Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d so I'm looking to build a PC with a budget of around two thousand dollars an hour normally build my own but just out of curiosity I've reached out to two companies just to see what was available in the pre-built or pre-configured desktop market so Lenovo sent their idea center why 900 Alienware sent their area51 both very different systems but in the same kind of price point that I was looking at here are my thoughts so the PC will be going into this area here it's a triple monitor setup will be doing too much regular gaming on it it's more for video editing and for some CAD applications but most importantly it'll be used for VR stuff as it comes out the ideas center why 900 has a carbon fiber look to it with some red accents it reminds me of the mock carbon-fiber panels on the lenovo laptops so the unit here is $1,800 it's a full size chassis there's a window on the side to showcase the goods and on the front we have an SD card slot a pair of use VIII's a pair of USB 2's audio jacks and a DVD drive there's a power button up top that's lit with a white LED it's not an extremely showy case but with the red accents and lighting on the front and inside it does draw some attention to it you can control the brightness of this lighting with software there's a handle up top for carrying it around and overall I think it's a pretty nice looking case especially if you're into the black and red theme but it's still a very generic looking case to me there's nothing about it that really feels unique it's not a bad case far from it it's actually well designed but aesthetically it doesn't really get me excited on the other hand the case of the area 51 remember when this case was first launched I was like what the heck is going on with this thing and I thought it was kind of ugly but it's totally grown on me and it's become very iconic and it's actually something I think looks pretty cool especially from the side now the area 51 is priced at $200 more than the Y 900 and you can tell that a lot of your money goes into the actual case up front we have an SD card slot 2 USB 3 I do Jack's DVD drive and a light-up alien there's no side window on this one instead it flexes by lighting up with LEDs there's lighting on both side panels and on the front and you get full lighting control with software inside you can make it look pretty crazy with different colors or you can keep things subtle it's definitely not a case for everyone but I really like it the lenovo has a lock switch on the back and then a large button that you can push down to open the side panel it pops off pretty easily and then the front panel also comes off so you can clean the fan mesh now because it's a more traditional case the drives are mounted on the inside like normal it's nothing too hard to access the area 51 has an equally easy case to open you lift the levers up here and then the side panels pop off and because there's lights on the side panels I actually expected some wires to be dangling around when I popped off the sides but there's actually some metal contacts here that route the current so there's no risk of breaking wires it's pretty impressive the drives are mounted behind the motherboard and because this panel also pops off they're pretty easy to access on the inside they both have geforce gtx 970m I went with this video card because it's the minimum requirement for running an oculus rift the WHI 900 is a pretty traditional case it's air cooled and properly cooled there's no throttling or overheating but the fan noise isn't exactly quiet it's not loud but it's clearly audible the area 51 is water-cooled 120 millimeter rad fans are controllable with software again the default settings keep things properly cooled there's no overheating there's no throttling but fan noise is a little bit quieter than the lenovo system one thing I noticed because the Y 900 is a traditional desktop case you need some clearance away from the back wall or else your exhaust vents are kind of choked up right with the area 51 because of the angled back you can butt it up against the wall without any thermal issues the exhaust just kind of vents things up on an angle the idea Center Y 900 comes with surprisingly good peripherals it has a mechanical keyboard that uses Cali switches which are kind of like knockoff cherry switches but they feel very similar the Y gaming mouse isn't as good it's not bad and you can add weight at the bottom but the build quality is just okay it also comes with a headset they don't sound amazing but it's an included peripheral and all of these things add value to the overall package the area 51 just comes with the standard keyboard and mouse and I'm not too bothered by this I think a lot of gamers just want to use their own peripherals anyways okay so at a similar price we're actually getting two very different configurations the Lenovo system is running a four core skylight processor the Alienware is running a six core haswell-e processor when I go into PC part picker and I build a configuration that's similar to these you'll see them about two to three hundred dollars on the Lenovo it's still a significant savings to go DIY but it's a lot closer than I thought it'd be and if you do the same thing for the Alienware system it saves you around four to five hundred dollars it's a much bigger gap but there's no way you can buy a case like the area 51 so you're obviously paying a premium to have someone build the system and then send it to you but you also get a year of warranty and customer service and with the Alienware systems you actually get an on-site service so if something busts or something goes wrong they'll actually come over to your house to fix it that's pretty cool but the biggest appealing factor to me is the time-saving C as you get older and as you get busier you just have less time to do fun things like building your own PC so eventually it gets to the point where you're going to have to buy a pre-built desktop it's going to suck I'm eventually going to get there I'm not there yet fortunately but I can see myself buying a pre-built system at some point in the future that's going to suck I'm not going to go into performance benchmarks too much I mean these two configurations have been reviewed and documented to death on the internet but the short of it is this single core tasks like web browsing do better on the 6700 K in the lenovo and then multi-core tasks like video and photo editing generally do better on the 5820k in the Alienware and the gaming performance between the two really depends on whether the game can take advantage of the extra cores on the 5820 or not the GTX 970 is pretty good at single monitor gaming but it struggles with triple monitor gaming and just to throw some rough numbers out there on Ultra at 1080p in witcher 3 you'll be sitting at 55 60 frames per second if you try the same thing on triple monitors it bogs it down to like 25 frames per second okay some closing thoughts if you like the look of the case and you like black and red I'd consider the idea Center why 900 a pretty good value obviously it's not as cheap as building your own but for what you're getting you're getting a good configuration you're getting some customer service you're getting some great peripherals and you're basically gaming right out of the box that's pretty nice the area 51 it's not as good of a value in terms of its share performance but you're getting a really well engineered case an iconic case and some of the best customer service and technical support in the industry so that's really nice personally I'm still going to be building my own I really wish I could use that Alienware case because it's super cool but oh well that's the end of this video hope you guys liked it thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time I love you Alienware area51 case will you stay with me I'll feed you lots of pixels