I ordered an I5 to replace my very old AMD system. I think that it will at least do better than what I have. It won't arrive until later this month, but first plan is replacement of the hdd. I have an external case, and a 120 gb Sata3 SSD. I do not want ANY of the alienware bloat ware. I don't want console mode etc. This will be reconfigured to be ONLY a PC and not some mad science gaben inspired quasi-console. Is there a way I can pre-load windows to the soon to be internal HDD so that It is plug and play? I have access to legit copies of Windows 7, and apparently they are trying to cram windows 10 down my throat...the system comes with an OEM key for W10. Anyone with this system have similar experiences? Anyone have luck with windows 7? I would prefer the least amount of OS overhead. Thanks again Ladies and Gents! EDIT I don't wan't you all to think that I am out of power house computers...Don't judge me......This was the easiest and cheapest way for me to get an I5....since the only thing any good in my system any more is the PSU (knock on wood 6+ years) I am curious to upgrade later on and see how this I5-t handles a real motherboard with some volts and water cooling. I wanted to edit to add: My alpha was ordered direct from the devil (dell), and it DOES NOT come with a controller. It does come with a 1tb 7200 rpm 2.5" hdd. Most of the older versions seemed to come with a 5400 rpm. It will make a nice external storage.
I have an Alpha and here are my 2 cents. Leave Console Mode at least, I did get rid of a bunch of the Dell backup solutions and other dell applications, but Console mode is probably the only one I kept just for the key mapping alone. You can copy everything from a windows iso/disk straight to the root of the external drive, just make sure to format it to Fat32. I have Windows 10 on mine, Dell does not recommend to upgrade to 10 but I have had no issues with console mode. Also how does it not come with a controller? That comes boxed even in the lowest tier of the Alpha. Game Ready Drivers do work for the Alpha, this is something new within the past year. You can upgrade the CPU in it as well, which if you do know that whatever 1155 cpu you put in it will scale down to I believe 35w multiplier? Steam OS works. Mac Os X works.
Thanks again Vbetts. You should go order one from the web site now. http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-alpha/pd This one is coming with windows10. Controller is extra. It seems like you either get a steam box now, or you get windows10. I saw the deal with the processors. I doubt Ill "upgrade". It seems like a nice mash up of I5 and internal gpu. It looks like in the past they gave away a few games as well. This one is pretty much bare bones/$200 off. If you like yours Vbetts, I am sure I will like it also. Thanks again for the tip. Does windows 10 offer some sort of external backup of the os (Iso form?)
Wow, I did not know that! That was one of the main selling points of the Alpha before, a Windows system with an Xbox Wireless controller and adapter for under $500! These also did not used to ship with Windows 10 last I checked, for the longest time I got the Windows 10 upgrade service but then the Dell service had a notification not recommending it, and proceeding without guaranteed support for console mode. I would suggest keeping these apps. HiveMind interface(Console mode and key mapping) if you are going to have a controller with it. Dell Foundation Services for system monitoring, now this one is kind of tricky because you should keep the service, but get rid of all the backup, and toaster services that come with it. Alienware Command Center for LED lighting control. There was an update today for everything that adds proper support for Xbox One controllers, and possibly Dualshock 4. Windows itself does have one that compresses everything, you can back it up to anything. The Alpha supports Network booting and tools such as MDT or ghosting, so I usually make a backup every month to my NAS. Like I said, I love mine. It's my living room PC and plays games fairly decent on its own, and steam streaming is pretty easy on it as well. I do wish that the memory was higher because I do notice some performance woes at 1080p, but this is usually solved by upsacaling. I have an HDMI upscaler from 720p to 1080p to kind of solve this, but there is some quality loss with this. I bought mine from Amazon but you have to look at what you're buying as well, because of DRM some upscalers will not work if you do it via hardware upscaling. Here is the one I bought. http://www.amazon.com/Panlong-PL-SH2H-Converter-Upscaler-Consoles/dp/B00D86UYBS I am not sure if there is any software upscaling. I know there is downscaling available but I have not found any upscaling.
The website is pretty quiet on what kind of GPU comes in them. It just says Geforce GTX 2GB based on Maxwell. I would guess a 960? Still this seems kind of pricey for what you get.
Performance is comparable to the 750ti, but a lot of support docs call it the 960m. Before it was a pretty reasonable little machine back say a year ago. It came with the controller, there was not any real small machine in the price range that offered the performance the Alpha did, and could easily be upgraded as far as memory, cpu, and the hard drive. But now, performance is kind of lower scale and it does not come with the 360 controller on its own. The 360 controller with the adapter I believe is like $60-$70. Even still, not a horrible deal because if you built your own it would be more just because of the Windows license alone, and you would not be able to get one that size.
