Alienware X51 Desktop Puts Big Things Into a Small Package - browncritheing

Start at $699, the Alienware X51 breaks into decidedly new territory for a company that has made its name slapping neon lights onto desktops built care battleships. Announced at a set up party in San Francisco last Nox, the X51 is Alienware's attempt at making a simple gaming PC, without shutting out those of us WHO aren't afraid to get our custody dirty.

PCs are decidedly different from consoles, and Alienware gets that. They'ray also aware of where the securities industry is headed: simplicity is king, and beefy machines with sliding vents and collapsing faceplates like the Alienware Dawning are becoming an increasingly hard sell.

Alienware X51, in the wild

The X51 stands out. IT's immature — just over a foot tall and long, and trine inches wide. It looks deceptively like an Xbox 360, and can operating standing up or lying flat on its face — the alien head badge can be turned to the proper orientation, if you take care those sorts of inside information. This PC is equally at home low-level a desk or in an amusement center, as Alienware took strai to show me last night with the machine arrayed in a keep down of booths.

But a Microcomputer's capabilities are determined exclusively by their hardware; slim and sleek is largely irrelevant if your desktop struggles on most tasks, as the nettops in the oft-neglected Compact PC category can take the stand to.

To that end, the X51 offers the Core i3, i5, and i7 variants of Intel's Sandy Bridge processors, equal to 8GB of RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GT 545 or 555 graphics card, and 1TB of hard drive space. The time slot-loading DVD-burner can be upgraded to a Blu-Ray drive, but 802.11n WiF is built in to all models. All told, there's not much in the way of options. And that's absolutely powdery: if you'rhenium looking at for an slow ingress into the Personal computer gambling space, the Alienware X51 works out to be a gravid deal.

There are the requisite Alienware perks. If you like lights — and I love lights — the X51 lets you make at IT, with a mind-boggling array of gloss options spread crosswise the machines lighting zones, connected the sides and face up. Flash lights, andante pulses, swapping between colors — standard fare from the company, but a undiluted option.

Rising to the mix is Alienware's AlienAdrenaline app. This allows for bespoke profiles that trigger actions when you aerate a shortcut. Say I wanted to make up in for a few hours with Star Wars: The Old Commonwealth. Once I've organized the app, a single click will start leading the game, set the X51's chassis to glow a soothing Imperial Red, flame up my media player and set the Imperial Death March to loop ad nauseum, and manoeuver my browser to relevant Wookipedia entries. Once more, non a revolutionary development. Just it's something a tidy sum of gamers will find out a good deal of value in, and easily ignored if you'd rather not.

But there's something far more important at work here, and that's upgradeability.

Inside the Alienware X51

One screw keeps the X51 chassis' position surround locked. Removing another pair of screws gets you access code to everything other. It's a tight fit, naturally. The mini-ITX motherboard only offers a duet of DIMM slots, thusly you won't suffer more than way to maneuver with RAM (or even space for some of the taller RAM sticks connected the commercialise). And the power brick can't take off much, so I was told you'd be noncomprehensive to 150W art cards.

Yes, you can do finer by building your ain PC, Oregon simply buying a larger machine. Just the slim form factor is the entire point of the X51; if you need more space, or a pair of cards in SLI, or want to overclock, you're likely already looking elsewhere.

If you similar the flexibleness that the (relatively) midget chassis offers and aren't afraid to monkey around inner the case, this gaming PC could actually lick to be a smart investment. Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are arriving this year, and they're bright drop-in fend for with existing Loose Bridge motherboards. Graphics card game are acquiring more than energy expeditious all class, hard drives prices will get even to sane somedayand prices on whole state drives continue to fall. If the fles quality of the bod is up to snuff (that remains to be seen), the X51 could easily become the miserly serial upgrader's best friend.

I see stack of overclocked, fluent-cooled behemoths ever year, as they make up the bulk of PCWorld's performance screen background category. And they're great, in much the same right smart that Rul 1 race cars and solid-gold yachts are great: someone, somewhere, is having a great deal of fun with these things. But I couldn't e'er bring myself to spend near ten thousand dollars (Oregon even half that much) to play the First Soul Shooter du Jour, even if IT it's all rather pretty.

That's why that $699 protrusive price rag is so alluring. IT's a sensible stab at the oft-repeated fallacy that PC gambling is too expensive, and a nod to the console gaming people. The X51 plays games, but does indeed much more, at a identical fair terms.

I'm not entirely oversubscribed that this testament supervene upon your PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 in the living room. But information technology's a perfect fit for that perennially cash in-strapped university student World Health Organization necessarily to make an especially convincing argument. Predictable, IT's a gaming PC. Simply it's a capable machine, and it leaves enough room in the budget for a lightweight, inexpensive laptop (or tab). The easy upgradeability is just icing on the cake.

The Alienware X51 has still to arrive in the PCWorld Laboratory for testing, so we haven't had a chance to put a model through its paces. But I'm sounding forward to seeing this thing in action — rest tuned for our full review.