How can Alienware afford pricing their PCs so high?

[Nejco]

I don't get it. Do so many people spend so much money on hardware they could've gotten way cheaper or what?

[Chris]

Style and branding comes at a premium.

If you want something that looks good and comes with a well known, well liked brand name you're going to have to pay alot of money.

[SundownKid]

People who dont know that much about PC specs, look at Alienware and think they are super powerful due to the fact that they advertise everywhere, when in reality they are just equivalent to a lot cheaper custom built PCs, but in a fancy case.

[_I_]

they make money off the suckers that buy their desktops
premade with cheap components and os will get the job done
some are willing to pay more for a system that you just plug in and use

[Azza ☠]

It's mainly the high-end gaming graphics card you are paying for, where as cheaper prebuilds cheapen out on the graphics card and PSU to lower the price tag, but end up forcing you to upgrade later on more and more (then replace)... however, do custom-build and get what you need, allow for future proofing, etc.

[Meurock460]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Nejc:

I don't get it. Do so many people spend so much money on hardware they could've gotten way cheaper or what?

Because its alienware. You are essentially paying mostly for the brand.

It looks all fast and high end to the average consumer, but in reality it is just a Dell with a fancy badge and a graphics card.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

DigitalStorm and others, like Falcon Northwest do the same things.
Course with those brands you can customize pretty much anything u could think of; paint, airbrushing, laser-etching, custom-liquid-cooler-loops; etc.

Alienware is no where near that area of customization, nor was it ever.

But they are all costly, like any pre-built. No need to complain about them, just don't buy them if u already know better. But good luck really talking someone out of it, who doesn't know, and has money to throw around.

The same could be said for some car makers, their model pricing, and what all "extra" service or customization wise that they offer for their premium pricing angles.

Alienware laptops however are fairly on-par with others in it's price range; such as ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte. All four of which don't restort to pre-installing bloatware like Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo tend to do. You still getting a better deal for most part going with a laptop from Clevo, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte; over pretty much any others out there. Especially for higher-end specs for work, professional or gaming usage needs.

But don't forget, when it comes to things like pre-built Laptops, they tend to only be as good as their warranty. If you spending say $1500 on a gaming laptop and not opt-ing for extended or accidental warranty coverage; I can't see buying anything of that sort.

[ee]

Business at its "best". If there's no shortage of people who don't care a about a few hundred dollars of difference and think that more $ is better quality and performance this sort of marketing and pricing strategy is very successful. Rent in the metro areas like SF is $4k to $5k. So if you spend 50k in housing a year what difference does it make if you save $500 on a computer you buy every 4 to 5 years? That was a rhetorical question.

[Nejco]

few 100? in some cases it seems you pay 2x more than you would have for buying stuff on your own

[Wolves_Star]

that just have a really nice case on them, and most are not powerful because they use Intel processors. If you want a powerful gaming experience with an alienware, I recommend buying one with an i7 processor. if you but an i3 you will experience lots of lag on more powerful games, like gmod or call of duty