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Area 51 perfect dark4/8/2023 Some gamers need a truly portable setup, whether it’s because they live in a foot locker, or they actually travel a lot.) Gordon Mah Ung (External graphics cabinets are another answer, but they don’t work for everyone. With the Area-51m, Alienware designed a custom graphics module that-in theory-can be upgraded down the road by the owner. While there have been smaller companies that actively market upgrade paths (Eurocom deserves a shout out here), no major companies have taken this path and succeeded. With a laptop, you’re usually stuck with turning down visual quality settings or resolution until you can no longer stomach it, at which point you buy a new laptop. In a desktop, the easy answer to better graphics is to upgrade to a newer or faster card. The most important component of any gaming PC is the GPU. The Holy Grail: Alienware said it designed a custom GPU module that can be replaced down the road with a faster model. That said, the chances that Alienware would do all of this work without offering at least one useful CPU upgrade is very unlikely, because it has deeper insight than we do into what’s coming. Given Intel’s history of dumping sockets or chipsets overboard, however, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to do it. The other scenario is upgrading to a “10th gen” Core i7 or Core i9. The first is you buy the cheaper Core i7-8700 and upgrade to a Core i9-9900K down the road when they’re on fire sale. Z390 consumes more power than its mobile counterpart but offers far more expansion options, such as additional PCIe lanes and native 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2.Ī socketed processor typically means user upgrades, and two scenarios make sense. The motherboard of the Alienware Area-51m R1 features four SO-DIMM slots, two M.2 slots, and a standard LGA-1151 socket for the desktop CPU.īecause this is a transplant of a desktop CPU, Alienware also pairs it with a desktop Z390 chipset instead of the more common HM370 used in most gaming laptops. You can see both CPUs compared here on Intel’s ARK. What that gets you is 8 cores instead of 6, and and a little more clock speed (5GHz, rather than 4.8GHz) compared to the fastest laptop CPU, the Core i9-8950HK. With the Area-51m, Alienware taps a standard desktop Core i9-9900K desktop CPU in an LGA1151 socket. That meant the ability to swap out the CPU down the road was impossible without also switching the motherboard-which, while technically possible, financially made no sense. Beginning with the 5th-generation Broadwell chips, Intel dumped socketed CPUs for all-mobile CPUs. Once upon a time, most large gaming laptops used mobile socketed CPUs. First, let’s get into the socketed CPU and why it matters. There are two standout features on the Alienware Area-51m: the replaceable desktop CPU, and the replaceable GPU. The Area-51m features Thunderbolt 3 along with an Alienware Amplifier port on the rear. However, it’s almost a half-inch deeper than comparable laptops thanks to its signature-Alienware big tuckus. You may also be shocked to find that the Area-51m is relatively small, at least in width and height.
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