EDIT: For those who hadn't noticed I ended up going with one of ASUS ROG models instead.

OLD OP:
A while ago I've been looking at possibly building my own PC. So I guess I'm still not comfortable with the thought, and that's why I have been chewing on that for a bit longer while intermittently researching stuff elsewhere. I've looked at 'boutique' PC builders, but their sort of premium prices are a bit much. As of late though, I've been looking at pre-built options again, and there's one that's looking quite reasonable actually.

This newer Alienware Aurora model seems to be pretty much perfect for me. Interestingly enough, Best Buy for once makes good use of its namesake. At $1,500 that seems to be the cheapest price anywhere. Hell, when trying to configure a similar model on Dell's website it ran over an extra $300. I guess BB has some sort of distribution deal with them. The specs are:
- i7 6700 (3.4Ghz)
- 16GB DDR4 (unkown speed)
- 256 GB SSD system drive + 1 TB HDD storage drive (I'm thinking of adding another 512GB SSD myself)
- NVIDIA GTX 1070
- 460W PSU (appears to be the most basic model for the Aurora line)
A similar ASUS model (non-upgradable and no SSD storage) would cost me an extra $100. I also looked into reviews and the Aurora's configuration, and there seems to be the consensus that it's pretty damn decent for a pre-built PC.

Any thoughts?

Pre-builts can be pretty good these days- there's not as much of a price advantage in building your own anymore. There's also a pretty good guarantee that the components they use will all work well together, plus you don't have to risk components arriving DoA. The main downside is pre-builts still tend to skimp a bit on power supply and motherboard, which limits upgrade options down the line, and can sometimes cause reliability issues after a couple years.

Not sure about the price - I work in loonies, and it seems with the exchange that would be about 2000 CDN bucks, before tax. Might be a bit on the steep side. I wonder about that PSU though. That's pretty much the heart of the system, and you want to make sure it's a good one. Other than that, there are some pretty good components in there. Too bad you can't find specs on the memory and there seems to be no info on the motherboard either. But, yeah, not bad.

I bought an Alienware computer about a decade ago, and while the computer had a couple of problems, Alienware and their customer service did well to correct the problems.

I won't comment about your build, sounds great to me. But you also might want to try https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/. I knew someone who got a computer through them a few years back. The comp turned out great and was much cheaper than Alienware.

I am not sure if Cyberpower is still cheaper than Alienware, but it might be worth looking into. There are more vendors of course, but I can't comment on them from personal or second hand experience.

Pfft. Yeah, good luck with building a system like that for so little. The CPU and video card alone cost about $700 on their own.

Just for kicks I just added up the cost of similar individual parts on New Egg + Win10, and at best I come to around $1300.

Ignoring the Win10 license that brings it closer to $1,200 or less.

Still that doesn't matter: Is $300 worth an hour or two of your time?

Whenever I see 'gaming' in the title of a product I usually think 'over-priced'.

The specs are very good in my opinion, stronger than my own PC.
If you play a good number of modern triple-a games it should work really well.

However as already mentioned you can save hundreds of dollars building it for yourself or letting someone else build it for you, a friend or some other person you would trust with this.This way you have money left to buy some new games or extra peripherals.

Yes. Not to bash Best Buy, but for PCs they often get their own BB-exclusive SKU. This means there is some change in the system compared to the garden-variety SKU from the same brand. Might be so that they don't have to price match... not sure.

Anyway, take careful note of ALL of the specs that matter to you, including connection ports and the like.

Build it yerself. It's fun and easy enough if you watch a simple tutorial before you start. Plus you can have the pride that you did a 200$ valued assembly job yourself.

You'll have to change out the PSu anyways, prebuilts still always come with the cheapest things in them.

Amen about the PSU. I'd build it yourself. It's really easy at this point. Except for laptops and macs. That PSU is severely underpowered for a gaming desktop. You need something like a gold 500 or 550w at minimum (that's what the 1070 recommends 550). Mine's 750w.

I assume the mobo is also garbage. Cheaping out on that severely limits long-term/upgrade potential of the PC.

You're also going to need a decent fan setup, get an evo push/pull..

The i7 is completely unnecessary. I could use an i7 (I run mathematical software and related) and I don't have one. Unless you're in 1) autoCAD work 2) video editing/encoding, music home studio e.g. DAWs 3) various mathematical, computational sciences or computing subfields, you probably don't. Nothing uses hyperthreading. You can actually OC an i5 k series faster than an i7, by a lot, if you know what you're doing.

SSDs are also, for the most part, useless for most people. I have 5 or 6 of them. They're mostly hype. Your PC will boot faster and apps may start faster. Again, barring CAD or vid editing (and some programming stuff with lots of loading from disk), not a priority (they have no utility in computational stuff). They die much quicker and are inappropriate for any long term storage. Samsung is also the only brand I'd recommend. They're probably using some B-team SSD or worse sandforce controller ones. Get a large WD Black.

The last pre-built desktop I bought was cheaper than I could buy the parts. A year and a half later, its PSU exploded and caught fire. "iBuypower".

Alienware is better than them (for desktops they're dell now, though honestly), so is Sager and MSI but I think it's really only worth spending money on any of them for a laptop. OP, just go on pcpartpicker. There are a lot of builds on gamefaqs and reddit. They will literally pick parts. I used to have one up on one of them. We figured something cheaper than a console.

Basically you're buying a GTX1070. I'll see if I can think of a decent build later.

Personally, if you can wait, I'd wait a month. Black Friday is coming around the corner, its very possible you could do better than that.

I've found, if you are very patient, (and shop at the right time - i.e. late November) one can find a pre-built system that is cheaper than you can build. But remember to factor in your upgrades, definitely upgrade that power supply if you go that route. Of course it depends how old your other computer is. If it's fairly new, you might be able to scavenge enough to make building one yourself the best option.

But when I've needed a new system, enough of the components were outdated enough that it wasn't worth it.

Its better then wasting extra money on a pre-built Alienware. The bonus about building your own is being able to do it in baby steps. Start small and gradually add parts when you can afford to. Picking your moment is key, wait til there is sales on and it can save you a small fortune. Also for your OS, sellers on ebay do reliable real keys for mere pennies.

I've been doing some more research on the Aurora, and it appears that Dell may be using subpar PSUs for the basic model. It seems like there's a 50/50 chance the standard 460W model might not be 80Plus. It also seems to have been causing system problems like intermittent rebooting for some. Hmmmmmm. I just read up on one guy replacing the PSU and his under-performing CPU air cooler.

I don't know if I really want to deal with such issues,. Also, his step by step process was almost like putting half of a PC together. Not good.

For most cases I'd agree that SSDs provide minimal advantage, but there is the occasional game that is limited by HDD read speed, and these do end up seeing a substantial performance boost from SSDs.