Area 51 invasion imminent

Just saw this. It will be mine.


Alienware Area-51

 

That design is just... odd. I like it, but from the side I keep thinking "Alienware made an airfilter system?". I hope they don't pull the same crap they did with the power supplies they did before....

 

Definitely looks...Alien. I like it.

I'm glad they're updating so much stuff this year, finally. Hopefully things keep moving forward from here on out without further delay.

 

What about a new revision of AW18 and AW17?


Also, very interesting design on the Area 51 lol

 

This "desktop" revision is done to match the Alienware laptop lineup. It's unlikely they've completely change the laptops again so soon. But since the AW 13 has the AlienHead power button, I'm hoping they do redesign them a bit to match... I want that power button back!

 

ayy lmao

Nah, I'm just joking. That thing looks pretty damn amazing! I wonder how much it'll cost.

 

Intel Unleashes its First 8-Core Desktop Processor

Sweet.

 

Funny you mention the Alienware head missing as a power button... very glad they are putting that signature item back in myself, it just doesn't seem right without it.

 

Yeah, now we're talking! Hopefully it offer at least 25% more horsepower than the current 6-core K and X CPUs at stock clocks and will overclock like no monster CPU we have ever seen before. The press release makes it sound pretty exciting. "This product family is aimed squarely at those enthusiasts who push their systems further than anyone, and we're offering the speed, cores, overclocking and platform capabilities they have asked us for." If this is really accurate and not a bunch of marketing lies it should be awesome. They have a lot of forgiveness that needs to be earned after screwing everyone royally with Haswell. If Clevo releases a replacement for the P570WM3 with this CPU and chipset that retains SLI it could literally be a to die for laptop.

This Dorito-shaped chassis thing has some mighty big shoes to fill in order to be worthy of the Area 51 title. I wonder if the chassis is going to be massive enough to house a ton of crazy extreme performance hardware like dual or triple Titan Z and/or R9 295X2 along with this new octo-core Extreme CPU? The gigantic Area 51 tower of 2009 was really sweet and its angular lines made for a very menacing-looking machine. The Aurora ALX chassis was really attractive, but it was too small and the hardware configuration offerings were often just a shade too conservative (780 SLI instead of 780 Ti SLI, only one Titan Z instead of an option for Titan Z SLI, etc.)... Always pretty decent, but never on the ragged edge of sanity. Let's hope that's about to change.

 

I'm sorry but with my alienware area 51 alx there is no competition, but nice try

 

I want this so much it makes me want to cry!

 

I think I like this. Love or loathe, I can appreciate that they appear to be taking a risk with innovation rather than playing it safe. I can't help but think they've been inspired by the Mac Pro 2014 cooling solution - which is a good thing in my opinion. I wonder what the footprint of this thing is..?

 

I think the nacho chassis is an aesthetic atrocity. I don't care for the design that matches the laptop lids, although it is tolerable. But, the triangle shape looks very stupid (yes, only my opinion). I am going to take a wild guess that it's not a massive case, so there probably won't be enough room inside of it to accommodate anything truly amazing.

 

Assuming the images are accurate, the monitors next to the system are 4k displays. All of the 4k displays I know of are 27" or larger. The system probably isn't as large as the previous Aurora due to its design, but I doubt it's small. It does look very weird, though. But I think it will cool pretty well with this design.

I agree, though. What they're doing in the gaming market seems (to me) they're heading in the wrong direction, or it at least feels as though they're following in someone else's footsteps as opposed to paving a new path and dominating the market that way.

EDIT: What also just came to mind is another thing I loved about Alienware before: the unboxing experience. I'm curious to know what kind of packaging this desktop will come in. Hopefully it's not some plain o' black box with some Alienware symbol on it. That's kind of boring.

 

Very cool. This may be a chance for AW to somewhat redeem its high end desktop line.

And what I mean by that is not charging more for a machine built in China with mostly OEM parts, than one made with all name brand parts from a boutique right here in America, and also not paring a super low end GPU with a freaking i7 on the base models.

For the people who havent read the articles on this so far, it definitely will have A TON of horse power, capable of more than any AW desktop preceeding it. up to that new 8 core i7, and up to three full-length double-wide graphics cards, or quad GPU configurations.(quad being normal size GPU's I would imagine).Which means you could stuff three GTX Titan Blacks, or even 3 GTX Titan Z's in there. 11520x2160 resolution across three Ultra HD 4K monitors would be nothing, even with games like Crysis 3 running with everything on ultra you would likely get average FPS north of 120.

 

Thank you for posting this. I'll have to look for the articles.

