Alienware Area 51 Extreme

Alienware is well known in gaming circles for producing fast, highly configurable PCs, with hardware that any self-respecting gamer would choose if they were building their own system. The top-of-the-range version of the Area 51 Extreme we looked at features Intel's latest 3.4GHz Extreme Edition Pentium 4.

Big, powerful and brutal-looking, in much the same way as a Nissan Skyline GT-R, the Area 51 is a complete contrast to the small form factor systems that seem to be all the rage lately.

It comes in a full-size ATX tower complete with a 480w quiet power supply.

The 'alien head' case design is certainly a conversation point, but whatever your opinion of the design, you can't argue with the finish. The Piano Black option or, as Alienware calls it, Space Black finish, is flawless but there is a range of other colours.

Powering this version of the Area 51 is one of Intel's latest high-performance processors, the 3.4GHz version of the Extreme Edition P4. The only difference between this and the original 3.2EE is the speed increase. The 512KB of Level 2 cache and 2MB of Level 3 cache remain the same, so there should be no complaints about lack of performance.

The processor sits in an Asus P4C800-E motherboard which is based on Intel's i875P chipset. It supports dual-channel memory and two of the four Dimm slots are occupied by 512MB Corsair DDR400 modules. This resulted in a score of 205 in Sysmark 2004, which was similar in speed to Evesham's FX-53 PC.

The Asus motherboard offers five PCI slots, although only two remain free. However, as the board has integrated Gigabit Lan and Alienware has installed a Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, it's hard to know what else you would want to add. The board even has a Wifi slot for Asus' Wireless Lan cards.

Once inside the case, the attention to detail is outstanding - it's one of the best built PCs we have ever seen. Using the Alienware Cable Management system (worth the extra £3), every cable is clipped or tied out of the way. Aside from looking good, it helps in cooling down the internals as the airflow is unrestricted.

Sitting in the 8x AGP slot is a 256MB Nvidia Geforce FX5950 Ultra graphics card, which comes with Alienware's Alienice cooling system. Despite the presence of no fewer than nine fans, the Area 51 isn't as noisy as you may expect. Although it's no silent PC, it is quieter than many an ordinary desktop with just three fans.

Two optical drives occupy two of the four 5.25in drive bays while the two drive cages have a single hard drive in each, and with four more bays left there is plenty of room to add more drives if you want a Raid array or a multi-card reader to add to the floppy drive.

Storage is provided by two 80GB Seagate Barracuda Sata (Serial ATA) disks which have spin speeds of 7,200rpm and 8MB caches. In the Area 51 we reviewed these were set up as separate drives but there is a host of options including Raid 0 and 1. Optical storage comes in the form of a Plextor PX-708A Dual-format DVD burner and a Lite-on 52-speed CD-RW. Also supplied with the Area 51 is a Microsoft Multimedia keyboard and Intellimouse which are available in a range of colours to match the system box.

The Area 51 we saw came with Windows XP Professional pre-installed, but XP Home is an option. As configured it comes with Alien Autopsy, an automated technical support request system, and a three-year warranty, backed by a 24-hour free telephone technical support service. If you like to stand out in a crowd, want the ultimate gaming experience and have deep pockets then the Alienware is tough to beat.

Contact: Alienware 0800 279 9751
www.alienware.co.uk

Specifications:

• Windows XP Pro
• Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition
• 1GB DDR PC3200
• Asus P4C800-E motherboard
• 2 80GB hard disks
• Plextor PX-708A DVD/RW +/-
• Lite-on CD-RW
• Nvidia FX5950 Ultra graphics card