Alienware Area-51 Gaming Laptops Are on Sale for Labor Day, Including an RTX 5090 for $3299

The Area-51: new color, curvy design, metal construction, and upgraded cooling

New for 2025, the Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop features an anodized aluminum shell for both the lid and bottom chassis with a gorgeous iridescent finish. The frame is made of a durable and lightweight magnesium alloy. Cooling has been upgraded with generous amounts of copper and a new thermal interface material to better transfer heat away from your hottest components as well as more fans and bigger cutouts for greater airflow. Dell claims that the laptop can handle a higher power ceiling of up to 240W TDP without raising acoustics.

Design-wise, the Area 51 has a sleeker, more contoured shape compared to previous models, with rounded edges and soft corners replacing the traditional squared off design. The hinges are internally positioned so that they’re near invisible. There’s a transparent window on the undercarriage to show off the internal components. As befits an Alienware laptop, there’s plenty of RGB illunimation, although most of it can be turned off if you want your laptop to be a bit more subtle.

I would recommend adding on the mechanical keyboard upgrade if the price is right

The mechanical keyboard on the Alienware Area-51 laptop is excellent, but it isn’t included as standard. The cost to add the upgrade varies depending on the model. If you see the option availabe for $50-$100, it’s a worthwhile investment.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX is a top performing CPU

Every model in this list is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, which boasts a max turbo frequency of 5.4GHz with a whopping 24 cores and 40MB total L2 cache. According to Passmark, this is the best mobile gaming CPU available right now, handily beating out AMD’s Ryzen AI Max Pro 390.

The RTX 5090 mobile is the best GPU for gamers and creators

The RTX 5090 is the most powerful mobile gaming CPU available and performs about 15% better than the RTX 5080. Currently you can get an Alienware Area-51 RTX 5090 gaming laptop for as low as $3,299.99. It’s about $400 more expensive than the RTX 5080 model, which is a fair price premium for a more powerful graphics card that also has a lot more VRAM (24GB vs 16GB). The extra memory is useful for 4K gaming as well as generative AI.

The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 mobile offer the best performance for your dollar

As expensive as these laptops are, you don’t want to spend even more on trivial upgrades. The RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU boasts performance on par with the RTX 4080 but with the added benefit of faster GDDR7 RAM and DLSS 4.0. The RTX 5080 is about 15%-20% more powerful than the RTX 5070 Ti. It also happens to be about 5% more powerful than the RTX 4090 and has the same amount of VRAM (16GB). Although both GPUs will run the latest games at high framerates, the Area-51 RTX 5080 laptop costs just $100 more than an RTX 5070 Ti laptop. The upgrade might still be worth it, especially if you want to connect an external 4K monitor or you want to run ultra-fast framerates (144fps or higher).

More Alienware Labor Day Deals

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.