Dell's New Alienware Case Goes to Extremes To Prevent Overheating

MojoKid writes Dell's enthusiast Alienware brand has always stood out for its unique, other-worldly looks (sometimes good, sometimes, not so good) and there's such a thing as taking things to the next level, this might be it. However, there's more to this refresh than just shock value. It's actually a futuristic aesthetic with a rather purposeful design behind it. Today Alienware gave a sneak peek at their completely redesigned Alienware Area 51 desktop system. This refreshed system is unlike any previous Alienware rig you've seen. With a trapezoidal shape to its chassis, Dell-Alienware says you can place the Area-51 against a wall and not have to worry about thermals getting out of the control. That's because there's a controlled gap and a sharp angle to the chassis that ensures only a small part of the system actually rests near the wall, leaving extra room for hot air to escape up and away. This design also offers users easy access to rear IO ports. Despite the unique design, there's plenty of room for high end components inside. The retooled chassis can swallow up to three 300W double-wide full-length graphics cards. It also brings to the table Intel's latest and greatest Haswell-E in six-core or eight-core options, liquid cooled and nestled into Intel's X99 chipset. No word from Dell on the price but the new Area-51 is slated to start shipping in October.

Comments

Ineffective advertising

[rebelwarlock]

The only way this could have been more blatant of an advertisement is if they had put in a preorder link. Even if it wasn't, their "controlled gap" is just a corner that juts out so you can't push it up against the wall properly. It's just not very impressive in terms of, well, anything.

Besides, I'm pretty sure the slashdot crowd builds their own rigs anyway.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[Charliemopps]

The only way this could have been more blatant of an advertisement is if they had put in a preorder link. Even if it wasn't, their "controlled gap" is just a corner that juts out so you can't push it up against the wall properly. It's just not very impressive in terms of, well, anything.

Besides, I'm pretty sure the slashdot crowd builds their own rigs anyway.

So lets tare it apparent instead:
1. It's hideously ugly
2. That vent design will make removing dust and pethair from the vents nearly impossible.
3. It's a non-standard form fact, a lot of hardware will not fit in it at all.
4. The PSU is at the bottom, heat rises, and directly above it they have the SLI video cards. This is a terrible design.
5. It's small and cramped... which I'd expect from a portable design for lan parties... but it's too awkward to carry.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[asylumx]

I'm anything BUT an Apple fan, but I think their new design for the Mac Pro is better looking and probably more functional from a shape perspective than this idea from Alienware. Glad to see manufacturers trying new things, but I hope they keep looking.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[LookIntoTheFuture]

I'm anything BUT an Apple fan, but I think their new design for the Mac Pro is better looking and probably more functional from a shape perspective than this idea from Alienware. Glad to see manufacturers trying new things, but I hope they keep looking.

That thing makes me want to start smoking again so I could ash in it.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[goarilla]

4. The PSU is at the bottom, heat rises, and directly above it they have the SLI video cards. This is a terrible design.

The PSU at the bottom is pretty much the standard these days.
It makes room for top vents or a radiator that way. And the heath output of the PSU is so minimal
compared to other parts that it's probably the best place for the PSU.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[O('_')O_Bush]

Maybe for low end prebuilds. I haven't seen an custom build that uses a case with that layout, and the most popular cases do not have that layout.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[LookIntoTheFuture]

Overrated? Come on, it totally looks like an ash tray.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[goarilla]

Oh really CM 690 III (it's a popular case -- they made three versions of it):
http://www.coolermaster.com/ca...

Antec 280:
http://www.antec.com/product.p...

Same deal with a high end Lian Li PC-A79:
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_p...

Re: Ineffective advertising

[mister_playboy]

Antec cases have the PSU at the bottom, or at least the fanciest ones do.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[ubersoldat2k7]

Mind commenting about TFA and saving your useless criticism for yourself?

Besides, I'm pretty sure the slashdot crowd builds their own rigs anyway.

So what? Because you're not interested it means everyone shouldn't be? Find something/somewhere else to hate.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[fa2k]

So we should compare this announcement with the Mac Pro one. Apple had to share a slashdot article between the MacBook and the Mac Pro. There's not many complaints about slashvertisement on the mac post.

The post about the Mac appears just as positive, but it packs a lot more facts in fewer sentences, so it's arguably better. Both have their share of marketing language and fluff, but the Alienware has a lot more of it.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[war4peace]

Antec P182 - I have it, there's almost no heat coming from the top of the PSU, and guess where does the PSU reside?

