Alienware’s Area-51 prebuilt gaming PC can now use an RTX 5090, if you’ve got the cash

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Alienware Area-51 reboot ever since Dell teased it at CES. It looked sharp, had decent specs, but for a while, your only GPU option was the RTX 5080. That changed, and honestly, it changed for the better. You can now get it with an RTX 5090 paired with Intel’s new Core Ultra 9 285K, and yes, the starting price is $5,499.99. It’s not cheap, but if you’re aiming for a high-end rig without spending weeks chasing down parts or dealing with shipping delays, it’s one of the more straightforward options out there.

This thing comes fully loaded: 32GB of DDR5-6400 RAM, a 2TB Gen4 NVMe SSD, liquid cooling, and a 1,500W platinum-rated PSU to keep it all from setting your house on fire. The CPU cooler is a 360mm AIO, which sounds excessive until you realize how much heat that chip and GPU combo can generate. I like that it’s ready to go out of the box. Dell’s estimated ship date is early April, and I value that kind of predictability. I’ve played the “prebuilt purgatory” game before and it’s not fun.

The chassis has been overhauled too. It’s cleaner, better ventilated, and less likely to turn into a dust terrarium. They moved the front panel I/O to the top, removed the side vents, and stretched the tempered glass across the entire side panel. I think it’s a good-looking case, and I don’t say that lightly because most gaming towers either try too hard or look like they were designed by someone stuck in 2014.

Alternative RTX 5090 Builds

If I only cared about gaming performance and wanted to save some cash, I’d be looking at those Skytech Prism 4 or Legacy builds with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and the same GPU for $4,799.99. They don’t look as polished, and the lead times aren’t great, but they’ll do the job. Maingear’s MG-1 is another solid option if you want boutique quality and don’t mind waiting a few weeks for the build.

As for the RTX 5090, I get it—it’s absurd. It’s also the only GPU out right now that feels like it was built with the next three years of gaming in mind. You’re getting 32GB of GDDR7, a noticeable jump in performance over the 4090, and DLSS 4 for the games that support it. Is it overkill? Absolutely. That’s sort of the point.