Turns out that Alienware's new upgradeable desktop is only fully upgradeable with an optional $35 conversion kit

Alienware is infamous for putting out snazzy rigs with limited upgraded paths. This CES, we thought the gaming brand had turned a corner with its new fully upgradeable Area-51 desktop rig but there’s an asterisk next to that saying ‘only if you pay $35 more’.

On Dell’s website, the AlienFX board cable conversion kit has gone live and for $35, you get a power switch wiring cable, fan power bridge wiring cable, USB dongle extension, and a bag with three nuts. This can be used to ‘convert’ your motherboard of choice for use in the Area-51 AAT2250 case.

We were told about the new upgradeable rig at CES but no mention was made of a special set of cables to actually get it all running. The page for the new conversion kit says it “enables connectivity between the Area-51 chassis and a 3rd party motherboard while enabling all of the features specific to the Area-51 chassis such as AlienFX lighting, fan controls, Front I/O functionality, and powering on the system”.

If your upgrade choice isn’t an ATX12VO motherboard, you will need to also buy a new power supply. However, any ATX12VO ATX or mATX motherboard will work, as long as you have the cables.

However, if you happen to own an old Area-51 rig, the new conversion kit won’t work but we haven’t seen an Area-51 rig since the R4 model in 2017 and the new Area 51 case is very different to what we’ve seen before.

Dell's AlienFX board cable conversion kit for Alienware desktop PCs — (Image credit: Dell)

This announcement leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, which is a shame as the new Area-51 desktop rigs look pretty impressive. Alienware claims it is “our most quiet, coolest running, and highest performance desktop” due to better thermals and stronger performance. Equipped with the latest RTX 50 series cards, the chassis reportedly has positive pressure airflow, which is where more air is being brought in than exhausted. This means dust and hot air isn’t sucked back in as a result.

The new Area-51 rigs are said to run up to 13% cooler and 45% quieter than previous models. It seems like, if you plan on one day upgrading your rig with a new motherboard, you just have to factor the cost of that extra $35 onto the final price of the rig.

GPU, RAM, and SSD upgrades don’t seem to have restrictions like the motherboard and each part has a QR code next to it, to show you how to upgrade. These are all very neat touches on a rig that looks very pretty, but the motherboard is the one let down for a rig that sounds very good in concept.

This feels like a two steps forward, one step back approach for Alienware. Any amount of modularity to a rig is still better than nothing, and there are some good upgrades here, but it’s not quite fully upgradeable out of the box.