I actually use an Alienware Alpha r1 on my day to day basis and it's amazing.. not for gaming tbf, only Valorant from time to time and I have to say, it's still an absolute beast. I have to admit, I have upgraded the CPU to a i7 4th gen and ram to 16g.
@@CBXweb Yeah, you could do the PIN trick, or simply disassemble it and replace the CMOS battery on the underside of the motherboard. If you are techy at all, you will be able to handle it easily. Watch a video if you need to, but no sense in writing off a decent little PC because of a a $3 battery. :)
Hey canI ask you something, mines turn off when I try to run games like Valorant, GTA on high graphics, Genshin Impact etc etc.. The old owner sayd it was like an default security system of the Alpha R2.. Can you help me out. Its an Alpha r2, gtx 960, 16 ram, Intel i7, 1TB ssd
Regarding zachs video in the review on your pc .I think that you make amazing PCs while realistically you being a small company that you don’t buy parts in bulk and you buy them retail on Amazon/newegg since you have to pay your employees you need to make money and that is a very fair price at 825 because you still are a company needing to make money. Also the aresgame power supplies ,I’ve built with them and they are affordable and low quality ,I have searched through all low ratings in those power supplies and none of them said they would catch fire or fry your pc .I think you should use some cheap evga units witch are higher quality witch are 10-15 more dollars. I have bought wraith coolers from you and it shipped fast and I am overall very Impressed with what you are selling on your website! 👍. Keep up the great work !
I got my R1 in 2016 for $400 new. Also came with an Xbox controller. It was the i3 variant, I think the i7 version was in the $650 range. I opened mine up recently to mod the CMOS battery to a standalone housing, routed through the bottom USB housing (5 yellow flashes, common issue in these). In the process, I repasted the CPU and GPU. The paste was absolutely cooked. Worth checking out for anyone still rocking this setup. I'm about to do an upgrade to an -7-4790s and 16gb of ram for roughly $60. Wish I would have grabbed an R2, the woes of going for the first iteration of "the new thing". But I played quite a bit of skyrim on it back in the day and it was great as a living room gaming machine.
I absolutely love this. I bought one off my friend with the same specs and would play warzone and even got 60fps before upgrading to a full desktop. He bought it for roughly $800 when new so it was competitively priced too. The only annoyance is the fan noise as it would be quite loud given the form factor. Overall a really good product from Alienware, probably even better designed then their full size hot boxes. Shame that such mini pcs are not available at this price point anymore.
Side bonus: the R2 version actually has an external graphics card adapter that you can connect to the R2 version so you can upgrade the graphics card to use it with the PC. The port on the back of the unit has the eGPU port.
I ended up getting the i7 version last month for $200. Ended up putting in a 32 gb stick of ram and a 1tb m.2 ssd, and other than some fan noise, it runs really well!
You can replace the cpu with an i7, the ram is upgradeable too and it has a m.2 slot along with a 2.5 sata input. Replace the thermal paste immediately.
Yeah, the 1070 will absolutely crush the 960 (which I think had 2gb memory vs 8gb on the 1070). You can also upgrade the CPU quite a bit more, not a K series of course. I have an R1 so I don't have the GFX amplifier, but its a pretty cool little add-on they did, even if it was kind of a niche addition. Quirky, but cool.
I bought one of these back in the day from Walmart and immediately returned it because I thought the two hdmi were both outs and it was not going to be able to run my oculus rift dk2. I bought an even better alienware from Walmart to run the occlusion with and my friend gamed on it for years after we stopped using it and now his friend games on the thing!
This PC is actually really great and I was able to throw in a better full fledged K series CPU in it along with the EGPU I was using a RX580, so I would ignore the recommendation of not using the egpu - Mine was the Aplha R2
Had the good luck of buying the i7 model with a 1tb hdd for $180 from gamestop a few years back. It was the Steam Machine version so I had to swap out that hard drive with an ssd and install windows but it was pretty great.
nice little pc got the 1st model which has a 4th gen intel cpu and a gtx 860m was my main pc since 2017 to 2021 and got replaced by a laptop with a 11th gen i5 and rtx 3050ti
Was thinking about getting one for call of duty. Ik you tested warzone but will it at least have higher fps in multiplayer? Since the maps are small and lower amount of players on the map?
You can fit an i7-6700T in there (it's a socketed CPU), and will run at its turbo frequency of 3.6ghz quite easily. I still use the Alpha R1 (i7-4770S, 16GB RAM and 860M) to do some eSports gaming - looking to get an R2 with the graphics dock actually
How are the temps and fan noise with the 4770S? That's 65W TDP vs 35W stock. I'm looking at possibly upgrading from an i7-4765T, and the 35W & 45W upgrade options don't seem worth the cost.
Yo u really need to open them boxes a different way. Cause everytime u use that gigantic sword to open a box it looks like ur going to hurt yourself lol
Should do the Alienware Alpha R1 since it's dual channel and actually overclocks on gpu really awesome. But test it with i7 and 16 gigs of ram because still to this day it runs things really good sometimes better than the R2 since the dual channel memory.
Hey Bros! I need a suggestion. My sister is in college currently and needs a laptop that can run genshin impact 40-60 fps med-low settings for about 400 dollars. Ive been looking everywhere but I cant find anything I can recommend. Any Ideas?
Hi the Toasy Bros! If you see this comment, could you try out this budget gaming laptop? It’s called the msg gf63 thin with a I7 processor and a 3050 graphics card?
EGPU makes a big difference I had mine paired with an RX580 and upgraded the cpu with one of the K processors I forget which one exactly I sold my Alpha R2 a few years ago
Mines turn off when I try to run games like Valorant, GTA on high graphics, Genshin Impact etc etc.. The old owner sayd it was like an default security system of the Alpha R2.. Can you help me out. Its an Alpha r2, gtx 960, 16 ram, Intel i7, 1TB ssd
I'd personally just spend more for a $600 gtx 1650 mini pc from aliexpress. Its much better than this Alienware especially since the Alienware hardware is outdated mostly for newer games
I bought my Alienware Alpha back in 2012 and it still performs well. It was pretty overpriced for the specs back then, but what you're really paying for is the form factor. It's a very unique machine back when all these china mini PC manufacturers didn't exist yet. Plus it has a discrete GPU! It's the closest you can get to a Mac Mini PC counterpart. I was using mine until the pandemic happened, when I started to notice that the 6th gen Intel CPU was starting to show its age compared to my newer office laptop. PS: The USB slot at the bottom was intended to house the Steam controller receiver (as this machine was targetted as a Steam PC) but a lot of people used it for their Xbox/Wireless KB/M receivers.
Hi Toasty Bros I am from philippines I watch your video very interesting and knowledgeable. Hope you can help me to build PC for online class and low end games thank you sir. Hope you recognize this comment :D
@@ToastyBros kk thank you. Also I heard that Sabrent is coming out with an 8tb gen 4 nvme ssd whose specs would be compatible with PS5. Just curious here, any plans on a video for that? thanks for the reply.
If anyone is interested in one of these and is in the Phoenix area, I have one and would be willing to sell it for $300. It's the i3 model with 12gb ram, GTX 960, and a new m.2