Get a whole RTX 5090 Alienware gaming PC for simply 17% greater than the GPU’s standalone value — 9800X3D beast with 32GB DDR5 and 1TB SSD drops beneath $4,450 at Dell, saving you an enormous $1,200

Put simply, there isn’t an alternative: this is as good as it can get for gaming on a consumer PC right now, with the ability to throw everything at it. 4K, ray tracing, graphics presets set to ultra: you’ll see high frame rates regardless. It’s also very expensive to buy separately right now, as our GPU price tracker will confirm, with the best price on an RTX 5090 that we can find at the point of publication costing $3,800 — around 83% of the cost of this entire machine.

Image 1 of 3

Take that GPU’s performance, and then dial it up with the 9800X3D. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, to give it its full title, was recently dethroned by the 9850X3D, but it continues to offer performance that almost any other CPU can’t beat. Intel isn’t coming close, and as the CPU benchmarks confirm, this 3D V-cache capable chip continues to deliver exceptional performance for gaming.

This 8-core, 16-thread processor uses AMD’s latest Zen 5 architecture and has a boost clock speed of up to 5.2 GHz. This is a fully unlocked CPU, too, so you can overclock it, which wasn’t possible in earlier 3D V-cache capable chips. It’s all down to that extra L3 cache, stacked beneath the CPU cores, closer to the integrated heat spreader, on a reconfigured die. For gaming, expect no bottlenecks from this processor. CPU-hungry games like Cyberpunk 2077 will run like a dream, even with intensive ray tracing enabled. Only the 9850X3D is better, but this processor is more energy efficient, using 30% less power.

This rig also comes with 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM, rated for 6,400 MT/s, with room to upgrade, along with a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD with the fastest Gen 5 speeds, which will give you space to install a few big AAA games, along with plenty of indies. A typical complaint about Dell PCs, including Alienware rigs, is that they don’t really conform to standard PC design specs, making them hard to upgrade. This new Area-51 design is different, as it uses industry-standard parts. It comes with a 1,500W PSU, along with a 360mm AIO cooler. You’ve also got a Dell issue keyboard and mouse thrown in to get you started.

Upgrading to 64GB RAM is possible, but it’ll cost you an extra $350. Likewise, a bigger SSD will cost you extra. If you’re going all-out, you might be tempted, but with the NAND flash pricing crisis affecting PC builders, compromise might be better. That’s fine, as either way, you’re getting a PC that will be able to play any game you throw at it, comfortably, for years to come.