Dell Alienware Aurora for DAW?

Just wondering what you folks thought of this for DAW and DVW ?

http://configure.us.dell....p;oc=BA1SGA0&s=bsd

has anyone done of bill of materials for a BYO PC with comparable (or better) specs? I'd be interested if so...

Dell works fine but in this modern day music environment you should either choose someone who gives you options on a build or buy a model you can configure to suit your needs. They did one that could be configured to the custom built specs you can get when I was looking but only offered Vista so that was out. If you find one of Dells that can do that then great. I've used two and they worked perfectly.

And the paid support is really excellent - not to be confused with the much mocked free support.

Jaz,
I bought an Alienware Area 51 about a month before Dell acquired Alienware. The Area 51 was very similar to the Aurora line except that it was set up for gaming and the Aurora was set up for business use. The basic chassis was mostly the same (just different plastic shell). The gaming variety used ASUS mothers with Nvidia chipsets. The chipset has always run smoothly for me. The major downfall for using it as a DAW was their cooling system. If you don't go to liquid cooling, you can look forward to an incredibly loud machine - their fan setup was one of the noisiest I've ever heard since the IBM mainframes of the '80s. Fortunately, fate decided to be kind to me - one of the 12v rails in the power supply blew a couple of months ago and it took out the mother and graphics card. I salvaged the hard drives, modem, cd/dvd and sound card and replaced everything else through AVA Direct. Since I was still using XP I wanted to stay with a socket 775 cpu, so I configured a rig with a NZXT Apollo chassis, Thermaltake power supply, ASUS P5N-D mb, E8400 dual core 3 GHz and an ASUS Triton cooler. The first time I ran the machine, I had to look around the side to make sure everything was running because I couldn't hear a thing. You could get something from AVA Direct that will have the horsepower that Alienware puts into their Aurora series for a lot less bucks. My advice is to avoid Dell and configure your own beast.
Good hunting!
 
Jim

JLH2


Jaz,
I bought an Alienware Area 51 about a month before Dell acquired Alienware. The Area 51 was very similar to the Aurora line except that it was set up for gaming and the Aurora was set up for business use. The basic chassis was mostly the same (just different plastic shell). The gaming variety used ASUS mothers with Nvidia chipsets. The chipset has always run smoothly for me. The major downfall for using it as a DAW was their cooling system. If you don't go to liquid cooling, you can look forward to an incredibly loud machine - their fan setup was one of the noisiest I've ever heard since the IBM mainframes of the '80s. Fortunately, fate decided to be kind to me - one of the 12v rails in the power supply blew a couple of months ago and it took out the mother and graphics card. I salvaged the hard drives, modem, cd/dvd and sound card and replaced everything else through AVA Direct. Since I was still using XP I wanted to stay with a socket 775 cpu, so I configured a rig with a NZXT Apollo chassis, Thermaltake power supply, ASUS P5N-D mb, E8400 dual core 3 GHz and an ASUS Triton cooler. The first time I ran the machine, I had to look around the side to make sure everything was running because I couldn't hear a thing. You could get something from AVA Direct that will have the horsepower that Alienware puts into their Aurora series for a lot less bucks. My advice is to avoid Dell and configure your own beast.
Good hunting!
 
Jim

I didn't even see the 920 processor as an option when I tried to configure an AVA direct machine and a comparably configured machine was much more than the Dell. Am I missing something? Can you point me to a link for a comparable machine for less?

Jim Roseberry

Can you point me to a link for a comparable machine for less?

 
I wasn't refering to "configuring" a less expensive (prefab) machine...  
What I was saying was to build a custom machine... where *you* choose exactly what you want to use.
That way... you get a machine with no compromises... that makes a great DAW.

I know. I wasn't replying to your message though. I was replying to the AVA direct message.

i also do video editing so i'm going to eventually want windows 7 when adobe switches to 64 bit.

I also do video editing and I build my own dedicated audio/video machines for it. I max out everything I can and run only my editors and DAW on it.

No wonder the link in the first post is dead

And even after 5 years it's still in the wrong forum! 
Actually there's a few threads here today that need moving..I guess the hosts are on holiday's :) 

A gaming machine should be fine for a DAW.  Most gamers and audio, video type guys often roll their own. It's also easier to blame and shoot the tech support person after a system build.
 
The last time I built a system was over 5 years ago. I built two recently. The scary part is hitting the power switch and hoping for one beep and no smoke.