Re:Ineffective advertising

[iggymanz]

Wow, festooning a computer case with weeds harmful to grains, to bring it apart. That's very novel compared to something as mundane as tearing one apart.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[Applehu Akbar]

If your PSU grows heath, you need to get a dehumidifier or even consider leaving Seattle.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[X0563511]

Mine's got the PSU on bottom, but it does have the intake (with a removable hair screen) on the bottom, raised pegs, and the exhaust on back. Meaning that the PSU doesn't blow hot air anywhere inside the case.

Tons of airflow on this case, even with the fans on the lowest setting my CPU fan hardly ever needs to spin fast.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[X0563511]

Or a trash bin.

It's certainly.. unique looking.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[Misagon]

Funny how everyone called it a "trash can" ... until they saw how small it was. Then they started calling it an "ash tray".

I thought the unified thermal core was genius... until I heard that it actually runs pretty hot.
The graphics card have to be custom-made for the Mac Pro, and you can't put a mechanical drive inside, which limits performance for video editing. Yet again Apple's own overpriced accessories are the only ones that fit.
I'm not saying that the Alienware trapezoid/pentagon isn't more ridiculous. I think the older Mac Pro was a better design than both of them.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[Cinder6]

Did you reply to the wrong comment? The cases you linked all have the PSU at the bottom.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[sudon't]

I am an Apple fan, and the new Mac Pro is the first design in a long time that I haven't liked. The old aluminum enclosure looked a lot nicer. This one looks PCish to me, in spite of being round. Maybe it's the color of the plastic? I prefer my ashtrays in amber glass on a brass pedestal.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[brianwski]

Our graphics designer who does a lot of video work got a Mac Pro here at work, they are pretty expensive, but it seems fast and reliable so far. Time will tell for sure.

> you can't put a mechanical drive inside, which limits performance for video editing

I think the designers made the correct decisions for video editing. SSDs are faster than mechanical drives and go inside. Most video editors also need large repositories in addition to their working set (the working set goes on internal SSD) and basically always use external mechanical disk arrays - and the Mac Pro comes with nice fast Thunderbolt for the external arrays.

I dislike the humongous cases of a few years ago, I welcome smaller, more practical, more desk friendly designs just as long as they are every bit as fast.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[rebelwarlock]

That's a whole lot of salt. You must be mad that no one liked your favorite brand's advertisement.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[Cinder6]

I blame the new layout (first time here in months). I couldn't see the other comment. My bad!

Re:Ineffective advertising

[Joe_Dragon]

more functional this thing has room for 3 video cars and 5 HDD's maybe even SATA express.

mac pro 2 video cards that only fit in the mac pro. 1 pci-e SSD slot and no pci-e slots.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[Joe_Dragon]

but only 1 inside slot? with no choice for raid? also no E-sata

Re:Ineffective advertising

[enjar]

I thought of the Mac Pro when I saw this design, and thought "this is more what the Mac Pro should have been". Maybe not from the aesthetic perspective (maybe a bigger trash can than the current model?), but the things this system can do are far more akin to what the old cheese grater Mac Pros could do:

- accept GPU cards of the maker you choose, and upgrade them as new models come out. Or, more accurately, more PCI devices.
- accept more storage devices in the bays, or a mix of SSD and disk technologies to give a price/performance mix for people who need it.

The new Mac Pro's exterior and technological designs have a lot of high points. What is misses was that the people who were shelling out the money for the "Pro" model were probably populating a lot of the drive bays, maxing out the RAM, adding additional GPUs and making use of the dual processors or putting in add-in cards that connected to storage or other specialized equipment. They might also be upgrading the GPUs during the 3-4 years they held onto the machine, as the GPU power has been appreciating pretty quickly.

So the new model misses the use case that those people had and replaces it with a throwaway all-in-one box whose only expansion potential skips the PCI bus and takes it down several speed steps to the Thunderbolt devices that you string together like Christmas lights with wall warts, which is going to turn into a dusty rat's nest of cables. I suspect PCs like this one might be appealing to the people who bought the cheese graters.

The only major complaint I had about the cheese grater was that you couldn't put in a 19" rack without resorting to the use of a saw to hack off the handles. We have several of them in our test lab and I was hoping to consolidate them from shelves into a rack so they would look nicer and be easier to maintain but it was kind of a pain in the rear. I'd have been perfectly happy if they had not gone with the trash can design and just come up with a new motherboard that supported newer Xeon processors, had PCI 3 and the latest SATA speeds (which we get all day long for our Windows and Linux servers -- using the same hardware!), but instead we get the trash can.

