Alienware Alpha Gaming Console

Product Description

Experience the dawn of a new era in gaming with the Alienware Alpha gaming console. This versatile unit provides the freedom of PC gaming with the ease of a console by letting you enjoy thousands of your favorite Steam games, movies, and TV shows. [Read more]

Top Reviews

A weird console computer thing that is awesome
by Peter Scannell (5 out of 5 stars)
December 11, 2014

Model: lowest end i3 version

Upgraded: I swapped out the hard drive for 240GB SSD for $80. I recommend you do too.

Product Explanation:

Many people viewing this product may be confused as to what it is since it defies traditional labeling. Is it a console or a computer? To effectively answer that question one must understand a level of technical jargon that could deter many non tech-savvy buyers.

The Alpha falls between two categories of devices that are closely related enough that explaining exactly where in the middle it falls leads many people to question it's overall usefullness as a device if they happen to already have a computer or console.

Reason for Purchase:

I bought this device because I had neither a windows computer nor a dedicated gaming machine, so the Alpha perfectly took care of both issues for me. The combination of small form factor, hardware specs, and price were the main factors that swayed me toward the Alpha.

REVIEW:

Upon opening the box it first hit me how small the Alpha was. After booting up the Alpha I had to set up a bunch of accounts which could be a hassle if you don't have a mouse/keyboard lying around. After initial usage I realized the hard drive was too slow and switched it out for an SSD which I would highly reccomend to anyone getting this product. After the hard drive swap the Alpha seems blazingly fast not just for boot up but for game loading times as well.

As for performance the Alpha does well. Really well considering it's size, and whisper quiet too! Most steam games I've tried have run above 60 frames per second with graphics quality on high. Console gamers may be unfamiliar with tweaking the graphical settings of a game but generally the games will automatically choose settings that are appropriate for the hardware so even some more demanding games that can't run with quality settings set to max will still run without any appreciable difference.

The most demanding game I've tested was Metro Last Light which seemed fine at first but then suffered from slow frame rates and jaggies after a few minutes of play, after some tweaking in the setting I found a "Physx" checkbox in the settings that when turned off made all the frame rate problems dissappear. Other than Metro all the games I've played have performed with no tweaking required.

It should be noted, that most games I play are less graphically demanding indie games, so if you want to play all the latest and greatest most uber graphically demanding games I would not suggest getting this product. However, if you can get by with only maxing out graphics quality 75% of the time then you'll certainly find the Alpha to be respectable performance wise.

When it comes to price the Alpha is actually a steal. You can do you're best to compete with the Alpha on the price/preformance scale by building you're own computer but you will probably fail and you will certainly fail at getting it at the form factor it is. As for console price comparisons I'd argue the Alpha is cheaper in the long run. You don't have to pay for online services on the Alpha and games are always on sale on steam. After 2 years you've already made your money back for sure.

Final Words:

If you're in the market for a small form factor windows computer that is powerful, well priced, and can play some games, look no further, this is your clear winner.

Update:

After using the Alpha for about 3 months now I can confirm that I still love it, it has performed flawlessly.
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HONEST REVIEW: There Are A Lot Of People Lying About How This Works, So Here I Go
by Kevin Phelan (5 out of 5 stars)
October 20, 2015

I came to the decision to buy the Alpha after a ton of research on machines in this price point. Let me be VERY clear -- You cannot build a gaming rig this good for this cheap, and frankly, with a couple light tweaks this thing punches well above it's price point.

There are two things you NEED to do, for gaming, to achieve the standards I am referring to.
1. Upgrade to at least 8gb of memory. DO NOT buy the Alpha w/ 8gb as it is insanely more expensive, 150 or so dollars more. The memory is 20 bucks. You put it in yourself, and when I say it's very easy, this was literally my first time ever opening up and upgrading a PC.
2. You HAVE to play games in Console mode. So many videos benchmarking games, that are running on Desktop mode to run the streaming software and really underselling what this thing can do. The Console mode is tweaked to shut down background apps and put the power of the device right on the games. You can of course play games in Desktop mode, but trust me, you will see a noticeable difference.

With this in mind, I have bench-marked the following games on Ultra w/ at LEAST 40 fps, which I consider playable. And 40 is the floor, on Ultra.

Dark Souls 2

Far Cry 4

Diablo 3

Saints Row 4

Bioshock: Infinite

Starcraft 2

NBA 2K15

And the current specs are capable of playing games like Star Wars: Battlefront on Ultra with 60+ fps. This game and Fallout 4 are on my radar, and the Alpha will be able to handle them both fine.

All that power....for under 500 bucks. It's small, sleek and quiet. You obviously need to have or buy a keyboard, mouse and monitor to utilize the Desktop mode. It runs a full Windows.

If you've been spoiled by Titan graphics cards and 4k, I don't even know why you would care about the Alpha. It was never meant to impress you. If you want to be able to play basically every game the PC has to offer on max graphics, on the cheap, while also acquiring a fully functioning windows PC, I implore you to take a long, long look at the Alpha. You will not find better value.

