Alienware X51: The Xbox With Teeth
by Dustin Sklavos on February 17, 2012 12:00 AM ESTBuild, Heat, and Power Consumption
Where I think Alienware has benefitted the most from their relationship with Dell is actually in these areas, and the X51 makes a strong case for buying a prebuilt instead of going the DIY route for Mini-ITX. The X51 uses a custom chassis and everything inside is sandwiched fairly neatly together. Although it was a little difficult to take apart, the tower is still basically laid out in a logical way, with the graphics card mounted to a riser card and essentially being an entire removable piece. The hard drive bay is then located beneath it, while the motherboard sits under the optical drive bay. The power supply is an external power brick connected to the back of the system.
What I'm not as much of a fan of is the glossy finish accent on the front of the case, as well as the USB 3.0 connectivity being confined to the rear ports. Our review unit also unfortunately came to us with a crack next to the power button, and the button itself would stick a little bit. This system has seen more than its fair share of shipment and manhandling to be sure, but it's something to keep in mind: the X51 feels pretty solid, but it's far from bulletproof.
Finally, Alienware includes their traditional configurable lighting scheme: the rotateable alien logo on the front of the case can have its illumination color configured across the spectrum, just like the two dim lights on the sides. The lighting is cute and not at all obtrusive, but if you're not a fan, their Control Center application will allow you to disable it entirely.
With such a compact design one would expect the X51 to be both loud and hot, but surprisingly this isn't the case. Quite the opposite actually; the X51 is cooler and quieter at both idle and load than the first-generation Xbox 360 was.
The CPU thermals are nothing short of excellent, with peak temperatures well under 70C, while the GPU's peak temperature of 79C isn't much to worry about. While there's some variation in fan speeds and the system is actually quite loud at POST (where the fans initially run at max RPM), in practice the X51 runs below 40dB at both load and idle, and you have to really listen to hear the difference.
For such a compact system, Alienware has done an excellent job of keeping heat and noise in check while producing a reasonably powerful computing experience. So what about power consumption?
Alienware is able to leverage NVIDIA's Optimus technology to produce idle power consumption that's nearly half of the next system up on the chart. Under heavy load, the X51 still barely draws any juice from the wall and clearly has some wiggle room on the power supply. 172 watts for a reasonably comfortable 1080p gaming experience isn't too shabby at all.
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Meaker10 - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
Xotic pc 16f2 barebone.Dustin Sklavos - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
Except a barebone doesn't come with a CPU, or hard drive bays, or memory.Dustin Sklavos - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
Er...or hard drives. Derp.Meaker10 - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
This is a customised barebone, so the price includes a dual core CPU, 8GB of ram, HDD, wireless and OS.It would also ship with brackets for a second HDD.
Plus it supports raid.
kasakka - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
The mobile graphics chips are nowhere close to the speed of their desktop counterparts. A GTX460M or whatever they've rebranded it as 5xx is about the same as a desktop GTX260, a several years old GPU.Personally I'd love to see more gaming PCs like this, but simply ditch the optical drive for more space so a bigger PSU, graphics card and cooler can fit in.
Death666Angel - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
This thing has no PSU inside the case, so ditching the ODD would not give you more space for the PSU and without a bigger PSU you can't have a beefier GPU.Mark_Hughes - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
I like this system, If I where looking right now this would certainly be high on my list, I normally use laptops, but one of my laptops hardly ever moves from the desk, this would make a great replacement when the time comes.Swirlser - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
Congrats to Dell on once again messing up and being blinded by its continuing race to the bottom.As if it wasnt bad enough a few years back when they bought Alienware and began pegging their XPS against it and now have taken what little was left of the BRAND and killed it with this bargain basement offering, quintessentially the opposite of what Alienware *was* about.
Im embarrassed that once upon a time I bought an Alienware, it cost 5,100 euro (monitor not incl). It was without a doubt the worst purchase Ive ever made, Ive had rather expensive cars experience less depreciation than that did! In the 6 weeks it took to deliver it, a dual core version of what I bought had come out (that'll give an idea how long ago it was). While money isnt particularly an issue and whether you like it or not, theres always something better around the corner, it still stung that before I even opened the box it was outdated. Fine, that was my own fault for not doing more research - in fact I did none. So my bad on that! BUT, even ignoring that, it was still a stupidly overpriced box that within a year I was itching for an upgrade.
Thankfully, I've since seen the light. I have done the lego route on my last 4ish rigs and its been a joy. Forget the cheaper price tag, just being able to hand pick each part, incl the case, the motherboard, the ram (none of which you get control over with an Alienware). Heck last time I checked they did away with picking a colour scheme (cba to check if its back or not).
Dell have a bargin basement brand already, its called Dell. A shrinking niche market the Alienware brand may have been, but it *was* that - a brand. Not anymore.
KitsuneKnight - Saturday, February 18, 2012 - link
Are you seriously lamenting that Dell is making Alienware sell more reasonably priced machines in the same post as you tell us the wonderful story of how the "worst purchase [you've] ever made" was a 5,100 euro Alienware machine that was an overpriced piece of junk, and outdated by the time you opened the box?Um... what?
seapeople - Saturday, February 18, 2012 - link
I was talking to a guy at work once who had just built his first new computer and I asked him why he didn't just get one from Dell, since you don't save all that much money. He used the argument about how great it is that you can pick each an every single component, whatever motherboard you want, the CPU, ram, etc...I then asked him "Oh, ok.. what CPU did you get?"
His response was "Um, I don't remember. I think it was Intel something or other. It was a quad core I'm pretty sure." (He had just finished building it about a week before)
So I said, "You mean, like a Q6600? Did you overclock it?"
"I... I just don't remember. Overclock? What's that?"
Then he went on to tell me how his computer kept crashing every few minutes, but he didn't know what to do so he just used it like that. It's people like you that lead poor, unknowledgeable saps like this astray.