Or just bring back the freaking XServe.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[geekoid]

1. I disagree.
2. No more then it is now. Pop open the top, and blow it out.
3. As nears as I can tell, the motherboard isn't standard, but everything else is.
4. Clearly you didn't pay attention to how it removes heat. Having the weight at the bottom is better.
5. lan parties. Cute.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[stg]

Yet again Apple's own overpriced accessories are the only ones that fit.

AFAIK it is all standard stuff - USB, Thunderbolt, HDMI, etc. None of those require you to use Apple accessories.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[geekoid]

For that price, you can get far more powerful PCs.
In fact, you could get several PC and create a mini farm.

OTOH, it's for a graphic designer, so pretty of substance.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[brantondaveperson]

If the PSU is wasting more power than the rest of the system is actually using, then you've got bigger problems.

The PSU should be >90% efficient, which means it's producing 10% of the total heat output of the system.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[thegarbz]

The only way this could have been more blatant of an advertisement is if they had put in a preorder link.

Allow me to introduce to you the concept of a product press release. This is something given to news outlets and then they run stories on it. There are other sites that exist to aggregate the news into a common place for a common interest. I believe one of the most popular ones is called Slashdot and they aggregate articles on the likes of news in the tech industry.

If you would like more information I can continue stating the obvious for a small bitcoin donation.

Re: Ineffective advertising

[Charliemopps]

Oh really CM 690 III (it's a popular case -- they made three versions of it):

http://www.coolermaster.com/ca...

Antec 280:

http://www.antec.com/product.p...

Same deal with a high end Lian Li PC-A79:

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_p...

I know they sell cases where the PSU's are at the bottom. It's a gimmick to sell cases to people that think that's a better design. It's not. The one and only benifit is the weight of the case is now at the bottom and it's less likely to tip. But heat wise, the PSU is the biggest offender in your case. It's also one of the most heat tolerant components. A good, basic, design has large fans in the PSU pulling air IN from the case and exiting the PSU out. All other fans are blowing IN to the case so all airflow enters the case first, travels through and then exits the PSU.

If you have the PSU mounted at the bottom of the case, he will radiate from the PSU up into the rest of the case. Also, as the hot air exits the PSU it will rise past your input fans causing them to recirculate that warm air again!

Re: Ineffective advertising

[goarilla]

I know they sell cases where the PSU's are at the bottom. It's a gimmick to sell cases to people that think that's a better design. It's not. The one and only benifit is the weight of the case is now at the bottom and it's less likely to tip. But heat wise, the PSU is the biggest offender in your case. It's also one of the most heat tolerant components. A good, basic, design has large fans in the PSU pulling air IN from the case and exiting the PSU out. All other fans are blowing IN to the case so all airflow enters the case first, travels through and then exits the PSU.

No it's not. The GFX card and the CPU are the most heat generating components.
The way it works nowadays is that the PSU draws air from the bottom circulates it over its components and pushes it out the back out of the case.
That air is not gonna to be drawn back in.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[rpstrong]

5. It's small and cramped... which I'd expect from a portable design for lan parties... but it's too awkward to carry.

5. Handles are built into each of the corners. Easier to carry (or tip forward, for connector access) than a typical box.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[asylumx]

Ya, this article showed up in my feed today which seems like an obvious slashvertisement to me, too: http://build.slashdot.org/stor... They've been pretty bad about this lately.

Re:Ineffective advertising

[asylumx]

I *do* think the mac pro looks like a trash can, and I worry about things being set on top of it and causing worse heating problems. Just saying, the alienware doesn't have those problems but it is going to be hard to fit the alienware design in with most decor.

Re:How much?

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

Dell didn't pay anything for it, as far as I can tell.

This is a post by MojoKid, who operates the HotHardware.Com site. I'm guessing he submitted the article to Slashdot in order to get some ad revenue from people visiting his site as a result.

I'm guessing that blocking

googletagservices.com
googleusercontent.com
tru.am

before visiting his site will make that a little more difficult.

I do not know if he is a Slashdot or a Dice Holdings, Inc., employee, but it would be nice if there was some sort of transparency statement, if that's the case.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Alienware's business model

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Buy the same components that would be in any high spec PC
2. Invent the ugliest, least practical case you find. Preferably one which glows blue, and has a perspex cum-proof window so owner can wank over their expensive purchase.
3. Throw in a stupidly heavy keyboard and mouse, each styled to be ugly too. Preferably they glow red.
4. Throw a 2 or 3x markup on what it cost to shit out this abomination.
5. Laugh at the morons who sustain this business model.

