Not sure about the support for those on BIOS level, but technicaly socketed Broadwells and MXM RTX 2000s exist. If they are not supported, it would become an expensive brick though
The new one is a downgrade in terms of build quality and upgrades, everythingis soldered except the ram and ssds, the bugs is not unlocked,.... and it is also only 18 inches not 18.4 inches on the old one, don't get me started on the sound and speakers... the old one shown in the video obliterates everything to this day with its klipsch speakers and subwoofer even a MacBook pro stands no chance... I am currently working 9n a project to modernize mine with a custom motherboard and newer hardware..... it will be a fun adventure
@@razor-reaper I'm impressed with how dedicated and passionate you are to this laptop, I saw your other comment saying you put Quadro RTX 5000 MXMs in it and was impressed. Laptops nowadays aren't built like they used to be, I wish mine had an MXM gpu. I've got an MSI GS66 Stealth with an i7 10750h and an RTX 2070 MaxQ (shunt modded, of course) and was planning on swapping the 1080p 240hz display to 1440p 165hz. There is one panel on panelook that matches all the same signal types as my original display so hopefully the swap should be straight forward assuming there is no bios limitation. Good luck on your project!
@@razor-reaper I mean speakers haven't improved much. The new one has the standard 16:10 screen that are currently famous among laptop screens. That's why it's 18 inch instead of 18.4 inch since it's not a 16:9 screen. But unless you really want to do a change of build every 3-5 years, I think that product is more than a great upgrade. If you want upgradability, the older Area 51m might be up your alley.
It looks like there was an issue with the second GPU with battle field. The utilization was like 10-15% where GPU 1 was at 99%. Maybe that’s why there wasn’t an increase in performance.
I bought one these new. It has SLI 860m. It was put away after I built a newer desktop. Covid hit and my nephew borrowed it for school. Years passed and he has new laptop and desktop. During Thanksgiving I inquired about it. They dug it out of a closet. I just finished doing a fresh Win 10 install and games/clients. I'm surprised it's handling GTA V and Farcry 4 as well as it does. I'm going to load it with kids games and have a little gaming/youtube kids station for my oldest kid. I absolutely forgot how massive it is. They even had the big alienware backpack I had it in. Great video!
Yeah I was gonna say the same thing. Although to be fair, I worked on a Sager Clevo laptop with a 3rd gen i7 and a GTX 675MX card that still had a 1394 mini port on it. That was probably the last year anyone included those ancient ports.
Wanted to say the same thing it is a mini display port.... which with a good splitter dongle you can attach 3 4k displays assuming you have dual high end gpus inside with at least 8gb vram each or even better wit quadros.... a perfect scenario for productivity
to be fair, 20-40% FPS increase with a second GPU in SLi is about what you got back then. I had 2 780Tis from this generation and I remember playing Shadow of Mordor and going from 40-50FPS on high settings to about 60-70 when SLi was enabled. The real limitation youre probably hitting is the amount of VRAM.
@@raven4k998 Assassins Creed 3 supported it and it more or less halved my FPS. It was so wildly unpredictable if it was going to work from game to game that even before it died off I went back to a single powerful gpu and never looked back.
That SSD-slot at 5:11 is for an mSATA-SSD. Fourth gen Intel (aka Haswell) was the first plattform supporting the NVMe protocoll, but it was not very common in laptops yet.
@@davemiller262 You practically never saw it on DIY boards but it was a thing in OEM machines. The reason being that ssd were faster to install in a manufacturing facility than 2.5" drives. Less screws and cables made them way faster to install. mSATA was origionally only made for early Ultrabook and other Thin-and-light notebook for which 2.5"-SSDs were simply to bulky. My Samsung Ultrabook used one of them.
I have a Gigabyte BRIX with the a8-5557m - it uses mSATA as well. Great form factor at the time for miniaturization, and it helped keep the thing cool without a 2.5in drive clogging up the airflow.
