Alienware Announces the Area 51 X299 Configuration With Intel Core i9 Inside

[Raevenlord]

Adding to Alienware's staple of custom-built PCs and their exclusivity deal with AMD to sell pre-built machines with Ryzen Threadripper 16-core CPUs, the company has just announced that their Area 51 desktop solution will now also be available with Intel's latest X299 HEDT platform. Intel Core X-series processors can be configured with a Core i7-7800X, i7-7820X, or i9-7900X processor, and liquid cooling comes standard with the system for these high-performance CPUs. Alienware even ships the Area 51 with an unlocked BIOS so that users can still tap all of the potential inside their new gaming rig.

Kingston's HyperX 2933 MHz memory comes standard (up to 64 GB in 4x 16 GB configuration), and the graphics processing can be configured with either AMD (RX 560, 570, and 580) or NVIDIA cards (GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060 (6GB), GTX 1070, GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti.) The absence of AMD's Vega graphics cards should come as a surprise for red-team fans. There are also dual and triple-GPU configurations available, though with the slow, choking death of multi-GPU support, that might not be the best inroad for a high performance computer. A 2 TB HDD takes care of storage, and SSD goodness can come in 256, 512 GB, or 1 TB in the M.2 form-factor. There's Intel Optane support (in 16 GB or 32 GB), and the power supply can range from an 850 W unit up to a 1500 W one. There is a total of 8x USB 3.0 ports (2x front, 6x rear) and 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports (1x Type-A, 1x Type-C). Dual gigabit LAN is provided by a Qualcomm Killer E2500 NIC, while wireless connectivity is available in the form of Killer 1535 or Dell 1820 802.11ac WiFi.



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[peche]

blue motherboard PCB and Green ram?
cant believe what Dell has done to alienware....

 

[DarkHill]

same arctic cooling /asetek oem AIO cooler (49x120x120mm rad) as the threadripper version.

Probably inadequate cooling for this platform as well - unless you put the sub 10 core SKUs in it

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

blue motherboard PCB and Green ram?
cant believe what Dell has done to alienware....

Thats a pre rendered picture, hence the very GTX 580- looking GPUS, also considering nvidia no longer allows 3 way SLI. Old stock design dell is reusing.

Also, who cares what color the PCB is? You dont buy a PC to look at it.

 

[peche]

Also, who cares what color the PCB is? You dont buy a PC to look at it.

Thats a pre rendered picture, hence the very GTX 580- looking GPUS, also considering nvidia no longer allows 3 way SLI. Old stock design dell is reusing.

... fan boy detected?

 

[timta2]

"The absence of AMD's Vega graphics cards should come as a surprise for red-team fans."

I doubt that surprises anyone, right now.

 

[notb]

Adding to Alienware's staple of custom-built PCs and their exclusivity deal with AMD to sell pre-built machines with Ryzen Threadripper 16-core CPUs, the company has just announced that their Area 51 desktop solution will now also be available with Intel's latest X299 HEDT platform.

I remember when this "exclusivity" was announced and so many AMD fans here where cheering like if this was an advantage for AMD. I had a huge laugh, really.
It was fairly obvious that this is a deal worked out by AMD, to put the TR4 platform in an OEM gaming set - something that was unlikely to happen on its own. I wonder how much they're paying Dell to do this.
It was inevitable that a X299 variant will appear (I suspect that also with some "help" from Intel), but I thought it might take a bit longer. People will prefer the Intel variant, so this is bad news for AMD. A tiny one, obviously, because these HEDT gaming platforms are not visible in financial results anyway.

The absence of AMD's Vega graphics cards should come as a surprise for red-team fans.

Not at all. Bad card, why bother? The blower variant doesn't meet Alienware's noise requirements. Maybe they'll consider a good AIB part or maybe they'll just ignore Vega altogether. It's not like Pascal lacks anything in gaming and this is a gaming PC.

 

[lexluthermiester]

blue motherboard PCB and Green ram?
cant believe what Dell has done to alienware....

That's not even the biggest problem.. Seriously with that ugly case? Come on Alienware/Dell, you can do and have done much better!

 

[peche]

That's not even the biggest problem.. Seriously with that ugly case? Come on Alienware/Dell, you can do and have done much better!

lost hope on alienware so long ago.. Dell just want to milk moar and moar money from people with a ultra fashioned gaming sub-brand..... cheap and ugly designed..

 

[notb]

That's not even the biggest problem.. Seriously with that ugly case? Come on Alienware/Dell, you can do and have done much better!

Ugly? What's wrong with them, exactly? What would you change?

I think the latest Alienware cases are easily the best looking ones they had. They're also easily elegant and neutral enough to be used for workstations in a workplace.

Yes, there are better looking standalone cases, but not so many in the pre-built PCs from major brands (Dell, HP, Lenovo etc). Dell has to play a bit safe - after all it's not just the case that they're selling.

That's how an Alienware case looked not so long ago:

 

[brutlern]

I dont get the 3 video cards. Nvidia stopped supporting more than 2 cards in SLI with Pascal, and AMD also announced they are moving away from Crossfire.

 

[notb]

I dont get the 3 video cards. Nvidia stopped supporting more than 2 cards in SLI with Pascal, and AMD also announced they are moving away from Crossfire.

Future gaming libraries will be able to use multiple GPUs - DX12 is already a sign of that. This is the main cause why companies are suddenly dropping SLI/Crossfire (which basically emulates a single multi-core GPU instead).

Or you can always put in few cards for mining...