"Against a wall"

[Noughmad]

In other words, it's ok to place this directly agains the wall, because the shape ensures it cannot be placed agains the wall. Well done.

Re:"Against a wall"

[v1]

In other words, it's ok to place this directly agains the wall, because the shape ensures it cannot be placed agains the wall. Well done.

That's actually completely accurate. Towers do tend to get placed under desks, or more commonly, in a corner where the desk meets the wall. Ventillatoin back there is crap, and the system overheats. So rather than make another case that will just generate a lot more support calls and broken harware in warranty, they just made it physically impossible to keep installing it like retard.

y'know... for their retarded customers ;)

Knowing your customer is key to a successful business.

But all sarcasm aside, I do like the new design. I'm a mac fan but I can see some thought went into this both for functionality and for original and interesting design. Even if they fail at both, at least they're trying. It's not just another boring beige / black box.

I think the biggest concern for me though would be how much floor space this is going to take up, plus how little or zero space there is to set anything on it. I don't even think you could set the keyboard aside on it without risking it falling over. And imagine the users setting drinks on top of it! At least with a box, if you knock your drink over, it's on the floor. HERE.... it can drain your entire soda into the mobo ports (back) or fan intake. (front) I think that will be the biggest problem this case has, getting users out of the habbit of setting things on top of their case.

Re:"Against a wall"

[Morpf]

There are already things hindering the customers to place their PC directly with their back to the walls. One is called cables, the other one is called convenience. Who wants to crawl under their desk to turn the PC on or to attach / detach an USB flash drive? Thus a PC is more often then not aligned with the front of the desk, with more than enough space towards the wall.

So I call BS on the "regular PCs heat up because of walls and thus we introduced this case design".

Re:"Against a wall"

[Mal-2]

I don't know about you, but I prefer to have my desktop machine as far away from my ears as the cables will allow. This also means putting it out of reach to set anything like drinks on top of it. I do have an 8-channel mixer and a USB3-SATA drive dock on top of it, but I have to stand up and take a couple steps to reach either of those.

If I could do it without knocking a hole in the wall, I'd put the whole machine in a different room so I don't have to hear it or feel its heat.

Re: "Against a wall"

[Bloke down the pub]

Spherical is the way to go, especially if you like cows.

Re:"Against a wall"

[war4peace]

Monsieur Ventillatoin disagrees.

Re:"Against a wall"

[TeknoHog]

imagine the users setting drinks on top of it! At least with a box, if you knock your drink over, it's on the floor. HERE.... it can drain your entire soda into the mobo ports (back) or fan intake. (front)

Moreover, I imagine this feature will increase dust buildup. Of course you get plenty of dust along the airstream, no matter what direction, but in this case (pun intended) there's a constant buildup from above, even when the machine is off. Then when you turn the machine on again, you get this nice layer of dust sucked in at once.

To avoid these types of problem, I'd rather have an indentation on the back, leaving room for air even when the top is pushed against the wall. It will be somewhat worse for natural convection, though. Then again it might help when lifting the machine up.

Re:"Against a wall"

[TeknoHog]

There are already things hindering the customers to place their PC directly with their back to the walls. One is called cables, the other one is called convenience.

But then you also have people who just like to shove things against the wall. I mean who cares about a broken cable now and then, you can always buy more >.<

Re:"Against a wall"

[tompaulco]

So I call BS on the "regular PCs heat up because of walls and thus we introduced this case design".

Regular PCs don't heat up because regular PCs don't produce a great deal of heat. Enthusiast PCs do, but Enthusiast PC owners know better, and if they don't then they are the perfect target market for a replacement PC.

Re:"Against a wall"

[Reziac]

A great deal of a PC's heat exchange happens through the case. Plastic shells are therefore not a good idea. (If you don't believe me, wrap your machine in a towel, leaving the front and back open, and watch the temperature go up.) And this one has less surface area. My guess is it will actually run hotter than the same equipment in a standard case.

As to Dell's engineering for temperature mitigation -- a few years ago someone gift me a top-of-the-line Dell that had a chronic overheating issue. It had the hood-and-distant-fan arrangement that OEMs seem to like, but no CPU fan and only the most minimal heatsink, like we mighta used on a 486. I removed the hood and the crappy heatsink, added a standard CPU heatsink/fan (nothing special, just a cheap stock model) and the machine's operating temperature dropped by 40F degrees (yes, FORTY degrees Fahrenheit).

So much for all the engineering that's supposed to enhance cooling, eh? This was when I concluded that, given that excess heat kills a machine in about 3 years, these damn things are *designed to die*.

