The Alpha was is the first of Alienware's Steam Machine's with the idea of providing the power of a PC with the ease of a console. It has an exclusively developed user interface (running on Windows 8.1) that allows the user to fully navigate the core functions of the Alpha with only the included Xbox 360 controller. A keyboard and mouse can still be installed and used but it is not required.


Included as part of this is Steam running in big picture mode which makes sense as this is marketed as a gaming machine. However, this is still a PC at its core so there are a number of different hardware options and price points to choose from. It has a starting price of £449 which gets you an i3-4130T, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD all the way to £699 and an i7-4765T with 8GB of RAM and a 2TB HDD. All versions come with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860 GPU with 2GB of GDDR5. The issue with this is that the GPU cannot be upgraded and has already been superceeded by the 970 and 980M versions.

While these machines are unlikely to be appealing to hard core PC gamers those looking for a more casual, sit on the couch experience may well be tempted by just what the Alpha was made for. The power of a PC with the ease of a console.

The Alpha is available now so head to Dell and order one now.

Do you have one already? Tell us what you think.