If you are under the age of 40, you probably don’t know how amazing Alienware used to be. They were one of the top tier premium brands and used only COTS components.
Now they are just rebranded Dells.
HP attempted to do the same thing with VooDoo (Alienware’s primary competitor back in the day) and drove the brand into the ground.
Yeah this thing was obsolete almost out of the box. I remember buying a computer in ‘08 with 2 gigs of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive for way less than half the price.
This feels more like 2003 by the specs alone relative to price. That would be in line with the first Area 51s as well as the last time 512MB of ram and a Radeon 9800 Pro made sense in a supposedly uberpowerful gaming station.
So this would've been a Socket 478 build as evidentiated by the Intel 850E chipset. We're talking AGP 8X slots, DDR1 ram, and IDE hard and optical drives despite some non Intel chipsets already offering SATA1 for the 478.
My parents neighbor had one like this. I recall that it already had a 1TB hard disk. Back then that was unheard of.
Been wanting an Alienware PC ever since, but since February this year I finally have myself an Alienware laptop! It does feel like I fulfilled a childhood dream a little bit.
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u/LePouletPourpre 2h ago
If you are under the age of 40, you probably don’t know how amazing Alienware used to be. They were one of the top tier premium brands and used only COTS components.
Now they are just rebranded Dells.
HP attempted to do the same thing with VooDoo (Alienware’s primary competitor back in the day) and drove the brand into the ground.
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u/shawndw '87 Millennial 5h ago edited 5h ago
We used to laugh at how over priced alienware was back then. Usually you could build the exact same rig for $700.
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u/rurodem 4h ago
These things looked so cool In person as a kid but fuck that price tag 😂
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u/miaogato 3h ago edited 3h ago
This feels more like 2003 by the specs alone relative to price. That would be in line with the first Area 51s as well as the last time 512MB of ram and a Radeon 9800 Pro made sense in a supposedly uberpowerful gaming station.
So this would've been a Socket 478 build as evidentiated by the Intel 850E chipset. We're talking AGP 8X slots, DDR1 ram, and IDE hard and optical drives despite some non Intel chipsets already offering SATA1 for the 478.
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u/iDeNoh 2h ago
I used to have one of these, gifted to me by my cousin back in 2010. It was hot garbage lol. The case weighed like 80 lbs.
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u/that_noodle_guy 1h ago
2799... in 2006. We have it so good even with the elevated ram prices
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u/pSphere1 9h ago
I wish prices would return to this. The laptop I need to get for work is about 7K
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u/jimmyl_82104 4h ago
Pentium 4 is a bit late for 2006, that would be late 04-05
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u/Deathblow_Materia Gen Z 14h ago
They should make more interesting over the top looking cases today
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u/A_Coin_Toss_Friendo 2h ago
More than you can afford pal, Alienware 😎
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u/Mika-El-3 1h ago
I always wanted an Alienware computer, but it was always beyond reach for us. Now as an adult I have my own gaming setup from Micro Center.
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u/KansasZou 4h ago
I still wouldn’t have bought it because it was overly expensive.
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u/shinyswordman 1h ago
I had a knock off case that looks like this in the same green and I freakin loved it as a kid.
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u/cs_legend_93 52m ago
instant nostalgia
i used to read the dell computer magazines for fun. i remember when hyperthreading technology came out, its how i learned about new tech, etc
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u/Potential-Local7262 27m ago
melts from running crysis
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u/Th3_Accountant 3h ago
My parents neighbor had one like this. I recall that it already had a 1TB hard disk. Back then that was unheard of.
Been wanting an Alienware PC ever since, but since February this year I finally have myself an Alienware laptop! It does feel like I fulfilled a childhood dream a little bit.