As far as boutique gaming systems are concerned there’s no one more famous than Alienware and their pursuit of the high end. Of course they’re only a choice if you don’t have the time and patience to build your own gaming system, but you’re an enthusiast and want things built your way right?

HotHardware has a review of the Alienware Aurora ALX and its Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire graphics crunching setup. It’s mighty fast:

As we saw in our preview article, the Aurora ALX is powered by Intel’s Core i7 975 processor running at 3.33GHz and features a custom X58 microATX motherboard. The 975 is Intel’s fastest and most powerful desktop CPU in its entire line up, though it is also the most expensive. For cooling duties, Alienware installed a 120mm singe radiator liquid cooling solution on top of the processor. And installed on the board is 6GB of Corsair Dominator memory running at DDR3-1600MHz at 8-8-8-24 timings. There is a ton of fast storage available as we find two 1TB 7200 RPM hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration at the bottom of the case. Last but not least, the highlight of the system are the dual ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards running in CrossFire.

It’s on the pricey side so you’re going to have to pay for that performance, on the other hand you won’t have to tweak it in order to get the speed.

What you see before you is Asetek’s custom made liquid cooling kit doing its job on Dell’s new Alienware Aurora PC. That should go a long way to cooling off their gaming rigs without all of that extra fan noise needed to keep those Intel Core i7 processors running cool.

Then again their northbridge seems to be sporting a 40mm fan which just about kills off any benefits.

The concept behind a gaming laptop is to provide a rather fast platform for getting your gaming fix on the go, Alienware’s M17 laptop has the processing power to handle its fair share of games but you’ll likely want to stay near a power source to keep the party going. ITreviewed has a look at this portable beast:

Available in the U.S. and Europe, Alienware’s Vista-powered M17 is powered by the world’s first mobile quad-core processor, Intel’s Core 2 Extreme QX9300, and is Alienware’s first laptop with ATI’s CrossFireX multi-GPU technology, thanks to the inclusion of dual Mobility Radeon HD 3870 cards. Using ATI graphics cards compared to ludicrously expensive nVidia parts is the main reason the M17 is so affordable, yet they still have full DirectX 10.1 support for the latest next-generation games and produce frame rates up to 80% higher than single GPU solutions.

The M17 has got its specifications sorted, but it’s the machine’s finishing touches that help raise it above the others. For starters, you can configure your M17 with either Alienware’s Skullcap or Ripley case designs. The otherworldly gills of the Skullcap design are synonymous with the aggressive, boundary-pushing Alienware attitude, while the sleek Ripley design reveals the evolution of Alienware architecture with a more subtle, sophisticated profile. The matte black, soft-touch Stealth Black finish of the M17 also has you covered when admirers come in for a closer look. Not only is Stealth Black all but impervious to fingerprints, it also resists most minor scratches, helping to keep the laptop as clean as they day you unboxed it.

It’s a pricey machine overall but it’ll keep you in the game even on the road…in your hotel room.