- Model Number: VGN-Z890 CTO
· NEW!
Built tough for business, the customizable, suitcase-friendly VAIO® Z is designed for on-the-go professionals.
Built tough for business, the customizable, suitcase-friendly VAIO® Z is designed for on-the-go professionals.
Available features:
- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor (up to 3.06GHz) with Intel® Centrino® 2 technology available
- Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64bit and other editions available
- 13.1" LED backlit display (1600x900 resolution), 3.42 lbs
- Hybrid Graphics System with NVIDIA graphics and 256MB dedicated VRAM
- Up to 500GB HDD or up to 512GB SSD with RAID technology available
- Up to 8GB RAM available
- Available Blu-ray Disc™ playback/burning or CD/DVD playback/burning
- HDMI™ output
- Up to 7.5 hours of standard battery life
- Built-in Bluetooth® technology, camera and microphone
- Fingerprint sensor and Trusted Platform Module
- Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband Built-In
- Premium Carbon fiber casing available
Available colors: Black
VAIO Signature Collection: Premium Carbon Fiber, Bordeaux Red
Microsoft® Windows® 7 pre-installed.
The VGN-Z890 Configure-to-Order also features the following options:
CUSTOMIZE
Dominate with Dual Graphics Options
ATI CrossFireX - Dominate any game with the ultimate multi-GPU performance gaming platform with Microsoft® DirectX® technology
Run this space-saving desktop with the latest dual graphics technologies, and your enemies won't know what hit them. ATITM CrossFireXTM and NVIDIA® SLITM graphics options deliver high frame rates at HD resolutions, all while maxing out game settings. Add a second graphics card to experience a whole new level of spectacular performance and lifelike imagery.
ATI CrossFireX - Dominate any game with the ultimate multi-GPU performance gaming platform with Microsoft® DirectX® technology NVIDIA SLI - Don’t dial back game settings; crank ’em up. With NVIDIA® SLITM graphics and Microsoft® DirectX technology, you can experience your digital media like never
Multi-GPU Support - With NVIDIA® SLI® technology, you can increase your gaming performance by up to 100%, while enjoying vivid images and fast transitions. With optional dual graphics cards, you can power up to four independent digital displays. Stay deep within your game on a main monitor and still keep up with your other tasks.
Complete Immersion - Build your system with some of the best gaming GPUs and still have room for the other essentials of an immersive experience, including crystal-clear sound and optimized networking.
Your Command Center
AlienwareTM Command Center provides intuitive, user-friendly access to exclusive applications, including AlienFXTM lighting effects, Alienware thermal controls and AlienFusion power management. Updates and new releases download directly into Command Center, creating an evolving tool for personalizing your system.
Revolutionary Design
The Alienware Aurora is designed for extreme performance from the inside out. Keep your edge with Alienware's most upgradeable MicroATX desktop, and a sturdy, organic design that helps improve airflow and lets you easily get inside for quick upgrades. And you can personalize your machine with your choice of a Cosmic Black or Lunar Shadow chassis.
Liquid Cooling — Eliminate distractions with high-performance CPU liquid cooling, which is more than twice as quiet as the standard heatsink and fans on other PCs. The efficient cooling also increases the reliability of your overclocked1 settings.
Easy Upgrades - Look inside the Alienware Aurora, and you'll see why it's easy to make this desktop your own. You can access many of the core components without any tools for fast upgrades and hassle-free service. (Or you can just show them off.)
Front Panel Access - Simply press down on the first louver to connect USB and front audio cables, without needing to reach to the back of the chassis. The ports are articulated to reduce front-door snag when cables are connected, so you can avoid unwanted tangling and costly mishaps.
Rear Entry - Use the chassis's last louver, towards the rear of the system, as the handle for opening the case for upgrades and service. The rear of the chassis also includes lighting for added convenience when adding or removing cables.