Re:"Against a wall"

[Swave An deBwoner]

Please. I'm having a contractor come in to move my walls so that they hug this case the way they are supposed to. Trapezoidal rooms .. here I come!

Trapezoidal shape?

[Ecuador]

Before clicking the link I was trying to imagine how a trapezoidal shape could help and I could not. Well, that's because it is a hexagon. Sure, not a regular one, as the article says "like a triangle but with twice as many sides", and even more complicated than that (half the sides are hexagonal themselves, the other half rectangular), but I would not call it "trapezoidal" unless I did not know what that meant.
That said, yes, you can push it to the wall, but due to its shape it is actually longer (at its lower part) than a rectangular case would be, so you would be able to leave enough space behind with a rectangular case if you set it so that its front is at the same place where this hexagon reaches when it is all the way back to the wall. If they wanted to actually save space perhaps they could get air from the sides and out from the top on a rectangular shape (along with ports etc)? I don't know, I'm just saying.

Re:Trapezoidal shape?

[NoMaster]

Before clicking the link I was trying to imagine how a trapezoidal shape could help and I could not. Well, that's because it is a hexagon.

Doesn't matter. You clicked on the link. Dice's job is done...

Re:Trapezoidal shape?

[X0563511]

Looks like an extruded triangle with bevels. Don't make it more complicated :P

Re:Trapezoidal shape?

[cyberchondriac]

What irked me is the totally useless video. Instead of exhibiting the case, using the benefit of multiple angles provided by a video cam, etc.. we just get a bunch of bullshit seizure inducing game screens and other pointless alien metaphor type stuff. The video could have been used to give us a much better grasp of the design than the picture or two on the webpage. They have definitely chosen flashy sensationalism over substance, and for that I cannot trust anything they claim.

A 24 inch boxfan works better

[Anonymous Coward]

Cooling doesn't have to be complicated.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how much advertising did Dell buy ro get this story run?

Don't be ridiculous. It's not an advertisement. Alienware makes some pretty slick gaming rigs--I have a few myself as I am sure many other slashdotters do. I find it interesting to hear about their latest case design. Sorry if paranoia prevents you from enjoying the article.

trapezoidal?

[m.alessandrini]

Does someone know a trapezoid?

The 2014 Award for the Ugliest Case goes to...

[DenaliPrime]

The Alienware "Trapezoidal" Area 51 Case.


Jesus... That thing is ugly.

Trapezoid? No, it isn't

[torsmo]

It's a hexagonal prism, albeit not regular. So it may be called a plesiohedron?

Corsair Air 540

[Mistakill]

I bought one of these, and between it and the Corsair H110, i don't even have any case fans on... the case has good ventilation at the top, and front... the case will be a fair bit cheaper than the premium alienware would be charging too

Re:Corsair Air 540

[johnny0099]

It's my favorite case ever. I think the GP has inspired me to try turning off the three case fans. I'm giddy.

Re:Corsair Air 540

[Sycraft-fu]

I love it. Very easy to route cables, great cooling, and it is shorter than a normal case (wider, but shorter). It is a great, great choice in my opinion.

Chill out - I dig it

[water-and-sewer]

I don't know why there's so much hatred about this being a slashvertisement. I actually like articles about new hardware - it's one of the reasons I still visit sites like this.

I dig the new machine, and totally support people looking into alternative and hopefully improved/innovative designs. This thing looks cool.

You guys will figure that out when you calm down a bit.

Re:Chill out - I dig it

[MojoKid]

That was refreshing. Thanks

Re:How much?

[binarylarry]

Wow nice, aryeh some kind of internet detective?

Re:How much?

[MojoKid]

I'm guessing that blocking

googletagservices.com googleusercontent.com tru.am

before visiting his site will make that a little more difficult.

I do not know if he is a Slashdot or a Dice Holdings, Inc., employee, but it would be nice if there was some sort of transparency statement, if that's the case.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Seriously? Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising. This was a press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware. It's a VERY cool case and system design I think, so I submitted our story on it. Yes, I run HotHardware.com and no it's not even close to an advertisement. It's just our usual news coverage on a variety of topics around the computing space. Alienware had a press release on this new system design and we covered it, along with many other Tech news outlets I'm sure.

And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should. The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on and people employed to serve up news, reviews and other content you enjoy every day, essentially for free.

And good sites (like Slashdot and HotHardware) know how to separate church and state, where advertising does not affect editorial opinion.

Re:How much?

[MojoKid]

Thank you, well said.

Re:How much?

