New X51 R3 with a 970?!? (X51 R3 VR Ready)

[sk.empyre]

Alienware recently announced they would support VR on majority of their desktops as well as the Dell desktops. I went a head and contacted a sales representative to find out more.




The *new Alienware X51 R3 VR Oculus Ready is officially on their website.

http://www.alienware.com/landings/oculus/



Lets go over some pros and cons with the *new X51

PROS

• EVGA GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 FTW Edition Graphics Card (INSIDE THE SYSTEM, NOT INSIDE THE AMPLIFIER)
• Up to 512GB PCIe SSD (Boot) + 1TB (64MB Cache) 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s

CONS

• ONLY UP TO AN Intel® Core™ i5-6400 (6MB Cache, up to 3.3GHz with Turbo Boost Technology) Includes Hyper-Threading.
• NO DISC DRIVE INCLUDED (Same case/model as the Regular Watercooled X51)

Now as for some special features such as the new Water-cooling I could not find an option to add this to the system, so I am going to assume it's only air cooled.

I'm a little on the fence with this version. While it may come with up to 16GB DDR4 2133MHz RAM, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD and a GTX 970, I'm not sure it's an entire deal breaker with me because of how they include the i5-6400. I feel that if you are selling a VR ready system you would at least have the highest processor be a i5-6500 or i5-6600.

Enough chit chat about what I think of the system and lets talk about the price for both default versions. (without tweaking the available options)

Version 1 Specs and Price

• Intel® Core™ i5-6400 (6MB Cache, up to 3.3GHz with Turbo Boost Technology) Includes Hyper-Threading
• Windows 10 Home 64bit
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX™ 970 with 4GB GDDR5: VR-Ready (EVGA GTX 970 FTW Edition, just so we are clear)
• 8GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz
• 1TB (64MB Cache) 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s
• Intel® 3165 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless LAN and Bluetooth
• 1 Year Limited Hardware Warranty with Onsite Service after Remote Diagnosis

PRICE: $1,199.99.

Version 2 Specs and Price

• Intel® Core™ i5-6400 (6MB Cache, up to 3.3GHz with Turbo Boost Technology) Includes Hyper-Threading
• Windows 10 Home 64bit
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX™ 970 with 4GB GDDR5: VR-Ready (EVGA GTX 970 FTW Edition, just so we are clear)
• 16GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz
• 256GB PCIe Solid State Drive
• Intel® 3165 1x1 802.11ac Wi-Fi Wireless LAN and Bluetooth
• 1 Year Limited Hardware Warranty with Onsite Service after Remote Diagnosis

PRICE: $1,499.99.


Well that's it for this article/topic.