Alienware has built some of the easiest-to-open toolless gaming PCs around but for years, the Dell-owned brand has stifled their upgrade potential by limiting them to Dells own proprietary power supplies and motherboards.But the 2025 Alienware Area-51, an 80-liter tower just introduced at CES in Las Vegas, finally ditches the proprietary parts in favor of standard ATX components. Even though the tempered glass sided chassis features fancy compartments for liquid cooling and power supplies, its no longer a hexagonal monster or even a proprietary tower: itll come with a standard power supply, standard based motherboard, and even feature standard fan mounting locations. And even though theres a dedicated daughterboard to easily control and cable manage its lighting, fans, I/O, and power switch, Dell will offer a conversion kit to make it work with third-party motherboards.You can see the daughterboard here. Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeWith this edition, we are returning to our roots with a machine that caters to the desires of PC gaming enthusiasts and longtime Alienware fans who have a deep appreciation for technology and a can-do attitude for manually customizing their build to their needs, writes brand manager Matt McGowan, promising the ability to make serious upgrades for years to come.Alienware Area-51 key detailsBeyond the shift in strategy, whats this gaming PC all about? Like the Alienware Aurora, its ditched the spaceship look for that new stadium loop design language with tempered glass sideIntel Z890 motherboard comes with up to 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 285KFits ATX and mATX motherboardsNvidias next-gen GeForce GPUs; room for 4-slot, 450mm cardUp to 64GB DDR5 RAM and up to 8TB of PCIe SSD storagePCIe x16 Gen 5 GPU slot and PCIe Gen 5 SSD slot (2TB Gen 5 SSD is an option)850W Gold or 1500W Platinum ATX PSUsNo exhaust fans; active intake with at least four fans, passive exhaust, gaskets to prevent leakage240mm or 360mm liquid cooling options for CPU, room for aftermarket 420mm heat exchangerThree SSD slots, two 2.5-inch drive bays, one 3.5-inch drive bayWi-Fi 7 (2x2), 2.5G ethernet standard2x 10Gbps USB-C ports, 2x 5Gbps USB-A ports, and audio jacks up top2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2x 10Gbps USB-C ports, and an assortment of six slower USB-A ports around back, plus audio and ethernetSeven lighting zonesWhy now? I asked McGowan, and his primary answer is that hes listening to his customers. Im talking with customers, reading reviews, understanding what the sentiment is in the market and where things are going, he tells The Verge, and what hes hearing is demand for standard mounting locations a demand so loud that Alienware decided to make a wholesale shift toward a fully upgradable computer.Thats not to say there werent reasons to go proprietary, or that Alienware is promising to do this on every PC. In fact, Alienware built its own nonproprietary ATX motherboard for this Alienware Area-51, and the new 2025 version of its smaller Aurora (a spec bump with new Nvidia and Intel chips) will still feature proprietary motherboards and power supplies, at least for now.McGowan says thats because of the leverage Dell gets with proprietary parts. If you go back years and years, there was a decision to take the power supply unit and go and drive commonality between our Dell Precision products and Alienware products, he explains. Dell got better prices that way and, he argues, more efficient, higher-quality power supplies, too, by unifying its supply chain and taking advantage of those economies of scale. And, he says, it allowed Dell to shrink the size of its PC cases at a time its commercial customers, in particular, valued a form factor aggressive chassis. Images: DellSo, does that mean the Alienware Aurora, the smaller and less expensive desktop that Dell is more likely to sell in volume, will get the ATX treatment, too? Were evaluating that for Aurora as well, McGowan tells me, but he isnt promising anything today. We have to hit an inflection point ... where we apply resources to go and redesign the internals of that chassis, he says. But Dell would need to see the numbers add up not just in terms of price, but the ratios of price, performance, size, and quality that would allow a new Aurora to compete. Theres a clear customer advantage around how much power we can put into a compact mini tower. The other [consideration] is cost related; when we get economies of scale across other Dell product and its something we can adopt with little impact on the gaming side, were going to take that and pass that savings on to the user, he says. Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeThis is far from Dells only shift in strategy this year in an attempt to become more consumer-friendly: its also killing off the XPS brand for Apple-like Pro and Pro Max product lines instead, and those Pro laptops will now all feature consumer-replaceable USB-C ports in addition to user-replaceable batteries.Alienware hasnt shared the entry price or configuration of the Area-51 quite yet but says itll ship later in Q1 starting at $4,499 with a high-end, next-gen Nvidia GPU. The company is also announcing a pair of new Area-51 laptops.