I would also reccomend this machine to people who like consoles but are interested in the greater potential of the PC. Just play a game like Dark Souls 2 on your PS4, and then on Ultra on your Alpha. You will never go back to a console.

It's easy to see why so much information is going around on this thing: equal parts not using it properly, and established products being threatened. Either way, I was a dude on a serious budget and this thing has blown me away.
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Best PC I've ever bought.
by MonkeyMan (5 out of 5 stars)
July 17, 2015

I am a software engineer...have been building my own PCs for ~15 years now. I bought this for my pre-teen as a replacement for his old PC. It's great! Here's why:
1. No bloatware! Usually commercial PCs are loaded with bloatware and you need to clean them before you can even use them. The only thing I had to uninstall was Windows Media Player (slows down boot) and this is a Windows problem....not a bloatware or Dell/Alienware problem.
2. Best bang for your buck on the market
3. Packaged driver updates via AlphaUI

The AlphaUI kinda sucks. When you click it, it will log you out of Windows, then log you in as the AlphaUI user, then load the UI. Not only is this a bad user experience, but the two accounts know nothing about each other! So any data you save under your account (like saved Steam games), AlphaUI will know nothing about them. My solution for this was to delete the AlphaUI icon from my kid's user account's desktop. He just always uses the desktop, not AlphaUI. I am trying to raise an intelligent human, not a console junkie. :) The only downside is updating the AlphaUI is how the box upgrades the drivers....so I sneak in his room once a month, load AlphaUI from the start menu, update AlphaUI, boot back to desktop.

The CPU, RAM, and HD are all easily upgradeable. In my desktop testing, the HD is the bottleneck. Drop an SSD in and this thing would sing.

Overall, I am super impressed.
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Great system, but not very reliable so make sure to get the 4 year warranty.
by exodus (3 out of 5 stars)
July 27, 2017

I loved this system it's small but packs a powerful punch I was able to play most games on steam at med/high settings 60fps. It was very easy to upgrade I knew absolutely nothing about computers before buying this and was able to upgrade the ram and hard drive easily myself. This system is also good for web browsing and most everyday desktop stuff. Now the bad I had the system for less than a year and a half and it died on me twice within that time the first time it was a warranty fix by Dell 4 months after that It got the dreaded YLOD a problem that's plaguing a lot of alienware alphas and alienware steam machines. (Google alienware YLOD). I called Dell's technical support and since my alpha was not longer under warranty they were going to charge me 260 bucks to try and repair it. And after it's repaired your only given a month warranty, this kind of reminds me of the red ring of death but at least Microsoft repaired your system for free and then gave you a three year warranty against the RROD on top of that. It's apparent that Dell is going to do nothing to rectify this problem. So I just ended up scrapping the Alpha and buying a gaming PC. I guess fitting all that tech in such a small form factor comes at a price.
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Great little machine
by Amanda (4 out of 5 stars)
May 12, 2016

I really like this machine. I used to game off of my laptop which after a while was becoming too strenuous for my laptop that wasn't built to handle the games I was playing. A friend of mine helped me pick this out for my gaming needs and I'm quite happy with it. I couldn't use the Console Mode at all. For some reason it just never worked for me and I'm not sure if that was because I updated to Windows 10 and it's not compatible but every time I try to launch Console Mode, it looks like it's about to start up but it just spins and spins and doesn't do anything. I stopped trying and just play in the normal desktop mode which is fine. I really like how small and compact this machine is and am happy with the amount of USB ports provided. This is a powerful little machine and I'm glad I bought this instead of building my own desktop which would have been way more costly and I'd be rather lost on exactly what I need for that. This takes the guess work out for me and as a hardcore casual gamer, where I really only play 3 different games but all the time, this suits my needs.
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but plays most games in high or medium settings just fine. While it is capable of playing games in .
by Greg Hakes (4 out of 5 stars)
February 21, 2015

The Aliens Strike again and this time with a Vengeance. The Alienware Alpha is a little console that runs in Beast mode. It won't dazzle you in Ultra mode, but plays most games in high or medium settings just fine. While it is capable of playing games in high settings, i play mostly in medium settings with either 900P or 1080P and it works great without any fans coming on, which is nice cause it is virtually silent. If you turn the settings to high the games will play but the fans will kick in after about three minutes, if you have the volume cranked up or have head phones on it won't matter, but if you try to play with the volume down the fans will seem a little load. It doesn't take long to adjust a game to your hardware, it's a simple task and i found that simple little tweaks can make a big difference without ruining the visuals.

So far i must give it a 4 stars out of 5. It's a nice compact gaming machine that does everything i need it to do. I have both the Xbox One and PS4 and i am now going to have to dump one or both. I am very pleased and maybe someday i will upgrade, but for now it is just fine. I already got a good start on Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider, i wish the day's were 30 hrs long instead of 24. LOL. The set up was easy and what i like most is that when you start up in steam mode, it recognizes what you have hooked up to it. so if you browse the store for games it will only show you controller games if that's all you have hooked up. If you have a Mouse and Keyboard it will show you all games, or you can adjust the settings and have it show you everything regardless. I actually like it that it shows just the controller games cause that's all i play.

