Alienware Area 5. Review. The good. Functional, eye catching chassis. Excellent graphics and overall performance. Runs cool and quiet during gaming. Considerably cheaper than the competition. M17x_laptop/command1.jpg' alt='Alienware Software Download For Windows 7' title='Alienware Software Download For Windows 7' />The bad. Not as many configuration options as the competition. Verdict. The Alienware Area 5. Meet the mother ship of gaming rigs. Snow_Leopard_Theme_Windows_7.png' alt='Alienware Software Download For Windows 7' title='Alienware Software Download For Windows 7' />In the Area 5. Alienware has translated its trademark space age aesthetic into tower form a beastly, 5. Nvidia Ge. Force GTX 9. LEDs. The Area 5. K resolution, and it keeps quiet while doing so. Priced at 4,5. 49 as configured starting at 1,6. Our Configuration. Design. Befitting its brand, the Area 5. If youre familiar with the companys current line of laptops, youll immediately notice the similarities between the towers plastic gray steel reinforced side panels with the trio of otherworldly customizable LED strips and the notebooks lids. Alienware does a remarkable job of mixing the familiar and foreign, as the tower looks like nothing youve ever seen before. Credit Jeremy Lips Toms Guide. Both panels can be removed via a pair of release latches, just in case you need to access the towers interior to gaze at the motherboard and the trio of Nvidia Ge. Force GTX 9. 80 cards. The panels are easy to remove and reattach they snap in and out of place, which should come in handy when youre swapping out components, to keep the tower fairly future proof. Instead of a boring, rectangular tower, the Area 5. Dubbed the Triad chassis, the unique shape is both functional and fashionable, allowing air to reach the rear ports and vents that would normally be obstructed by a wall. The functional form extends to the top of the tower, with the top of the rig functioning as a sturdy handle. MORE Best Gaming Desktops. On the front of the Area 5. Closer examination of the panel reveals a hidden crisscross pattern. Toward the top of the panel sits a large, glowing alien head, which removes any doubt that this is an Alienware system. A pair of LED strips wraps around the panel, completing the Tron like look. Measuring 2. 2. 4 x 2. Area 5. 1 takes up a significant amount of space. The extraterrestrial monster manages to dwarf the Maingear Shift 2. Origin PC Millennium 2. Dell electronics and accessories page has customer reviews, hot dealsoftheday and popular categories to help quickly locate the right products. Description Driver Download Intel Chipset Installation Utility for ICH9 Version 9. Chipset Download AMD HighDefinition Video Graphics Card Version 8. However, at 5. 9 pounds, the Area 5. Install Gnome Control Center Ubuntu Wallpaper. Millennium 6. 0 pounds and the Shift 6. Alien Command Center. If it doesnt glow, then its not Alienware. As the company has done with some of its other devices, Alienware has preinstalled its Alien Command Center software on the Area 5. The ACC includes several helpful utilities, giving you the ability to do things like create custom shortcuts, adjust power settings and, of course, customize the towers lighting. As it lets me unleash my inner rave kid, Alien. FX continues to be my favorite Alienware software. I created a multihued color theme from the 2. Skrillex would be proud of. You can also create lighting themes for system events for example, when you receive an email or when the tower is in sleep mode. The Thermal Controls feature allows gamers to configure the Area 5. Alien. Fusion lets you adjust the power settings. Alien. Adrenaline gives you the ability to create custom shortcuts that launch with a designated game. For example, when I played Bio. Shock Infinite, I set one of my custom color themes to launch along with XSplit Gamecaster which I installed myself. Lastly, theres OC Controls, which provides a quick and easy method to overclock the processor and DRAM. Configurations My review configuration of the Alienware Area 5. It comes loaded with powerful goodies, such as a 3. GHz Intel Core i. K processor 6 core with 1. GB of RAM a 2. 