Alienware with I5 8400 or XPS with I7 7700

[dgmccune]

I just purchased the Alienware Aurora R7 for my son with the an I5 8400 processor, 8gb ram, 1tb HDD, and GTX 1060 6gb graphics card, $799. I attempted to add 16gb Optane and increase Ram to 16gb but it did not go through, and cannot modify the order, so I would need to upgrade on my own. I am considering cancelling the order and purchase a Dell XPS with an I7 7700 processor, 16gb Optane + 1tb HDD, 16 GB ram, and GTX 1060 6gb Graphics card for $979. I don't have much experience in upgrading pc equipment, so the XPS with the included hardware would be more convenient, but wasn't sure if the 7th generation processor and the XPS system in general would be a downgrade and less future proof.

 

[tsnor]

I7-7700 and i5-8400 run at roughly the same performance level with the i5-8400 slightly faster: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8400-vs-Intel-Core-i7-7700/3939vs3887

Comparing optane in front of a slow 1TB drive and a consistently fast flash drive I'd much rather have the flash drive. Flash drive is cheaper and better. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3191706/storage/optane-memory-review-why-you-may-want-intels-futuristic-cache-in-your-pc.html

If you want to upgrade to optane later you buy the optane drive and put it in a slot. Takes 3 mins.

 

[sadams04]

CPU - As tsnor said, they both perform very well. I personally would take six physical cores on the newer i5-8400 over the four cores / four hyperthreads of the i7-7700. You would be happy with either.

OPTANE - You aren't really going to get much performance from a caching drive. You are WAY better off going with an SSD up-front. Look toward a M.2 256GB SSD paired with a 1TB HD (or something similar). Consider keeping the Alienware R7, then putting in an SSD yourself. It is a fairly painless process and there is plenty of support available for installing the SSD and installing the OS (Dell forums, etc..)
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/8WZ2FT,KXkwrH,8YRFf7,DM7CmG/