I am in the market for a new desktop as mine is from 2010 and starting to finally slow down.

Anyone ever shop Dell outlet? I was looking at their Alienware and some of them are $1k off original price. These are mostly refurbished with a few scratch and dent but with steep discounts.

I have never bought a refurbished computer so wasn't sure. All the specs seem like current generation stuff. I do some light gaming but I use Adobe Premier for video editing as well, my computer is starting to struggle.

Their inventory seems to change daily, but here is what I was looking for.

32-64GB Memory
7th gen i7-7700k
256GB SSD
1TB HD
Nvidia GTX 1080

Thanks for the help!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: hunter62,

Your specs are pretty much top of the line.
It's Dell - one of the biggest PC retailers out there, they didn't get that way by accident or subterfuge.
All the usual caveats about refurbs - you're trading warranty for cheaper price. Personally, I buy a lot of used/refurbished stuff. I'm cheap & almost all the time it's just as good as new. I'll take the risk.

I bought a refurb Dell laptop 2 years ago to use during the last 2 winters in Mexico. I paid about $200 for it on one of the 50% off sales.

It worked just fine albeit rather slow. It came with a charger and Windows 7 Ultimate.

I just replaced it with a MacBook Pro and suspect I can recover my $200 on Craigslist.
Mike

With those specs is build it rather than buy it and source exactly what I wanted right down to the case.

I've bought several computers from the Dell Outlet, and had good success, but those machines were more workstations rather than the custom dig you're looking for.

Dell Outlet is fine, IME. I and others I know have bought at least 10 laptops over the years with no issues.

The Micro Center always has good prices and selection. Too bad there is not one in your area. They do have a website:

http://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/default.aspx

Specifically on the alienware, those computers are slanted to "gamers."

If you close your eyes and picture what a "gamer" would look like, would you trust any computer they returned to Dell? Granted that Dell "checks" these computers but, still....

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
With those specs is build it rather than buy it and source exactly what I wanted right down to the case.

I've bought several computers from the Dell Outlet, and had good success, but those machines were more workstations rather than the custom dig you're looking for.

I just priced build vs buy. It was exact same cost. I7-7th gen is $325, case power supply and fan is another hundred, graphics and sound cards 200. Mother board $120. 16gb ram $150. All said, $1,000 with OS.

I bought brand new Dell with almost same specs for $1,100. Will be delivered to my door tomorrow ready to go with one year warranty. It's only cheaper to build if using older or mid tier stuff. For $100 extra I save 3-4 hours and get in home service for a year. I decided my time was more valuable.

PS, mine was new XPS, not outlet buy.

I7-7700, win 10, 1tb HD with 16gb SSD thingy to speed it up, 4 gb vid card, 16gb ram expandable to 64. Will reuse my sound card or use integrated card.

Very fair price in my mind.

We use the Outlet all the time for work. Dozens of systems every month.

I think the failure/return rate is probably lower than new, IME. Returns/warranty work is very easy, and you can bump out the warranty upon checkout, should you choose.

Just a couple weeks ago for a basic replacement box for home desktop. Not my first time, probably not the last, always had good results and service.

Thank you guys! I wasnt sure what dell did on the refurbished units. I was worried they might just assume there was no issue and ship it right back out.

I have been looking at the Dell Outlet for about a month and have seen similar specs to what I need in the $1500-$1700 range. The graphics card alone would be in the $550-$800 range depending on if it is an 8GB or an 11GB model.

Good thing is this computer still works, so I dont have to buy the first thing I see.

Here is one for $1890 on the dell outlet. It has the 11GB card which adds an extra few hundred bucks. It also has 64GB of memory and I would be okay with 32, but it is missing a SSD.

Alienware R6

Processor: Intel Core 7th Generation i7-7700K Processor (Quad Core, up to 4.50 GHz, 8MB Cache, 91W)
Windows 10 Home 64bit English
2 TB 3.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
64 GB DDR4 UDIMM Non-ECC 2400MHz (4x16GB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti with 11GB GDDR5X
Dell Outlet Alienware Aurora R6
Liquid Cooled


I might be willing to pay a little less and get the 8GB card, 32GB memory, and an SSD. I also probably don't need liquid cooled. It is easy to upgrade memory down the road as it becomes less expensive.

Just be aware that you're paying for the Alienware name. You could get an XPS or Optiplex with similar specs for half the price, and then toss in your own video card, which would probably cost less than if Dell installed it. I get that you don't want to mess with that though.

