Alienware shows off its new Area-51 gaming desktop

Alienware makes PCs for serious gamers. That’s evident in a demo I saw of the Alienware Area-51 gaming desktop, which ships to retail Tuesday morning.

The first thing you notice about it is its “Triad” triangular design. The shape means it is really easy to access both the front and rear ports, but you won’t want to balance anything more than a cup of coffee on top of it. The triangle also enables the system to vent air upward much more easily than a traditional desktop tower computer does. It pulls fresh air in at the front and spits out warmed air diagonally from the chassis out the rear.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.