This thread is not intended to be negative on Dell or the Alienware brand but hopefully it can be used as constructive. I as many here own several Alienware products and they do work as intended. Whoever is selling their prebuilts, they have their pros and cons.

My biggest contention currently with Dell and Alienware is NOT the quality of the product but rather the need to design a product that locks you in and is basically non upgradable. This includes motherboards that are based on proprietary design as well as the case and power supplies. If the PSU fails, you can't buy an ATX PSU off the shelf. So you either have to send it out to a PSU repair facility or buy one from Ebay because Dell may not sell you a replacement part. That's my biggest issues with Alienware. The PC's look really nice but the cons as mentioned above outweigh the pros because for gaming they deliver.

So I was looking at alternatives and considered the HP Omen 45L with the latest i9 and 4090 but the cost without discounts was a little high. Enter Lenovo's Legion Tower 7i. It uses basically a Corsair case, a full size ATX mobo and all standard parts. In other words it's extremely upgradable. I was comparing the R15 with the i9 and 4090 at $3799 vs the Legion Tower 7i. The 7i includes the i9 13900KF, RTX 4090, 32GB @ 5600 Mhz, 1 TB Gen SSD, Wifi 6, 1200w PSU, three front case vented intake fans, a rear exhaust fan, upper 360mm AIO, and multi-zone RGB lighting. Cost with current discounts, $2660.20 plus tax. It would be difficult to build something comparable at that price, vs the R15 with a similar config with slower RAM at $3449.

Hopefully Dell and it's design team should do in the future is design their systems to have upgradability, better cooling where their best CPU's aren't throttling due to heat and use non-proprietary parts. Cooling wise the R15 is a step in the right direction vs the R13/14 but it's based on existing chassis design that is used for non-gaming applications. I decided to go with the Legion 7i.