(Full disclosure: We mainly deal in business models, but we occasionally have to deploy CAD and mega-Adobe machines, and this is what we usually do. Get a great tower with just the on-board video and add a super card.)

I bought my last several laptops from Lenovo outlet.
They are mostly new computers that were spec.'ed by someone else but not purchased. The last one came with a ton of RAM and a SSD drive that would have been beyond my budget otherwise.
They are usually business oriented models so they don't have all the games and bloatware the consumer stuff comes with which was a big plus for me.

I've purchased a few things from them, but only the returned-as-new items. I haven't purchased any refurbs or scratch and dent from them. My experience has been good.

It has been a LONG time but I did buy a PC and giant monitor, and a Laptop, from Dell Outlet.....I was happy overall with the pricing and shipping. I had a monitor/video card issue that was just easier to fix myself(I thought) so I regret not pursuing that bit a little more aggressively.

So for sure, thumbs up for MY experience, but inspect thoroughly in the allowed time.


EDIT:
Relative to bobtheelf's post above: the monitor AND desktop that I bought were refurbs. I was still generally happy with all DELL outlet experiences.

Dell Outlet is good to go, especially when they run a sale. Through the Dell Outlet, I've personally purchased 20 Optiplex desktops and 20 Latitude laptops that I donated to my kids' school. They are four years old now and some of the laptops are showing wear and tear, but otherwise they've been reliable.

For myself, I've bad an XPS m1710, XPS m1730, Alienware M18x, and an Alienware 18 (my current machine for the last 3 years). On these I bought the extended warranty because the video cards with all tbe heat the generate in a small space can be problematic. After two years the video card on the m1710 (I paid $1,300) went and under warranty they gave me the m1730 (an over $4,000 configuration) which was a huge upgrade spec wise. The m1730 lasted another 2 years and still works, but the video cards are sketchy. The Alienware M18x (I paid $1,250) lasted two years before the video cards went and I got the Alienware 18 ($3,800 configuration) as a replacement. It's still going strong. All of these machines were beasts; high end overclockable i7 processors and the last three had top off the line dual video cards. They generated a lot of heat which is what killed them. The current Alienware laptops have excellent fans and ventilation plus the newest Nvidia video cards are very efficient and don't generate as much heat.

I paid no more than 50% of what the same configuration was going for new on any of tbe 45 computers I've purchased through the Dell Outlet.

Nothing wrong with buying a Dell or Alienware PC. Just bear in mind that it may be difficult to upgrade individual parts on a Dell later on down the line. I'm not sure about Alienware's upgradability.

Thank you for the replies!

TRAPPER:
This would actually be my first real gaming PC since 2000. I have a top of the line XPS that I bought in 2010 and have been upgrading, currently with 32GB memory and an Nvidia 1050ti card. My issues are probably related to the motherboard, processor, and the HD. I have had no issues with this rig running hot, but the 1080 card is a whole different beast. The link I posted a few spots above had a liquid cooled chassis, is this something I should look into?

I was looking to pay more along the lines of $1600 and really the XPS does not offer everything I want. Buying a nice XPS and upgrading the memory and graphics card ends up putting me over the price of these Alienware Outlet versions that come with what I need.

Thanks again!

My XPSs and Alienwares were/are laptops which really was the root problem with heat. So much heat generating electronics packed into a really small (relatively speaking) space. My gaming desktop is 4 years old now and air cooled. Two AMD 7950s in crossfire and an i5-3570k clocked to 4.2ghz on air in a big case with lots of fans. I started having problems where it would lock up a few months ago. I re-did the thermal paste on the cpu and haven't had a problem since. I didn't feel the need to water cool then, but I'm not up on current theories. I suspect air cooled is still fine these days. GPUs and CPUs are really much more efficient even in desktops and don't produce as much heat.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
Nothing wrong with buying a Dell or Alienware PC. Just bear in mind that it may be difficult to upgrade individual parts on a Dell later on down the line. I'm not sure about Alienware's upgradability.

As compared to what other brand of computer?

If you are set on an Alienware that's fine. But if you could settle for a Dell Latitude, I recommend checking out Woot.com. They run deals one refurbished Dell Latitudes about every other month.

I've looke at Dell's Outlet before and frankly I their prices didn't seem like much of a savings as compared to buying new.

EDIT: My apologies, I realize now you are looking at desktops and not laptops. I still recommend checking out Woot. You may find a good deal on a Dell workstation that you can then customize to your liking.