Alienware Steam Machines look horrible.

Hulluck

Title. I have not payed much attention to them. But ventured into the forums on Steam this afternoon.  My gosh. Mortified that people are going to buy those and expect them to run new games on max settings or even close.  Or even holdup after a year or two. Kids are going to talk their parents into buying the top end one and man.   I guess it bothers me because I have been there.  Dare I say at some point most pc users have had some bad purchases. The cheap one. Ok.. that one might be alright.   The $800.... I just..   Why didn't Gabe just build a mini ATX that could be upgraded and with real desktop parts!?  Looks like those mobile  GPU's are proprietary as well, gosh... Sounds like it from Alienware rep posts on those forums. might not be. but can the psu handle a upgrade if they aren't?

Overreacting?  Given the time of year. Going to be some great deals.  I'm not even trying to make the build your own argument. Forums kind of slow. So I figure why not. See what others think in a more neutral environment.

laserit

I'd never buy one personally, but I think you have to compare the performance and price against the consoles. This is where the Steam box will be judged.

Braindome

I think it looks pretty cool and console manufacturers could probably learn a thing or two from the design as it looks to be designed in a very orderly and well structured manner when compared to your standard console.

Regardless, I don't want or need one.

laserit

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

Hulluck

laserit said:

I'd never buy one personally, but I think you have to compare the performance and price against the consoles. This is where the Steam box will be judged.

I get that. But the thing is they aren't consoles or playing games designed for consoles (them). They are going to be playing pc games. The $400 might be alright honestly. The top end one. For a home gaming pc? Add onto it that it might be proprietary hardware (the GPU). Meaning can't be upgraded unless Dell makes upgrades for it.

If people understand what they are and still want them. That's awesome.  But those that don't are going to feel burnt when they can't run the latest and greatest decently on that $800 machine. Very questionable I think. But not an expert. I think for that money given the time of year. Better pre built options to be had. Maybe not as small. I know discussing this on Steam forums is like poking a hornets nest. So silly.

Design is definitely neat. oh well. guess time will tell.

Hulluck

laserit said:

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

From the quote on the forums in Steam. The Alienware rep said it was a modified 860m.  Might have been a 850m..    Definitely modified.  Proprietary?

laserit

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

From the quote on the forums in Steam. The Alienware rep said it was a modified 860m.  Might have been a 850m..    Definitely modified.  Proprietary?

It's an 860m. The closest comparison in performance would be a $1200-$1400 laptop. It will work pretty decent, (nothing great) using mid range settings at 1080p

Hulluck

laserit said:

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

From the quote on the forums in Steam. The Alienware rep said it was a modified 860m.  Might have been a 850m..    Definitely modified.  Proprietary?

It's an 860m. The closest comparison in performance would be a $1200-$1400 laptop. It will work pretty decent, (nothing great) using mid range settings at 1080p

Yeah it's not horrible. Especially if the $400 is a 860m.  I don't know that a 860m at $800 in a desktop environment though is actually well spent. Or even close to future proof for desktop environment.  Can it be upgraded with off the shelf parts? Guess mountain out of a mole hill. Not my money. Happy with what I got and it's future proof.  I do feel for the people who think they might be getting more than what they are actually getting. 

laserit

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

From the quote on the forums in Steam. The Alienware rep said it was a modified 860m.  Might have been a 850m..    Definitely modified.  Proprietary?

It's an 860m. The closest comparison in performance would be a $1200-$1400 laptop. It will work pretty decent, (nothing great) using mid range settings at 1080p

Yeah it's not horrible. Especially if the $400 is a 860m.  I don't know that a 860m at $800 in a desktop environment though is actually well spent. Or even close to future proof for desktop environment.  Can it be upgraded with off the shelf parts? Guess mountain out of a mole hill. Not my money. Happy with what I got and it's future proof.  I do feel for the people who think they might be getting more than what they are actually getting. 

The $450 and $550 versions have an I3 cpu, they're going to royally suck for AAA games. The $850 is an I7 that will be comparable to the previously mentioned laptops.