@@davemiller262 I purchased a new in box, Dell XPS-8700 from Fry's about a decade ago. It came with a brand-new OS installed -- Windows 8. It didn't come with the mSATA SSD installed. So, when mSATA SATA 2 drives became dirt cheap, I bought a new old stock 80GB Intel mSATA drive from eBay. It was in in the machine until a couple of weeks ago when I replaced it with a 1TB, SATA 3 drive from Kingston. (They had the drives on sale.) The 80GB drive was just too small to handle the cache/temporary files from a new video app and was put into an enclosure to make a portable drive.
Yeah, pre Dell Alienware was actually some awesome stuff. Crazy and cool cases too. Their stuff today is just plastic on an office PC with an alien head logo.
I have the duel 780m version of this, incredible machine. Bought the alienware backpack(the only bag it would fit in) so I could bring to and from work, ended up having to reinforce the straps because it was too heavy and they started to tear off
Not gonna lie this thing design and upgradability is nothing short of amazing... wish they still made laptops like this one nowdays... would really like to see a second video were you try to upgrade it 😃💪
Dual GTX 1050Ti in MXM form factor with the same SLI bridge is a distinct possibility and wouldn't break the bank. The CPU could also be upgraded with a top-tier 4th Generation. I would love to see this too.
Except if you ever owned one of these (and I did), you would know how bad they were. The cooling issues were crazy & the thottling would get just nasty. And lets not talk about the issues with the power supply
We have one, my wife had till recently used it as her WoW machine. We upped the GPUs to 2x 980M and the CPU to an i7-4940MX. 32gig fo memory, removed the blu-ray addded more storage and it now has a 128gig boot drive with a 3Tb raid. This beast flies !!!! It is quiet (for waht it has under the hood) The ony reason we replaced it for the Alienware A51s was Nvidia and Microsoft stopped support for the SLI and when you update the drivers it is a pain in the bum hacking SLI back into it as it breaks the next time ther eis a driver update. If however you want a Take anywhere (with a pickup truck) retro gaming, emulation , cool looking laptop this is peek gaming. Sadly our is now sitting in the corner of the spare parts room along side her Toshiba Quosmi gaming machine from the before times, awaiting sale (im holding off doing this cos I love it too much) . Oh and all told the machine cost us £4500 in total when fully upgraded so £6,445.92 today or $8,030.88 !!!!!!!!!! WAnna buy it ? comes with 2 extra 880m GPUs ;)
Those Frameworks laptops do remind me a lot of laptops 20 years ago. If it gets a wide adoption rate it could become a standard again of being able to upgrade your laptops.
@@olsirmonkey folding phones Are not popular at all, that’s why everyone is failing like Motorola version of the flip, even samsung can’t sell its flip phones Only boomers want that garbage iPhones better Samsungs are so garbage you can buy a flip 4 for $700 can’t say the same for a iPhone 13-14 which hasn’t really lost its value like Samsung🤢🤮
@@Replyingtoclowns why do you think that? I am not saying that their designs and prices are perfect. But even if the only thing we get out of this is convincing the other PC manufacturers to bring back mor modular PCs I think that is a good thing
Correction it's a Alienware 18 not the m18x. The m18x is older but way cooler in my opinion with no power limitation, you could attach dual 330w PSU pushing 660w into it overclock the heck out of it. The Alienware 18 won't draw more than 330w it is hardlimited.
Dawid, I'd really love to see a video of you upgrading the MXM graphics card(s) in this old beast and see what it can do with something significantly newer. The NVIDIA Quadro P4000 mobile seems to be quite an upgrade, while costing not nearly as much as a Quadro P5200. Additionally, seeing the CPU upgraded to a 4940MX would be mildly interesting (as the CPU in this laptop was already upgraded to the 4700MQ). I'm not sure what RAM comes in the laptop, but perhaps upgrading that as well could be interesting. All together, it would show upgradability is important and how large the difference in performance can be with said upgrades. Just a cool idea. Edit: also, did anyone see that little subwoofer at 5:42? 10:13 shows the laptop had Klipsch speakers, which must be pretty impressive! I'd love to hear those laptop speakers!
I'd recommend dual 8GB GTX 980M cards for it. If you tried anything newer it either doesn't support SLI or the MXM board components (like the VRMs and mosfets) won't line up with the original heatsinks.