[Applehu Akbar]

This attitude goes right along with assuming that every argument that differs from one's own is a shill for some corporate interest. Is there any position on any issue that can't be construed that way, by the decicated paranoid?.

So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[Marrow]

There were reasons which I cannot seem to remember right now. Fan noise maybe? But why dont cases blow air up?

Re:So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdote: I knew a student who had a self-built computer, with a top fan exhaust (and a very high CFM fan, a Delta I think!). He had a bit too much to drink one night, and threw up in exactly the wrong direction, straight on top of his PC...

Extra comedy: His PC survived, because the Delta threw the vomit right back in his face.

Perhaps this is why.

Re: So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when it isn't on you'd have a nice opening for dust, hair, and anything else to rain down into the case.

Re:So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[geekoid]

Some do. But mostly, it's to prevent damage from spillage.

Frankly, we need to go back to desk tops.

Re:So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[tompaulco]

I have a cooler master haf-x. It breathes out the top. Works great, and I can put it right up against a wall, because the intlet fan is on the other side, unless I am an idiot and put the fan side against the wall. Even then there are two other fans, one in front and one in back to try to limit the damage if I am an idiot.
I can't speak enough praise about this case. From the access points, to cable grommets, to incredible airflow, to built in sdata and usb frontside.
I priced an alienware to a homebuilt with this case, and went homebuilt. I'll never look back. Alienware was probably 50-75% more and with them you don't get to pick the top of the line brand new components, if that is your choosing.
This is not a slashvertisement, as I don't have any ad links for you to click, just my opinion and I hope you are able to use it to some benefit.

Re:So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[Demonantis]

A lot of gamer cases vent out the top. For example; http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/... I think its to deal with the PSU being on the bottom of the case or to have space for the liquid cooling radiator inside the case.

Re:So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[PixetaledPikachu]

There were reasons which I cannot seem to remember right now. Fan noise maybe? But why dont cases blow air up?

Actually modern PC cases such as Bitfenix's Prodigy/Phenom, Fractal Design Define R, and specially made for air cooling Corsair Carbide Air provide vent and filter on top. You can install apair of large fans on them but most of the time, they are used for watercooling kit.

Re:So why dont cases breathe out the top?

[vikingpower]

I have a self-built server in an Antec tower case. It breathes out of the top ( the main inlets are front, behind the RAID controller, and one of the sides ). It stands on a table, and never has any problem with hair from the three dogs who regularly stalk around here, insects, etc. Only some dust, but that is normal.

A Triply Truncated Triangle

[pefisher]

That's what I'd call it.

Re:How much?

[MojoKid]

Sure, OK, 5-10 for a domain and hosting is chump change and sites like this are all run by volunteers. You go with that. Whatever works for ya.

Corsair Air 540

[Cinder6]

How do you like it? I was pretty intrigued when I saw one of these at a Fry's, but I went with the Carbide 300R (which is the best case I've had the pleasure of using). The 540, aside from being gigantic, seemed like overkill at the time.

32GB

[lucm]

The RAM on this thing is limited to 32GB. Pretty soon there will probably be laptops at Best Buy that support more than that.

Q: How much RAM do you really need?
A: It doesn't matter. GIVE ME MORE RAM!

Re:32GB

[geekoid]

False. Very few Application use more then a few gigs.
Some do, and that's great, but for 95+% of users, it would just be wasted.
This isn't 1993

It's math.

Re:32GB

[lucm]

Wherever you go you must be the life of the party.

Re:How much?

[phantomfive]

Seriously? Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising

It helps to increase that assumption when in the next paragraph you defend ad-block passionately.

If ads were guaranteed to be malware free, then I wouldn't block them, but ad-tech companies are more interested in vetting inventory than advertisers (because advertiser are the ones who pay, so ad-tech companies put a lot of effort into making sure they get a good product).

FWIW I thought your post was interesting.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot.

I suspect in reality that the best sites would continue, but there would be a lot more paywalls around, probably less editorial integrity on open sites as things like product placements and affiliate referral fees became more reliable revenue streams, and maybe over time we'd eventually get somewhere with micropayments. In some ways, moving to more "honest" funding via paywalls and/or micropayments might be a better long-term model for the people who do produce good content and run valuable sites than what we have today, though no doubt it would be a painful transition with many casualties.

The thing that makes me a little sad inside is that the aggressive, irresponsible advertisers have spoiled the model for the moderate, responsible ones. Because of the former group, I do block very aggressively when I'm browsing, and I don't feel any guilt about it because my motivations are security, privacy and performance. However, I also have no problem with people who just want to make a bit of money from running a decent site, and I wouldn't block their ads if there were a reliable way to allow those while still eliminating the rest. Unfortunately, I don't see that being possible any time soon, which is why none of the commercial sites I've ever run myself has relied on ads as a business model.

