Alienware PCs depreciate faster than fiat currency in 2024

This PC needs to be sold to a collector, not a consumer. It's wonderful for what it is - an example of vintage PC art. If you look at it as a simple daily driver PC, it's not too great.

Tech YES City videos USED to cost $0. They still do in 2024. Incredible value while talking about incredible value.

Site states that it comes with a 600 series card when a check of the system configuration through the service tag shows that the the GTX 555 was fitted at the factory. It was probably the cheapest GPU option at the time and the original buyer decided that they wanted all the bling but not all the power.

This is basically the same as an office PC but with a more "gamer agressive" looking case. If you'd take a regular Optiplex from that time,throw in an i7 and good GPU you'd get the same performance as this thing if not even better for a few thousand dollars cheaper

That is a great retro computer. I have been able to flip a few that were similar to that one, I did not really make much money but was happy to get the machines to people that wanted them. It was a dream machine for someone out there at the time of release I am sure.

It is wild sometimes to see these old school Eye candy Pc's in such great condition. Thanks for putting in the effort, I would put it up for sale. It could be a great Piece for somebody's collection.

My very first desktop PC! Basically the same spec with a 680. Looking back, the only thing that was really cool imo was the toolless hdd bays. Inserting a hard drive like you would and SD card was really cool. Otherwise, it ended up being a very uh, educational pc. Mine was extremely unreliable, and dell customer support was awful, so I had to learn to do many troubleshooting things myself. That inevitably led me to just building my own PC with everything I learned. Thanks, Dell! 😅

I like the case. I'd change everything in it down to the motherboard. I really like the logo that lights up and the motorized ventilation.

Alienware has and always will be overpriced junk - overpriced marketing at its finest

I've aquired an Aurora R1 for kinda cheap, around U$S100 where I live, that's a pretty rare system, I've managed to find just another R1 on a case only situation. I was pretty hyped up to fix its motherboard, which is refusing to boot up, but after seeing your amazing video, I'm kinda reevaluating the whole project. For starters, for the very first time I've had to watch tutorials on how to even take the front and right side panel out for cleaning, it was a half a morning ordeal. Removing the motherboard to eventually put a new one or fixing the older one took me about an hour, on that frame time I usually fully swap a new board to a chassis and have the new system up and running. The internal space is absurdly lacking, their air flow is totally disrupted, I'm just evaluating either selling as-is, or to fit a "El Cheapo" CPU with some decent RAM and cut my losses.

3:35 loved looking at the vents back then when looking for a gaming pc

One of these was for sale locally for $100 for a couple of months and I couldn’t get him to budge. I really wanted to check it out but after buying 2 XPS 9100s there was just no space left. I am glad you made this so I could see a recent review.

Great video, subscribed just because you have my same dell monitor. Cheers from chile

love your videos and the facts you share keep it up

That is such a cool case. It would be interesting to do a new build in it. I almost got this system back in the day and I always wished I had been patient and got it.

4:00 - 5:08, great background track Bryan, F.O.O.L & A.L.I.S.O.N - Vibrance, they have some bangers right now... 🕺🕺🕺🕺🔥🔥👍👍

i love your videos! always excited to see a notification from you

The Zalman H1 case I use has fan vents at the top too. They can be manually opened and closed or set to open when the internal temps reach a certain level (of which I'm not sure as I've rubbed the numbers off during cleaning over the years.)

I had this motherboard with a Xeon 2670E and a GTX480. I could run Doom 4 on medium, which was the thing I wanted to do at that time. It was probably the cheapest Doom 4 machine I could put together and I was blown away by the graphics. Good times. I used it for some time and still sold that board for good money. Idk, people are into Alienware for some reason :)

Still fascinating to see old builds, and wonder what they used to play on that Commodore Vic 20,

Alienware used to offer great tech automated tech like this (auto drop down front panel and automatically adjusting panels depending upon the heat output etc of the case components, a little bit of lighting etc) in some of their old PCs to help ….. “justify” their costs ….. whereas in recent years you pay a lot more for no features and no performance…. Even substandard performance of an i7 or higher with power limited mobos etc.

