Hey, cool Xbo- oh

Alienware want a fair bit of cash for the privilege of owning their new compact X51 gaming rig. More than a bit, actually, and PC gamers far and wide have decided: Hey man. That just ain’t right. Now Alienware have gone on to defend their new machine’s hefty asking price by pointing out that their usual demographic of elite PC gamers is “not really the target audience” for the X51.

“Ultimately, yes, if you go and source all of the components yourself and have the knowledge required to build a system yourself and understand how to manage the heat inside that system, and understand airflow, and the importance of how you route your cabling so you don’t disrupt the airflow – if you know all that stuff then yes, you can do [build the X51 for less than £700],” senior product manager Eoin Leyden informed Eurogamer. “But to be honest with you, if you know all that stuff you’re not really the target audience for this product."

In Leyden’s opinion, the X51 is sort of the equivalent to a modern Mac in terms of accessibility – or maybe even... a console, it being somewhat of a “plug ‘n play” riff on the comparatively complex world the gaming PC.

“If you know what you’re doing, if you have the time, if you think it’s a good investment of your time to go machining parts to fill the thing instead of paying £100 extra to have somebody else do it for you, then yeah [build your own],” he continued. “But for everyone else who just wants a great gaming experience out of the box and maybe doesn’t want to get into the guts of the machine and start tweaking it, this is giving them that experience. It is a performance product. We’re not trying to build a cheap small form-factor PC, because there are plenty of them out there, and we’re not cheap compared to other small products. But within that form factor, we believe that’s the best experience you can get from a gaming perspective.”