The system is essentially a custom made Gtx 860m Board with laptop memory and a low wattage desktop cpu on one board. I have been in the market for a mini pc, and nothing I have will fit in even the Sluggo cases. I have a 910w psu with non-modular cables that are really long in a huge old full sized ATX. I had a gift card that could only be used at a very limited number of places, Dell was the most tech savvy vendor. I paid very little out of pocket....Less than the value of the i5 chip. I have read quite a few reviews and most touched on costs. It is quite hard to create a comparable system in that cost range, even if it is not the top end.
What I have seen is people build APU systems with near the dimensions of the Alpha, but there is a lot to worry about with that. The APU's are still more power hungry and heat up more than both the Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU combined. Cooling is hard to do, even more so to really get the value of an APU the best thing you can do is overclock memory and GPU cores, which takes more power and heat. The next best thing is the GigaByte Brix series, but these are not cheap whatsoever.
Order got delayed. I tried to cancel, and after an hour on wait they offered to refund me $50 if I stuck around for one more delay. I am thinking that there is more than a 50% chance of further delays.
Cloning the included 1tb HDD to a 120gb SSD was a huge headache. I found that by using Macronis AND totally ignoring dells secret restoration partition allowed my clone to boot.....however, It apparently did not transfer essential files for windows to rebuild itself, so I made a flash drive ISO. I can't get windows 10 to work with me. I just don't like it. This may yet end up with windows 7.....I don't need one bit of dells software, just drivers.
I give up. I will be doing a totally clean fresh install of the OS. I found a pretty basic VBS script that shows me what my windows key is, so I am ready to go: This pc was made so cheap. It does not have ANY sort of microsoft sticker. No COA, no "Authentic" color change windows sticker, nothing. It has a single Intel inside sticker...nothing else.
This is my first OEM pc since the late 90s. I would strongly urge everyone to reformat and reinstall an OS every time. I somehow managed to save over 10 gb of storage that was 100% unused. Once you have a reformat/restore flash drive, the 8gb+ partition with dell authorized Day One install is useless.....Windows 10 seems to be quite good at obtaining proper drivers for everything, and after the fresh install I only needed Nvidia drivers. If I had the $$$$ for a larger SSD, I would still have done this. This 120 gb is going to get small fast, I guarantee it.
The old PC has been scattered into the wind. Let us take a moment of silence, and remember the Beige ATX that has been with me for so long, but was outdated too soon. My raid-0 4x 100gb SSD has been scattered about. Half is being used as a raid-0 on my brother's pc....1 is upgrading my wife's laptop. The other will be <undetermined fate> The gtx660 will upgrade my brother's system. That with the raid-0 ssd will be enough to blow his hair back. The board, ram and chip are being equipped with a gtx 260 and given to a friends son who expressed interest in a PC more capable of running skyrim than an xbox. The Pc Power and cooling 910w PSU may end up here for sale/trade. Im still taking my moment in. The old King is gone....Long Live the King!
After much reading and fiddling, I have a few complaints..... I recently became spoiled by my 144hz LCD. This is the only thing that has compared to my Gdm Fw-900.... However this Alienware Alpha ONLY outputs with HDMI, and does not apparently support higher refresh rates. I finally forced it into 1080p @ 85hz. Its a fair tradeoff, and I will still continue to try and find better methods with higher refresh.
Congrats! Maybe you will find some kind of improvement or success with this: http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm
Maybe you can use Alien Respawn to create a bootable USB drive after you get the machine though. You have two options.... You can install the M.2 drive and install Windows to it via the USB backup you made. You can install a smaller M.2 drive and just cache the 1tb drive. It isn't as fast as a straight SSD but it is a lot better then stock HDD speeds. Personally I would install the largest M.2 drive you can afford and run Windows off of it and then use the HDD for gaming. You could even probably split the drive and use a portion of it for caching and the rest for Windows. The largest the cache drive can be is 60gb , the rest can be used for storage data.
I just researched that software, because It is not on my machine from factory. Apparently it may or may not work correct in w10. My machine has internal space for One and only ONE drive. I didn't have any trouble using a w10 bootable usb flash drive to delete all partitions and reinstall. I am trying to avoid dell "software" like the plague. Google "Dell Foundation Services" (which they now offer a tool to remove said software)... https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/870761 I am a fan of total reformats especially due to doofy actions like creating a customer experience thing that backfires and is a backdoor for all sorts of trouble.
