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Alienware is bringing the Area-51 gaming PC back from the dead
The new 80 litre tower is the first full-size flagship PC from the brand in five years
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Your support makes all the difference.Alienware is resurrecting the iconic Area-51 gaming PC, the brand announced at this year’s CES tech conference in Las Vegas. Alienware’s 2025 plans also include a refreshed Aurora PC line-up and new 16in and 18in Area-51 gaming laptops.
The return of the Alienware Area-51 marks five years since the brand last had a full-size flagship PC in its portfolio. Once known for its bizarre and extraterrestrial chassis – originally shaped like giant alien heads – and more recently some weird gadget you’d find in Batman’s cave, Alienware has settled on a more mature design this time around.
The 80 litre Alienware Area-51 is a full-size, roughly cuboid tower designed to exceed the size requirements of even the largest gaming PC components, giving builders more than enough room to upgrade and customise their machine. The giant chassis has room enough for six storage devices and up to a quad slot graphics card.
“Area-51 captures the hearts and minds of gaming enthusiasts and those old-school Alienware loyalists,” says Matt McGowan, director of Dell’s gaming division. “Our new full-size Area-51 tower delivers an unprecedented level of performance and scalable design.”
Keep scrolling for everything you need to know.
Alienware Area-51: Price TBA, Dell.com
Alienware hasn’t announced any pre-build specs but it has confirmed the Area-51 will support the latest top-of-the-line components, such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU.
The desktop comes with an ATX standard motherboard and an ATX standard 1,500W, platinum-rated power supply. “Area-51 is designed with enough headroom to support more than 600W of dedicated graphics power,” says McGowan, in a nod to the power requirements of Nvidia’s latest cards, which are rumoured to be huge.
The use of industry standard parts throughout means critical components can be easily replaced or upgraded. Small details such as QR codes dotted around the interior of the chassis, linking to installation videos for individual parts, mark out the Area-51 as a gaming PC for tinkerers looking to keep their machine running at top performance, with ongoing upgrades.
The Area-51 is also designed with enough headroom for sustained overclocking, with enough cooling and voltage regulation to handle 300W of extra power heading to the processor. “That equates to 50 per cent more processing power, gen to gen,” says McGowan. Builds can be customised up to a 360mm liquid cooling unit, though that capacious chassis means there’s space for the largest 420mm units, if needed.
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Speaking of cooling, the Alienware Area-51’s case ditches traditional exhaust fans, to greatly reduce noise during intensive tasks. “All of the fans are pushing inward,” McGowan told The Independent. “By doing this, we reduce air recirculation and create a pressurised chassis, which efficiently moves air through the system, cooling critical components before dissipating through a passive exhaust in the rear.”
McGowan says the Area-51 runs 45 per cent quieter than Aurora desktops at full pelt. “Even the processor runs 13 per cent cooler at full speed than any other previous desktop that we’ve ever done in Alienware history.”
The Alienware Area-51 gaming PC is set to launch in early spring, with UK pricing and available configurations due to be announced soon. Alienware’s current desktop gaming PC, the Aurora R16 starts at around £2,600 – so, expect a price somewhere in that ballpark.
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