Gadgetory

hey guys Austin is a tiny gaming PC worth it so this is the Alienware alpha r2 and if you remember the original alpha was actually one of the first steam machines oh wow okay so first off we actually have an alienware keyboard I mean this stuff is fairly basic you'll probably want to upgrade to something a little bit more high-end but it's definitely nice as its included we've also got the 180 watt external power supply this is a little bit unusual and a desktop however considering how small this is it actually makes sense this is just hanging around back you'll find quite a few ports including both HDMI in and out so you could theoretically set this up as part of a home theater setup but more interestingly is the external PCI slot so this is what you can use with the Alienware graphics amplifier which is essentially an external box you could put in even more powerful graphics card also if you flip this over what you'll find beneath this little cover is a USB port so it might seem weird to have a hidden USB port however this actually makes a lot of sense if you have say like a wireless mouse or keyboard you want to hide the dongle it goes underneath here slide the cover on it's totally hit one of the advantages of having a computer that's so small is that you can actually be portable with it so they sell a specific bag that is made for the Alpha so now that you have enough room for the ALF itself but you could also fit a couple controllers maybe a mouse can also fit the power adapter when you're ready just zip it up and you've got yourself a nice portable travel bag this is really where the alpha r2 makes sense we could always go for a gaming laptop there quite a bit more expensive where this is more of a proper desktop with an HDMI 2.0 port you can hook it up to a 4k display or TV you can get a PC that's way more powerful than a console speaking up you've got a fairly clean install of Windows 10 but the biggest addition is alien where's hive UI launcher the idea is that this is an interface that's meant to be used with a controller to launch games and do some basic tasks but honestly it feels a bit half-baked I prefer to use steam big picture mode and keep a wireless keyboard around for using Windows the Alienware command center software can be useful to handle the HDMI input along with customizing the LED lighting that lives around front of the computer the model I have to test has an i7 and GTX 960 which is powerful enough to handle basically any game out today the this model has a core i3 gigabytes of RAM and AMD r9 470 X but I'd recommend upgrading to the model with the Core i5 and gtx 960 you're also dealing with the one terabyte hard drive across the board you can upgrade this from Dell site but it's easy to remove the four screws on the bottom of the Alpha and install your own SSD for less than $100 why they're titles like rocket League or absolutely no problem to run a max of 1080p you won't notice a huge difference in graphics compared to consoles but rocket League is hardly the most demanding title step it up to The Witcher 3 and the Alpha r2 is able to run at high settings at 1080p 960 is a solid card pushing things to 1440p is a bit much shadow of Mordor is a great example of this it runs really well at 1080p ultra and has the added benefit of being able to control the lights in the alpha two metrics going on in the game it's also seriously fun as you might be able to tell the Alpha R 2 is an interesting PC it's a bit expensive but the mid spec model with an i-5 and 960 isn't too bad you'll want to add an SSD but you're really paying for portability it will be really difficult to build a system too small yourself so what do you guys think about the Alpha R 2 definitely be sure to let me know in the comments below and I will catch you on the next one