Loved the look of Alienware cases back then. When I didn't know much about them, I always thought of it as dope as hell. I mean of course today, the truth is out and... The PC case is clunky and is a hot oven. The GPU is unsupported in many areas and is using older standard DVI and mini HDMI. The motherboard is propietary. I think I remember one time on this channel. I think you cut your hand and had to get stitches once on an Alienware case? Or was it another case? Anywho, the case out of the Alienware factory. Yeah at the end, it's nothing special and has bad design flaws. I definitely agree with you on that, Mr. Tech YES Man. But, now that you HAVE the case. And all the parts are working just fine. From where I'm from, I could absolutely make a sale out of it or have fun with it. Something a certain kind of enthusiast would like or something to give away in case your worried about it being returned. Getting RetroBat installed. Getting a bunch of older games on it from that time that could be played offline and without any accounts from Epic Games or GOG. Painting the case. Adding cheap RGB strips. Or completely modding it with good protection(glasses, thick leather gloves, mask) and power tools to add more space or mount your own radiator or heatsink. Plenty of drive cages in it from the front. If there is no chassis intrusion with the side panel off, see what could be done to make it like an old server/retro gaming PC with some other OS on it. So much could be done to have it be pretty fun. I agree Alienware dropped the ball and ran with the money. We all agree on that. That's what your videos are about. Don't waste money on these when they are new and way, way overpriced. However, you channel is also about reflipping and finding value where there is none is all about. I see this Alienware as a great modding project. I say the easiest part is to paint the case like mostly white and somwhat blue. Put in a cheap RGB LED strip on the top. Install Retrobat and no games. If the side panel can be run without it, then showcase it that way with the drive cages being a highlight. Put it as a Retro Gaming/Server PC. Make a slightly higher profit. Or give it away like you once did for those school kids. It inspired me so much to give my mother's school(she's a principal) a old Core2Duo computer with way older GPUs and parts, yet painted with a cheap RGB strip and Batocera OS on it with no internet and cheap controllers. Plus my physical games I've ripped on it so they can play LoZ, Mario, etc. And not like Doom and stuff. They are playing this when parents come to pick them up way later cause we all live in the countryside. So plenty of good use with older hardware. And I really wish Alienware thought the same too. Hope everyone has a good day. Thanks for the vids like always, Mr. Tech YES Man. Keep being cool.

I bought an R3 version of that in 2011 for my oldest son, IIRC I paid about $1600 for it, those systems were almost all sold as custom configurations, so sometimes you will run into weird hardware combinations. The one I bought my son came with a 2700K, 120mm AIO, 8GB RAM, which was a lot in 2011, and two GTX 650s in SLI )also a big thing in 2011). It also came with an 850W PSU, two 2TB hard drives, and didn't have the powered vents on top. It wasn't exactly a great value then, but it wasn't all that much more than building it myself either. Oddly enough I bought an Alienware X51 in 2014 that came with a GTX 555 in it along with a i5 4550 and 8GB of RAM for about $600 brand new.

I remember acquiring two of these a couple of years ago for good used bargains. Never took the opportunity to equip one of the machines with an RX580 when those were going on major sales. Wherever that 4930k is, good times.

I'd love to repurpose the case like that. They dont make anything fancy like that anymore. Alienware aesthetically has always been pleasing.

remember i bought this used prob 7-8 years ago i overclocked it to 4.8ghz all cores on watercooling (280mm) 2x140mm high performace fans hit 80 degree celsius on stress test then

I want that case. I like stupid things like self opening fins, and a button to push that opens a door. Plus my current build will fit in there perfect.

