When Dell announced its Alienware Alpha, it was initially planning to sell it out as an official Steam-powered Machine however, things got stuck right there when Valve was delaying the release of its SteamOS, which was in need of more tweaking to perfection.
Dell’s all-in-one gaming “console” PC
Dell’s all-in-one gaming “console” PC is going to be available at four different price tags. You will have options of throwing in $550, $700, $800, or $900.
Dell had to accommodate another major change into the release of this device; as it appears Valve’s SteamOS was not the only thing which was subject to a delay, in fact the Valve Steam controller was also delayed into 2015 which is why Dell is now shipping its Alpha with an Xbox 360 Wireless controller instead.
Afforable Next Generation Gaming Consoles
The different price ranges obviously mean that there are going to be different models and they will be offering us different levels of satisfaction. Alpha’s basic low-end model is going to be powered by an Intel Core i3-4130T dual-core processor which has been clocked up to 2.9 GHz. It comes with Nvidia’s customized 2 GB GeForce GTX 860M GPU and an impressive 4GB of DDR3 RAM.
On top of all this, with the 500GB internal hard drive you have plenty of storage even in this basic model. If you move on to the next price point, which is $699, you are going to get double the memory and internal storage however the rest of the features are going to remain the same.
If you are looking for a higher-end processor capable of keeping up with any video game you can throw at it, you would want to have a look at the $799 model which bumps up the processor to a quad-core i5-4590T clocked up to 3.0 GHz, while the top-end $899 SKU goes all out with an i7-4765T clocked to 3.0 and 2TB of internal storage.
Regardless of the price variations, all models are going to be accompanied with Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity and four USB ports; two 2.0 on the front and two 3.0 on the back. Along with this you will also get connections for all your standard Ethernet, HDMI, and optical audio cables.
Frank Azor, General Manager of Alienware, commented about the PC saying “We’ve been working hard this past year to break the mold and develop a system that finally brings hundreds of Steam games, including some really fun indie titles, to TVs,” … “The team and I are excited to finally deliver our vision for big screen gaming and give our fans a console that delivers true next-gen performance with the flexibility to choose how, what and where they want to play.”
