On the high-end of things, the Alienware Area-51 is already one of the more powerful prebuilt gaming PCs you can buy. With E3 2017 well underway, however, Dell is stepping things up in a big way by adding the latest powerhouse CPUs from both AMD and Intel to the mix.
On the AMD side of things, there's the new Alienware Area-51 Threadripper edition. As the name implies, this configuration comes with AMD's recently announced 16-core, 32-thread Threadripper CPU. That's an awful lot of power for gaming alone, but Dell is positioning this as a true enthusiast PC built for not only 4K and 8K gaming, but for streaming and VR.
If Intel is more your bag, Dell is equipping the Area-51 with Intel's new Skylake-X chips. Acting as sort of the super high-end of Intel's chip range, the Skylake-X chips (in i7 and i9 varieties) come clocked at up to 4.5GHz with as many as 10 cores. Like its Threadripper-based Area-51, Dell is targeting this one at anyone looking to power 4K and 8K gaming, along with streaming and VR.
Aside from the new processor options, the Area-51 can be stacked with up to triple AMD (up to RX580) and dual NVIDIA (up to GTX 1080 Ti) graphics cards, up to 64GB of quad-channel DDR4 XMP RAM, and speedy M.2 solid state drive (SSD) storage options. All of that is packed into the Area-51's unique chassis, with color-coded accents depending on whether you pick team Intel or Team AMD.
There's no word on pricing yet, but Dell promises we get details soon. That said, it's probably wise not to expect these to come cheap. As for availability, the Threadripper Edition Area-51 is due out on July 27, while the Intel Skylake-X series config is yet to be determined. If you're looking for Threadripper in a prebuilt PC, it seems Dell will be your only option, thanks to an exclusivity deal with AMD.
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Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the Editor in Chief for Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. Got a hot tip? Send it to daniel.thorp-lancaster@futurenet.com.