Looking at some of the other Steam Boxes, I think Alienware will be the worst choice. They never have been known for value for $ spent.

With all the other machines, it looks like you would save significantly just building your own rig, but that's not who they're being marketed towards.

Unlike consoles, everything looks to be very open ended and it looks like there will be some very cool business opportunities for the little guy.

I like the ideas behind it. 

JDis25

Yeah I think people will definitely feel burned on these. Unless games are fine tuned for the specifications of these machines as they are consoles, but something tells me that won't be as easy and/or feasible.

mbrodie

laserit said:

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

From the quote on the forums in Steam. The Alienware rep said it was a modified 860m.  Might have been a 850m..    Definitely modified.  Proprietary?

It's an 860m. The closest comparison in performance would be a $1200-$1400 laptop. It will work pretty decent, (nothing great) using mid range settings at 1080p

Yeah it's not horrible. Especially if the $400 is a 860m.  I don't know that a 860m at $800 in a desktop environment though is actually well spent. Or even close to future proof for desktop environment.  Can it be upgraded with off the shelf parts? Guess mountain out of a mole hill. Not my money. Happy with what I got and it's future proof.  I do feel for the people who think they might be getting more than what they are actually getting. 

The $450 and $550 versions have an I3 cpu, they're going to royally suck for AAA games. The $850 is an I7 that will be comparable to the previously mentioned laptops.

Looking at some of the other Steam Boxes, I think Alienware will be the worst choice. They never have been known for value for $ spent.

With all the other machines, it looks like you would save significantly just building your own rig, but that's not who they're being marketed towards.

Unlike consoles, everything looks to be very open ended and it looks like there will be some very cool business opportunities for the little guy.

I like the ideas behind it. 

my M17 was actually really good value for money when i bought it, all other comparable gaming laptops for around the same price range always fell short in a couple of areas, the alienware was about $200 more than most of the others but had the complete package, i wasnt settling for less.

like one laptop might have had less ram and a slower cpu

another one might have had a worse gpu and hdd

the alienware had everything that the others were falling short in and was like $200 more, so it ended up being very good value for money at that point in time.

But it's touch and go with alienware, one week it could be an awesome bargain and the next week they changed some parts and it's majorly overpriced.

As for the steambox, you're not gonna get a cutting edge gaming PC, they're trying to bring in affordable solutions in small form factor PCs, to compete with the console market, not all games are currently supported by steam OS and some games may never be supported by it, so you're not gauranteed access to ALL of the steam library from my understanding, unless you go with the windows 10 option. not the preloaded steamOS version

Rusque

But the people buying these don't care (or possibly know about) "max settings" - it's the consolified version of a PC, if the game looks close to a console version and can run at 30 fps then it does its job. Not only that, it runs games at 1080p - most games on ps4/xbox one are either 720p / 900p.

Recent game for example: Dragon Age Inquisition runs at 900p @ 30fps on Xbox One and 1080p @ 30fps on PS4 - and in neither case do they look like what they do on PC running everything maxed.

It's also not running Windows, so all the hardware resources are dedicated to gaming.

Aethaeryn

That's why I am just going for the Steam Link to simplify what I am already doing.  Plus, once Dell bought Alienware I was kind of turned off regardless.

Buccaneer

Unfortunately I'm not interested in a steam machine.  It's Linux based, so that will limit the amount of games it will support.   The Steam Link would be better value if I wanted to play games on my TV due to being able to access my whole Steam library.

Quizzical

It's paying for the form factor.  Think of it as being like a gaming laptop except without the laptop.  If the goal is to build the best gaming system they could inside of 200 in^3 and $700, they did a respectable job of it.  Take away the 200 in^3 restriction and of course it looks ridiculous.  Trying to squeeze into that form factor is always going to look ridiculous on a price/performance basis if you compare it to a proper desktop.

If you want to compare it to consoles, though, you have to start by conceding that it costs a whole lot more than $400.  They don't say what the GPU is, but it probably offers console-like performance.