The klipsch speakers still obliterate everything available in modern laptops hands down.... they were just that good 👍 and about the GPU upgrade I believe the wattage per GPU on this one is about 150 watts but the laptop is limited to 100 watts per module and the mxm quadro rtx 5000 is 100 watts max which perfectly fits within the limits of the 100wats gpu heatsinks....
MXM RTX cards from HP and a few obscure venders are known to work aside from needing to mod the drivers. The HP mxm cards do require some heatsink modding but beyond that they work pretty well and have been demonstrated to work without much of a fuss.
There is 1 thing im missing with in your old hardware videos - overclocking. Im pretty sure you can make those 765m's run significantly higher clocks with this kind of cooling. I managed to get extra 20% of performance just by overclocking 7600 in my retro gaming laptop.
13:30 worth noting SLI isnt really working in this specific case. 2nd GPU is only running at 135mhz and drawing less than 10w But i guess it makes sense as SLI was probably already dead and buried by the time BF V released
Yeah a soldered on P.O.S PC of today beats a $4k desktop replacement laptop from ten years ago. BTW given that most users (not you and I but most) don't replace their components and in fact destroy (battery or keyboard) their laptops within five years, it "makes sense" for manufacturers to solder everything.
They are crazy prices today. This would cost 6-7k now a days there is 2 graphics cards on it if they didn't discontinue making more than one in a computer anymore not even desktops use two Gpu's anymore in a prebuilt
you could theoretically install an RX5700 XT MXM GPU in there, which that thing is no slouch. This alienware should have been the beginning of what future laptops should have geared towards. Instead we get shovelware chromebooks and throwaway soldered garbage fires.
Absolute GEM of the video, thats some good clean fun right there, I hope you make part 2 video where you upgrade everything as much as posible (balls to the wall, i belive is the expression)
I have this laptop. Still works today. It's a beast. I upgraded the GPU's from dual 780m's to dual 980m's in SLI. The processor can be upgraded to but I already had the highest spec available for it with the 4940mx. This was back when AW used to make amazing laptops. I also have the previous model of this the AW M18x R2 with also upgraded CPand GPU's.
Any suggestions for sites or channels or forums for this? I have a 17r - something (it's upstairs and I'm lazy) that my son has used all these years and just now replaced with a desktop. So I'm inheriting it. I need to clean it up and replace the coin battery, he's been F-12ing it. I don't even know where the battery is on this sucker and I hope it doesn't require flipping over the motherboard.
I agree. Taking apart my new MSI GF63 Thin to upgrade to a dual channel 16GB kit and add a 2.5" SSD and I had about 10 million screws and needed the jaws of life to get the back off.
5:14 That SSD slot is mSATA, which was/is commonplace amongst laptops back in that era. It was a way of allowing a compact size SSD alongside regular 2.5in HDDs, since NVMe was not a thing then for SSDs.
Do what I love to do when I get an older laptop like this. Get all the best parts you can to upgrade it to the maximum setup it can handle. Hopefully they are cheap now instead of what they cost brand new.
I got a laptop, the HP Zbook 15 that has the same cpu, 24gb of ram and a k1100m, the upgradability, including socketable cpus is amazing. Edit: I have the 4800mq cpu.
Finally bro, I have been waiting for you to do a video on these laptops, I have a similar Alienware laptop from years ago and I think it's suffering from the over heating. Thanks so much for the video content buddy , really appreciate it 😊
Battlefield 5 doesn't fully support SLI & requires a custom nvidia inspector SLI profile to work in SLI mode. For upgradability, you can go up to SLI GTX 980M's or single GTX 1070 MXM. CPU highest is i7 4910HQ.
i have this exact same laptop but without the SLI configuration! the 765m has around the same performance of a gt 1030 nowadays. this one is really well taken care of, the sides and the top housing of mine are turning into goo.. temps are supprisingly good after a quick thermal paste replacement! great vid as always
Used to work for Dell, working on these laptops was nice and easy and changing parts didn't need special tools VERY nice wor work on !! Wish newer laptops were nice to work on !!