If that is all true, then the hardware sounds totally awesome even if the chassis shape is too weird for words. I can put up with weirdness as long as the insane performance is there. I don't feel like going postal any more.

 

No problem.

For a 3+ GPU capable system, cooling is VERY important, and most companies that do machines capable of such configurations account for this by put them into ridiculously huge chassis that can't even fit under a desk, let alone on one.

To shrink a super powerful system down and not have issues, you have to do some pretty extensive engineering gymnastics, as Apple showed with their new Mac Pro last year (AKA, the coffee maker capable of rendering a pixar movie lol).

More power per square inch is great in my book.

 

With this design, it looks like only cool air will be going inside the system to flush out the hot air on the other side. So, it should be pretty efficient in terms of cooling. It's definitely an interesting design.

 

If I ever have to go back to "ball and chain computing" then I have always really loved a huge desktop chassis. An an open frame benching chassis would be my preference today, but I like whatever it is to be attractive. Some will think the Dorito-shaped thing looks good, and that's fine. I'll wait until I see more photos, but I am not impressed right now. To be fair, the new design Alienware laptops look much better in person than they do in photos. I thought they looked terrible in photos, but they look pretty decent when you actually have one sitting in front of you.

Performance trumps everything else. As far as cooling goes, I would prefer the just built something with a full loop liquid cooling setup instead of a closed-loop (CPU only) arrangement. Then the chassis "efficiency" becomes less important and the system will be a better overclocker, too.

 

My current favourite case. If the Alienware turns out to be poor I will use this case Cooler Master: COSMOS II

 

I totally agree. It looks hideous. And regardless of its size, there's a lot of wasted space both inside and out.

Yep, my favorite as well. If you're building an uber rig with 3 or 4 GPU's, Extreme Edition CPU's, and water cooling it doesn't get any better than the Cosmos II.

 

COSMOS II does look fantastic. I have always loved how it looks. There was a really sharp cobalt blue one with white racing stripes painted to match the owner's Mustang featured about a year ago in CPU magazine that looked awesome [ LINK].

If I were going to build a desktop now it would likely would be an open air bench setup. For a case, I think I would go with a Case Labs Mercury S8 or Mountain Mods Ascension CYO because they are so stinking huge and built like an M4 Sherman tank.

 

Here's a review: The New Alienware Area-51 Is the Weirdest Gaming PC I’ve Ever Seen

 

I went to Pax Prime today and this is what I saw at the Alienware booth:

 

Wow, they really shoe-horned a lot of nice stuff into that little chassis. The ergonomic basis for the shape and the handles on top makes good sense (based on what is in the article) but I am still not liking how it looks too much. I don't like the aesthetics of the cylinder-shaped Mac either. Maybe it will be like the latest laptop design. I did not like them in photos at all. I still think they are not very photogenic, but they do look very nice when you can actually see and touch them.

 

It really is a very nice looking machine and it can certainly hold allot! I am not sure that it would fit in my computer desk slot that now holds my Aurora R3!

 

You mean like the laptops come with now? God I loved that box that came with my M17x R4, hell I even still got the box because it's epic.

 

That thing looks quite a fair size! Did I just spot up to 3 graphics card's inside?

See if they will tell you when the new Alienware laptop line will be out!

 

It's starting to look smaller than I thought it would be...
I wonder when we'll get some prices. Can't be far off.

 

hmm that does look very small. Maybe I will have to use the cooler master case.

Case labs have a purpose I can see for testing etc... I just want something that looks awesome and has space inside. My partner and I are combining our systems Next year as she is not upgrading to the latest mac pro and I am upgrading my gaming desktop. Means I need something that can run Cubase for her composing as well as my gaming addiction. As well as it having to have a certain value to it. I think the Alienware will look great but I wonder how easy it will be to upgrade etc...

 

Yeah, exactly. I loved the previous generation unboxing experience much more than the current generation. It's not a big deal for most, but I think for a premium product, you should have a different experience than every other product on the market. Alienware used to offer this, and I hope they bring it back this year.

 

That depends on what they use in the build and what you want to upgrade. Hopefully, there is nothing proprietary about the motherboard form factor, PSU form factor and connectors. There's really no telling until someone gets their hands on one and dissect it to find out what is generic and what is not. This is always a hazardous proposition when buying a branded desktop instead of building your own. It will also be interesting to see if they have locked down and crippled the BIOS like they did on the Alienware 14, 17 and 18. If the BIOS only allows access to the settings that Dell wants you to have access to and Secure Flash prevents it from being modded it will be a regrettable purchase for some folks. Micro$haft is getting their filthy mitts firmly clutched around the gonads of everyone with Secure Boot and firmware certification. Command and control seems to be the order of the day for the tech Nazis. The big OEMs that do not cater specifically to true extreme performance enthusiasts are drinking that feces-flavored Kool-Aid with smiles on their faces.