Originally, my Lenovo Brickstation P520 sold at a base price of $1400 back in 2018 but 5 years later I purchased most of what I needed for only $300. It was built for graphics design and 3D modeling and now it's corporate E-waste available on eBay that can be turned into a gaming PC. Also, I never bought into the whole Alienware idea or the concept of dressing up computers into gaming PCs, I would say that there's a time and place for playing Dress Up because that active ventilation was pretty cool, but I wouldn't go buying a computer just for something like that.

Love those old cases buddy!

I love the moving vent thing

Need a DVI to HDMI adapter, also, those are full DVI-I ports with the extra 4 pins round the cross, so you have a choice of DVI cable, DVI to HDMI adapter, DVI to VGA adapter

This used to be my dream pc when I was a kid, then I learned how to build PC. Never looked back to any pre built ever since.

Here in the US the PC case alone are desirable. You can use it or quasi sleeper, and maybe put a Ryzen board in there. Also that power supply is same ones used in Dell's professional Precision desktops which are severely under spec, but are the best PSUs in the industry.

That chassis was used from the R2 all the way to the R7, so at least the RnD costs were low, considering they used the same chassis for nearly 8 years!

I bought two of these in years ago for flipping. One had a 580, and one had a 680. I upgraded both to 6-core i7s and better GPUs (R9 390 and a GTX 1070). Honestly I kinda hate these cases, because there's so many parts that can break on them. Luckily the motherboards work fine in new cases, which is what i did. Still have one of these old cases laying around

My brother bought one of those 1 year before I bought my new PC. I got a current i7-4770, and his was only a 1st gen, ie, Dell's current line was way behind what was being sold - lol -.

Worth a look, ive personally stopped flipping anything older than 4th gen and only do 4th gen if i get it for dirt cheap. For me personally i find 6th gen is becoming the sweet spot now.

Is the case identical to the ALX versions that came with motorized and adjustable upper fins? I love old Alienware cases

70 degree celsius on CPU is from the alienware mobo is throttling the cpu to maintain the temperature below 70 or 71. This can cause you don't get the perfect scores of benchmarking with the original custom build with those specs (I m saying CPU,GPU,RAM, except Alienware motherboard). I saw a video of youtuber "mattscomputerservices" which he demonstates with custom build of alieware hardware and alienware PC.

honestly if that case could fit regular motherboard and psu i'd be interested lol. maybe then you can build a not-so-subtle sleeper pc there.

If you're GTX 555 then I'm RTX 666

still remember drooling over this back then , probably worth picking up now if can find one for a decent price here ...

Son has an Ivy Bridge Xeon, E5 2667 v2, and he is happy with it. I honestly think it's the best 2011 v2, for it is 8c/16t and it boosts to 4 GHz. He's probably going to use it until he needs something with AVX2. He has it paired with a RX 6600XT and 56 GB DDR3. His PC is a Dell Precision T3610

4:08 Geeez! They left the protective film on the gpu? Premium stuff right there. 😂

To be truthful some of the prices Tech Yes city obtained for its second hand parts are Not available in the second market like Gumtree and Facebook's marketplace where parts are usually sold at competitive market prices.

Ah the Aurora R4 ALX (non ALX don't have the active vents) I have re-built a few of these in the past (the motherboards failed en-mass right outside warranty). Nice heavy duty chassis but airflow needs help. They used to sell really well and the PSU's were great for pretty much any GPU at the time.

In 2020, i picked up two of these Alienwares. One had a oem gtx 660 and other had an amd variant or was it ati? I dont remember other than the pcs had too much issues due to they were ex repair shop ones. I pulled both gpus and sold the remaining to someone for over double what i paid which was 50 for both and i have a backup win xp gaming gpu on hand.

i remember when x79 was all crazy hyped up like x58 for the budget gamer like 5 years ago, i even ran it with am x79 extreme4 asrock board, e5 2670v1, 16gb ram and a 980ti

