Alienware x51 review: A proper, affordable gaming slim tower (Albuquerque Journal)
(Credit: Matthew Fitzgerald/CNET)
I expect Alienware will sell a lot of these.
There’s very little about the new Alienware x51 gaming slim tower a mainstream
buyer won’t appreciate. You can buy a reasonably fast configuration, like our
review unit, for under $1,000. It’s on an aesthetic par with an Xbox 360 or a
Playstation 3. You can even put it on its side and slide it into your media
rack.
It’s still a PC, of course, with all the content benefits and interface and
software hang-ups implied therein. And in spite of Alienware’s clever work
cramming in a full-sized 3D card, the x51 will make a finicky upgrade
platform. You get no other expansion card slots, room for only one hard drive,
and the 330 watt power supply (an upgrade over the 230 watt default) limits
you to mainstream graphics cards.
#### Alienware X51
Still, the bumped up GeForce GTX 555 card in our review config can play
Battlefield 3, Skyrim, or pretty much any other game at 1,920×1,080 at smooth
frame rates and respectable quality settings. That’s all many gamers will ask
for, particularly those shopping for a PC like this one.
… [Read more]
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