Hey all,
I used to build my own gaming PCs way back in the 90s/early 2000s but I fell out of the habit when I realised I’d rather kick back on the sofa with something that “just works” than constantly chasing framerates etc, and I switched to exclusively console based gaming. Now that I own a Steam Deck, and with Xbox going down the shitter, and my kids becoming of the age where having a static family PC makes a lot of sense, I’ve decided to move back into PC gaming.
I started looking at self builds again but everything’s moved on so much since I last dipped my toes into that space that I struggle to know where to start. Then I saw an Alienware A51 in the refurb store with a decent early Black Friday discount code and very-nearly top-end specs so I pulled the trigger yesterday:
£2525
- Core Ultra 9 285K
- Geforce RTX 5080
- 64GB RAM
- 2TB Gen5 SSD
- 1500W platinum PSU
Retail, this spec is currently going for £3600 so it’s a sizeable saving, but now I’m getting cold feet on the basis of the Intel chip not being the best choice for gaming (and will possibly never see the BIOS fix that Intel rolled out to address this), the odd PSU that’ll likely need swapping out at some point in the future, and the sheer size and weight of the thing.
On the plus side, the reviews I’ve seen say that it’s very cool and quiet, which is pretty important to me, and I do like the case design itself - it’s very understated compared to most of the off-the-shelf options out there. On the downside what looks like a huge discount on the surface is mostly just wiping out the Dell premium, and similarly specced AMD options are available elsewhere for similar prices - albeit with the aforementioned off-the-shelf cases and a big question mark over noise levels.
All of which is to say: Help this former DIY builder feel a bit better about dropping this much money on a Dell of all things! Odd CPU choice aside, this is still a decent system at a decent price, right?
Dell has always had good warranties on parts. Its half the reason Alienware was held in such high regard for so long after they were aquired in the early 2ks. Even though enthusiests will scoff at the prebuild, if you dont intend the PC itself to be the project, you did good.
Thanks. I always manage to do this to myself with any expensive purchase. Yesterday I watched a ton of video reviews of it and came away pleased with my decision, and then this morning I started second guessing the whole thing. Been telling myself all day that the CPU thing isn’t a big deal, it’s leaps and bounds more performant than any console, and could still get fixed if Dell releases Intel’s patch, but there’s always that little nagging demon on my shoulder!
Eh, dont let it get to you. This horse will serve you well and it affords you room to grow. You will hear it a lot on lemmy, but get a second SSD and give linux a go. I game on Pop_OS and its the closest thing to “It just works” ive seen out of the community (debian for most everything else… because home lab).
Plus, you put the effort into researching the model and its parts. In 6-7 years time, look into building the next one, further your learning and figure out what each component does and why a the manufacturer picked what they did.
If you need help with things/troubleshooting, the Lemmy community is here to help. Welcome to the club!
I do already plan to shrink Windows down to a bare minimum (or possibly just clone it to an external SSD) and use something Linuxy as my daily driver. I’m mostly a Mint guy but I’m interested to give ZorinOS a go since they’ve just released v18. Might even try Bazzite for shits and gigs.
If you do plan to dualboot I’d suggest picking up another ssd to run the other OS on. Just less of a potential headache installing Windows and Linux on their own drives, and using bios to select which drive to boot off of at launch.
This video shows how they do it, and you can skip to the 3:30 mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yimjBuzAqOo&t=215
So they basically just install linux unplug the drive and plug in another one to install Windows. And then plug them all in once done.
You can share an NTFS partition between all of your operating systems (which is what I do for stuff). You can even put DRM-free games on it, and the same files will run on Windows or Linux.
Good to know. Last time I tried to share a partition between Windows and Linux it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing but that was a number of years ago now.
Just beware the Linux and Nvidia GPUs don’t go together well.
Bit of a catch-22 for me there. I want to run a local LLM for Home Assistant voice stuff and most of them are heavily optimised for Nvidia. At least the ones that don’t take a ton of effort to setup.