Alienware Alpha Intel-Powered SFF Gaming PC: Consoles Beware

Name: Alienware Alpha Intel-Powered SFF Gaming PC: Consoles Beware
Brand: Alienware

by Marco Chiappetta, Joshua Gulick — Monday, January 26, 2015, 01:05 PM EDT

Accessing the inside of the Alpha's chassis is easy. Pop out the four screws at the bottom of the PC and you can pull the guts out, which gives you plenty of room to work. You can even remove the bottom portion of the chassis so that you have easy access to any component.

Two cooling fans obstruct your view of the motherboard, but each has little plastic clips that makes them easy to remove. The fans have hoods that direct warm air out the back of the system, just above the ports. Once the fans are off, you have access to the heatsinks for the processor and GPU, as well as the memory slots. Both memory slots are full, so upgrading means you'll need to replace the existing DIMMs.

Turn the system over and you can reach the hard drive, which is tucked up against the back of the motherboard. You can replace this too, if you’d like, but there’s no obvious way to add storage to that cramped space. Of course, that’s what you should expect from a pre-built, compact system like the Alpha.

This side houses a hidden USB port. This is the port that sits in a little pocket at the bottom of the Alpha. It’s there so you can put a wireless dongle on the system and have it tucked safely out of the way.

Tags: Dell, SFF, Gaming, PC, Alpha, Alienware

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com