Today we’re comparing two Intel X99 Haswell-E systems, one from Evatech and one from Alienware. For a long time, Alienware has carried the impression of being premium among the PC gaming community, but after very little research and comparing, you can quickly see it carries a premium price tag, too. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of things!
As in our previous comparison posts, we’ve always tried to build systems that closely match each other in terms of hardware, so that we see a true difference in price. Because Alienware didn’t have a Skylake CPU option for me to customise, I’ve gone with the Intel X99 socket and decided to make 4K capable gaming PCs.
The specifications of both the Ragnarok (Evatech) and Area 51 (Alienware):
CPU: Intel i7 5960X Haswell-E
Motherboard: Intel X99 (MSI X99 SLI PLUS) / (Unknown)
RAM: 32GB DDR4 Quad Channel (2400MHz) / (2133MHz)
Case: (Corsair Graphite 760T Full Tower) / (Alienware Command Center – forced option)
Power Supply: 850W multi-GPU approved (80+ Gold Modular) / (Unknown)
Primary Storage: 256GB SSD (Samsung 850 Pro) / (Unknown)
Secondary Storage: 4TB Hard Drive (7200RPM) / (6000RPM)
Graphics Cards: Dual Nvidia GTX 980 TI 6GB in SLI configuration
Optical Drive: DVD Writer
Network: WiFi Dual Band AC (Bluetooth 4.0)
CPU Cooler: Liquid Cooling (DeepCool Gamer Storm Captain 240) / (Unknown)
Operating System: Windows 10 Home Edition
Warranty: 12 months on-site service (Often same day service) / (Next business day service)
The above will cost you $6,745 at Evatech and $7,763.29 from Alienware. The math works out to be a difference of $1,018.29 with current pricing.
The motherboard difference probably isn’t all that important when it comes to gaming, RAM is probably a difference of about 1 frame-per-second (FPS) better with the higher frequency from Evatech, cases are quite different, but at the end of the day still basically just house the hardware, power supply from Evatech likely to be more efficient and light on your power bills – nothing too drastic though, SSD from Evatech likely to be faster, hard drive from Evatech sports a faster RPM, Alienware PC features Bluetooth 4.0, and finally, the warranty is a better service and upgradeable options are cheaper from Evatech.
After-sales support with both Evatech and Alienware is free.
It’s probably worthwhile mentioning that the Alienware system includes a keyboard and mouse, but from what we could tell they’re not the type of products you would want to use on a system worth this type of money, the two of them combined probably cost about $20 and if you do use them, you’ll soon want to replace them with better quality products. Another worthy mention is that Alienware forces you to have an Office 365 trial pre-installed, after the trial is up you’ll be asked to purchase a renewal or pay for the full suite. There is mention of other software such as Dropbox on their product page, which makes us think you might get a few other bits of software pre-installed for you, which can be annoying. Evatech systems do not have anything pre-loaded on the PCs – only the required drivers to make it work straight out of the box.
One thing that didn’t stop annoying me on Alienware’s website was the little pop-ups/”chat with us” boxes that kept following me around and sliding all over the page with me. Not sure when websites will learn that if someone is looking at the website, let them look at it and not some stupid pop-up box!
If the fancy lighting is something that interests you when it comes to a PC, Evatech offers coloured LED kits for the inside of the PCs, as well as coloured LED fans – selecting these will set you back a maximum of $75.
For the difference of about $1,000 – we aren’t convinced at all that what you get from Alienware is any better than what you would get from Evatech, unless the odd-looking LED-stuffed triangular case design is your thing (and you think that’s worth $1,000) of course.
The reviews of Alienware’s system (the Area-51 specifically, for those wondering) all suggest that the customers are happy with the performance they get from their systems (and it’s not always clear what they purchased exactly, unless they mention their hardware components), no surprises there. Surprisingly a lot of people have the price of the system or hardware as a negative point, yet they still purchased it? Some other recurring “cons” were unclear hardware specifications, “customer service is terrible”, people wanting more options in upgrading components, no option to have a blu-ray drive. There was also some less common but still negative feedback that we found surprising to be listed on the Alienware product page itself: noisy fans, poor build quality, heavy and awkward to carry (starting weight is 28KG!), DOA (dead on arrival), upgradability, having problems from first day, video card having corrosion and didn’t work, and quite a few unhappy customers regretting their purchase, returning it or not recommending it to others.
I found it amusing that a few reviewers said that they liked how unique it looked. As unique as at least 41 of the other people who reviewed the exact same product!
On the other side of things, with Evatech, we’ve had a few unfortunate incidents that had customers unhappy, sure, but with our dedicated support and staff working hard to please customers, soon enough our unhappy customers are happy once again after a resolution is found. To date, we don’t have one customer who is dissatisfied with how we’ve given support or the end solutions we have provided for them.
Every Evatech PC has multiple case choices, and multiple options for every component included in the build – it’s highly unlikely that any two builds would ever be exactly the same, even if they may look similar on the outside if they chose the same case.
To put it into numbers, for purely hardware choices, Evatech’s Ragnarok PC has 611,284,911,390,720 possible combinations.
Alienware’s Area-51 PC has 32 possible combinations.
Yes that’s right: six hundred and eleven trillion, two hundred and eighty-four billion, nine hundred and eleven million, three hundred and ninety thousand, seven hundred and twenty vs thirty-two. When we say custom PC, we really mean it. Customised to what you need and/or want!
I think we all know who the real winner here is. To get started on your own 4K gaming PC, shop with Evatech. Don’t forget, to achieve 4K gaming, you will definitely need a 4K capable monitor/TV, and also need to select dual GTX 970 graphics cards (or above) when customising the PC.
The following Evatech systems will enable 4K gaming with correctly balanced hardware choices and a minimum graphics card selection of dual GTX 970s, and an absolute minimum of 8GB RAM (which is the lowest option anyway):
- Valkyrie Skylake Custom Gaming PC (CPU choice of i5 6600 or above)
- Ragnarok Intel X99 Custom Gaming PC
See our Evatech vs Harvey Norman post.
See our Evatech vs Origin PC post.
Hint: Evatech comes out on top (by $1,000 or more) every time.