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Alienware's Triangular Area-51 Re-Design With Tri-SLI GeForce GTX 980, Tested
MojoKid writes Dell's Alienware division recently released a radical redesign of their Area-51 gaming desktop. With 45-degree angled front and rear face plates that are designed to direct control and IO up toward the user, in addition to better directing cool airflow in, while warm airflow is directed up and away from the rear of the chassis, this triangular-shaped machine grabs your attention right away. In testing and benchmarks, the Area-51's new design enables top-end performance with thermal and acoustic profiles that are fairly impressive versus most high-end gaming PC systems. The chassis design is also pretty clean, modular and easily servicable. Base system pricing isn't too bad, starting at $1699 with the ability to dial things way up to an 8-core Haswell-E chip and triple GPU graphics from NVIDIA and AMD. The test system reviewed at HotHardware was powered by a six-core Core i7-5930K chip and three GeForce GTX 980 cards in SLI. As expected, it ripped through the benchmarks, though the price as configured and tested is significantly higher.
I think I had a space heater that looked just like that once.
looks more like a skewed protruded hexagon.
I was missing my MojoKid/HotHarware clickbait.
Thanks!
Trolling is a art,
Build your own PC, don't be a clod.
This website continues to feature less and less interesting content and more and more click-bait and advertisements masquerading as articles.
I knew the end was near when Slashdot featured that one-sided Gamergate writeup that shat all over gamers, right around the same time all the other big media-controlled blogs were doing the same thing.
I've been reading and giving you page hits since 2003, but I'll be damned if I'll do it anymore.
Buy a computer because you like the shape of the case. It's how you guarantee quality.
k-ching!
Despite the hype they make about the unencumbered airflow front and back, I seriously have my doubts on a system that has a pump-in fan so close to a pump-out fan.
I mean, look at the top triangle tip.
In their defense, there are 2 extra fans below, but some fluid dynamics graph would be nice for prooving good thermals exist there.
Motherboard:
Custom Alienware Area-51
Power Supply:
Custom Alienware 1500 Watt
These "Dell" minimal/cheap profit driven components worry me. As with all Dells, they skimp on quality.
Whatever the warranty is, add a day. Thats how long your PC will last before you need to pay over the top prices for "custom" replacement parts.
The only "good" parts in this package is the GFX cards and CPU. The rest is just cheap profit driven components. I mean, look at the stock ram without heatsinks, look at that "custom" motherboard. How cheap can you go lol.
Monitor is 8ms response time....... On a system marketed at "hardcore gaming". Only Dell!
Review (Advert) also lacks:
- Psu specs (number of 12v rails, efficiently, etc)
This product is such a gimmick. I feel sorry for those who are unable to build their own PC's with higher quality components, whilst saving 50% on the price.
Granted, this $4649 is for a system with three graphics cards, but only one CPU socket! That one CPU is a hex core, but still, if you're making a fantasy computer for the stupid rich that want "the best there is", you should have at least dual Xeons.
As someone who owns an Alienware laptop, I assure you that the quality of the build is second to none. I imagine that their desktop PCs are similarly well made and not everyone has time to waste building their own, unless perhaps you're a kid who "got hold of daddy's credit card" and you don't have any real responsibilities.
this triangular-shaped machine grabs your attention right away.
Looks ugly and boring to me.
Try $4k+
I liked the part about the triangular PC case.
Wow, there's so much jealous in this thread.
I am curious, for those who have owned Alienware since Dell acquired them - how is tech support? Are you thrown in with the consumer rabble, or so you get priority support like Dell provides with it's Precision workstations?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
How is the tech support? Is it as good as the Precision workstation group?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
not everyone has time to waste building their own, unless perhaps you're a kid who "got hold of daddy's credit card" and you don't have any real responsibilities.
You don't have time to spend four hours one evening assembling the parts? Not even if it saves you $1,000 off of a similarly configured prebuilt?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Some of us will gladly pay to avoid four hours of frustration, followed by 6 more unplanned hours of troubleshooting. Do you change your own oil in your car? Make your own peanut butter? Bake your own bread? Build your own furniture? Don't you know how much money you could be saving by doing all these things yourself?!?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It looks like it was inspired by the ass-end of a 1983 Mercury Capri.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I find this piece of advertisement to be too article-shaped.
The tone is way to sober and objective. If you read carefully you'll find that some of the data are actually facts! I refuse to accept this kind of newsy look-at-me-writing-articles crap in Slashdot.
If we start accepting this kind of posts, soon we'll end up having news for nerds. Or even stuff that matters, god forbid.
Hardly. Mostly, everyone seems caught up on the price, as if they've never seen what a pre-built high end system costs. They add up the cost of the components, not including the ones they have lying around, and figure that anything that costs more is silly. If you ever become successful enough that you value you time, you'll realize that pre-built is the only way to go. Until then, you'll simply be jealous of those of us who can check the boxes for what we want in 15 minutes and have Dell ship us a working machine, then go spend a couple hours extra consulting to cover the cost of all that integration. We'll be gaming while you guys are still trying to build. So, yes - jealous.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm delighted to learn that a company has taken PC's from the era of the box shape. It's akin to the invention of the metal guitar. Alienware is WAY too expensive for the speeds they offer but this is real innovation and they deserve many kudos.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Link wasn't to Dice.com. Not interested.
Thank you for having the guts to try something new and different.