Ironically the monitor I use for testing these machines is 1 that somebody threw out. It has HDMI DVI and SVGA all on the same monitor I've got 1 of each cables attached on the monitor so I can just switch from 1 to the other if memory serves me there's a gouge in part of the screen but like I said I use it for bench testing. Only ever had an Alienware in the wild wants and I lost it. Long time ago back before I was doing my own work I took it to somebody to get a hard drive replaced and ended up never getting the computer back where the guys stole my machine and machines belonging to several other people. It was a computer I got on the side of the road where it has been owned by a senior at 1 point and actually wasn't very old. I still don't know how a 80 plus year old woman ends up with an Alienware desktop. Machine was like 3 or 4 years old at the time

I have a palit 650ti which uses the mini hdmi..had a hard time finding a cable locally back in 2012

It would interest me to see someone mod the hell out of it and put something decent in there under the hood. For you and your channel that's probably not a thing but I'd be curious as to what someone could come up with.

I would take the moving air fins off and put it on a new build, its.pretty cool little touch

I'd just use it for a winxp retro pc, run crysis, Fear, Far cry and etc. Enjoyed the video!

Engraving, provide no fps advantage. That was some fancy case though. It's pretty good

lol the top of the case reminds me of that active aero on Travis pastranas car

you cant lock in xmp on a base modewl . once you get a cheap unlocked ivy bridge e chip the settings unlocks

Bryan, i didnt know your fav Hero is Slark. I only used him during Rank all the time till I reach Guardian. Most heroes ive been using is most supports like Enigma and Oracle.

The weird plastic and little light up bits are a bigger part of the deal now they aren't depreciating they are gaining antique value

Hey look when ever you get a chance, can you do a video on how to under volt a 3400g on a Asrock B450 M Pro 4? Appreciate that Thanks.

i would love to see someone make an sleeper pc with that case @__@

I bought one of those motherboards, or a very similar one once second hand on ebay. I was going to use it to overclock, but although that feature should have been supported it seemed the feature had been removed or locked at some point from a bios update. Some real BS from dell.

It might take a 4930k I just did that to a old x79 with 64gb ram and dropped in a rx 580 its my old hot rod pc lol I love it I know you do to

Brian got lazy on this one. The motherboard is a standard matx. With non proprietary connectors and all power connectors are standard too. The I/O shield is standard and removable. You can case swap or upgrade the matx motherboard, it is a massive case though. The cool thing about this motherboard is using a modded bios to use a NVMe storage via PCI-e to NVMe adapter.The modded bios also let's you overclock Xeon CPUs. Unfortunately you can't use V2 Xeons. I have several of these motherboards as they are so cheap. Better than the cheap Chinese x79 boards.

I wouldn't even bother playing newer games on this thing. To really appreciate how well it worked, it's best to play games around the same time this thing was new which was the earlier 2010s. It still should run office and everything else just fine.

I love the new meta where Bryan is like, "Can we get performance out of this ancient PC?" When all these old viewers are like, "We know damn well we can! Throw it in the turbo washer! Hit it with the brake cleaner! Hit us with that soundtrack! Hey, how's dad man!?"

I feel like Asus ROG Strix took the mantle of what Alienware used to be. High priced cool looking machines

Wish you can make a build on the R4

Holy heck, these first few comments from the YouTubots are extra wild today! lol Anyway, Alienware's descent into overhyped, overheating, overpriced, over-engineered, underperforming irrelevancy over the years is such a bummer. Fun video, Bryan!

I have an in-law with one of these sitting in a closet. I wonder if I should buy from him for cheap and see what can be done? I presume I can’t gut it and put modern stuff in the case and still make those vents work? It should do stuff like Minecraft as is, right?

04:06 wait, what....the GTX 660 still has it's protective film on it. Did Alienware perform no QA on builds, or is that a later owner addon GPU? (Later, GTX 555 !!!!!)

I personally wouldnt resale it, the case with the electronic vents seem to be more rare. Ive only see the ones with the perforated top panels.

No games with DX9. DX10, DX11 ? I was really curious about the GTX 555.