56. GB SSD with a 4. TB, 6. K rpm hard drive and three Nvidia Ge. Force GTX 9. 80 GPUs in SLI configuration with 4. GB of VRAM each. Credit Jeremy Lips Toms Guide. If thats too rich for your blood, you can go for the 1,6. GHz Intel Core i. K CPU with 8. GB of RAM a 2. TB, 7,2. 00 rpm hard drive and AMD Radeon R9 2. GB of RAM. MORE Best Gaming Headsets. Gamers looking for the crme de la crme experience will want to check out the 5,6. That hefty sum buys you a 3. GHz Intel Core i. K CPU 6 core 1. GB of RAM a 2. GB SSD with a 4. TB, 6. K rpm hard drive and two Nvidia Ge. Force GTX Titan Z GPUs in SLI with 1. GB of VRAM each. Ports. Got a peripheral The Area 5. Youll find a pair of USB 3. Blu ray readerDVD writer, and jacks for a headset and headphones. Credit Jeremy Lips Toms Guide. The rear of the tower is where youll find most of the ports, including four USB 2. USB 3. 0 ports. Between the three GPUs, theres a trio of HDMI ports, three DVI ports and nine Display. Port ports, so you can set up a multidisplay extravaganza thats only been witnessed in the most fevered of gamers dreams. Credit Jeremy Lips Toms Guide. For audio, you have a coaxial SPDIF connector, an optical SDIF connector, jacks for LR speakers, Surround LR and CenterSubwoofer LFE. Rounding out the ports are the security lock slot and the massive power jack. In case youre having trouble plugging in your various gadgets, Alienware was kind enough to add a small light to illuminate the rear panel. A small button on the upper right side of the panel switches the light on and off. Graphics and 4. K Gaming. When it comes to GPUs, three is never a crowd. Outfitted with a trio of Nvidia Ge. Force GTX 9. 80 GPUs with 4. GB of VRAM each in SLI configuration, the Alienware Area 5. Playing 4. K games on the Area 5. As I made my way through Shangri La in Far Cry 4, even the most unpleasant scenarios revealed an unsettling beauty. I grimaced at a recently beheaded body, the mouth still frozen in a silent scream, with small droplets of blood frozen in time. The tower delivered consistent performance throughout my play through, averaging 3. K on ultra settings. Metro Last Lights ruined subway system looked eerily beautiful in 4. K. The Area 5. 1 served up 1. The Maingear Shift fared somewhat better, at 1. Origin PC Millennium produced frame rates of 8. Both the Maingear Shift and the Origin PC Millennium are equipped with three GTX 9. GPUs, albeit not in SLI configuration. MORE Best Gaming Laptops. On Bio. Shock Infinite, the Area 5. The Shift notched an impressive 3. Millennium hit 2. When we switched the games effects level to high, the Area 5. However, it wasnt enough to top the Millennium 2. Shift 2. 37 fps. During the resource intensive Metro Last Light benchmark, the Area 5. It beat the 1. 21 fps average, but not the Millenniums 1. At the highest settings, the Area 5. Shifts 8. 2 fps. Performance. Overclocked to within an inch of its life, the Alienware Area 5. GHz Intel Core i. K processor 6 core with 1. GB of RAM has plenty of multitasking muscle to spare. Despite running Far Cry 4 and Bio. Shock Infinite simultaneously in the background, I could still stream an episode of Once Upon A Time on Netflix and download Battlefield Hardline without a hint of lag. The Area 5. 1 produced 2. Geekbench 3, which measures overall performance. That was enough to breeze past the 1. However, it couldnt hold a candle to the Origin PC Millennium 3 GHz Intel Core i. X or the Maingear Shift 3. GHz Intel Extreme Core i. X, which hit 3. 2,2. Credit Jeremy Lips Toms Guide. Armed with a 2. 56. GB SSD with a 4. TB, 6. K rpm hard drive, the Area 5. GB of multimedia files at a relatively swift 2. MBps, matching the Millennium 4. TB hard drive, 1. TB SSD and beating the 1. MBps average. The Shift two 2.