Alienware’s new Area-51m brings a new design, RTX GPUs, and 9th-gen Intel chips

Alienware's new top-end gaming laptop, the Area-51m. [credit:
Valentina Palladino
]




CES 2019 is officially underway, which means the time has come for every gaming PC maker under the sun to introduce new hardware. Dell and its Alienware subsidiary are no exception, and on Tuesday, the latter announced a new flagship gaming laptop called the Area-51m.
The 17-inch notebook will be available on January 29 starting at $2,549. That's expensive, but the Area-51m appears to pack the kind of high-end power you'd expect for that price. Alienware says it will include Intel's 9th-generation desktop CPUs and what the company says are the 'full-fat' versions of Nvidia's GeForce RTX GPUs. The entry-level model comes with a six-core Core i7-8700 chip and RTX 2060 with 6GB GDDR6 video memory, but those can be upgraded up to an eight-core i9-9900K and RTX 2080 with 8GB GDDR6 if desired.
Alienware is pushing the Area-51m as the beginning of a new design language for the brand. To be clear, the device still looks very much like a Gaming Laptop: it's heavy (8.54 lbs), chunky (1.7 in), and loaded with RGB lighting effects. But the bezels are a bit slimmer, the lines are a bit cleaner, and the overall footprint is smaller. That last part is due in part to a reworked thermal system. The display sits on a hinge in front of a large exhaust area that juts out the back of the device. A series of hexagonal fans sit on the bottom of the magnesium alloy chassis. Alienware claims this will keep heat and noise levels manageable, though we'll have to test the device to confirm that.
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