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The compact PC is about the size of an Xbox 360.

Alienware is known for building reliable and powerful PCs. Although it might be better (read: cheaper) to build your own by hand, Alienware gives you great tech for the price. Alienware's new X51 model gives you a new kind of gaming PC, one that looks an awful lot like a gaming console.

Prices start at $699 and go up to $1,149 for its top-tier setup. The Alienware website says the top-level setup is "capable of playing Battlefield 3 at 50+ frames per second with 1080p Full HD resolution." Despite its powerful components, the tower itself looks like an Xbox 360, making it perfect for someone who wants to hook it up to a television.

The two lowest priced models, available for $699 and $899, both come with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 545 GPU installed. The cheaper option has half the RAM, at 4GB vs. 8GB. The big difference between the two is the CPU: for $699 you get an i3-2120 3.3 GHz and for $899 you get an i5-2320 3.0 GHz.

The two high-end models ($949 and $1,149) also share the same GPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555. The RAM difference is 6GB vs. 8GB. The cheaper model uses the same CPU as the $899 option, while the more expensive one packs in an i7-2600 3.4GHz processor.

As for upgrading the PC in the future, Alienware assures that everything is easy to get to. Getting to the graphics card for example is as easy as one screw and a release latch to get the casing off and the graphics card sits inside an easily accessed tray.