factor, back when I got the CRT, but I can't really use that as an excuse anymore.

I'll switch up to OLED, once they start coming in larger sizes. That is a technology I am excited about. And FOLED. Ooooooh, FOLED. I don't remember the last time I had floppy and computer in the same sentence.

Nice review... That's a lot o' system for 2 grand.

I've got that same CRT, it's great, but I'll be getting an lcd monitor with my next desktop just to save desk space. The new lcd's are good and relatively cheap.

I had a strict budget of $2000 when ordering, and I wanted to get it ordered quickly. I currently have 4gig to be delivered soon. Just a matter of finances, time, and wanting all of my ram to be matched.

Yeah, lots of dust. I just finished that room out, and there's a lot of saw dust and paint dusk still floating around. I'm keeping it clean though. I'll be replacing the current images with better ones in the next few days, sans dust/fingerprints.

Hammerhead: YES, YES it is! I'm quite happy with this baby, and further upgrades will push it's lifespan back considerably.
LCD's are much improved in quality and price since I purchased the CRT, around four years ago. At the time, a comparable LCD would have run me nearly twice as much as the CRT. These days though, the increase in production of LCD, decrease in CRT, everything is leveling out. It'll fit really nicely in my MAME cabinet once it's done.

nice review! and nice cutlery!

Thanks and thanks, Yang.

A few images replaced, and more added to the small gallery at end of post. Better camera, lighting, no dust/fingerprints.

Nice review, Brokn ... anyone who is looking to put together a killer system without spending an arm and a leg would do well to follow your build - looks great!

And if they have the money to add the RAM initially, and they're cool with Patriot RAM, just get it through AW, Newegg sells at nearly the same price. You might save a dollar, maybe.

How does the Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz 2MB Cache 1066MHz FSB
compare to the 7500 equipped with the AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ Processor w/ HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology ?

Also, does the standard casing (no alien ice or Alien FX) have the LED glowing gills on the bottom. (looks purple on yours) I'm thinking about buying a new desktop and deciding on these two processors... the 7500 with the AMD (starting at 1299) is a few hundred dollars cheaper.. let me know what u guys think. Thanks

You would be better off with the Core 2 Duo setup IMO , you most likely will get better performance than AMD and the standard lighting uses the same setup as AlienFX does just with a different chassis card that uses 3 dimm switches to change light colors (red,blue,green) than using AlienFX to control your colors within Windows. You have more options with going with AlienFX to set different places different colors and setup different options (ie:receive email,etc). But IMO for a $200 upgrade I was more than happy with just using the standard lighting with green on a green case.

So with the standard lighting (no alienice , alienfx or liquid cooling etc) the Alien eyes are blue and the gills are standard blue lighting right? I never purchased a Alienware desktop before so please ingore my igonorance lol

Anyone else? should i go for the core 2 duo 2.13ghz or the AMD X2 5600?

Yes the front Alienhead(on/off button) would be blue, the front by the grills, front mic/sound and usb connectors, inside front panel above top optical drive and left and right side panel alien heads or which ever color you selected

I've posted the tomshardware CPU charts more times than I care to think about in the last month or two, so I'm not going to link to it again.

However, the AMD cores (and I say this as an AMD fanboy) just aren't as good as the Intel ones for gaming right now. On some applications, the AMD cores perform as well or slightly better than the Intel ones.

But Intel is beating AMD's brains out in the gaming market. So if you don't do a lot of hardcore gaming, you could be okay with AMD. If you're a total FPS fiend (first person shooter or frames per second, either way), you might want to go with Intel.

And oh yeah, nice system and nice rendering, Brokn.