Hands on: Alienware X51 review

Gaming PC vendor Alienware recently took the wraps off its X51 - a smaller form factor desktop to go alongside its not-so-dainty Aurora line of gaming desktop behemoths.

We got up close with the Core i7 variant of the new mini gaming PC at a demo event yesterday.

The first thing that strikes you is the size - it isn't that much taller than an Xbox 360 - 32cm high at its shortest point and less than 10cm in thickness.

The box has been designed to either sit horizontally or stand vertically, and Alienware is expecting a reasonable number to find homes underneath HDTVs in living rooms.

So what we're looking at here is a couple of the £999 units each boasting a 3.4Ghz Intel Core i7-2600, Nvidia Geforce GTX 555 graphics and 8GB of memory.

Alienware is keen to stress that there's a market for a performance gaming system without the bulk - it believes people are looking for smaller machines, but that gamers still want a desktop PC rather than a laptop. The company is keen to stress it wanted to sit the X51 above traditional small form factor (SFF) systems that don't have a great deal of power or graphics capabilities.

As you can see, there's a slot-loading optical drive on the front (24x dual-layer DVD), as well as a couple of USB 2.0 ports. There are a couple of USB 3.0 ports on the back as well as three more USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Ethernet, full complement of audio outputs including SPDIF and two DVIs. 802.11n Wi-Fi is also integrated.

Alienware was keen to demonstrate that the lower end £699 is also very capable - it packs a 3.3GHz Intel Core i3-2120, Nvidia Geforce GT545 graphics, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1TB HDD. All models sport Windows 7 Home Premium.

There's also a 3GHz Core i5-2320 mid-range variant available.

We love the look of the thing (and yes, you can customise the colours of those LEDs - there are 8,000 different combinations) but we'll be honest - the X51 is a lot of money for what it is, especially since Alienware believes it occupies a mainstream rather than enthusiast segment of the market.

The unit's weigh clocks in at 5.5Kg - Alienware says it occupies only around 15 per cent of the space of one of its traditional desktops. The components inside are user upgradeable.

You also get a Alienware backlit keyboard and mouse in the box. We'll run our benchmarking rule over it when we hold of one in our TechRadar test lab, though Alienware has posted its on basic benchies for the Core i3 and i7 models, which you can see below - click here for a bigger version.