Power Supply Cage - Now it’s easy to upgrade your power supply unit. After using the power supply release handle, you can access the PSU cage with a single-cable harness. And avoid the frustration of "bird's nest" cabling. review of Stories
Customer
Product Reviews
Reviewed
by: AuroraGuy 
(read
all my reviews)
Location: Arlington, VA
Duration of product use: Less than a week
Level of expertise: Expert
(read
all my reviews)
Location: Arlington, VA
Duration of product use: Less than a week
Level of expertise: Expert
Title: Not a bad pre-built system.
Date: October 28, 2009
Review:I used to build my own
desktops, but having a well-paying job after college graduation and being
ultra-lazy changes things. So I ordered the Aurora with all the bells and
whistles, and this is my review after less than 24 hours of ownership.
I'll start with the cooling ability of the case: I have yet to figure out a
method to adjust the fan speed thresholds on the 120mm fan attached to the
water cooling radiator. As it stands, the i7-975's average idle temperatures
across all 4 cores are low to mid 40 degrees C, and with moderate use (~30%
load on each core on average) I've seen the temperatures reach the high 60's.
The fan is a Delta AFC1212DE, capable of pushing out 148 CFM. Yet, I have yet
to hear the fan going at its full speed even with temps in the high 60's. The
fan only kicks in moderately harder at these temperature ranges. Ideally, I'd
like the idle temps to be mid 30's C and the 100% load temps to be mid 60's.
However, with no way to adjust the fan thresholds, this is unfortunately not
possible. I'm assuming the people who initially designed this system preferred
a quiet computer case vs low CPU temperatures, since the case is very quiet
when idling, and only somewhat loud with 30%-50% load across all cores.
There is a lot of plastic on the exterior of the case. So much so that I was a
little careful with my hand placement when moving my case around, as I was
worried I might snap a part of the plastic exterior off. The "front
door" to the drive bays and the latch to the top USB/headphone/microphone
ports feel a little flimsy, but they work. I do enjoy the tool-less design
inside the case. Installing Intel SSD's was a snap with the slide-in hard drive
tray design, and all the cables have been pre-routed so there's no cabling
nightmares involved. The lighting they did in the case also look great. Cable
management is very well done.
The motherboard takes 20 seconds to post and enter Windows. It's a little slow,
but this is only a minor complaint. I'm not sure what kind of bloatware came
with the initial hard drive, since I immediately wiped the Vista Ultimate drive
it came with clean and formatted with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 after ensuring the
system is functional upon arrival. Actually using the system itself has been a
dream so far. With the i7-975 and 2x Intel X25-m G2 SSD's, everything is
running stable and *fast*. Installing Windows 7 and all the drivers/software
(including Alienware's Command Center) was pain-free. Dual 5870's yielded
insane framerates in my games.
Overall, I'm quite pleased. I think the case itself looks great (especially
with AlienFX lighting effects), and so far I have yet to run into any serious
issues that would prevent me from enjoying the system, unless everything
running ridiculously fast is a complaint. If I had to go back and choose
between building my own and ordering an Alienware... well, I would probably
build my own just for better cooling options.
| Title: Not a bad pre-built system. | Date: October 28, 2009 |
Review:I used to build my own
desktops, but having a well-paying job after college graduation and being
ultra-lazy changes things. So I ordered the Aurora with all the bells and
whistles, and this is my review after less than 24 hours of ownership.
I'll start with the cooling ability of the case: I have yet to figure out a
method to adjust the fan speed thresholds on the 120mm fan attached to the
water cooling radiator. As it stands, the i7-975's average idle temperatures
across all 4 cores are low to mid 40 degrees C, and with moderate use (~30%
load on each core on average) I've seen the temperatures reach the high 60's.
The fan is a Delta AFC1212DE, capable of pushing out 148 CFM. Yet, I have yet
to hear the fan going at its full speed even with temps in the high 60's. The
fan only kicks in moderately harder at these temperature ranges. Ideally, I'd
like the idle temps to be mid 30's C and the 100% load temps to be mid 60's.
