Yeah, I definitely know there are times when you can do much better with individual components, and then there are times when I've been able to beat Dell part for part in the Alienware configurator (again, not necessarily saying much, but they're not the huge rip people make them out to be)...I mean hey, I am typing this on an Alienware Area 51...I bought it when Hyperthreading came out - first chip with it, it's still a beast today and I'm only replacing it for quad core, dx10, and vista (and I'll be building it myself).