This year’s Consumer Electronics Show has been surprisingly interesting with some simple yet innovative tech on showcase, specifically in the PC domain. Both Asus and Acer introduced a unique perspective to portable gaming, and now we have Dell showcasing an Alienware gaming notebook that is said to be upgradable.
The new Area 51m is a first of its kind laptop that is promised to come user-replaceable processor, graphics card, storage, and RAM. For starters, it features a desktop-class Intel processor so you can choose between Intel’s 8th-Gen i7-8700, or 9th Gen i7-9700K, or i9-9900K. There is a 17.3-inch display with various options including 1080p resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, G-Sync support at 60Hz, 144Hz with G-Sync support, 144Hz with Tobii eye tracking, or 144Hz with both of the features. The machine features Intel’s desktop Z390 chipset and you can put a 1TB 2.5-inch hybrid drive and up to two 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSDs.
The notebook comes in a sleek and minimalistic design with a striking oval RGB-LED light on the back, along with an RGB backlit keyboard. The bottom lid can be opened to access the various part, just like a desktop PC.
So you can basically upgrade most of the components, but there’s one problem. The notebook is being offered with a Graphics Form Factor (DGFF) GPU slot for Nvidia’s new RTX-series cards up to a GeForce RTX 2080. What this means is that the chip sits on a custom board, so technically one can only upgrade the GPU from say an RTX 2060 to a 2080. Now that is not the kind of upgradability we wanted, but it sounds like a good start.
Dell has said that while they cannot guarantee if a user can upgrade to a graphics card series that comes after the RTX, but there is a possibility if and only if it is compatible with DGFF.
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