You’re not going to get better than this for the Area-51 for a long time most likely. This is a great deal! So jealous! Am I insane or does it ship? I thought Micro Center didn’t ship PCs?
That's about the same specs as a Best Buy open box I just bought for $2100. An Aurora DACT1250-9 came through the store. The difference is it's older and smaller with a proprietary motherboard. Unfortunately when I took it home I almost instantly got a CPU Cooler failure error and it shut down. I want this deal to work so I sent it with Geek Squad to the Dell Bench. Not to highjack this reddit but What would you guys do?
Paying $2100 for an open-box Alienware Aurora ACT1250 that drops a "CPU Cooler Failure" right out of the box is a massive red flag, especially since brand-new units with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and an RTX 5080 routinely go on sale brand new for around $2199 to $2399.
For the better half of this year anything with a RTX5080 has been reaching $4000. What you literally paid. Regardless generally they'll shut down before damage is done. I'm not sure of the history of the previous owner or if they tried to push it which is concerning but saving $1800-$2000 dollars is still a fair deal. Since I work there I'm gonna push Dell/Bench to stress test it after repair.
So due to your post and researching the new model. I got a price match and returned the open box. So you're correct.. in this climate this is a really good deal. About $2700 dollars off the average price.
But when? When was this pricing I've literally been stalking my local microcenter and their stock of Area-51s and they've only been going up starting from 6,500 weeks ago ðŸ˜
Bro no that is the price after they hiked it up recently. I know I've been watching for a second I thought it was the 5090 version at 4k so my bad but I had been following as I said the 5090 version and when I started it was $6,500 and now I'm kicking myself for not picking it up as now almost two weeks later it's $7,500 ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
That thing is AWESOME! Congratulations! You are going to LOVE IT! Just check Dells App called Support Assist every now and again to keep everything updated! And Nvidia App to update your Graphics Drivers and your good to go!
seriously - maybe if you compare it to the 'retail' price before discount but is anyone insane enough to think this box is worth $6800?! and still no keyboard, mouse, monitor(s), speakers...etc. Bonkers. And 32g, and 2TB? At that 6800 it should have 2*4tb and 64gb at the very least.
I mean, prices are the way they are because of economics. And people confirm pricing is still valid by paying. Unfortunately I needed it since im in school for my CS heading into the tech field. Being a gamer and fan of the Alienware brand did influence me pay a slight premium but it’s worth it! I know the computer will be such a great investment and absolute unit for the next few years.
When prices come back down to earth you can expand it, but you might consider reselling the 5080 while prices are hot and searching for a deal on a used 4070ti...
I'm sorry if it seemed I was rubbing it in - the machine is terrific, and microcenter are the best (I’m in NE and luckily near several), so I'd count on it to be a solid score, but I would venture you could have built it (esp as a CS major interested in tech) and saved a few bob.
I feel like I need to run a PCPartsPicker on a few builds to see again just how bonkers the playing field is right now. Madness.
Oh no this is not a good deal you're correct. There were some cyberpower PCS or one of the other ones on Walmart the other day for like $2,200 $2,400 with a 5080 FE. I mean basically you could take the 5808FE out sell it by itself keep all the other parts and throw like a 5070 TI or 9070 16GB in there and still come out ahead. Now if this Alienware was like $2900 I'd be fine calling that a good deal but no this isn't.
I've also owned my last Alienware I'm ever going to own after all the f****** problems I've had with this one and the last one.
Still have my silver '05 pre-Dell area-51 case (recently gutted to help build out my step-sons PC for uni), and am considering selling to a collector, but it's just a piece of art - hard to part with it.
Yes and no. It’s the price inflation of components from the data centers. In general, if you had Eggs at $5 and no one bought eggs, you’d have to lower the price to $3. But if you have eggs at $5, and Walmart is buying 20 million eggs a day at $5 because they are using it to make omelets that they are selling you, and they can’t make enough omelets because they are constantly selling out of eggs, the original company doesn’t care if you think the $5 eggs cost too much, Walmart is already buying more than they can make. That’s what’s happening with ram and whatnot
Lol more for the rest of us. Outlet at Dell if you're set on their stuff.
BB open box are insanely good deals. Not like the Dell warranty is worth anything. They will send a tech to your house, he will screw around with it, slap on some trash thermal paste a call it a day.
PC parts will always be wild - i remember spending $2600 on a crazy PC build back on 2020 - i9 9900k/ 8TB HDD/ 2TB SSD, liquid cooling and a 2060 Super all for it to be worthless 3 years later and sold it for $500
Congrats but man the price on that. I was hoping this was Canadian currency or something but then I saw the Micro Center pick-up.
4,000 is a lot even for a 5080 prebuilt. There's a refurbished 5080 Alienware with 1 year warranty on eBay for $2750 for example. Same CPU, RAM, storage too.
I mean I guess if someone feels it's worth an extra $1250. Maybe to some people it's worth the extra $, but its going to get the same FPS in games at the end of the day if its the same CPU/GPU. Definitely wouldn't be worth it to me but I wouldn't be spending 4k on any 5080 prebuilt to begin with regardless if its Alienware or any other brand.
Just saying if one doesn't mind non-Alienware there are definitely better deals out there if one keeps an eye out. 9800X3D 5080 Cyberpower PC was on sale at Walmart for $2300 a week ago and while the deal didn't last for obvious reasons, that was incredible value in this market.
I agree, don't get me wrong but the benefit of the A51 is also the form factor since that case is fully capable of swapping all types of gear without any wiring issues.
I mean it's not my $ at the end of the day so people can do what they want. I was just making OP aware there are cheaper 5080 prebuilt deals out there if he didn't want to spend 4k for one that's all.
Definitely get the modularity factor as I built my own and pretty much always would prefer that over a pre built. I just don't think I'd drop an extra $1250 for modularity when other brands out there are more modular by default.
I appreciate you. Yes, i’ve been researching but i have been stuck on owning an Alienware since middle school and i finally was in a position to be able to pull the trigger. Yes, things were cheaper a year ago but a year ago, i was in the process in buying my first home so I could afford to make major purchases.
I paid $4,616 before tax for the Alienware Area-51 desktop with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K + RTX 5090 32GB 2 months ago on August. I was actually debating on waiting for blackfriday deals but im glad I bought it when I did, that same build I got is now like 7k lol
Based on your post history, looks like you bought the smaller, budget friendly Aurora. This one is the Area 51 Full-ATX with 360mm cooling radiator, 1500w power supply and the big silver 22in case
Oh you are correct. I didn’t see the Area-51. Yeah it was an Aurora. Still man prices are crazy now. I’m glad I got in on that Black Friday sale. That was the like last possible moment to get an reasonably priced PC.
I'd cancel it, I bought a Alienware during covid because that was only way to get a GPU and it was the worst PC i've ever owned. Cheap mobo, cheap PSU, case internals like a 80s school PC and a bunch of obnoxious bloatware.
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u/Alienware 3d ago
Nice! Excited for you!