Exterior Design
The Alienware Area 51 7500 P2 chassis is massive. It measures about 25″x19″x10″ and uses molded plastic using high-gloss paint. You can pick from green, silver, and blue depending on your personal taste. Despite using plastic, the case is quite heavy measuring 52 lbs. on my bathroom scale, so moving this thing around isn’t very easy. Lugging it to a LAN party isn’t very practical unless you have a rolling cart. If you’re looking to bulk up, carrying the Area 51 up and down the stairs a few times should get you well on your way.

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To tell you the truth, I’ve never been a big fan of computer cases with crazy designs — thankfully the P2 chassis is done rather tastefully while having a unique characteristic.

The front of the case has a door that sits flush when closed, and swings open when you need access to the front panel. The front panel has your optical drive, two USB ports, a Firewire port, and headphone and microphone jacks. A nice feature is a 28-in-1 digital media reader/writer so you can easily transfer files from pretty much any memory card. When the system is turned on, the USB, Firewire, and audio jacks are lit so you can see where you’re going in a darkened room.

To power on the Area 51 7500, just give the alien head a press and the computer springs to life.

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All around the case are vents that allow the fans to pump cool air over the hot components inside. Even though the Area 51 7500 comes with a watercooler, you still need ample cooling for the two NVIDIA 8800 GTX inside (standard configuration is a single 7950 GT). Along all sides of the case you will find vents and fans on the inside to help cool and exhaust the interior.

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Going around to the back you have all your connections for your peripherals. There is a nice 120mm fan grill with an Alienware alien head in the middle. Along the expansion slots is a vent which will help with exhausting hot air away from the video cards.

The power supply does not have a rear blowing fan, but there is a fan on the power supply on the inside.

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