Hulluck

mbrodie said:

laserit said:

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

Hulluck said:

laserit said:

If you could throw the GPU of your choice in the thing, it would be really cool. I think expectations will be too high, it won't perform as well as consumers will expect it too and you won't be able improve performance in a meaningful way unless you can upgrade the GPU

From the quote on the forums in Steam. The Alienware rep said it was a modified 860m.  Might have been a 850m..    Definitely modified.  Proprietary?

It's an 860m. The closest comparison in performance would be a $1200-$1400 laptop. It will work pretty decent, (nothing great) using mid range settings at 1080p

Yeah it's not horrible. Especially if the $400 is a 860m.  I don't know that a 860m at $800 in a desktop environment though is actually well spent. Or even close to future proof for desktop environment.  Can it be upgraded with off the shelf parts? Guess mountain out of a mole hill. Not my money. Happy with what I got and it's future proof.  I do feel for the people who think they might be getting more than what they are actually getting. 

The $450 and $550 versions have an I3 cpu, they're going to royally suck for AAA games. The $850 is an I7 that will be comparable to the previously mentioned laptops.

Looking at some of the other Steam Boxes, I think Alienware will be the worst choice. They never have been known for value for $ spent.

With all the other machines, it looks like you would save significantly just building your own rig, but that's not who they're being marketed towards.

Unlike consoles, everything looks to be very open ended and it looks like there will be some very cool business opportunities for the little guy.

I like the ideas behind it. 

my M17 was actually really good value for money when i bought it, all other comparable gaming laptops for around the same price range always fell short in a couple of areas, the alienware was about $200 more than most of the others but had the complete package, i wasnt settling for less.

like one laptop might have had less ram and a slower cpu

another one might have had a worse gpu and hdd

the alienware had everything that the others were falling short in and was like $200 more, so it ended up being very good value for money at that point in time.

But it's touch and go with alienware, one week it could be an awesome bargain and the next week they changed some parts and it's majorly overpriced.

As for the steambox, you're not gonna get a cutting edge gaming PC, they're trying to bring in affordable solutions in small form factor PCs, to compete with the console market, not all games are currently supported by steam OS and some games may never be supported by it, so you're not gauranteed access to ALL of the steam library from my understanding, unless you go with the windows 10 option. not the preloaded steamOS version

I'm not trashing Alienware or pre-builts.   I honestly believe we will see a lot of annoyed people at some point not to far off after they launch. Especially the $800 versions. I saw them and thought wtf. Knee jerk reaction this morning. I haven't been paying attention at all. Expected better price per performance ratio. Not half a laptop sold as a desktop that sold at desktop pricing.  Harshly worded but it's what it is.

Hulluck

Quizzical said:

It's paying for the form factor.  Think of it as being like a gaming laptop except without the laptop.  If the goal is to build the best gaming system they could inside of 200 in^3 and $700, they did a respectable job of it.  Take away the 200 in^3 restriction and of course it looks ridiculous.  Trying to squeeze into that form factor is always going to look ridiculous on a price/performance basis if you compare it to a proper desktop.

If you want to compare it to consoles, though, you have to start by conceding that it costs a whole lot more than $400.  They don't say what the GPU is, but it probably offers console-like performance.

modified 860m is the gpu. whatever modified means.

As long as people realize what it is. Who am I to complain? If the price came down some. I wouldn't have been shocked.

 How many people have asked for help here and went off and came back with sub-par stuff.  Or came here asking if they made an ok purchase after they bought something questionable. I don't post a lot. But seen it happen a lot and you explain to them that they should have asked first.

Hulluck

Since I have done nothing but Gripe about the Alienware version of steam machine. I just looked at the the Syber version.  It actually looks pretty dam good spec wise and price wise. Doesn't look like it uses mobile parts.

• - Intel® Core™ i5-4460 Processor
• - 1TB SATA III HDD
• - 8GB DDR3 Memory
• - NVIDIA GTX 960 2GB GDDR5

 on the $700- $800 version.   That for $729.