 

I think the motherboard being propriety is the biggest issue. As long as you can chance it out for something else the rest of the system should be fine.

I guess future places will be better CPU, better graphics etc without having to pay for a whole new system again. I guess its going to come down to the price of the system itself.

 

The PSU could be an issue as well. If it ever goes belly up and it is not the standard dimensions and/or has proprietary connections on the motherboard end that could present some issues replacing it with something other than a stock part. As long as it is under warranty none of that would matter as long as you don't want to upgrade to a more robust motherboard at some point. Hopefully, both of them are an industry-standard generic reference design and then it won't matter.

As far as price is concerned, I doubt we can expect to see any unusual bargains. Some people are going to want it just because it is an unconventional design and unique and that will likely keep the pricing high. The R&D overhead will need to be accounted for and recovered as quickly as possible. I am sure they are going to charge a premium for that, and doing so would be totally understandable. Based on what it appears the top specs are going to be, it will most like be über-expensive just like a maxed out Alienware 18 or Aurora ALX would be. Even building your own with like or better components will be very costly.

 

You guys sound a bit paranoid. Let's wait for a full review.

 

A full review would be awesome, but they would still need to dismantle it and disclose what components are proprietary and which are not to make a fully informed buying decision about component upgrades and aftermarket service parts potential. A full and proper review should also include images and/or video showing every BIOS screen and exactly what the full extent of overclocking options are so that potential buyers could know if it has everything they are looking for. Unfortunately, most reviews don't dive that deep into a machine's inner workings. These things are always good to know before spending money... especially large sums of money.

 

So is this going to be alienwares only big desktop now? Or are they keeping the Aurora line to?

 

Good question. I don't know that this has been disclosed anywhere.

 

I can't believe I am the first person here to say this......."it appears that Alienware are thinking "outside" the box"

 

More like outside this world...

 

Hmm, there's a purpose behind the name "Alienware" after all?

 

New Area 51 looks awsome but i still wouldnt buy one....

 

Now that the new laptops are out, the new area 51 is coming out... I wonder what the new x51 and new aurora are going to look like....

 

I'd like to see what the new X51 looks like. Once again I hope it gets a bigger PSU.

 

Must admit would love to buy the chassis....looks awesome:thumbsup:

 

I know info is pretty short right now, but anyone know if the side panels are metal like the laptop lids?

 

No idea but i would imagine that it would be. It would interesting to see what effect if any putting the graphics cards on an angle like that would have on the fan bearings long term?

 

Scarcy, Linus had a similar question.

Anyway there's some more information and good close ups in this video - Fast forward to 5:00

 

The FalconNW and NCIX systems shown in that video certainly are nice. The cooling system on the Maingear has the others whipped. All three of them look like real beasts. The red paint job on the FalconNW machine is gorgeous, but we've come to expect nothing less from them.

It's really too bad the Area 51 only has liquid cooling on the CPU, then GPU fan bearing durability would be irrelevant and GPU overclocking would likely be improved. Regardless of where a person lands on the new aesthetic it is undeniably unique. The ergonomics basis for the design is nothing short of brilliant, especially the part about accessing wiring and ports on the back plate. The look might eventually grow on me like the new laptop design did, but it concerns me how tight everything is in the chassis. There isn't a lot of extra space to work with, or at least it looks that way in all of the photos and videos. I suppose that if you never change anything from the factory configuration that may not matter.

 

Alienware UK posted this on facebook. There's 17 photo's including inside and out.

The Alienware Area-51 returns... with some improvements. This chassis was rebuilt from the ground up to deliver a bold, striking design that offers improved functionality, blistering performance, and plenty of space and options for upgrades.

Our decision to move towards this triad design improved thermal flow through the system and allows for better ergonomics and move space for upgrades. The change in position of the front ports and rear IO panel also allows for easier access from any position.

More detailed specs to come:
- Intel Core i7 Haswell-E processors
- Factory overclocked and liquid cooled
- Available with 6 or 8 core CPU options
- Intel’s X99 Express Chipset
- Quad Channel DDR4 2133MHz RAM
- Dual, Triple or Quad Graphics Support
- Up to a 1.5KW Power Supply
- SSD + HDD Storage Options up to five drives
- Intel 802.11ac Wireless
- Bluetooth 4.0
Learn more about the Area 51: Alienware Area-51