The Holy Grail of gaming laptops reviewed!

Gordon reviews Alienware's Area 51m, which packs a full desktop Core i9-9900k and RTX 2080 inside, and walks us through the benchmarks. He also gives us the inside scoop on Dell/Alienware's plan for it's replaceable graphics module.

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[adiesha_]

This is the best review of Alienware area-51m in YouTube!! Nice work !! 👍👍

[kornfreak]

Would love to see you guys do a review on the Alienware Area 51m R2.

[christophermartin]

Mine just arrived. I ordered the 2060 with intentions of upgrading next year or something. That said, I am shocked at just how well it runs. Great fps, great thermals. No throttling at all. It benchmarks as well as the desktop version and even keeps up with more expensive 2080 max Q laptops. As crazy as it sounds, I consider the $2400 I spent for the 144hz, GSync monitir and 2060 a pretty good deal.

[oukn]

I ordered one, dell has a 17% off coupon it was a steal.

[juiceboxer]

I wish there was a good review of the lower end one with the 2060

[jontoad]

I've had my Area 51m for almost a month now and i love it. i got the i9-9900k, RTX 2080, 32gb ram combo. i use it mostly like a desktop running an external Alienware ultrawide 34in 3440x1440 120hz G-sync monitor. i also use it to run a VR racing simulator setup with a Samsung odyssey VR headset and a steering wheel rig. it's a big upgrade from my old Alenware 17r2 laptop i was using to run the same sim racing setup that was bottle necked by the 5 year old CPU. i already have the Alienware graphics amplifier i was using with the old 17r2, so i can always stick a better graphics card in there in the future if i have to. or if future cards aren't available in the Dell GPU form factor. i'm stubborn and prefer laptops over desktops since i can use them to tune my car in the garage or on the front porch and other areas of the house. i probably could just keep using my old 17r2 to make tune changes on the car though. for me i didn't see the point in getting a non mobile desktop when this can do the job and be mobile, but i admit i probably won't want to take something this expensive when i travel either. lol.

[anthonyandthemachine]

This would be the computer for me if I had that kinda money. Laptops are just so cool to me. Y'all definitely gotta revisit this laptop in like 3 to 5 years to see how the upgrading stuff turned out.

[goshisanniichi]

The only way it makes sense LONG TERM is if they also make the mobo a standardized form factor and also allow them to be upgraded.

[lilenday]

Cpu and gpu thermals more in depth would be nice. That’s the main issue with putting a desktop grade cpu and gpu inside a laptop. Kinda disappointed you guys didn’t point this out. That’s the main concern for potential buyers. I have a Helios 500 with 8750h. Running pubg for 4-5 hours my cpu temp only gets to around 70-72C @3.9ghz and gpu temp never passes 60C. Can you guys include some type of real life gaming scenario to see the the actual temperature?

[FM-epis]

Well I'm stucked watching things I couldn't afford

[kelsealawrenson]

Really great review overall. All I hoped to hear was a little more about thermals, and a few more gaming benchmarks since you focused so heavily on this being the best possible gaming rig. But I appreciated all the extra discussion and analysis.

[xyz]

I've been using Eurocom (Clevo) laptops for years. My current model is the Sky X4E2 with a 7700K that shipped with a GTX 1060 6GB card (I got the 330W power adapter rather than the standard 230 as I planned to OC and anticipated the possibility of upgrading the GPU in the future; I just really couldn't afford the 1070 at the time and didn't see much need for it at 1080p). After around 2 years I finally got to the point where I decided the time was right to upgrade the graphics now that games at 1080p are requiring more graphics horsepower (games like Assassin's Creed, Shadow of the Tomb Raider etc.) so I pulled the trigger on the GTX 1070 8GB card and I couldn't be happier. It's a night and day difference, overclocks well (I have yet to test the limits, but so far I've gotten a Fire Strike score of 16, 571 for the system, 19, 760 for the graphics with an OC of +124MHz on the core and +426MHz on the VRAM and I keep the CPU at a full 4.6GHz across all cores full-time and my temps top out around the low~mid 80'sC (it was lower with the 1060, but I used Kryonaut originally and when I did the upgrade I used IC Diamond 7; I've already ordered some Kryonaut paste from Amazon to re-do the CPU and GPU). The upgrade was fairly straightforward, just a few screws, a mini power cable, some thermal pads and the paste and the rig was ready to rock. I wish the industry would adopt MXM as a standard and actually maintain a single standard (i.e. the same design/pinout/power etc. for cross-device/cross-generation compatibility) and I'm sure that someday they will adopt some kind of standard, especially as GPUs and CPUs become more efficient/cooler and more and more gamers migrate to gaming laptops for the added portability/flexibility vs desktops. They've already done it with the CPUs now that you can get a desktop chip in a standard socket without the CPU being soldered on the board (my 7700K is even delidded), so I really do think it's only a matter of time before these OEMs say enough is enough and adopt a standard across the board to make upgrading these systems much easier, at least for the more powerful/high end desktop replacement gaming rigs (the thin and light models have obvious limitations that would prevent them from adopting such standards). I was hoping that with NVIDIA's dedication to the mobile market with Pascal, things would get better and it would translate to more options, more standards and more flexibility for high end laptops, but unfortunately with Turing they're back to the same old tune of 'no upgrades for you!' which is really unfortunate, because I'm certain I'm not the only one who would be willing to purchase a newer gen card for my laptop if that was an option, especially if the price was reasonable.

[kostastheripper]

my only problem is that the screen is not 4k. do you suggest this or the m17 ??

[dannyberry]

Just received mine yesterday and pics and video do not do this laptop justice. It is absolutely gorgeous and a dream to type on. Ordered mine through HIDevolution with a delidded 9700k, 2080. Haven't had time to benchmark yet but will soon and will come back and link to results and thermals.

[TechWithSean]

11:00 that’s not true anymore. Some of the newer g-sync laptops let you disable it. The laptops never used a module like the desktops did. I think they could open up VRR for 144hz displays with a driver update, but they use it to let vendors have product segmentation.

[VeritechGirl]

man, that color scheme is gorgeous! 
It's like a stormtroopers gaming machine!

[Juang]

Hows the cooling ? I read CPU can get hot... I mean like 99c type of hot

[justinbeamon]

Why not compare it to the other laptops with the 9900k? The 2 from Clevo?

[dreadswizzard]

I saw somewhere that Dell was actually planning on allowing other companies to use their Alienware gpu standard to make it a universal standard unlike mxm.

[SK-riwn]

Any chance this laptop will ever get a 2080 TI upgrade kit? If it's a desktop replacement, then why not 2080 TI?