Edit. look at the options!.  swear I didn't know the Syber version existed. Never even heard of them. I was being so negative. I went back to see if i was missing something. I'd consider buying one of those with a few option changes if I needed or wanted a small form pc. Anyways. I'm done sorry for the negativity. Still think the Alienware version is junk. Not because of brand either. Because it's mobile parts at desktop pricing. Competing with desktop market.

Quizzical

Hulluck said:

Since I have done nothing but Gripe about the Alienware version of steam machine. I just looked at the the Syber version.  It actually looks pretty dam good spec wise and price wise. Doesn't look like it uses mobile parts.

• - Intel® Core™ i5-4460 Processor
• - 1TB SATA III HDD
• - 8GB DDR3 Memory
• - NVIDIA GTX 960 2GB GDDR5

 on the $700- $800 version.   That for $729.

If what you're after is price and performance and don't care about the form factor, then yeah, that's much better than the Alienware.  But it's also much bigger.  Here's a size comparison that I found:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2ybrmx/steam_machine_dimensions/

As I said, if you get the Alienware steam machine, you're paying for the form factor.  If you don't value the small form factor, that's fine.  I don't, either.  So neither of us will buy it.  But fitting the small form factor of the Alienware requires giving up a lot, and that's not something that Syber can readily get around, either.

Hulluck

Quizzical said:

Hulluck said:

Since I have done nothing but Gripe about the Alienware version of steam machine. I just looked at the the Syber version.  It actually looks pretty dam good spec wise and price wise. Doesn't look like it uses mobile parts.

• - Intel® Core™ i5-4460 Processor
• - 1TB SATA III HDD
• - 8GB DDR3 Memory
• - NVIDIA GTX 960 2GB GDDR5

 on the $700- $800 version.   That for $729.

If what you're after is price and performance and don't care about the form factor, then yeah, that's much better than the Alienware.  But it's also much bigger.  Here's a size comparison that I found:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2ybrmx/steam_machine_dimensions/

As I said, if you get the Alienware steam machine, you're paying for the form factor.  If you don't value the small form factor, that's fine.  I don't, either.  So neither of us will buy it.  But fitting the small form factor of the Alienware requires giving up a lot, and that's not something that Syber can readily get around, either.

It is and you and others are correct about the size being a selling point. I rewrite posts so much before posting sometimes. I know I intended to agree to that point earlier if I didn't when someone else mentioned it. I guess I'm preemptively bitching because some people will buy the Alienware version and expect more out of it.  Mountain out of a mole hill on my part. Something that should be of no concern for me.

Hrimnir

I don't think OP realizes how small it is.  I own a lower end one (The i3) version that was about $500 that I bought as an HTPC that could do decent gaming.  To build my own rig with a similar level of performance would of cost me that much, without the OS, and would of been a larger rig.  Not hugely so, but still a couple inches in all directions.

860m is a lot more powerful than people realize.  I have the same GPU on my laptop and so far have had no problems at 1080p.  Granted im not playing TW3 on it and such, but people need to have realistic expectations.  You're not gonna play TW3 on a $800 desktop with a decent framerate either.  That game pretty much requires a $300 graphics cards to play at medium high settings.

Hrimnir

That Syber def has nice specs, but it is significantly larger than the alienware is.  The XBOX controller is a good indicator, the alienware is barely larger than the xbox controller if you were to draw a rectangle around the xbox controller.

To give you a point of reference that syber is 14x14x4 inches.  so over a foot square, and 4 inches tall.

For comparison, the alienware is 8x8x3"  It is quite a bit smaller.

Now, its up to the consumer to decide if they want the size or the gaming prowess.

Hulluck

Hrimnir said:

I don't think OP realizes how small it is.  I own a lower end one (The i3) version that was about $500 that I bought as an HTPC that could do decent gaming.  To build my own rig with a similar level of performance would of cost me that much, without the OS, and would of been a larger rig.  Not hugely so, but still a couple inches in all directions.