However, with no way to adjust the fan thresholds, this is unfortunately not
possible. I'm assuming the people who initially designed this system preferred
a quiet computer case vs low CPU temperatures, since the case is very quiet
when idling, and only somewhat loud with 30%-50% load across all cores.
There is a lot of plastic on the exterior of the case. So much so that I was a
little careful with my hand placement when moving my case around, as I was
worried I might snap a part of the plastic exterior off. The "front
door" to the drive bays and the latch to the top USB/headphone/microphone
ports feel a little flimsy, but they work. I do enjoy the tool-less design
inside the case. Installing Intel SSD's was a snap with the slide-in hard drive
tray design, and all the cables have been pre-routed so there's no cabling
nightmares involved. The lighting they did in the case also look great. Cable
management is very well done.
The motherboard takes 20 seconds to post and enter Windows. It's a little slow,
but this is only a minor complaint. I'm not sure what kind of bloatware came
with the initial hard drive, since I immediately wiped the Vista Ultimate drive
it came with clean and formatted with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 after ensuring the
system is functional upon arrival. Actually using the system itself has been a
dream so far. With the i7-975 and 2x Intel X25-m G2 SSD's, everything is
running stable and *fast*. Installing Windows 7 and all the drivers/software
(including Alienware's Command Center) was pain-free. Dual 5870's yielded
insane framerates in my games.
Overall, I'm quite pleased. I think the case itself looks great (especially
with AlienFX lighting effects), and so far I have yet to run into any serious
issues that would prevent me from enjoying the system, unless everything
running ridiculously fast is a complaint. If I had to go back and choose
between building my own and ordering an Alienware... well, I would probably
build my own just for better cooling options.
Reviewed
by: Trotskii (read
all my reviews)
Location: Houston, TX USA
Duration of product use: Less than a month
Level of expertise: Good
(read
all my reviews)
Location: Houston, TX USA
Duration of product use: Less than a month
Level of expertise: Good
Title: Top Specs, Top Quality
Date: September 29, 2009
| Title: Top Specs, Top Quality | Date: September 29, 2009 |
Review:The wizards of Miami... what can I say?
Their computers are so good that I recommend them to simulators and gamers
without reservation. Part with your money are go for it!
Alienware designs expensive computers for users interested in cutting edge
technology and top quality (though the computers are built in China).
Best: A desktop that's compact and more powerful than my college's mainframe.
Worst: Dell needs to be more seamless with Alienware. If I have to deal with
Dell, I want the quality and responsiveness I expect with such a huge price. | Overall: | | 4 [RATINGOF] 5 |
| Title: Excellent machine | Date: September 25, 2009 |
Product Uses: Connecting with
Friends, Gaming, animation
Review:Pros. this is the type of machine that i always want, with lightning
fast speed, good sound & a nice gaming experience
Cons. it must be cheaper
 Motherboard and Chassis Form Factor  | 
| Operating System Options |
| |||
| System Dimensions |
| Audio Options |
| |||
| Power Supply |
| Network Adapters |
| |||
| Motherboard |
| Wireless Connectivity |
| |||
| Chipset |
| HDTV Tuners Options |
| |||
| Processor Options |
| Front I/O Ports |
| |||
| Processor Cooling |
| Memory Slots |
| |||
| Video Card Options | | Optical Drive Options |
| |||
| PCI Slots |
| Software Personalization Options |
| |||
| Supported Memory Options | | Rear I/O Ports |
| |||
| Supported Storage Options- Hard Drives | |
(read
all my reviews)
Location: Arlington, VA
Duration of product use: Less than a week
Level of expertise: Expert| Title: Not a bad pre-built system. | Date: October 28, 2009 |
Review:I used to build my own desktops, but
having a well-paying job after college graduation and being ultra-lazy changes
things. So I ordered the Aurora with all the bells and whistles, and this is my
review after less than 24 hours of ownership.
I'll start with the cooling ability of the case: I have yet to figure out a
method to adjust the fan speed thresholds on the 120mm fan attached to the
water cooling radiator. As it stands, the i7-975's average idle temperatures
across all 4 cores are low to mid 40 degrees C, and with moderate use (~30%
load on each core on average) I've seen the temperatures reach the high 60's.