I want one of these old alienware cases just because.

I remeber, at the time i was a kid playing minecraft and I really loved alianware design laptops and desktops, its a piece of art from apearance

Painfully long comment incoming. I have one of these passed down from my late uncle a couple years ago... I have very mixed feelings about the system itself - it looks cool, and absolutely amazed my 9 year old self when my uncle got it back in 2012... but man, with how much I know about servicing computers now, the early Dellienware Aurora series kinda blows. Keep in mind when I say Dellienware, I'm referring to Alienware since Dell's acquisition of the brand was completed in 2009. I'll start with some subjective positives - if you're into RGB, this had programmable lighting several years before what feels like everything had it. Most of the time you had single-color LED fans, and maybe if you were willing to add it, you could add RGB strips that would likely plug in from a USB 2.0 header or a SATA, molex, floppy connector, whatever source of power was common for RGB strips in the old days. If you had your Aurora R4 specced with the motorized flaps like mine and the one shown in the video do, that's also pretty neat. Just putting that out there, it's just neat. Although upon watching the video, I can see how the aesthetics aren't all a positive - since the money that went into designing the case could have been used towards making it more functional, actually practical for servicing, and giving it better airflow. the R4 in particular is the most interesting of the first four Dellienware Aurora systems since it uses the X79 platform, whereas the original (retroactively called R1), R2, and R3 used 1366/X58, 1156/P55, and 1155/P67 platforms respectively. From what I understand, X79 was far less common than X58 on OEM prebuilt systems. And despite only having four RAM slots, quad channel memory is still possible. I'll get back to this system being on the X79/LGA2011 platform later, because it's not all a positive. Most (I say most for a reason) of the main components are standard form factor unlike modern Dellienwares, especially those after the R12. Does that mean the components are any good though? I will let you be the judge of that. *Now for why this system would have disappointed me ever since I started really getting into PC hardware...* - The case is extremely overbuilt and way too big and heavy for only being able to house up to a MicroATX motherboard. the liquid cooling system died many many years ago, so I had to replace that with one of few low profile LGA2011 air coolers since anything bigger would be blocked by the VRM heatsink and fan above the CPU. an LGA2011 socket and appropriate chipset is a lot to pack into a MicroATX motherboard - so a compromise had to be made by putting the VRM heatsinks above the CPU socket and not to the left side. Liquid cooler failures were extremely common on the Aurora R4 within only two years of owning the system due to Dell cheaping out on the coolant used. I would not be surprised if my unit ran with a broken liquid cooling system for 6 years, because this system wasn't maintained a whole lot. Oh yeah, airflow is shit - no surprise there. - I also had to replace the power supply when I got my R4 due to being left on a lot with SLI GTX 580's (one of which was factory equipped) in its previous life, and since the cables are routed in a very specific way to go into the hard drive sliding area, it seems like a real pain in the ass to un-route every cable. thankfully, the Precision T5500/Aurora R4 power supply has one big cable containing all the connections that can be removed, making the power supply replacement much easier provided you're replacing it with the same model 875W unit. For literally any other power supply, good fucking luck. - The GPU door is pretty annoying, because it prevented larger GPU's like my old MSI Armor mk2 RX570 from fitting unless the door was somehow removed, due to the GPU having a metal corner that was blocking the door hinge from shutting. Not sure how that's to be removed without breaking it, but you could always make modifications should you want to actually build in one of these cases and use a GPU that has a big chunk of metal or plastic in the upper left corner. - Oh yeah, the power button is fucked on my unit. the plastic that depressed down to the power switch has gone loose and the switch itself takes a lot more pressure than it should to trigger. and a replacement power switch board is basically nonexistent, yay! And since the power switch is in a very tight space, it's effectively a proprietary part. Not that I know of many other Aurora R4's with this problem, but it is noteworthy nonetheless. My verdict on this system? I like it as an art piece, and also because I personally have sentimental value for my particular unit. But one could have gotten a much better experience if they built their own system (or maybe had one built by an SI) using similar off-the-shelf components but stepping down to LGA1155 and i7-2600K, provided you didn't order your Aurora R4 with the 6-core i7-3930K (or 4930K on later production units). Due to the motherboard being MicroATX, you likely couldn't use all the PCIe lanes of X79 anyway - so nothing that actually mattered at the time was lost, especially for purely a gaming system. Unless you're a collector, these early Dellienwares - or even later ones - aren't worth the hassle. Fuck, I spent over an hour and a half writing and revising this comment. I hope someone finds the information I provided valuable :')