860m is a lot more powerful than people realize.  I have the same GPU on my laptop and so far have had no problems at 1080p.  Granted im not playing TW3 on it and such, but people need to have realistic expectations.  You're not gonna play TW3 on a $800 desktop with a decent framerate either.  That game pretty much requires a $300 graphics cards to play at medium high settings.

  My P.o.v. first and foremost is if I spend money to game on. I want the best price per performance I can get or comfortably close. Obviously not everyone see's things this way and I admit that it is somewhat hard to wrap my head around at times.  Hence the knee jerk reaction after I first saw the Alienware (with modified "?" laptop parts). Only fair to compare something competing with home pc's with home pc's.  It lacks portability of a laptop. Unlike a laptop you are limited to where you can use it. I also don't think a lot of people will get what they are buying. Expecting it to eat games up. The Steam Link is neat if there are no latency issues. (Another poster pointed it out earlier) Why not big box in another room and then it? Never used anything like that. Even when I had my Nvidia Shield Tablet. I should have tried the Streaming feature.

For the record and in general has nothing to do with Alienware or prebuilts.  A Steam Machine Syber is a prebuilt. Just a stupid reaction to what I saw as a crazy price for what it is. But I get it and accept it that people want it for it's size. Forgive me If I still say "wtf?" but I'm no longer really phased by it.  It's passed.  

Edit to add:

I also admitted earlier that maybe the lower end one. Might be alright. Especially if it has the 860m.  But CPU power is just as important as another poster pointed out.

What got me wound up like slinky was the $800 version.

$499 Steam machine Syber

Gaming Chasis: SYBER VAPOR STEAM PC Gaming Console Chassis (Black Color)

CPU: Intel® Core™ i3-4160 3.60 GHz 3MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1150

CPU / Processor Cooling Fan: Intel Certified CPU Fan & Heatsink

Motherboard: ASRock H81m-ITX Wi-Fi 802.11 w/ USB 3+ SATA 6GB/s GbLAN, 1 Gen3 PCIe x16

RAM / System Memory: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 1GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 (Single Card)

Part options. Upgradable. But it's again, Bigger.  Actually curious how this one and the and the Alienware version stack up. Wouldn't surprise me if the Alienware pulls ahead slightly with the modified 860m.

SavageHorizon

Rusque said:

But the people buying these don't care (or possibly know about) "max settings" - it's the consolified version of a PC, if the game looks close to a console version and can run at 30 fps then it does its job. Not only that, it runs games at 1080p - most games on ps4/xbox one are either 720p / 900p.

Recent game for example: Dragon Age Inquisition runs at 900p @ 30fps on Xbox One and 1080p @ 30fps on PS4 - and in neither case do they look like what they do on PC running everything maxed.

It's also not running Windows, so all the hardware resources are dedicated to gaming.

Seems many of you are late to the steam machines party, that AlienWare steam machine is the second generation. I have the first generation which has the windows 8.1 operating system and came with the xbox 360 controller instead of the steam controller plus the hard drive  is slower than the new generation.

Mine is called the Alienware Alpha which is the i7 version and i acquired it from dell outlet for 500 pounds refurnished.

 

Everything else was the same as the newer second AlienWare generation system. 

I also have a PS4 and can tell you that the steam machine runs way higher in fps.


This is the base model version in this vid not the i7 version which is what i have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az3y3q79oj8

Now if you buy the base model 1st gen alpha you also get a PC which is worth the extra cost compared to the PS4. I've seen them for as little as 200 pounds in on dell outlet.

First generation http://www.dell.com/uk/dfh/p/alienware-alpha/pd?~ck=anav

Second  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2992486/software-games/hands-on-with-alienwares-steam-machine-valves-vanguard-for-pc-gaming-in-the-living-room.html

You can get the 1st generation really cheap because it runs windows and not Valve’s custom Linux-based OS.

Thane

looks like an xbox to me ^^

laserit

A person who has basic knowledge with PC's will know what they are getting.

A guy with an XB1 or PS4 who listens to the hype about PC gaming and spends double or more on a steam box, is going to be pissed with the performance.