Customer Ratings & Reviews

THE ALIENWARE I3 IS A FUN AND EASY TO PLAY CONSOLE.PLAYS ALMOST ALL STEAM GAME.

I haven't have the time to really use it much but so far so good.

Amazing computer I would recommended this to a friend

Found this as an open box item and even got an additional discount. Very very happy with this purchase and item.

I wanted to potentially use this with a monitor, but it does not have vga or dvi outputs, so i returned it. it did not come with recovery software.

This little thing is awesome. I am using it as intended (a gaming/htpc hooked up to my 70" 4k TV). I got the i3 model for the price to performance ratio being the best value. I overclocked the GPU a little to get as much as I can out of it, and am really surprised with how powerful it is. I am also really happy that it supports 4k/60 output. I won't be doing much 4k gaming with this machine, but 4k YouTube videos are now an option. For anyone worrying about the i3 version being too weak- honestly your money is better spent on upgrading the hard drive and RAM (over the $ spent for the i3 to i5 upgrade). Around $100 will get you a 240gb SSD and an extra 4gb of RAM. That will give you WAY more performance gain over just getting the model with an upgraded CPU. All in all, if you are looking for some sort of a gaming beast of a computer, this is not the computer for you. It was intended to be a gaming "console", which basically means "plug and play", 1080p, med settings. Even with the i7 model, you will not see that much of a performance gain in gaming (games still are primarily GPU focused, and ALL models of the Alpha have the same GPU). If you want more out of a gaming computer spend the $900-$1000 it would cost for the higher end Alpha models on building a computer yourself.... But, if you want a remarkably small form-factor htpc/gaming machine that will play almost any game at 1080p med/high graphics with a good frame rate, comes with a controller, has 4K output capability, built in wifi, AND runs full windows, this i3 Alpha is amazing

I too was looking to get into pc gaming a bit, currently have ps3 & xbox360, but really don't know the first thing about building a pc system of my own. I was able to get the I3 alpha for $399 on a price match and considering a similar xbox 360 remote runs about $50 not to mention the windows 8 license that's included makes this built gaming pc a pretty darn good value in parts alone. Now with that said here is the bad, out of the box with no usb based keyboard/mouse combo setting things up is a bit of a task(meaning you might want to put $25 to the side for a decent keyboard/mouse), the steam UI is clunky as all hell and at least one of the free steam games(metro last light) had some issues out of the box which had me up in arms considering you'd think they would test the free games you're given...loading games, and the steam UI takes forever, the steam UI just from startup takes roughly 1m30s which if you think about it you could click the button for startup and go make yourself a pot of coffee and when you come back its just coming up...thats a long time. Good thing is the good CAN outweigh the bad but in order to do so you'll need to get some additional ram...heres the thing though, I've found some people had 2x2gb chips while mine had 1x4gb chip of ram in it so before you go and buy 2x4gb chips or 1 gb chip check to see what yours has in it. This, in itself, could potentially save you $30. I bought an 8gb chip thinking mine was going to be like the ones with the 2x2 and it wasn't. And if you have the funds get yourself a 500gb+ ssd drive. The reason for the 8gb of ram is that alot of todays games recommend at least this amount, for instance battlefield 4, otherwise the game might struggle through it. The reason for at least a 500gb HD is that I've installed payday2, battlefield 4, metro last light and a couple of indie games and I'm down to 313gb of free space. I think BF4 uses some 50gb by itself, 8-9 games of this size and you're out of room real quick. The SSD drive will speed up your load times for virtually everything so instead of 1m30 for startup, maybe 5-15 seconds. I've personally invested about $500 now for the system, keyboard/mouse & 8gb ram, I have not done the SSD drive as of yet as another $170 just isn't in the cards just yet but I know what my next investment is. And I've still got a ram slot open for another 8gb card if I want which should make this system future proof for a while but that can wait until the next gen of games start funneling down.

I have used Alienware computers to play games in the past. For example, I used an Area 51 as my base system until recently. Yet, when I replaced the 51 (it was five years old), I decided that my next desktop would be strictly work. This left the question of the games. When Best Buy had an open box, i jumped at the chance. Af first glance, it does not seem like much - not a gaming computer. For example, the hard drive is only 500 GB, the processor is an i3 - not strong indicators of a good game system. Yet, at the price, I was willing to take a chance. I was surprised. Lets get the weak part out of the way - the Steam/Alienware UI is rather clunky; there is no keyboard included (for some games and for paypal, you need a keyboard); the system can be easily opened (but the opening tool is not included - rats). Now, for the good part, - it works reasonably well as a gaming system. I was driving a 1080 tv screen at 60mhz and the system had no problems. The screen resolution was at the highest. No problems with frame rate lag (I was playing Borderlands - sometimes the old games are the best ones). For the price, a good system. One more downside - the price that Best Buy is offering it is not really that competitive. Currently, Alienware is selling the systems at a discount (the same unit there is $499) with additional discounts that drive the price further down by over $100. Surprisingly, recommended.

Works great!! Its what I need and it proves great!

