Back in January 2019 Alieware launched the Area-51m, a gaming laptop featuring upgradeable internals, a first from the Dell-owned company in 20 years. Now said upgrade kits are actually available, at least for the GPU.
The upgrade kits allow customers to replace the included graphics card with either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 or 2080, the same GPUs found in the highest-end Area-51m model. As such, they are aimed at buyers of the less powerful versions of the laptop. Each kit consists of the GPU in the proprietary Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF), together with a CryoTech 2.0 cooling system and a matching power supply. Installation by Dell technician is also included.
Laptop upgrades are a challenge, in good part because of a lack of standardisation leading to machines based on proprietary designs. The 17.3-inch Area-51m does have some features making it more upgrade-friendly, such as a desktop-class socketed CPU, regular SO-DIMMs and standard storage devices. However the GPU comes in the aforementioned proprietary form factor, if one Dell is providing upgrades for.
The Area-51m upgrade modules are available now.
