So the day after my post, Alienware added an nVidia 9800GT2 SLI option. So I decided to go for it, even though the SSDs were not available. I did go read a lot of reviews on SSDs and they are still a little mixed. I mostly cared about speed and silence. I got the Alienware Acoustic Dampening ($99) and am hopeful that it will deliver on the silence side. As far as speed, most of the reviews I’ve read indicate the SSDs are great for boot-up but don’t offer a super-meaningful speed increase in general performance. Since this is a desktop and will be on most of the time, boot-up speed isn’t of primary importance.

— I welcome any posts on SSD performance from anyone that may read this.

Also, I’m happy to note that after a bit of escalation I found out that upgrading your video card does not invalidate your warranty. Obviously the new card (unless you bought it from Alienware) isn’t covered by the warranty, but the basic warranty is still valid. That’s good news.

My new Alienware is now in Phase 6 – “Integration” and I hope it will ship soon. I’ll be posting a review as soon as I get it.

I’m excited to see what Quad-SLI is like. Not to mention the cool Alienware case.