Laptops designed to be desktop replacements can be really interesting to look at, and the new Alienware Area 51m is certainly the most interesting design we’ve seen at CES for now.
The Area 51m has a completely new and unique design language which is elegant and agreeable. It’s not easy to make an 8.5 Lbs laptop look attractive, but Dell has done an amazing job on this one.
To justify its desktop replacement status, it has to be very powerful, and it is. It can accept a desktop CPU, up to the 8-core Intel Core i9-9900K. And since there’s a socket on the motherboard, you can even replace it later…
There are 4 SODIMM RAM slots, three simultaneous storage options, and even the WiFi module can be replaced if you want to (WiFi 6 is coming…).
The graphics processor (GPU) can be configured up to the NVIDIA GeForce 2080 is replaceable as well. And we’re not talking about the Max-Q low power version. This GPU has a thermal design point (TDP) of 180 Watts. In fact, the combined CPU+GPU TDP is 299 Watts.
To evacuate all this potential heat, the Alienware Area 51 has a large heat exhaust area in the back. It is very nicely designed with an RGB light to add an accent on this feature. it conveniently acts as a backlight as well which can make things easy on the eyes during gaming sessions.
The huge air intake is located at the bottom of the laptop and is designed with a cluster of hexagons with a protective grill. Dell says that this was the most efficient design their team came up with. We’ll have to put it to the test, but it seems to work great and looks very cool.