Alienware Alpha R2
Even a new GPU can’t save the Alpha
PRICE STARTS AT $ 1499 alienware.com
The
original Alienware Alpha was born in a time when Valve’s steam machines seemed like they were going to revolutionise PC gaming. We all know how well that turned out – we’re as likely to see Steam machines take over PC gaming as we are a plebiscite on gay marriage. It was tiny, relatively quiet, and fairly cheap, but it lacked the gaming guts to play any of the games of the day at high settings. This was thanks to the proprietary GTX 750 level card inside, which was slow by any stretch of the imagination.
Alienware has taken a second crack at the Alpha, delivering the same tiny form factor, but giving the graphics a significant kick in the pants. We first saw this unit at Computex 2016, and it looks basically identical to the original. Alienware claims that this second revision of the Alpha is up to 60% faster than the original, and we’re guessing it’s down to the GPU and CPU revision.
Measuring 200mm x 200mm x 55mm, and weighing just 1.81kg, the new version of the Alpha is as impressively small as the original. If you’re looking for a very simple mobile LAN solution, and will only be playing the likes Counter Strike, this could be it. Considering it’s so tiny, we can’t help but be impressed at what Alienware has stuffed inside – the Alpha R2 makes a Mini-ITX system look huge. They’ve gone for the same very basic square shape of the original, with a couple of angled edges to bring the gaming theme forwards, and a power button in the shape of the Alienware logo on the front. This sits next to two USB 3.0 ports, while the rear has many more I/O options. There’s HDMI in and out, as well as Gigabit Ethernet. Another two USB 3.0 ports adorn the rear, but it’s interesting to see Alienware has stuck with Type-A for all of these connections.
We’d have liked to see a USB 3.0 Type C/Thunderbolt 3 connection, but instead, Alienware forces users to use its proprietary cable to connect to the external graphics accelerator. This box can house a discrete GPU to give the machine a huge boost in performance, but it appears to be identical to last year’s version. It’ll take Nvidia cards, and easily handles the likes of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080. Maximum TDP for this box is 375W, and all of the latest generation of graphics cards easily fall within that limit. However, it’ll only take dual slot configurations, so don’t buy a huge triple slot solution. One interesting issue we found was that our
Alienware claims that this second revision of the Alpha is up to 60% faster than the original version
R2 wouldn’t boot without the graphics accelerator in place – we’re guessing it’s a BIOS setting that needed to be changed. Adding this brings four more USB 3.0 ports to the equation, a nice increase on the meagre four included with the base R2.
Alienware sent us the top-end version of this product, and they’ve packed as much as possible into this tiny box. Intel’s i7-6700T is at the heart of this product, and the T indicates it’s a low wattage product, at just 35W. Yet it’s still fully equipped with four cores, full Hyper-Threading and a top turbo speed of 3.6GHz. It also includes Intel’s integrated HD graphics 530, but you won’t be using this while gaming with the Alpha R2. 16GB of memory is plenty, but the long-term storage options aren’t quite so appealing. There’s just a single 256GB PCIe SSD included – strangely our system showed another 512GB HDD, but we could not access it. For
another $700 you can upgrade this SSD to a 1TB version, but that’s a huge price increase to give the R2 enough storage for all of your games and media. It seems there’s just not enough space in the R2 for a dedicated mechanical drive, so you’re going to be relying on a NAS or other external storage solution once you hit that small 256GB cap.
The biggest problem with the first Alpha was the proprietary Nvidia GPU within. Even though Alienware never officially announced what card it was, most figured out it was a custom GTX 750. This year’s R2 has had a huge boost, in the form of the GTX 960 with 4GB of GDDR5. However, Alienware doesn’t say whether this is the desktop version of the card or the mobile variant, which are wildly different. What we can say is that it delivers a massive improvement in performance compared to the first Alpha.
As our benchmarks show, this unit is now capable of playing most mid-range games at medium settings. The GeForce GTX 960 is still nowhere near capable of delivering 1080p at 60 frames per second with all settings on max, even with games that are a couple of years old. This is a bit of a shame considering Nvidia has just released its new mobile variants of the 1060, which would have been a huge upgrade for the Alpha. There’s also the issue of fan noise: stuffing a 960 into something this small has resulted in a rather loud buzz box. We measured 54dB of fan noise under load, so you’re going to want to play your games nice and loud to overcome this annoyance.
While we appreciate the engineering effort that has gone into the Alpha R2, is it really worth spending so much just to cut back on size? $1500 buys a damn fast gaming PC these days, rather than something powered by a 2-year old GPU. If Alienware releases an R3 with 1060, then the story might change, but until then this is an overpriced, underpowered novelty, designed only for those with a need for the smallest of systems.