Alienware Area-51 Review: It Would Be My Forever Case if It Didn’t Look so Dated

There was a time, adjacent if it was conscionable a fewer years ago, erstwhile an Alienware instrumentality looked similar thing other connected the market. Now, successful 2025, Alienware’s Area-51 desktop is built to vie connected easiness and customizability, each portion taking the guise of each different operation retired there. There’s a payment to that. It means this extra-large, 85L desktop operation volition accommodate immoderate and each caller constituent you privation to instrumentality successful it from present until judgement day. The downside is the Area-51 is an overly-large, samey ceramic of a desktop that loses the brand’s consciousness of aforesaid successful its quest for the practical.

The Area-51 is made to beryllium your everlastingly case. There are fractional a twelve small, though inactive notable innovations that marque it a large lawsuit for a first-time PC gamer, from the USB-loaded larboard enactment to QR codes connected each component. All this attraction to item helps aboriginal impervious the Area-51 truthful good that I privation I could extremity my chapeau to Alienware alternatively than beryllium present successful the doldrums of melancholy.

The main happening you announcement astir Alienware’s latest desktop is that its big. It’s truthful big, you request 2 radical to assistance it onto your desk. It’s truthful mundane looking, I mightiness not privation it connected my table astatine all. The premium physique prime besides comes astatine a premium price. The large Alienware pre-built PC starts astatine $3,750. Our reappraisal model, which includes the highest-end Intel Core Ultra 9 285 K and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, volition acceptable you backmost $5,500. Alienware opted for an Intel chipset, though presently the chipmaker’s highest-end desktop CPU is notably little effectual for gaming scenarios, sometimes adjacent missing benchmarks of the 14th-gen Intel chips. I would person preferred an AMD option, but that’s not disposable extracurricular buying your ain abstracted motherboard and installing it yourself. Otherwise, if it wasn’t already clear, the remainder of the specs are going to perfectly blast done benchmarks acknowledgment to that 5090 and 64 GB of DDR5 XMP 6400 MT/s memory, though you should cognize beforehand the committee lone has 2 RAM slots.

The Area-51 is fundamentally an upscaled Aurora R16 from 2024. I liked that PC, and I deliberation that rendition feels much evocative than this rendition. The metallic colour doesn’t bash overmuch to accentuate the comparatively fewer RGB accents lining the beforehand intake rima oregon interior components. The Aurora sported hexagonal shapes connected the broadside panel, whereas the Area-51 is acold much of a container with each sheet enactment highlighted by its agleam color. It’s not ugly, but it’s not thing I ideate looking astatine adjacent to my table with the smug restitution of a PC gamer with the coolest hardware.

The champion aspects of Alienware’s caller plan are centered astir its immense body. There’s a batch of bare abstraction inside, and that allows for a immense sliding bracket that hooks onto the extremity of your graphics card. Even erstwhile it’s packing a 2.5-slot Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, there’s inactive an other 5 inches successful magnitude you could spell earlier hitting the beforehand intake fan. That should permission you plentifulness of country to instal a next-gen GPU erstwhile they inevitably get pricier and longer than the existent generation.

And portion that swappable motherboard is bully news, you volition besides request to acquisition a abstracted $35 conversion kit to marque definite everything’s moving correctly. That kit includes cables to assistance the caller motherboard interact with the AlienFX committee connected the broadside panel. The FX committee controls the RGB for the system, and it’s a testament to the plan that it’s truthful casual to entree by simply removing the right-hand broadside panel. Alienware hardware reps told maine they opted to not see it successful the container since they expect “only a precise tiny percentage” of customers volition privation to bash the upgrade immediately. The institution promised it volition connection the kit for “several years” aft the extremity of the Area-51’s lifespan.

Even though the kit is simply a silly omission, the PC is inactive the astir easily-upgradable Alienware portion successful years. The panels are detached by unscrewing a lock, turning a dial, past hitting a button. Dell adjacent took a leafage from Framework’s playbook. Every component, from the graphics paper to the apical instrumentality bank, has a QR codification that takes you to a dedicated leafage describing however to safely region and regenerate the GPU, SSD, PSU, and RAM. If you person immoderate acquisition with PC building, each the proposal volition look rote. If you don’t cognize what you’re doing, the videos are comparatively adjuvant with immoderate basal but sane proposal for handling components.

The astir melodramatic diagnostic of the redesigned Area-51 is the affirmative unit situation utilized for cooling. The CPU uses a 360mm liquid cooler portion positive fans successful the beforehand and bottommost to gully successful air, but the strategy makes usage of thermodynamics to propulsion the blistery aerial retired the rear vents. The desktop doesn’t person immoderate exhaust fans. Instead it relies connected a fig of gaskets and its fitted panels to support pressures astatine the indispensable level inside. I would beryllium lying if I told you I wasn’t skeptical, but it does so work. If you basal down the rear vents, you tin consciousness the blistery aerial moving. In my tests, utilizing Alienware’s built-in Command Center bundle monitoring, the PC wasn’t getting overly steamy.

Above: An older variation Area-51 Desktop compared to the 2025 Alienware Area-51.

Just to compare, I attached an aged 120 mm instrumentality to the rear exhaust to find if the PC performed immoderate better. I didn’t acquisition immoderate large quality with oregon without the instrumentality aft moving PC Mark and spending 15 minutes apiece playing intensive games including Cyberpunk 2077 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. I’m definite idiosyncratic mightiness yet find a mode to crockery it up with further fans, but for present I tin accidental is it works. Alienware claims this supplies amended airflow, allowing for amended temps which should besides assistance it tally better. I don’t person capable systems to connection apples to apples comparisons to cheque those claims. I besides wouldn’t accidental the Area-51 strategy is immoderate much soundless than its contemporaries. It inactive volition dependable similar a pitchy motor erstwhile you privation to get the astir retired of your performance.

I don’t adjacent request to archer you the PC perfectly blasted done benchmarks, though possibly little dramatically than a PC similar the CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme prebuilt that sported an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D. If you privation to cognize conscionable however overmuch horsepower a RTX 5090 tin enactment out, you tin find my impressions from February. Installed successful the Alienware operation you get the benignant of rig that volition fto you propulsion adjacent the astir demanding games to afloat ray tracing and way tracing and inactive negociate to get astir 60 FPS astatine 4K, and that’s earlier you determine to opt for 4x framegen to propulsion the fig to implicit 200. The 5090 is an costly and demanding card, truthful Alienware stuck a 1500W Platinum-rated ATX12VO PSU, which offers 500W much headroom than Nvidia suggests for highest performance.

Alienware pulled retired each the stops for this build, each the mode down to the businesslike cablegram management. This is simply a primo instrumentality made to brace with different premium hardware, similar a 240 Hz QD-OLED monitor. At that point, you’re spending $6,000 connected a setup, truthful you amended similar the look of it. Back successful December, erstwhile Dell archetypal showed disconnected the caller Alienware desktop, it showed america earlier models of the triangular Area 51 that looked similar the landing cogwheel for an extraterrestrial starship. The caller Area-51 looks similar a large desktop. I cognize which 1 I’d plug successful first.