Details and noise
The Alienware is an incredibly quiet system. Given the amount of hardware that is jammed inside, it's a testament to the engineering of AMD, NVIDIA and ASUS that it makes less noise than your average machine.
The ASUS board has a heatpipe cooler for the northbridge, which means there's no whiney northbridge fan to distract you. In use, this didn't get too hot, suggesting that it's an adequate and stable solution. The case also sports a handy screw rack, meaning that you can always keep some spares around for adding extra components, should you decide that this monstrosity actually lacks something you require.
The front door does a great job of keeping noise from the optical drives at the minimum. The 600W Enermax PSU isn't fantastically quiet, but is adequate. We'd rather see a meatier, quieter PSU from someone like Tagan in there.
The case is also plastered in soundproofing matting to keep noise down.
The cards have CardKeepers attached, meaning that they'll be secure in transit, should you wish to cart this to a LAN party. Be warned - the system is incredibly heavy, so you might want to keep those trips out to a minimum. There is an inverter at the front of the case which powers the blue lighting that flows through the front grille.
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