The fan is a Delta AFC1212DE, capable of pushing out 148 CFM. Yet, I have yet
to hear the fan going at its full speed even with temps in the high 60's. The
fan only kicks in moderately harder at these temperature ranges. Ideally, I'd
like the idle temps to be mid 30's C and the 100% load temps to be mid 60's.
However, with no way to adjust the fan thresholds, this is unfortunately not
possible. I'm assuming the people who initially designed this system preferred
a quiet computer case vs low CPU temperatures, since the case is very quiet
when idling, and only somewhat loud with 30%-50% load across all cores.
There is a lot of plastic on the exterior of the case. So much so that I was a
little careful with my hand placement when moving my case around, as I was
worried I might snap a part of the plastic exterior off. The "front
door" to the drive bays and the latch to the top USB/headphone/microphone ports
feel a little flimsy, but they work. I do enjoy the tool-less design inside the
case. Installing Intel SSD's was a snap with the slide-in hard drive tray
design, and all the cables have been pre-routed so there's no cabling
nightmares involved. The lighting they did in the case also look great. Cable
management is very well done.
The motherboard takes 20 seconds to post and enter Windows. It's a little slow,
but this is only a minor complaint. I'm not sure what kind of bloatware came
with the initial hard drive, since I immediately wiped the Vista Ultimate drive
it came with clean and formatted with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 after ensuring the
system is functional upon arrival. Actually using the system itself has been a
dream so far. With the i7-975 and 2x Intel X25-m G2 SSD's, everything is
running stable and *fast*. Installing Windows 7 and all the drivers/software
(including Alienware's Command Center) was pain-free. Dual 5870's yielded
insane framerates in my games.
Overall, I'm quite pleased. I think the case itself looks great (especially
with AlienFX lighting effects), and so far I have yet to run into any serious
issues that would prevent me from enjoying the system, unless everything
running ridiculously fast is a complaint. If I had to go back and choose
between building my own and ordering an Alienware... well, I would probably
build my own just for better cooling options
(read
all my reviews)
Location: Houston, TX USA
Duration of product use: Less than a month
Level of expertise: GoodReview:The wizards of Miami... what
can I say? Their computers are so good that I recommend them to simulators and
gamers without reservation. Part with your money are go for it!
Alienware designs expensive computers for users interested in cutting edge
technology and top quality (though the computers are built in China).
Best: A desktop that's compact and more powerful than my college's mainframe.
Worst: Dell needs to be more seamless with Alienware. If I have to deal with
Dell, I want the quality and responsiveness I expect with such a huge price.
| Title: Excellent machine | Date: September 25, 2009 |
Product Uses: Connecting with Friends,
Gaming, animation
Review:Pros. this is the type of machine that i always want, with lightning
fast speed, good sound & a nice gaming experience
Cons. it must be cheaper
It's been said that it takes a village
to raise a child, and at Blue Sky Studios it takes a Sun server farm to
entertain that village. The amazing, lifelike animation of its most recent Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was generated at its new
Sun server farm consisting of Sun Blade 6250 Server Modules mounted in 10 Sun
Blade 6048 Chassis. Learn more about it in this video.
More
Than 20 Years of Animation Leadership
Founded in 1987 and based in
Greenwich, Connecticut, Blue Sky Studios
is a leader in the field of computer-generated imagery (CGI) for feature films
and television. The studio's crew has created superior photo-realistic,
high-resolution computer-generated character animation for successful movies
such as Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who
and Robots. A wholly-owned unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, Blue Sky
Studios has approximately 400 employees.
