Cracking open the Alienware Area-51 7500

By Mark W. Kaelin May 7, 2007, 4:52 AM PDT

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Cracking open the Alienware Area-51 7500

By Mark W. Kaelin

ntThe good folks at Alienware recently sent TechRepublic one of their Area-51 7500 gaming desktops for review. The configuration of this system includes the overclocked Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad CPU and the 768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra video card. Both the CPU and the GPU are liquid cooled — believe us when we say, this is not your office PC. We take a look inside this super-performing premium gaming system and drool over the components.
nt
ntThis system was supposed to be overclocked, that is what I asked for, but I’m not certain that it is. I’ll investigate.

ntnn

Unpacking

While the Alienware laptop PC we reviewed earlier this year shipped in an ordinary FedEx box, the desktop system came in a box with the familiar company logo.

Unpacking

Even the box inside the box has the logo.

Unpacking

The peripherals box contains the T-shirt, owner’s manual, mouse, keyboard, and various video connection cables.

Unpacking

One thing I noticed right away is that machine was wrapped in soft cloth instead of Styrofoam paper like so many other manufacturers use.

Angles

There are other colors available, but I prefer the black.

Cracking

Two DVI outputs as well as S-video.

Start it up

The LEDs are even functional — you can see where to load your Half-Life 2 disk even if it is otherwise pitch black.

With the LEDs, connecting your headphones to play a midnight match of Call of Duty without disturbing your spouse is a trivial task.

By Mark W. Kaelin

Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the information technology industry, software, hardware, gaming, finance, accounting, and technology geekdom for more than 30 years.

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