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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ranilus - Monday, February 20, 2012 - link
The advantage is the flexibility of where you can put the system. On the desk, right beside/behind the monitor, on the floor, in an entertainment center, etc.I had an Aurora. I was happy with the stock CPU and GPU, didn't feel the need to upgrade or overclock, or add SLI/CF or RAID 0. But that case, on man it wasn't just HUGE. It was HEAVY. I think it was 60lbs. I couldn't put it on the desktop. I couldn't fit it in my computer desk which had space for a computer tower, I could only put it beside the desk, and it was sort of in the way the whole time.
There's always the want for simplicity, a neat desk-area, a clutter-free Feng-shui, and/or an aesthetically pleasing gaming room. The X51 achieves that, while also being relatively powerful.
It is indeed just as you've said, you are obviously not the target audience. Really the system, and All-In-Ones, are for those who appreciates a holistic Chi.
Coup27 - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
Nice review and a neat little system. What sets this apart is the custom design and build. On that front it is a shame there is only one photo of inside the unit itself and even that you cannot see past the side.Death666Angel - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
I like the clean built and the form factor and the relative power it packs. However, I'm a PC nerd and would never buy a complete PC unless I can save 100-200 bucks compared to the components used (which is impossible).Leyawiin - Saturday, February 18, 2012 - link
I'm kind of intrigued by this tiny form factor and the relative power it has. I'm sure it would perform better than my mid-range PC (GTX 460 OC'd and X4 955 OC'd). Interesting...JarredWalton - Saturday, February 18, 2012 - link
CPU would be faster in some cases, yes, but the GPU? Overclocked GTX 460 is almost certainly going to outperform the GTX 555 (OEM). 460 has 336 cores at 1350MHz (stock), which works out to 907.2 GFLOPS (theoretical), and the 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface at 3600MHz (effective) gives you 115.2 GB/s of bandwidth -- that's assuming you have the 1GB version of the GTX 460; if not, you'd be sitting down at 86.4 GB/s.In comparison, the GTX 555 has 288 cores at 1553 MHz, which yields a theoretical 894.5 GFLOPS. It has a 192-bit memory interface running at 3828MHz, for 91.9GB/s of bandwidth. So, at stock the GTX 460 1GB card would have 1-2% more computations power and 25% more bandwidth, but you say your card is overclocked which would mean that however far you've overclocked basically translates directly into more computational power.
Leyawiin - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
Ah, I'm not that familiar with the GTX 555 since its OEM and there are no reviews anywhere. I am playing Skyrim almost exclusively right now and its so CPU bound I was thinking that stronger CPU would have more of an impact.JarredWalton - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
The 1.4 update should have alleviated a lot of the CPU-bound issues. At least, it seems to have done so on my PC. Plus you can also use the high resolution texture packs -- though with a 1GB card that might be asking too much.TareX - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - link
Extremely irrelevant, but I'm wondering when Anandtech will be reviewing the world's latest, fastest, most impressive handheld gaming machine coming out this week...AndySocial - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I find it interesting that no reviewers ever seem to review the base model. It seems that would be enlightening. Many people are probably intrigued by the idea of a small system with ostensibly enough power to play current games on their HDTV (gotta love HDMI standardization across PC and TV usage). But, this review, like every other I've seen so far, won't tell them if the most-affordable system is worth buying. This is especially true when the X51 is using OEM-only video cards, so a typical user is not going to be able to find a lot of comparisons of other systems with the same specs.