Your bad business model isn't my problem

[sjbe]

Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising.

Because there is a large number of the tinfoil hat crowd here. Unfortunately they aren't always wrong. There are sometimes stories that really are just PR in disguise. I've certainly seen a few of them slip through here on slashdot. I agree that this particular instance probably isn't PR but I can see that it might be hard to be sure.

If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should.

It also doesn't mean that I have some obligation to watch the ads, particularly given the privacy baggage that tends to come with them. I come to slashdot to read the content, not to watch ads or let companies track my every move. Your bad business model is not my problem. If I value what you have then I will pay for it. I pay for several magazines as well as subscriptions to several online media services I find valuable to me. Frankly most online ad services are invasive to the point of being creepy as hell. Why on earth would I support that in any way? Advertising companies are generally invasive and seem to have no clue about when they've crossed the line. If they had any ethical compass I might be more lenient but I regularly see interviews with people involved in the online ad industry and they regard website viewers like a rancher views a side of beef. No respect whatsoever.

The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on and people employed to serve up news, reviews and other content you enjoy every day, essentially for free.

Media funds through ads because it is easy but it is hardly the only means available. If you want to take advantage of the easy money don't be shocked when you get pushback. Newspapers are shriveling up because they built a business model based on a distribution monopoly and easy advertising dollars. Now that the distribution monopoly is broken by the internet their business model no longer allows monopoly profits. Your business is no different and if your business model is based on people being dumb enough to not block advertising that has a blatant disregard for privacy then I have no sympathy for you.

And good sites (like Slashdot and HotHardware) know how to separate church and state, where advertising does not affect editorial opinion.

The problem is that it sometimes is hard to tell the difference. Given that fact I would be a fool not to take control of my own privacy given that I have the means.

I'm not always stupid and rich ...

[geekoid]

but when I am, I buy Alienware.

You don't like a bax case?

[geekoid]

Why not trapezoid?

I'm not hearing a no....

Re:How much?

[davester666]

Um "press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware" == advertisement

and making a press release appear to be a review [also known as "branded content"] is a violation of church and state

but it's the new thing to get a few extra sheckles these days

Re:How much?

[evilviper]

Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising.

Perhaps because it's utterly and totally devoid of valuable information on the subject? When your copy is just "Ooh, look... Shiny!" and uncritically copying bits of info out of the manufacturer's press release... you are doing nothing more than advertising a product.

If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should.

Adblock Plus allows non-annoying advertisements through the filter, to be displayed by default...

If every site used non-annoying ads, ad-blockers "would likely cease to exist."

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising. This was a press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware.

I know you are right in the middle of it since that is your website and that makes it difficult to see things from any other perspective, but you should take a step back and try to see it as an uninvolved bystander would because those two statements are fundamentally contradictory. They can not both be simultaneously true, press-release journalism is not legitimate news, if for no other reason than coordination reduces your ability to critically report a story.

Heavy

[buckfeta2014]

Does the thing still weigh 200 fucking pounds? That's always been my beef with Alienware computers. You need a fucking forklift just to move them around.

Re:How much?

[MojoKid]

No one made this article or anything in it "appear to be a review." It's an announcement and news release, that's it. There is no mention of testing, or passing judgement other than maybe an opinion on the design aesthetic, which is completely subjective anyway. At this point the dialog has gone off topic and off the rails, rather than discussing the post at hand. So I'm done with it. Carry on. Thanks

Re:How much?

[davester666]

I know you've "left", but the article is totally written in the sense of an independent review of a sneak peek of the hardware and NOT by Dell/Alienware, and only by careful reading of the entire article do you actually find out it effectively an advertisement for the hardware.

A casual reader would easily mistake it for an actual review, and not the paid ad that it is.

Re:How much?

[penguinoid]

And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block.

Of course we're proud. What do you think we are, stupid? Who wants to sacrifice bandwidth so as to have a gaping security hole that occasionally installs malware directly via exploits, frequently contains deceptive warnings which actually link to malware, and at best are noisy or flashy distractions from the page itself? And then the pop-ups, pop-unders, redirects, phishing scams, etc. Things have gotten so nasty that Adblock Plus more effective for securing your computer than the so called "security software", and as a bonus it doesn't even eat all your processor and blocks ads besides.

And the worst is that the advent of ad-supported web pages has slowly pushed people away from producing quality content as a contribution to the world, and towards producing SEO or clickbait content (or perhaps the latter hides the former).

