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Alienware relaunches Area-51 ALX desktop with overclocked 4GHz QX9770
Hold onto your frame rates folks, as Alienware has just relaunched its more-potent-than-ever Area-51 ALX desktop. The bona fide gaming rig packs a 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770, but rather than being satisfied with Intel's work, this thing comes overclocked to 4GHz -- it's "maximum stable output." As expected, you'll find the outfit's own High-Performance Liquid Cooling solution to keep things from turning into molten hot lava, and you'll also have your choice of twin NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GPUs or an ATI CrossFireX configuration with dual ATI Radeon 3870 X2 cards. Furthermore, you'll notice 4GB of DDR3 RAM, dual Ethernet ports, an optional Blu-ray burner, oodles of hard drive space and all the other high-end niceties you've come to expect from the company. Only problem? The $5,549 starting price that comes along with the 4GHz CPU and required 1,200-watt PSU.
Alienware brings quad graphics support to ALX CrossFireX
Believe it or not, Alienware's Aurora ALX rig was boasting quad SLI support two whole years ago. After yesterday's official launch of ATI's CrossFireX technology, now the ALX has another partner in quad GPU crime. Dubbed the Area-51 ALX CFX, this rig features a 3.0GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor, up to 4GB of RAM, a bevy of HDD choices, optional Blu-ray burner, a 1,000-watt power supply and of course, twin 1GB Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards (four GPUs in all). Granted, this thing will run you at least $5,649 as a CrossFireX-equipped rig, so think carefully if slicing into your son's college fund is really worth 4x the graphical mayhem.
Alienware introduces 4x Blu-ray drives for desktops
Alienware, never afraid of spec'ing its machines just a little bit ahead of the curve, has just introduced 4x Blu-ray drives into its Area-51 7500, Aurora 7500, Area-51 ALX, and Aurora ALX desktops, making the systems the first in the industry (or so they claim) to carry the faster drives. The new additions to the PCs will offer a significant performance increase in reading and writing Blu-ray discs (a 100 percent increase, in case you're not doing the math), which should make burning those massive discs just slightly more tolerable. Of course, the whole shebang is backward-compatible with CD and DVD discs, per typical Blu-ray spec, and will set you back an additional $600. Available right now.
