New Alienware Area 51 PC - refreshing new look

M76

M76

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jun 12, 2012
Messages
15,591
I just saw the new enthusiast system by alienware, and I'm loving the radical change in case design. I'm sick and tired of Cubes and Brick shapes.

http://hothardware.com/News/Alienwa...ed-Area-51-Desktop-HaswellE-On-Board/#!bNjVqB

I know it's not for everyone you either hate it or love it, but I'm in the latter group. If I could I would get a case like that instantly for my built PC. But I'm not getting my hopes up, I don't think this will make case manufacturers part with regular shapes.

What do you think, aren't you tired of the same old shape? I had a tower case since 1994, and nothing changed since then in the basic design principles. They just change up where the components go inside the case, but it's always a frakking cuboid.
 
I was just going to post about this myself. I'd like to just buy the case. It's so radical I want it. It looks pretty small too which I like.
 
It may be effective, but I didn't like the hexagonal design.

If I could get one case it would be an open design such as In-win's D-frame, which is a superb case.
 
Well, it's not supposed to sit with it's side facing out. So when you look at it face on, it's still going to look like a rectangle.

But to each of their own. Definitely a love it or hate it case.
 
Honestly I think that is a pretty damn cool looking case. I like the design a lot.
 
I love the look of the case, and thanks to the hex shape it's almost a rotated motherboard mounting like my Raven RV02. They didn't skimp on space either so you can put nearly anything inside, you aren't restricted to M-ATX or smaller PSUs or anything like that. I definitely would buy the case if it came to market as a standalone and not a complete system.
 
An interesting design. I like it for breaking the mold but I wouldn't have an Alienware desktop myself. Their component selection and build quality sure as hell isn't what it used to be an over priced is an understatement when talking of their price tags.
 
I say "meh".

I liked the older Alienware Aurora boxes better
 
I like the case esthetics, I'd give it a try, but assemble the inside myself...
 
I sent them an email asking if I could buy the case individually. Ha. I await their response.
 
I am glad they are still trying to bring new and creative things to the market.

But IMHO it looks retarded. I like the current line of cases myself.
 
I think it looks like something out of DeusEx, but I don't think they would sell it separately, without the huge overhead price of the whole system it would be a loosing business for them.
 
i like the case. i think black with red accent lighting would look even better.
 
The case design is trying to appeal to a more mature buyer, it seems.

It looks pretty neat and clean.

Unfortunately, overpriced. But you have to give Dell some credit.

If I recall correctly, Chieftec used to build a lot of their cases. Maybe look there for a similar design?
 
M76 said:
I think it looks like something out of DeusEx, but I don't think they would sell it separately, without the huge overhead price of the whole system it would be a loosing business for them.
Click to expand...

They probably view selling those cases separately as a negative impact to their business but that's not the reason. They could over price it and sell those just fine. The problem is they don't want Alienware branded hardware out there getting sold or potentially passed off as theirs. One thing that businesses contend with that people often forget or are largely unaware of is brand identity and reputation. Reputation is effected by factors we often don't consider and some asshole selling "Alienware" PC's that are passed off as the genuine article with ECS boards and budget video cards would be a problem.

That isn't so say that selling such things is impossible but it must be handled in the correct way by their marketing team to prevent such things from happening on any kind of scale.
 
Yes that's another reason I wanted to mention, but laziness got the better of me.
 
Well it's not even out yet, their customer support probably doesn't even know about this.

Another issue I'm thinking is it's possible that the MB is proprietary and not using regular ATX mounts. That can be seen in many Dell built systems.
 
It looks unique and I like that.

When I was a young man, I use to build my own machines. If anything went wrong, I'd troubleshoot the hardware and send it back for RMA. Meanwhile buying another to get me by or upgrading and later selling the RMA'd piece of hardware.

Now that I'm older, I prefer buying machines from Dell and if anything goes wrong, someone will come over the next day to fix it. No other brand comes close to their support.

AW machines are definitely expensive, but I'll probably be getting this when it becomes available as I've been looking to get a desktop.
 
Looks like massive internal turbulence w/ out enough exhaust fans.

I would like to see a re-design of mobo / CPU HS / vid card HS that all blow through the box like a wind tunnel...
ie: like 3 fans blow in, 3 fans on HS's blow toward back, 3 fans exhaust, PSU fans oriented for intake / exhaust.
All fans blowing all air straight through / front to back / like a wind tunnel...

I want to see smoke testing for cases & see what is really happening to the air.
 
callmaster said:
It looks unique and I like that.

When I was a young man, I use to build my own machines. If anything went wrong, I'd troubleshoot the hardware and send it back for RMA. Meanwhile buying another to get me by or upgrading and later selling the RMA'd piece of hardware.

Now that I'm older, I prefer buying machines from Dell and if anything goes wrong, someone will come over the next day to fix it. No other brand comes close to their support.

AW machines are definitely expensive, but I'll probably be getting this when it becomes available as I've been looking to get a desktop.
Click to expand...

I have very bad experience with them. They send an indian guy, with a screwdriver, who replaces the MB regardless if that's the problem or not, and forgets to connect half of the wires to their place. That's my experience with them.
 
M76 said:
. If I could I would get a case like that instantly for my built PC.
Click to expand...

You might run into the following issues if you want to build your own PC with an Alienware case as I experiences extensively modding my older Area 51

1. You might be stuck using the stock dell motherboard for the lightning system to work. It also looks like they'll be clearance issues if you go higher than ATX

2. You might be stuck using the stock PSU as Dell likes using propirety connectors for again the lighting system and most other case features. It also looks like any PSU longer than what they have in there will also have clearance issues.

3. Water cooling in that case looks non-existant. So much potential wasted space just for the cute triangle design. There aren't even W/C holes in the back if trying to go external.