A Sun Success Story When Blue Sky Studios set out to create a realistic, computer-generated world full of dinosaurs and other characters for its upcoming film Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, it knew it needed to expand its computing capacity. The company's proprietary CGI Studio software -- a programming language and renderer used to describe, manipulate, and visualize 3-D elements -- had previously been deployed on AMD Opteron-based Angstrom blade servers. The Blue Sky R&D Department worked on the film for approximately 12 months, slated for release in July 2009, which meant the studio needed to implement additional functionality and render more digital content in a shorter time frame. Blue Sky also wanted to increase their level of support. The State of Blue Sky Technology "Our Angstrom servers were aging, and the processors were no longer delivering the performance capabilities we needed," says Carl Ludwig, Chief Technical Office at Blue Sky Studios. "We wanted to do a lot more with our software, and we needed more powerful systems to run our rendering application. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was the first time Blue Sky Studios and Fox Animation was delivering a stereoscopic or 3-D film, something that would require higher-performance processing," added Ludwig. The Challenges Sun was called upon to help Blue Sky Studios meet several important challenges:
The company was also planning a move to new headquarters, and the space and energy footprint of any new technology was important. "Our calculations relative to what would be needed were very critical in our new building and space relative to the footprint that would be required in power and cooling," says Keane. The Blue Sky Process Blue Sky evaluated solutions from HP, Angstrom and Sun. After talking with Sun, Blue Sky decided to participate in the Sun Try and Buy program for the Sun Blade X6250 Server Module. Soon after testing the technology, Blue Sky knew it had found the right fit for its CGI Studio software. "Clearly, going with a Sun solution allowed us to very specifically design a layout of the data center, and know that we would get a substantial increase in price/performance and footprint -- and it's proved to be quite successful," added Keane. Another factor in choosing the Sun solution was the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series, which powers the Sun Blade X6250. "The architecture of the Xeon processor 5400 series was very appealing to us," says Ludwig. "CGI Studio is a huge compute engine, and we saw that the multi-core Intel Xeon processors were faster than what we had been using, because of the caching scheme." Blue Sky Business Results The studio's designers now have powerful new design tools to help them create film images in significantly less time. Benefits include:
| The Results By December 2008, Blue Sky had implemented 10 Sun Blade 6048 Chassis, comprised of 480 Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules, each with two Intel Xeon processors 5220 series, and 120 Sun Ultra 24 Workstations, along with Sun's Enterprise Installation Services. When the studio's crew began working with the new solution, they experienced much higher performance from the company's CGI Studio software. "Performance was four times as fast with the Sun and Intel solution, compared with our previous servers," says Ludwig. "So our team realized they could render digital frames much faster and create more frames in less time than before. Their personal productivity has improved significantly." The Sun Solution Blue Sky Studios teamed with Sun to deploy a new solution that includes Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules that run on Intel Xeon processors 5400 series. The company also deployed the Sun Blade 6048 Chassis and Sun Ultra 24 workstations. The configuration includes:
Sun's technology allowed lighting artists to try more computationally-intensive techniques such as radiosity, which gives a much richer, more realistic result, and provides the ability to turn these iterations overnight. Keane added, "Blue Sky's vision is to have our CGI Studio software and Sun hardware do the 'heavy lifting' to allow the artists to be more creative. The Sun/Intel platform gives us more bandwidth and power for CGI Studio to deliver what you see on screen." The Benefits Also, the Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules have a compact design, which is what Blue Sky Studios was seeking for its new studio space. "The X6250 takes up much less space than our previous servers did, and we needed that smaller footprint," confirms Ludwig. "We will use less energy on power and cooling as a result." The new Sun and Intel solution's combination of performance and price has better enabled Blue Sky Studios to produce cutting-edge animated films. "Sun has a strong reputation for engineering, and it shows when you work with these products," says Ludwig. "Technology like this, priced as well as it is, brings a lot of value to our company and what we do." Blue Sky Studios is also pleased with the technology support it is receiving from Sun. "We're very happy to be working with Sun again," Keane says. "Sun has the right combination of price, performance, and power for us. They have great quality products and we saw that the Sun support would be great, and that was a key part of the decision for us. We have a lot of faith in Sun's engineering as well as in Intel's processor architecture, and I'm hopeful that our relationship with these two top technology companies will grow even more." |
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