It's so tiresome to always have Apple be the one that experiments with design, followed by everyone else copying whatever Apple did whether or not it was a good idea. When Apple introduced their gumdrop iMacs, everything else went translucent. Microwaves. Clothes irons. It was absurd.
eg: We recently got a bunch of PCs, and they included mice copied from Apple's absurdly-flat mighty mouse or whatever they call it. Had to throw the damn things out cause they were unusable. Apple should be barred from designing mice.
Do you change your own oil in your car?
Always, as well as most of the other work on the cars.
Make your own peanut butter?
No but I haven't eaten peanut butter in close to 20 years, I do make my own jams though.
Bake your own bread?
Yes and I love the smell that lingers for about a day after doing so.
Build your own furniture?
Yes because I can't find good furniture for prices that aren't extortion level priced. That and you try finding a solid walnut desk.
While I understand the need to make things other people's problems there is a real sense of accomplishment when you do something your self. Once you get good at doing things you can generally do a better job than the quick and dirty you paid someone. When I change oil I actually spend the time while the oil is draining to check things that should be checked regularly, like belts, hoses, suspension, wheel bearings, lights, etc. I also will take care of things like knocking some of the dust and dirt out of the air filter, and changing the power steering fluid that is in the reservoir, charging the battery all the way, greasing the wheel bearings. Now add in that I can do a full synthetic fluid change for about $50 on a vehicle that has a 7 quart oil capacity and takes a rather expensive canister filter. The 45 minutes I spend changing oil I come out ahead since I would spend about 45 minutes to go get it changed and get back from the rapid oil change place and they do a shitty job which costs more and likely they would cross thread the drain plug.
Time to offend someone
Confirmation Bias is your friend.
Those are not 45 degree angles.
It will happen.
That's why I came in this thread - one of the reasons I like building my own machines is the complete lack of bloatware. How are Alienware machines in that regard, since they're controlled by Dell are they packed with useless shit I don't want or need? Is it finally time for me to order something pre-built, or is the landscape still basically the same?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
You misspelled "experience".
"Experience" together with "As someone who owns an Alienware laptop".
This is weak even for trolling.
It's the geek version of holding a gun sideways on one hand and $20 in single dollar bills on the other.
Shame that the case looks like it's made from the plastic used in $10 cases. Instead of ABS, or metal or something that wont break by looking at it sideways.
(Sits down at new uber-Alienware.)
"Jimmy, why aren't you doing anything?"
"All the current MMOs suck. The only fun ones are ancient and boring, like WoW, or dead, like City of Heroes."
"There will be a CoH clone soon."
"Maybe. In two years. Everything now is a god damned action pew pew MMO with no soul. Ever feel alone in a crowd of a few dozen other players? Somehow these fuckers manage it with trivial soloability."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I had a much longer response typed out but lost it.. meh.
DIY isn't always about saving money, sometimes it's about customization and getting exactly what you want. I baked my first loaf of bread ever last night (without aid of a bread machine), total labor was about 30 minutes spread across 4 hours. I mixed fresh chopped spinach into the dough and topped it with some shredded chedder that was in the fridge and needed to get used. I now have spinach chedder wheat bread to make lunch with for the rest of the week and probably part of next. In this instance, it also saved me a trip to the store.
I started building my own cabinets and shelving units because it was difficult to find units at the store that could fit where we have space and serve the function we wanted them for. Next I plan on attempting a dining table, chairs, and maybe even a sofa. Hell, if I make the sofa, I might build in usb ports, maybe a laptop desk as well.
I got back into programming about a year ago so I could automate some repetitive tasks. The last language I dealt with was BASIC, many many many years ago. Getting into C++ and Java was a bit rough at first but didn't take too much effort. Am I going to be writing my own OS or drivers? No. Can I write some basic software to automate some repetitive tasks at home and work? Yes.
I've been building my own towers for about 20 years now. The first was a 386DX40 that dual booted MS-DOS and Linux. In all those years I have never spent more than a couple hours putting everything together and installing OS and drivers. I probably spent more time shopping around for parts and reading reviews/benchmarks. If I was just buying a prebuilt I'd still be shopping around and reading reviews/benchmarks. I think the only way a build could take longer than 2 hours is if you didn't have the necessary tools on hand and had never seen the insides of a PC before. For the 10 years I worked with PCs prior to building my first, I had opened every system I owned and taken a look inside, upgraded a couple of them myself and overall become familiar with most of the basic components, so I had a pretty good starting point when I did my first build.
"With 45-degree angled front and rear face plates, that are designed to direct control and IO up toward the user, in addition to better directing cool airflow in, while backside warm airflow is directed up and away from the rear of the chassis, this machine grabs your attention right away. There's nothing else like it on the market currently. Alienware might call it Triad, but we'd actually call it pretty bad-ass.
I would definently buy this gaming dektop pc, a good a a viable design , and a performance that is really uncomparable with other products.
I know that my league of legends match would work perfectly ,no lags,no screen freezing, it's a good price for a future investment.
Tractari Auto Iasi
You know, I'd be much happier about it if it had been only four hours of frustration followed by only six unplanned hours of troubleshooting, without the need to get different components when something mysteriously didn't work.
I have enough money to live quite comfortably, now and after retirement. I'd like more time. This means that I pay people to do some jobs I don't like to do that would take up more time than I like.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Its nice but as far as I can tell, there's literally no game out or coming that will stretch one 980GTX, let alone 3, so why do/buy this?