I searched youtube for reviews on the Alpha and found a lot of negativity from die hard PC users who used the Alpha as a stepping stool to try to get you to build your own PC. Most of the video's are pure garbage, the Alpha is a fine console/PC. Yes if all you want to do is play games on Ultra Settings than the Alpha won't be for you. I also heard them say that it boots up slow and the games load really slow because of the 5400 RPM Hard Drive, that again is nonsense. They are comparing it to PC's that have SSD hard drives and that isn't a fair comparison. It takes 31 seconds to boot up my Alpha, to me that is not that long. The Alpha is small form factor and it plays games on High or Medium settings at 1080P just fine. I have the I3 base model and it works just fine for me.
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Good enough for what it is, but not particularly impressive, even after upgrades.
by Squelch (4 out of 5 stars)
November 21, 2015

Let's be clear about what this is and what it's not. I got the base model, with an I3 processor. I upgraded the HDD and RAM, and threw in a good SSD and 8GB RAM. It's a nice little computer and I've been satisfied with it. However, there are a few things to say about it:

Pros:
1) it's small
2) it's somewhat upgradeable
3) decent graphics chipset

Cons:

a) external power supply (just like a console, pretty much)

b) the Alienware software needs (quite a bit of) work. For instance, I had to disable the on-screen keyboard program because it used to pop up every time there was some typing to do (essentially every time you're selecting a text field). This was EXTREMELY annoying when you're using it with a mouse/keyboard. The rest of the software is meh... but you're still better off using Steam directly rather than going through their Alien (whatever it's called) interface, if all you're doing is playing games on it.

c) because of 2) and 3), there's only so much you'll be able to do with it. For me, it runs everything I want, albeit usually not on the highest settings. With that said, it's very satisfactory for what it is. Yet, if I hadn't upgraded, or hadn't been willing to AT LEAST throw in some extra RAM, I don't think I would have been nearly as satisfied with it.
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Best little pc on the market!
by Jacob S. (5 out of 5 stars)
February 9, 2015

Love this little PC, First it's amazing how tiny it is. You'll need a keyboard and mouse. The Alpha UI is kind of a pain to wrap your head around. It creates it's own windows account and has to boot into it before you can load windows. For a while I had uninstalled it and the pc was booting super fast but after I read you get a 5-10% performance boost in games running steam through it I decided to re-install it. I'm very surprised at the speed of this little pc. I recently built a I7-4790 with a R9 270 amd graphics card with a ssd and many top tier parts but this little pc does pretty well against it. Gaming wise it's not as far behind as I would of thought it to be. I don't have exact numbers but so far with the games I play I have been impressed. I usually stream all my steam games off my faster pc but I did install games like Dead Space 3 and insurgency just to see and Dead space 3 runs maxxed out with no issues and insurgency gets about 130fps on high settings.

I run this pc on a 50" sony tv and over hdmi I get a perfect image like a giant lcd monitor. The trick was I had to turn off every feature in the picture settings menu to get super clear fonts. But now it's a razer sharp image.
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Newbie to PC gaming and loving it!
by Patrick (5 out of 5 stars)
October 31, 2015

Pretty cool! I have been a console gamer since the original Atari and NES, played a handful of PC games over the years but never had a gaming system as they were always very expensive. This had a bit of a learning curve because I had never used Steam. You can basically treat it as a console and use the included Xbox 360 controller or use it as a straight PC with a keyboard/mouse and Windows 10 (Windows 8 is included, the upgrade to 10 is free and optional).
I held off buying until the new valve steam boxes appeared on the market. This sounded like a much better fit for me, the valve boxes do not have windows, have fewer game offerings than this version and are more expensive. I do have the RAM upgrade ordered and on the way as many have suggested.

Great little product at a nice price!

PS if you do not have a wireless keyboard and mouse I would suggest picking both up, they both add quite a bit to the complete experience. And if you're a living room/couch user (like me) a lap desk wold compliment those accessories perfectly!
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My new favorite piece of hardware
by Gadgetry Guy (5 out of 5 stars)
February 23, 2017

The Alienware Alpha is an absolutely phenomenal console-like PC for gaming, considering the price. I had sworn to never return to Windows, but the low price of this PC, together with some Windows-only software I needed to use, led me down this path. I would have never agreed to purchase another PC unless it was inexpensive, performant, small, and stylish, and this unit checks off all four requirements. I'm glad the price came down since this model has been discontinued; the newer model is more powerful, but much more expensive, comparably. Prepare to spend a tiny bit of extra money for some necessary upgrades (another 4GB RAM minimum, 250GB SSD, etc.) but be satisfied in what the resulting small price tag offers in terms of performance and functionality. This blows away a similarly-configured Mac Mini, and it's upgradeable.

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