Dell's Alienware segment has refreshed its top-of-the-line gaming PC, the Area-51 ALX. At the center is the option of a quad-core, 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, overclocked for even greater performance to 4GHz; to avoid corresponding overheating problems, Alienware has equipped all ALX computers with liquid cooling. Motherboards, meanwhile, can now be configured with up to 4GB of 1,600MHz Corsair DDR3 RAM.

Cooling may be particularly important in tandem with new video options, which give buyers the choice of two Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards in ATI's CrossFireX SLI mode, or two GeForce 9800 GX2 cards in Nvidia's Quad SLI format. Prices for the new ALX configurations are extremely high, however, beginning at $6,159 or $185 per month, and yes, that's without the inclusion of a monitor or speakers.

Alienware refreshes Area-51 ALX with 4GHz CPU