Not to be outdone by Acer and its enthusiast-oriented “Predator” series PCs, Dell has revamped and re-launched its high-end Alienware Area-51 ALX desktop system which now includes an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 CPU overclocked to 4 GHz.

The company is describing the 4GHz overclock as the chip’s “maximum stable output”, and with that kind of power, it’s not surprising to hear that the new Area-51 ALX comes standard with AlienIce high-performance liquid cooling to keep it from melting down. On the graphics front, users can choose between Nvidia Quad SLI featuring dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 cards or an ATI CrossFireX configuration with dual ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards.

Rounding out the system’s performance is up to 4GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600MHz memory, and the option of two 64 GB SSD drives as well as an Ageia physics card and a network accelerator card. Of course, all this power will cost you a ridiculous sum that goes upwards $5,549. All in all, the new Area-51 ALX is a step in the right direction for Dell as it strives to mark a difference between the XPS and Alienware brands.