CES 2025 | New Alienware Area-51 gaming desktop packs powerful RTX 5000 GPU in all-new chassis design now with standardised parts - sort of

Alienware is reintroducing its Area-51 gaming desktop PC at CES 2025 today, and it has taken quite an interesting approach to the gaming desktop, opting for a DIY-friendly ATX design instead of the usual mess of proprietary parts.
Although Dell has designed a custom motherboard for the new PC build, it is supposedly a standard ATX motherboard, suggesting that future upgrades should be as simple as removing the old motherboard and installing a new one. Unfortunately, the reality isn't as simple as it seems, as replacing the motherboard with a third-party ATX unit requires buying a separate AlienFX motherboard harness from Alienware. At the time of writing, it's unclear how much this harness will cost or exactly what it does, but it likely has something to do with the non-standard fan headers in the top right corner of the motherboard, the front panel I/O, or what appears to be a non-standard ATX hole pattern (the holes along the bottom left edge of the motherboard appear to not align with a standard ATX hole pattern).
The newly redesigned case features a clear tempered glass side panel and a mix of dual 180 mm front intake and dual or triple 120 mm top intake fans in a positive pressure configuration with no exhaust fans. All intakes are covered by easily removable dust filters to simplify the maintenance process, and Alienware has published a series of videos explaining how to do basic maintenance and replace some core components.
Speaking of core components, the PSU included in the Alienware Area-51 desktop is either a 1,500 W 80 Plus Platinum unit or an 850 W 80 Plus Gold PSU. Both options use the new ATX12VO PSU standard, so there's a reasonable amount of future proofing there, and both PSU options should work with modern ATX motherboards. Cooling duties in the Alienware Area-51 desktop are handled by either a 360 mm or 240 mm closed-loop liquid cooler, although Alienware claims that there is space in the chassis for up to a 420 mm radiator.
Alienware Area-51 desktop core specs:
- Up to 64 GB of DDR5-6400 dual-channel RAM
- Up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU
- Up to 8 TB PCIe SSD storage (dual 4 TB SSDs)
At launch, the desktop will only be available with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, although Alienware is promising that other configurations will arrive as the new GPUs become available. Alienware has made some curious decisions when it comes to the overall design of the motherboard and the parts it has chosen for the final build. For starters, the motherboard only has two RAM slots, meaning any upgrades will necessitate replacing both RAM sticks, and, at least for the time being, this decision also limits gamers to a total of 64 GB of RAM, since there are no 64 GB DDR5 RAM sticks available just yet.
The SSD situation is similar. Despite 8 TB PCIe SSDs being available from the likes of WD (at an eye-watering $599.99 on Amazon), Alienware has opted to use dual 4 TB drives, forcing anyone trying to upgrade their storage to replace at least one SSD in the process.
At launch, the Alienware Area-51 gaming desktop will cost $4,499 with a “high-end, next-gen, NVIDIA GPU,” which sounds an awful lot like the just-released RTX 5080 or RTX 5090, although Dell doesn't specify which in its press briefing. Availability is slated for late Q1, 2025, further suggesting that this is an RTX 5090 configuration, while cheaper configurations are TBD.
Source(s)
Alienware