I had the alienware aurora r2 i5 760 found on marketplace free cleaned it up and traded for a modded psp

McDonalds kids meal plastic PC case, i miss the old beige metal pc cases.

that would be an awesome case for a sleeper build

I remember when I wanted an Alienware desktop, laptop back in the dayss

That case alone is worth much more than US$65 to any PC enthusiast over 30 years of age.

My radeon hd 6950 that I bought in 2011 had 2GB of vram

There wasn't enough room for 2xDVI and full size HDMI on a single slot, I had an EVGA GTX 660 that was the same.

Such a fine vintage this milky smooth Alienware machine.

Why I build my own shit! Since Socket 7 in '97.... PS What's a GTX 555? Got a 550 Ti* from a deal once *Could be good(better than my good OL' GTX 260 C216) for a W2K/XP Socket 939 Opteron 180 (RE)build! What say ye, TYC followers?

think you missed an opportunity here. there are lots of people who love that computer for just its case. for 65 bucks its an absolute steal. there are two main reasons to buy an old Alienware if its really old peak retro gaming if its more recent like this its restomodding that machine is probably more valuable as an empty case than a case than comes with some free but old parts.

Still rocking GD900 :)

What Brian, you don't have a DVI to Hdmi cable??!

When is the next episode of the flip up challenge coming up?

was the 555 in sli originally ?

Maybe sell it to a collector or to someone who wants a capable Windows XP x64 machine for retro gaming. Didn't SP3 for XP come out in late 2000 or something?

Fun video as always but I think some of the criticism is misplaced. I mean all the decoration is for the same reason people deck out their system in RGB. And the vents on the top actually are kind of smart. They are aesthetically cool but also vent hot air out of the system. And however you feel about it expecting a switch on the power supply is also not very realistic with an OEM like Dell. Not even their Precision T3600 and even the dual socket Xeon T5610 of about the same vintage and thousands more have a power supply switch. I mean I am not trying to be a jerk. A switch on the PSU is nice to have but it seems unfair to criticize something that you can't get on any Dell no matter how much money you had to spend.

Is that the original plastic wrapper on the graphic card.

wouldn't have cost me a dime to upgrade that. i already have spare drives, ram and a gtx 1050 ti sc 4gb sitting around.

it has a bit more value as an oddball, add 6 4tb and get a nas out of it, add 32gb ram and 2.5 and new fans - will do fine for years - hdd are like less than 10/tb now and the same rule of thumb applies to 3/4th gen - 30-40 bucks tops and 6th gen is 50 more or less - 8th to 10th gen prices jump but they should start falling again with more new pc parts getting released

Walked past an Alienware store yesterday in Shanghai. Their stores always seem to be empty. Feel like the are like the "Bose" of PCs. Looking for a niche of customers with lack of understanding of the product and cash to burn.

I don't know what the deal is with OEM gaming computers being huge, they'll have a case that can fit a WTX board and 18 hard drives with a micro ATX Motherboard, a 50 class card and one SSD in it.

I had one of the org Alienware systems before dell and $2200 was cheap my Fx55 one was over 3k.

If you owned a GTX580 this comes with two DVI ports and a mini HDMI port you just need to buy the correct cable - I have lots!

It’s a collector’s dream. Reselling as a museum piece maybe, but not to anyone.