Alienware Alpha vs Brix Pro - mini box for kinect2 tracking

Has anyone tried out one of these little alienware alphas?

dell.com/ca/p/alienware-alpha/pd.aspx

they have a decent 860M GPU and at the upper end an i7 4567 3.0Ghz

seems really nice. I’m looking for a machine to do specifically some kinect tracking only remotely and send the results over ethernet back to the main computer thanks to the USB3 cable length limitations.

The only thing is that the kinect2 hardware requirements are pretty strict about 3.1Ghz or better processor. And I know the USB3 connection can be finicky about the kinect as well.

The other option is the Brix Pro 4770R - which sadly doesn’t have a dedicated GPU (Iris Pro 5200) but I see some reports of Touch Designer working on it, and I have read similar reports of the kinect2 running on it as well. gigabyte.com/products/produc … id=4888#ov

All in all they shape up to be about the same cost, but I am wondering if the dGPU in the alienware could be that much of a boost and then still unsure it Kinect2 could run on it.

Anyone out there with some experience with either of these machines? I kind of need to make a choice soon - Ill be happy to report back but I’m curious about others….

I’ve been using this brix model which has a dedicated desktop GPU in it for TD powered art installations:

newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6856164020
It’s insanely fast, not cheap though. You need ram and ssd/hdd before it’s good to go.

It’s power supply is longer than the brix is in one dimension, and pretty beefy overall (understandable considering power draw) but worth noting.

That being said that mini computer runs TD faster than my full sized lenovo y500 laptop.

I haven’t tested it with a kinect though so hard to say how it would perform there!