The motherboard and PSU issues might not bother you at first but 3+ years down the road they might. I remember the Area 51 had a beefy 1200watt PSU but couldn't even handle more than 2 GPUS due to the voltage on the railings and stuff and got outdated quickly. Every single component becides the GPU and CPU are the lowest end made-in-China stuff ever. I may be tempted to get an Area 51 again if they ever come out with a new Alienware monitor and updade their peripherals that are like 5+ years old now for a nice "command center" theme.
 
Old thread, I know, but I recently picked one up as I was due for a system upgrade. I usually build my own, but I figured i'd get Dell/Alienware a shot for my X99 build as I was very satisfied with their 17'' laptop. I also have substantial discounts so while the Area 51 still ended up being more expensive then building my own; The gap wasn't that large when you consider how awesome the case is.

I'll start with the problems;

Packaging was terrible. When I got my laptop from them in 2013 the packaging was really good. Apparently for the new Area 51 someone really screwed up on the shipping material and well.. I'm amazed my computer didn't arrive damaged. The weight of the Area 51 is 65 pounds. It needs better packaging to go with that weight.

To go along with that; The weight. The weight as I mentioned is 65 pounds. I'm fairly old now and at work I still deal with decades old transport equipment that weighs a shitload, but we're talking ancient Marconi ATM switches here. With how great the case is the weight is still unacceptable in 2015 IMO, and they should have used more aluminum in the build.

Lack of motherboard options. The motherboard is apparently a MSI X99 motherboard, but Dell has it locked down way more then it should be. RAID is only supported in the first two SATA ports (da fuck?!, this is a x99 board folks), and you are not giving any control over the ports themselves. You are 100% reliant on hoping that the auto detection works on every port. Thankfully from an overclocking perspective every setting is able to be modified though.

Lack of motherboard features. Again, this is a X99 motherboard from MSI. It is missing what I consider fairly standard features though. No SATA express. No PCIE x4 m.2 port. (Although it oddly has a m.2 port filled with a wireless NIC, it's just that the port doesn't have the lanes needed.) Fortunately the board does support NVMe though so it's not a complete loss. Lack of USB 3.1 isn't a big deal to me because at the time of release of this system it wasn't something available, and I don't care for it anyways.

Only four DDR4 slots. Most of these motherboards of the ATX size have 8. There is room there, but for whatever reason they decided only on 4. Not a big deal besides the fact that if you get the system with 16GB all four ports will be filled with 4GB dims which means upgrading will be more expensive.

Finally (And this is a big one to me IMO) you have no control over where the PCIE lanes go. There are three 16x slots, one 4x slot, and a 1x. With a 5820k installed the first two ports default to 8x each and for some reason the last port defaults to 4x. (huh?) I only ever plan on using 2 GPU's at most, but not having control over the lanes is a bit odd. Even with nothing in any other PCIE slot besides a single GPU it's still only set as 8x with a 5820k installed. With a higher-end CPU this would be a non-issue though. To those wondering why an ATX length motherboard has so few slots; The three 16x slots are all gapped by a fair margin, and all three give you room for 3 slot cards. The 1x and 8x slots can still be utilized even with three, three slot cards installed.

The motherboard has only had a single BIOS update and my hope is that some of these issues will be fixed. I know that with my laptop features were slowly added over time. None of these issues are completely game breaking though. The hardware itself from visual inspection seems to be of decent MSI build quality.

The board is a standard ATX board, and from what I can see the case will accept any standard ATX board. You'd loose the lighting effects on the case though as any other motherboard won't have the special connector on it that connects to the specific MIO board that deals with the lighting. Although I suspect if someone was smart enough and cared enough you could hack the MIO board and get the lights working anyways. You just wouldn't have the easy software control.

Moving on to the positives -

Again, build quality is on par. The component selection is all on the higher-end of the scale. The 1.5kw PSU has decent rail ratings and is 80 plus gold, same goes with the 850w.

Cooling is excellent. My system operates in an apartment without AC and it's 80 degrees in here almost constantly. The cooling design of this case is very smartly done due to the triangle shape. You've got a fan at the bottom drawing in fresh air that blows it straight onto the PCIE slots, and you've got a fan up top/front drawing in air blowing it straight over the CPU/RAM area. There is only one exhaust fan at the rear / CPU WC radiator, but this is enough as all the air being blown in to the PCI area gets spit out by the GPU's, and anything rising gets spit out by the radiator exhaust anyways. All the drives are actually under the motherboard and are easily accessed with the other side panel, so all the driver clutter does not get in the way of the two front intakes. Needless to say everything stays very cool even with the small number of actual case fans. One can conclude that the triangle shape works very good for cooling purposes.

Again, the build quality of the case itself is the best I've seen, ever. It beats out the 80 pound EATX two decade old beast I still use to house my Pentium 2 classic gaming build. The side panels open like a car hood. There is a lever for each, and it just pops open. There are no wires for the lighting effects on the side panels, as there is just a couple of copper pads that connect/disconnect when the panels are shut all the way.

I could say more but I just wanted to touch on the points that people would actually care about.

Was it worth extra couple hundred or so over building myself? I believe so, even with the issues I've noted. Although if I cared more about RAIDing my drives it may not be. It's loaded with dual 980Ti's. I ordered the system with the cheapest option (A 370), pulled it and sold it. Getting the cheapest GPU option, and drives is the smartest idea here as Dell overcharges for drive/GPU upgrades by a lot. This coupled with a total of a 25% discount made the system quite price competitive to just building on my own. More importantly, I have an awesome ATX case now that I can always drop a new motherboard into in the future.
 
Last edited:
Looks about as ugly as I thought it would

Looks like a pain in the ass to work in, too
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top