Three years into their respective lifecycles, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have relaunched in smaller, slimmer incarnations - but neither of them holds a candle to the Alienware Alpha's form-factor. It remains an absolutely tiny, ultra-cute piece of PC technology - and this new R2 incarnation is now a whole lot more powerful, having swapped out its Nvidia GTX 860M for a new range of GPU options, the flagship model boasting a GeForce GTX 960.
And that's the version of the hardware we're reviewing here today. The Alpha shifts from Intel's Haswell to Skylake CPU architecture so Alienware has crafted a new mainboard for the R2 Alpha, and this new model also moves from DDR3 to higher bandwidth DDR4 - with a single 8GB module of Hynix laptop-format SODIMM RAM included as standard. The first order of business for any prospective Alpha owner should be to order a dual-channel config if possible, or else buy a matching module to complement the one fitted in the unit as standard. CPU resources are limited, and hobbling memory bandwidth with a single SODIMM won't help matters there.
The Alpha supplied by Alienware comes equipped with a Skylake Core i5 6400T running at a mere 2.2GHz, but it's really the GTX 960 that is the star of the show, offering up a good 50 per cent of additional performance over the old GTX 860M. Although it's a seemingly bespoke part - it's soldered on directly to the motherboard - it works just like a standard GTX 960, meaning that no custom drivers are required, and you can access all of Nvidia's downloads, driver updates and GeForce Experience features. And yes, you can overclock it too.
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