They’re ridiculously good bang for your buck, have great warranties, and as long as you get liquid cooled ones you’ve got nothing to worry about. People on here seem to have all sorts of misconceptions about them based on what just seems to be elitism. “Non standard parts” is one of the weird and wrong things going around. “Hard/impossible to upgrade” is another. Both completely wrong btw.
their cases are pure garbage, if you don't go with water cooling you will have absolutely awful thermals.
and yes the fact that they do not have any standardised parts but instead use their own weird proprietary ones means that you can barely service the things and you will have a really hard time upgrading down the line.
for one, their cases are extremely small and have almost no space for changes due to the crammed nature of them. even small things like switching out your CPU cooler will be basically impossible. and you will have to do that if you do not go with water cooling because their normal coolers are absolutely the lowest end trash available.
they use their own motherboards which are usually extremely low spec/quality and are also bad in terms of thermals. the sitze is not standard so it will only fit inside their awful cases.
I recently got a new PC, a prebuild from a smaller company... not only would I have payed more for the same specs when going with an Alienware, but also I would have gotten worse parts + thermals and would be limiting my upgrade path, not to mention that they literally limit the RAM you can add to your prebuild based on the CPU you want... if you want a Ryzen 5 you can ONLY get 8GB... that is fucking ridiculous, and just shows what a piece of trash they sell you.
my PC cost 1300€ and has the following:
-Ryzen 5 5600X
-RTX 3060ti
-16GB 3200mhz DDR4 [2x8GB dual channel]
-1TB SSD
-Windows 10 Pro (literally zero bloatware installed either)
At Ailenware 1800€ you get:
-Ryzen 5 5600X
-RTX 3060ti
-8GB 3200mhz DDR4 [1x8GB single channel] (you can't get it with 16GB cuz fuck me for wanting a reasonable CPU and not go with a Ryzen 7 I guess)
-512GB SSD
-Windows 10 Pro (would not be surprised to find bloat on that install too)
and again, that is will shittier non-Standardised parts, worse thermals due to their air restricted shitty plastic cases and no way to be sure you can upgrade along the way because the motherboard is shit and the case is so crammed.
meanwhile the PC I got from a smaller vendor who only uses off the shelves parts that can be mixed and matched with ease and uses a case that is a good size and has plenty of ventilation + options to even go further with ventilation, was 500€ cheaper + would perform better when stress-tested.
so tell me again how Alienware PCs are "ridiculously good bang for your buck"... like what? Before buying the PC I looked around everywhere and Alienware was basically the worst option aside from getting a freaking standard Dell
the fact they even offer a Ryzen 5 + RTX3060ti "gaming PC" that runs on fucking 8GB single channel memory, and no way to configure it with 16GB or 8GB dual channel, is the biggest fucking red flag you could get...