Best motherboard upgrade for the Alienware Area 51 R2?

if you meen 3rd Party Motherboards, then i would say all of them have Issues in this Case. most of the time the Lights don't work as they should. you will need a few new Cables and Adapters. your Command Center will show some fan Errors. Pump not detected, Fans always at 0 RPM etc. and you will not be able to use OC Features.

last one who replaced his Board was Bobmugabe and he ended up with some Problems. read more here:

he did some great Work there and explained alot so you don't have to guess anymore. his Asus Motherboard was actually a good Choice. it has all Features needed for a Gaming Rig including M.2 Slot and the Price is okay.

i am waiting until Area 51 with x299 Motherboard is released and then i'll try to replace my current one, because it has some Issues. the Case seems to be the same so it could work. let's see if i can order one from Dell.

you are probably right about the Price.

and i'll need a new CPU and probably RAM.

but i need this new Intel RAID Technology. it's called VROC and is basically SLI for M.2 SSDs. 10 GB/s Read!!! amazing.

Thats a good idea that might work. Dell would most likely charge $600 for

the motherboard.

$600.00 for the X299 motherboard, $1000.00 for the cpu and $600.00 for ram adds up to $2200 the price you will be able to get a base Alienware Area  51 R3?

Carbon Based Lifeform wrote:

... but i need this new Intel RAID Technology ...

Because of ... reasons! 

okay you got me.

i don't really need it. it would be Overkill anyway. some Games don't need this kind of SSD Performance. Tekken 7 Loading Times are Hard Coded for Example. i'm not even sure if i could tell the Difference between SATA SSD and single M.2 SSD with this Game. but if you have to replace your Motherboard, then why not go with the new Generation? M.2 RAID is just another nice to have Thing, you know?

600$ Price however is probably out of my Comfort Zone. with that Money i could buy a nice Motherboard and a new Case. we'll see.

JKTRRT wrote:

$600.00 for the X299 motherboard, $1000.00 for the cpu and $600.00 for ram adds up to $2200 the price you will be able to get a base Alienware Area  51 R3?

probably yes. with 16 GB RAM and cra**y CPU like i5 Quadcore and AMD RX 460 or something like that. "normal" Version is expected to hit 4000$ Range. well according to Rumors atleast.

oh and i believe the x299 Area 51 will be R4 because Alienware is releasing an AMD Version before the Intel one. so AMD Threadripper = R3 and Intel X299 = R4.

I am most likely to end up keeping my Area 51 R2 the way it is I already

changed cpu 6950x, Hyper X 64gb 2666 hz ram, 2 Titan Xp's, Corsair ML 120MM

fans, 2 Samsung Pro 1 TB SSD's and 3 WD 4 TB Black Hard Drives and a

Samsung 1 TB 960 Pro M.2 for the boot. Next venture is a new monitor?

Suggestions?

i believe we already talked about new Monitor. it was that Freedom of Choice for PC Gamers Conversation.

JKTRRT wrote:

Next venture is a new monitor?

Suggestions?

i found a Monitor that might be something for you. here:

Alienware 25 Gaming Monitor: AW2518H | Dell United States 

Tripple Setup would look nice i guess.

what do you think?

Its only 1080 P and its a TN panel. Gotta wait until the 4K HDR 144hz monitors come out.

so....

i tried to order the X299 Motherboard from Dell. they don't sell them separately unless you own a Area 51 R4 and can provide a valid Service Tag Number. i don't even know what to say anymore.

On Aurora-R1 with a SATA 256gb, I still have 100gb free (after all these years). It holds Windows-10, all my apps, and even a couple of large games. Data files and most games are on separate spinner. So, 256gb should be fine if you must.

On the Aurora-R6, it has a NVMe 512gb SSD. They got cheaper so it's more future proof. It holds all apps, and many large games current being played. Plenty of space left. Rarely played or large games, go on a spinner.

Backups go to USB3-HDD or NAS and most media is just stored on NAS.

I picked up Alienware 25 in monitor i might be exchanging it for the 34 in

curved monitor that just came out. Which one would you go with? 240 Hz vs

120 hz

I think maybe you got ahold of someone having "a bad bad" or just grumpy. 

Are heavy upgrades to pre-built computers ever easy or really worth it? Do many components even transfer over anyway? (technology has moved forward)

You could buy a minimal config Area51-R4 machine (on sale), swap the video cards, move your nice HDD/SSD over and then sell or re-purpose the working (and still adequately-configged) Area51-R2.