Thanks for the effort you put into your response.

[Marrow]

It looks like a really nice case, but too far outside my "minimalist" envelope. I do need to shake things up though; I haven't built a machine in too long. I need to bring a new one to life.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

because it IS ADVERTISING, you submitted it here to try and get more page hits, you could have linked directly to the alienware announcement, or to a site that isn't riddled with advertising links, but no you linked to your site with the intention of generating traffic and neither Slashdot nor hothardware are good examples of separate church and state.

Re:How much?

[serviscope_minor]

And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block.

Well, look at it from another perspective. I have nothing against ads online. I understand they pay for stuff and whatnot. If I see something advertised on a site I like that I want, I'll follow the link there so they get their cut.

Well I used to.

I don't run adblock, but I hardly see any ads anymore.

You see, I'm browsing on the moment on an eee 900. As you may recall, it has a 900 MHz Celery P3 and a whole gig of ram. I basically run noscript and enable the minimum necessary to bring up the text and sometimes the pictures.

Why? Because frankly this thing doesn't have the CPU grunt to run every wierd bit of javascript that everyone seems to want to tack on to their pages these days. Sadly, it seems that advertisers not only want to advertise to you (that's fine) but want to do it while consuming as much of your CPU as they can (not fine).

So, I don't see most ads. I'm not proud of not seeing ads, I feel in fact vaguely guilty about it. However, I'm not going to re-enable all javascript and make browsing on this computer unusable.

On another note, once I disabled all the weird google services I noticed the creepy tracking went away and so I no longer get targeted ads. I'm seriously not re-enabling it again.

However please not, I do not nor will I likely ever run adblock.

Re:How much?

[qpqp]

They make them to they can eat and feed their families.

What a lousy business model.
Real money is made by sustainably providing value to the customers/users, not deciding that your hobby of talking about knitting pink socks is going to buy you a house and employing a legion of editors to chase that hallucination.

you still conveniently ignore that people don't make websites for free.

Last time I heard, there's a myriad of FLOSS CMS or web-publishing systems out there, slap a template on 'em or pay other people to do it for you, if you can't be bothered to invest a couple of weeks (hours?) learning how to do so.

supposed commodity hardware

What do you mean? Most of the internet runs on commodity hardware, so obviously, it's you who doesn't have a clue.

HVAC

[bobmajdakjr]

so if i run the fans backwards does it become a room cooling unit?

Re:How much?

[Your.Master]

If there are such places, then go there, because you just described why you don't need an adblocker -- you already have ad-free sites for all your content, right?

The argument can be extended to anything. There are plenty of soup kitchens offering food for free, so it's your problem if you can't find a business model that works when you just take food without paying for it. Right?

I get the problem of annoying ads. First of all there's the malware ads and spoofing ads; those are awful. But even worse are those ads that play sound. The only time an ad should play sound is if it's inserted into or at the beginning / end of a video or audio stream. If somebody knows of an adblocker that just gets rid of any ad that plays sound (excluding those provisos) and leaves the rest, I'd take that, even if it just replaced the entire page with "Sorry! This site is awful and is committed to pissing you off. Go elsewhere.".

Re:How much?

[qpqp]

The argument can be extended to anything.

No, it can not. I'm specifically talking about the cost to run a website, not a brick and mortar enterprise.

then go there

Don't worry, that's where I spend most of the time dedicated to my information needs. They're also usually much more accurate. Other sites (like slashdot) let me turn off ads without an adblocker (unfortunately not the slashvertisements). Some sites (like duckduckgo) I make an exception. Most of all, I definitely don't use that hardware site that spawned this discussion, or CNET, or other sites like that.

you just described why you don't need an adblocker

No, I described that there's plenty of places that don't use this shitty excuse for putting up ads all over your viewport, I also described that hosting costs are neglectable and stand in absolutely no comparison to the argument that "The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on [...]" It's totally different in the sense that running costs are neglectable if done right (e.g. volunteers for editors, lean architecture, etc.).

I get the problem of annoying ads.

I also wonder, if you get the problem of ads that track your surfing behavior?

Re:How much?

[Quirkz]

And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot.

I'm not "proud" of adblocking any more than I'm proud of locking my door at night. It's just basic personal security. It's a shame that my security needs conflict with the site's business model. But frankly, I'm not going to click on any ads anyway. I've clicked on maybe two in the past decade, and both were by accident. Mostly I'm not interested. Even if I *am* interested, I'm going go to the source web site directly, because I can't trust some random ad to be genuine.