Hi duders,

I was wondering if anyone has experience with the Alienware Alpha line of pseudo-Steam machines. I was looking at the low level one (i3,860M,4GB RAM, 500GB drive) as a replacement gaming machine. IMPORTANT! I am not a stickler for high-end graphics and crazy resolutions. I am more than happy to play at 720p, with medium-high graphics settings, so long as the framerate is stable.

I was also considering picking up a cheap 4GB stick to add to it (there's a slot free), and augmenting the hard drive with my SSD that's sitting around doing little. My main concern is maintaining warranty on that, as well as just hearing whether other people have been happy with their Alienware purchases (customer support, build quality, etc...)

Thanks guys!

Why not just build one yourself? It's $500 for a pretty weak machine. You're looking at around $700 if you want to add the memory and SSD. You can build a pretty good PC yourself for $700, one that will be a lot better than the Alienware.

You should probably ask Alienware directly about warranty questions, they have online chat.

@horseman6

The thing is, I've had really bad experience in the past with building my own PCs. I never seem to be able to get stable performance, and have suffered too many cases of undiagnosable issues where the only resolution is throwing money at new parts, and I don't have the funds for that any more. I've already got an SSD and the RAM, so that would be at no extra cost, and it's the warranty and support if something does go wrong that I'm most interested in.

@horseman6: My reason for being interested in this thing is the form factor. You really can't build a system as small as this one. The question is whether that makes up for the laptop-like lack of modification options, which is a judgement call. A friend of mine has one and has had no complaints, that's as close as I can come to a review :-)

@mrroach: Awesome, that's helpful :) Has your friend had it long?

I don't have an Alpha (Sorry!) but my PC is fairly close, I think. (Currently using a 750 ti, which I've heard is pretty comparable to the Alpha's GPU) I don't play the latest triple A titles or anything but everything I did play ran beautifully at 720p. Most games I was able to tick to the highest settings and still got really smooth framerates. Hell, even at 1080p a lot of the games I play still run like that.

As far as prebuilt machines go I think the Alpha is probably the best value on the market, at least if you tried to match components. A comparable desktop that you build yourself would cost probably like $450, while the Alpha also comes with a fully licensed copy of Windows 8.1 (which will be eligible for the free Windows 10 upgrade) and a wireless Xbox 360 controller. Plus, you would definitely not be able to match that form factor, even with a mini itx build.

I think if you're really okay with 720p medium settings it'd probably be worth it, though you may want to upgrade the processor to the i5 4590s or something in the future since a lot of new games need 4 cores to run.

For it form factor, the stock unit doesn't seem bad but I do see it as not a long running in the gaming end. If I were to have it, I probably would use it as a backup comp or a media center down the line.

@turtlebird95:

Thanks for the great feedback! Performance-wise, that sounds perfect; as I mentioned, I'm not that fussed about ultra-detailed graphics and such (every game I've played on current-gen consoles leaves me gobsmacked visually, so that's more than enough to meet my standards)

With regards to the quadcore processor, what games do you know of that require one to run? If it is a potential barrier to playing future games, I may have to consider shelling out for the upgrade.

Thanks again! :)

@macka1080: A few months. Things I know he has played are Elite:Dangerous, TF2, Skyrim, and Dark Souls, so nothing terribly taxing.

I looked into this thing as a potential streaming box to mess around with. It's mostly ok except for one glaring fault, it doesn't use standard nvidia drivers. The firmware customization that Dell have performed for the 860M in there prevents you from installing the latest releases from nvidia, instead you have to wait for Dell to release their own custom drivers before you see an update and I have zero faith that they would maintain any kind of proper release schedule.

@macka1080: These things take laptop RAM, not standard size DIMMs.

@mb: I know. I have extra SoDIMM sticks kicking around from a dead laptop.

@macka1080: I know Far Cry 4 did, though it could be played just fine with a dual core processor with a third party hack. I think Dragon Age Inquisition as well? Lots of modern games like GTA V, Witcher 3, Arkham Knight etc. are starting to list them as minimum requirements. GTA V in particular seems to have stuttering problems on two cores, and who knows if technical behemoths like Witcher 3 will even run on it.

@macka1080: Do you know what speed and timings that stuff has? I would be surprised if it was the same, you shouldn't really mix RAM types and putting old, slow RAM in the Alpha is just going to be bad news.

In that case, go to your local pc parts retailer and toss them $20-50 to build your PC for you. You will still get individual warranties for all of your parts if something ends up going wrong (and if that happens, you'll only have to send off the faulty part to be RMA'd). There are no advantages inherent in buying a pre-built - especially an overpriced Alienware one with laptop parts.

As far as upgradability and whatnot is concerned, you can open the case and swap out the CPU, RAM, and HDD without voiding the warranty. The GPU is based on the 860m (http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-860M.107794.0.html) and in my tests with the Alpha so far, you'll get performance that is 15-20ish% better than PS4 and Xbox One. A lot of "the hardcorez gamers" scoff at anything Alienware, but I feel as though this machine is a really solid value for the price. And it comes with a bunch of free games.

The only caveat I have is that swapping between the Alienware "console mode" and desktop modes is a little clunky. It is still a Windows PC afterall.

@mb: Yeah, it's standard DDR3 1600, so I could chuck my spares in, but all the so-so comments here have convinced me of what I was trying to avoid: going the whole hog and getting a proper rig built. I'm going to shop around for some decent builds with a bit more oomph than the Alpha, and just tack on a warranty of some sort for peace of mind.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Good luck. The first build is usually pretty fun and occasionally terrifying. I used this series from Newegg as a tutorial and it worked out great.

@captainthunderpants: Thanks, but I've built a couple of PCs before. As I mentioned, it's the difficulties of diagnosing and the headaches of troubleshooting that I want to avoid. Something with a repair warranty is what I'm after.

You should have manufacture warranty on all your parts, and building a pc is way more fun than buying one. Just make sure you research more before hand, and it's much cheaper than buying pre-built, especially allienware/dell.