How to delete the alienware os off of the alpha

How to delete the alienware os off of the alpha Pc#

The 'thin' in the name is accurate, by the way- it is the slimmest 2.5' hard drive I've ever seen, more like an SSD drive in physical size. In this case, my Alpha arrived with a 500GB Seagate Laptop Thin HDD. When ordering a computer online, I always pick the cheapest storage solution available so I can replace it with the drive of my choosing (you can usually find better after-market storage solutions cheaper than what OEMs charge). This post is for people like me who already had an Alpha and wanted to make it work for VR.

How to delete the alienware os off of the alpha Pc#

If you are thinking about getting into virtual reality and you haven't bought a PC yet, you're going to be better off (both financially and otherwise) by purchasing a VR-certified off-the-shelf unit or building your own desktop with high-end parts.

The Graphics Amplifier introduces some other problems that I'll discuss later, which make the computer less-than-ideal for general use.

While Alienware offers the ability to use higher-end graphics via the very cool Alienware Graphics Amplifier (AGA), this kind of cancels out the primary appeal of the Alpha: its small and sleek design.

Trust me, you want multiple independent video outputs. While there are solutions (like this special bi-directional HDMI switch) that let you share a single video output, depending on what you need to do and the specific games/apps you work with, sometimes that's just not going to be enough.

Whichever headset you end up going with (Vive or Rift) is going to require an HDMI port, and you will need at least one other video output to drive a regular monitor. ( Note: The same Intel CPU is recommended for the HTC Vive, but they also recommend the AMD Radeon RX 480, which is ~20% faster than the i5-4590.) The recommended Intel i5-4590 processor is around 25% more powerful than the low-wattage i5-6400T in my Alpha, based on Passmark CPU scores. Only the i7 models have CPUs that meet minimum VR recommendations.( Note: The recommended specs for the competing HTC Vive are a little strange here: They recommend the NVIDIA GeForce 1060- which is ~8% faster than the GTX 970 or the AMD Radeon RX 480- which is ~13% slower!) The recommended GeForce GTX 970 is around 32% more powerful than my Alpha's GeForce GTX 960 graphics, for example. The on-board graphics in all Alpha models released to-date fall short of current VR minimum recommendations.While I love the Alienware Alpha for what it is- a small, powerful-for-its-size living room gaming PC, it is definitely not the first thing I'd recommend to someone who mainly wanted to play virtual reality games and didn't care about the form factor.