Home Technology Dell announces powerful updates to its Alienware gaming laptops

Dell announces powerful updates to its Alienware gaming laptops

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If the launch of the Unreal 5 gaming engine is anything to go by, we’re in for an exciting time when it comes to gorgeous looking games. To make the most of those sorts of games, it means that you’re going to likely be in need of a bit of a hardware boost. For console gamers, those will be coming in the form of the next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony. For PC gamers though, the options are a lot more numerous. If you want to mix that theme with some portability, then you are most definitely thinking of a proper gaming laptop and Dell wants to make sure that they are going to pack the best hardware possible to ensure their new Alienware notebooks are prepared for the future.

The company’s entire lineup of gaming laptops – the Area-51m, the m17, and the m15 – are getting overhauled with updated specs, including Intel’s new 10th Gen chips and Nvidia’s latest GPUs, as detailed by The Verge. Alienware is offering four processor options on the devices that all take advantage of Intel’s new chipset technology.

For the top of the range 51m, there’s the entry-level Core i7-10700 (eight cores, 2.9GHz base clock speed with up to a 4.8GHz boosted speed) and the unlocked Core i7-10700K, which boosts base clock speed to 3.8GHz and can boost speed up to 5.1GHz. However, if that is not enough and you want to throw even more shade on your friends, there is also an option for the 10-core Core i9-10900 (2.8GHz base speed and 5.2GHz boost speed) along with the unlocked Core i9-10900K, Intel’s most powerful 10th Gen desktop chip with a 3.7GHz base speed and 5.3GHz maximum boosted speed. As for RAM, even faster RAM modules are available with 2933MHz DDR4 configurations at up to 64GB and NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD drives of up to 2TB and even more storage space if you add a traditional hard drive in with a RAID configuration.

Of course, these are gaming machines though and so blindly fast processor speed are not enough and GPUs are essential and so this top-of-the-range bat will also offer a choice between Nvidia’s GTX 1660 Ti (with 6GB of memory), RTX 2060 (with 6GB of memory), RTX 2070 Super (with 8GB of memory), or an RTX 2080 Super (also with 8GB of memory). There’s also the newly added AMD option of the AMD Radeon RX 5700M (with 8GB of memory). All these GPUs will be using Dell’s DGFF (Dell Graphics Form Factor) modules, which, in theory, allows them to be easily removed and upgraded like a desktop PC, future-proofing these laptops even further when graphics technology inevitably jumps again.

A for the “cheaper” m15 and m17 models, they will be getting three choices of CPU: the quad-core i5-10300H, the six-core i7-10750H, and the 8-core i9-10980HK, with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM. Storage options range from 256GB to 2TB of PCIe M.2 SSD storage, with options for up to 4TB in a RAID0 configuration or 4.5TB in a RAID0 Plus setup.

Outside of processing power, the laptops will also come with improved screens offering improved frame and resolution rates along with improved batteries, though given the amount of power these things will require to operate games don’t expect much improvement to battery life.

Of course, all this is superfluous because while these machines are massively powerful and put even the next generation consoles to shame, they will also cost several organs to even afford and so consider it just another on the list of cool technology that you will never get to play with.  The cheapest m15 model will cost $1500 while the 51m will set you back a whopping $3050. Throw in import tax and our crippling exchange rate and you will need to take out a mortgage just to get these laptops. Still, if you are somehow rich and bot feeling benevolent enough to pass it on to me, you can certainly buy these devices and feel comfortable that even well into the next console generation you can continue to talk about your superior race.

Last Updated: May 14, 2020

One Comment

  1. Iskape

    May 15, 2020 at 07:55

    And they’ll cost a small fortune! I like the new idea of components being upgradeable though. Could be the start of something great. That is of course always been the biggest issue for me (aside from the prohibitively high cost of the laptops) – no real upgrade possibilities aside from memory and harddrives.

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