What a great concept. I bought this open box item after a lot of research for a gaming pc. I really didn't want to spend $1000+. What's cool about this pc is that it boots in a console mode, for gaming, which keeps other PC operations from disrupting your game while running in the background. After an initial upgrade to the console software it is running very smooth. I had an extra 4 GB of memory laying around which I popped in immediately to give me 8 GB. Other than that I am running this straight out of the box and the performance on my games is light years ahead of my laptop. The only downside is that the video card cannot be upgraded, but I don't think this is going to be an issue for some time. The compact size is great, it fits right under my monitor. In fact, I have room on my desk to keep my laptop running my other programs like streaming videos and VOIP chat. Steam has lots of free games to play and you can install any pc based game that you like and launch them right from the console. When you need your desktop, just sign out of the console and sign back in for a full Windows 10 experience. Although it has wireless capability, I would recommend an ethernet cable connection (LAN) for lower ping rates and faster response time. I am happy that I bought this and if affordable, compact, and powerful is what your looking for you will be too.

After getting burned by Syber's poorly designed Vapor steam box I decided to exchange it for an Alienware Alpha and I have to say for a PC smaller than an old Sega Genesis it does everything I need it to. As long as you're not expecting to run every game at the absolute highest settings it works great and the games look great. I'm planning on upgrading the RAM and maybe replacing the HDD down the line but even without any changes it's a solid, inexpensive, no frills machine for convenient home entertainment. I'm using mine as a desktop PC and got rid of Alienware's Steam front-end which I didn't really care for. It's certainly not a negative and it's there if you want it, especially if you're planning to hook it up to a large screen TV and operate the system without a keyboard or mouse.

GOOD FOR USE FOR ONLINE SEARC,BASIC VIDEO AND PICTURE

I got this cute lil thing all set up to log on to an older game and lag. it runs silently but is also to laggy for my needs.

This computer is great, but it has it's downsides. Some of the downsides this computer has is that the graphics card isn't upgrade-able and is equivalent to an 860m. Everything else is upgrade-able. I would highly recommend upgrading the RAM and the HDD if you want a pretty good computer. The HDD that's included is a 500gb 5400rpm drive. Making it pretty slow for gaming or even opening files once you get some files on there. I ended up getting a Samsung EVO 850 500gb Solid State Drive to take full advantage of the SATA 3 connection getting up to 3gb/s. The RAM that's included is 4gb DDR3LP 1333mhz even though this device supports 1600mhz. This is fine if your using it as a media streamer or a basic home computer. Once you get into the actual gaming you'll need to use Alienware's software to help kill background processes. Otherwise games will stutter from the lack of available RAM. After awhile of dealing with stutters here and there I ended up going up to 16gb of DDR3LP 1600mhz RAM from Corsair. DO NOT PUT PNY MEMORY IN THIS COMPUTER! I had it blue screen multiple times with two different kits of 16gb PNY DDR3LP. The i3 processor is pretty good and can beat some of the low power i5 processors. The processor is one of the many changeable parts I haven't replaced. Mainly because it's hard as heck to find a T or S model processor, and the i3 surprisingly has been pulling it's weight. Yes you can try and replace the processor with a stock one, but your case will most likely melt because of the heat produced from a standard processor and not to mention the limited power draw via the external PSU would downclock the processor to run the same speed as a T series or S series. The S model i5 or i7 would be a great performance boost for normal computing, but on the gaming side not many games take advantage of the more cores or even hyper-threading for that mater. All in all this is a great test product from Alienware and kinda shows what can be done in a small form factor computer. If you're looking for a good computer to sit next to an Xbox One /PS4 or even replace it this is the computer to look at getting or the i5 model if it's on sale. Out of the box don't expect 60FPS @ 1080 with detail on full / extreme, but 720p @ 45-60 fps on low - medium is more of what you'll get. After upgrades you can squeeze some more performance out of it.

So usually alienware is related with expensive overpriced gaming machines. Not this one and surprisingly it runs like a $700+ machine. With the modified nvidia 860m/750 ti graphic chip, it can run the latest games at around high settings at 1080p and max at 720p. Another touting point is that its pretty easy to set up compared to other gaming rigs since it has Steam Big picture guiding users through the process. It also comes with a wireless $50 Xbox 360 controller for free which is a big +. The only problem I have is that it does not have a DVI port or VGA port or audio jack or mouse or keyboard. I understand that its designed to be a console but at the end if it runs the windows 8 operating system and that if it can be used as a PC, it should be mandatory to have these type of things. At the end if you're looking for a cheap gaming rig or heck even just a regular small desktop PC, this is the best you can probably buy for around $500-$600.

The system did not preform well at all. It took 2 days to download a game and the some games would constantly freeze.

Ok for a pc gaming system. You will need to up grade the memory.

Love it great for the family that needs the multiple function computer

crashed two days after purchase. Best buy sending another

I had Ps4 and Xbox One and I wanted to get into pc gaming. Out of the box with only 4gb of ram, games like Battlefield 4 and Metro Last Light would hick-up and couldn't run on high or ultra settings. I bought a 8gb ddr3 1600mhz ram single stick and added it to the 4gb stick that was already inside giving it a total of 12gb and I can now play any game on high to ultra settings. As for everyday computing, the Intel core i3 is perfect. With only 4 usb ports, you will need to purchase a usb hub. I bought all my additional upgrades from Best Buy.