After a litany of gaming laptop reviews here at EFTM, Alienware have sent over their newly relaunched Area 51 Desktop for us to check out. 

The Area 51 desktop took gamers by storm at CES earlier this year, offering a large desktop tower designed for premium performance in a scalable design. 

The system has been designed as their quietest, coolest running and highest performance desktop yet, with liquid CPU cooling, as well as being able to be configured with the latest Intel & NVIDIA silicon and multiple memory and storage options. 

The pricing starts at $4,499 for the basic spec, however Alienware have provided a high-spec review unit, including an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, 32GB of RAM and 1TB M.2 Gen4 SSD – which, specced on the Dell website comes out to over $8,000 AUD.

With a high-spec gaming desktop and a Steam library full of games, we checked out the Alienware Area-51 Desktop for a couple of weeks and here’s how it went.

Design

Simply put, the Area 51 desktop looks awesome.

The case itself is a mix of metal and glass, with a brushed metal front panel featuring a simple AlienFX enabled, Alien head power button on the front. The AlienFX RGB lighting effects continue internally, as well showing on a loop that surrounds the front air intake on the PC. 

The system is large – 80L in capacity – offering plenty of room for large sized GPUs, cooling, as well as scalability for updating the system in the future. 

It’s quite heavy, weighing in at over 34kg, so you’re going to need a decently strong desk (and back) to get it set up.  

Getting inside the case is fairly easy. The side panels, one tempered glass to show off those internal RGB lights and the other a flat brushed metal panel, can easily be removed with a Philips head screwdriver required to unlock the push to remove mechanism for the side panels. 

Cable management is immaculate on this system. Any cables used are hidden away underneath the side panel, or, like the power and data cables for additional drives – are hidden under the A51 panel at the base of the tower. 

There’s plenty of room for additional drives inside, with space for two 2.5-inch, and a single 3.5-inch drive drive. There’s also two M.2 slots – one PCIe 5.0 and one PCIe 4.0 for bumping space and speed once Gen5 SSDs start dropping in price. 

Alienware have included capacity for full-sized GPUs to be used with the capacity to take quad-slot GPUs up to 450mm in length giving you a lot of options in the future. 

You could also switch out the AlienFX ATX motherboard for another in the future, or switch to a smaller mATX form-factor – though as Alienware have used some proprietary connectors on this board, according to the user manual, you’ll need a conversion kit to get all the front-panel, fan control and power button working. 

There’s also a 1500W Platinum Rated power supply on-board, so you can rest assured you’re not going to be caught short in that department. 

There’s plenty of ports on the Area 51 Desktop, with a front panel sporting dual USB Type A and USB Type-C ports, and separate mic and line out. The back panel has four USB-C ports – two are Thunderbolt 4 – and a number of Type-A ports – USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 – with 3.5mm line in and out, S/PDIF Optical out and a 2.5G RJ45 ethernet port.

The board supports Bluetooth 5.4, and Wi-Fi 7 with Alienware including a Wifi antenna you can connect on the back. 

Performance

Suffice to say, with an Intel Core 9 Ultra processor, NVidia RTX 5090 GPU with 32GB RAM and a Gen4 M.2 SSD, I had no issues with performance. 

From the super quick boot up speeds to surfing the web, launching into the latest games or editing media, the system is fast. I’d never say no to a look at a system with 64GB of RAM, but this is a fast system. 

In terms of gaming, there’s absolutely buckets of performance here. Games like Crysis Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077, Sons of the Forest, Fortnite, Death Stranding and more run like a dream. 

For the most part, the games were run at 1440p, though some like Crysis Remastered decided halfway through to change default resolution and no amount of coaxing (or manually setting resolution) would change its mind. 

Crysis Remastered served up over 100fps, not a bad result for an older game, while Cyberpunk 2077 regularly offered above 75fps on High Graphics settings. Fortnite was similarly smooth, as was Death Stranding and Sons of the Forest. 

The performance is set by the profiles – and there are four on board configurable in the Alienware Command Console: Quiet, Balanced, Performance and Custom, each of which have a different audio profile. 

The audio is obviously dependent on fans and while the Area 51 which uses liquid CPU cooling, it does have fans as part of Alienwares Positive Pressure airflow system which uses seven fans – two 140mm fans above the PSU blowing air over the GPU, two 180mm fans on the front intake and three 120mm fans at the top – to build a positive pressure system that forces hot air out the rear. 

It’s a lot of fans, and Alienware has mesh filters on all of them, and they’re easily removed – if you have a philips head screwdriver handy – for easy cleaning. 

On Quiet, the system fans are barely noticeable, Balanced has similar noise though ramps up as required with the performance and Performance is loudest, though Custom can give it a run for its money. 

In terms of performance, here’s how the Area 51 Desktop did on 3DMark:

Software

While the Area 51 desktop came with Windows 11 Home, it can be configured with Windows 11 Pro if you think you need it. The Windows 11 Home build is 24H2 with support through to October 2026.

As far as pre-installed software and apps, there’s very little to complain about with the bare minimum of bloatware on offer from Microsoft like Office. Microsoft has missed a trick here with no offer of Xbox Game Pass trial when you load the Xbox app – while most laptops, especially gaming laptops include a 3-month trial of Ultimate. 

There are basic utilities for your hardware installed, with apps like NVIDIA app and Control panel for your GPU, Realtek and Dolby Access apps for your audio and Killer Intelligence Centre for your network traffic. 

The main installation for me though – as with any gaming PC, is their control app. For Alienware it’s the Alienware Command Centre. 

It’s similar in scope to the options from other makers, with the app allowing you to change settings on performance, as well as control AlienFX (RGB lighting) and of course, access your games through their hub. 

Final Thoughts

The Alienware Area 51 Desktop is an absolutely stunning pre-built desktop system in terms of performance, upgradeability and style. 

In terms of performance you won’t be found wanting. The system can play any game you throw at it, and keep asking for more. It also works quite well with content creation and office work is an absolute breeze.

You pay a premium for this kind of system, however at this level you’re also seeing a lot of headroom in terms of future gaming and upgradeability.

There’s very little to ask for from a desktop PC, and there’s a load of options to build out your own system over on the Dell website.