Alienware’s redesigned Area-51 is like the Mac Pro of gaming PCs

After a few years finding itself/getting a heavy-duty industrial makeover, Alienware’s well-respected (and, importantly, customizable) desktop gaming PC has returned. TheArea-51 isn’t small, but it now has a new triangular… hexagonal… something-between-the-two design, intentionally hewn that way to maintain airflow and keep it cool, even when positioned against a wall. It’s certainly come a long way since the tower desktop days of 2011. Given its size, two of the corners have handles to lug it around with — we hope you can bicep-curl 45 pounds though, because that’s how much it weights. It also looks nothing like Alienware’s incoming Steam Machine. Inside that space-age shell, there’s support for up to three full-length graphics cards, Intel’s best and brightest Core i7 six- and eight-core Haswell-E CPUs — all overclockable and liquid-cooled. All the above is backed up with DDR4 RAM support. The early announcement unfortunately didn’t cover pricing or release dates, but expect to see the machine later this year. Oh, and the new model also has nine separate light-up zones for customization. Because customization is key to victory in Counter-Strike. (It isn’t).