Alienware announces the 2nd generation of Area-51m gaming laptops-- the Area-51m R2, a machine bringing the latest Intel Coffee Lake platform, with processor options reaching up to the Core i9-10900K.
The Area-51m remains an oversized, 17.3-inch machine one can generously describe as "portable." The aforementioned processor found inside is a desktop-class number customers can overclock up to 5.3GHz, and makes the first Alienware laptop with a 10-core chip, at least according to Dell. On the graphics side the company offers a choice ranging from the AMD Radeon RX5700 8GB up to the Nvidia RTX 2080 Super GPU, while the display comes with either a 300Hz refresh rate with Tobii eye-tracking or 4K resolution support. Finishing off the machine are up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of Raid 0 storage.
Such a machine runs toasty, so Alienware packs "Cryo-Tech" cooling, vapor chambing cooling and, in select configurations, a 12-phase voltage regulator. The result is a hefty machine weighing nearly 5kg, but but one with plenty of I/O, including x3 USB-A ports, x1 USB-C port, x1 Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port, x1 HDMI 2.0b, x1 MiniDisplayPort 1.4 and both microSD and SD card readers.
The Area-51m R2 does mark an end to the promise of the first model in the line, mind. When the Area-51m first launched back at CES 2019 the main selling point was upgradeable internals, with a socket-swappable processor and a GPU set in a DGFF (Dell Graphics Form Factor) slot. However the change in socket specification of 10th gen Core processor makes them incompatible with older motherboards, and while Area-51m owners can buy GPU upgrade kits, they cannot do the same for the CPU. The release of a 2nd generation version only cements the death of such capability.
The Area-51m R2 ships on June 2020.
Go Alienware