Upgrade the two GPU to the best you can! And try to upgrade a cpu if the motherboard allow and of course update the bios first! Would be a great video!!!
This was a great vid, Dawid! I have an old System 76 Bonobo Extreme gaming "desktop replacement" with a GTX 680 with option to add another one for SLI. It's just as easy to strip down (I have to make time to replace the old paste and pads) as the Alienware unit you showcased. I only use it as a back up PC when the other one is in use. Fun times!
Did it survive your vivisection? While they're not as popular as they should be there are MXM GPUs out there in RTX 20 series and GTX 10 series and I for one would be curious to see if you could force an upgrade to a modern laptop GPU
Framework is planning on launching a laptop with an upgradable cpu and gpu late 2023. Not the same as mxm though. I assume it’s going to be more midrange options to start
@@Spork0 I did see that, the only question is to frameworks connector (or rather pinout since the connector existed already) being adopted as a standard and whether or not it would have even needed it if not for the death of MXM. That's the thing I hate most about the concept of a "desktop replacement" really is that they mostly are stuck in the configuration ordered to start, framework's effort to turn that around is appreciated.
Sadly it wouldn't work, usually these laptops that supported MXM gpu's only ever accepted cards from the same generation, and in the "best" case scenario they'd take one generation later if the cards were roughly similar in architecture. So in this case I'd image something from the 8** line (which was a thing for laptops, if I recall) would maybe work, otherwise you'd want to go for a 780m.
This and the 17 in equivalent take 1070 mobile mxms no problem. Not sure about SLI with those. And its dependent on which screen you have and your knowledge on altering drivers to make it work. I have a maxed out 17 inch with a 980m in it currently.
Daily drove the 17" version of this for about three and a half years. Thing is built like a battleship. Dropped it off of the pavement and the only thing I had to do was go in and reseat the GPU and I was good to go for another year and a half. Ended up retiring it due to not needing a laptop at my new job, but it has been collecting dust(And needing a repair). That being said, I wish you showed off the HDMI-In feature these two laptops, and nearly no others, had. Such an interesting feature(And honestly one I wish more PC manufacturers used, though AFAIK only Dell can as they bought the patent off of Clevo.). I've used it a few times and it is genuinely useful, turning the laptop's relatively nice screen into a spare monitor.
Hey is the increase in system RGB luminosity only for new subscribers or what? I've been subbed for ages and my RGB is just as luminous as it always has been. I love the set up on this thing! It'd be super cool if newer laptops were as modular and user friendly to work on!
1:44 watching those lifts ……. Was soooo waiting 👀🍿with baited breath to see that power brick slide down and hit poor Dawid in the “eagle eggs”🥚🥚👀 causing him to whimper back home to mama 😅😂🤣😅😂🤣
The port you called firewire is actually a mini displayport (you can tell by little dp logo) and that tiny ssd slot was for msata drive which was a predecessor of m.2 form factor.
1. These laptops largely suffer from the same surface coating breakdown as you would expect on a logitech peripheral. 2. SLI was essentially worthless EOL even when this was new, it really was not relevant since 5 or 6 series. 3. Firewire was also dead at this point as well. I would have considered one of these if they went to 8th gen, but I ended up going with a single card config Clevo P870TM, as SLI was definitely dead at 10 series, the 1080 I got is still competitive compared to modern stuff
I upgraded my dad's old Alienware M17xR2 to an i7 920xm and added another Radeon 5870. Was hell with those ribbon candles and I was pretty clueless at the time. Amazing upgradability even if the crossfire was only supported in a handful of games. Thing was so heavy. This was a nostalgic blast😂 Great stuff Dawid
just when i thought UA-cam contents were getting monotonous, Dawid came to rescue. been enjoying your contents lately. You sir are genius and crazy, love your humour 🤣
I miss those older systems that had more upgradeable parts than just RAM or storage. I still remember seeing the OG Alienware systems (pre-Dell) that had the same kind of swappable video cards, it blew my mind. Wish more manufacturers would make their systems more modular.
Hi Dawid, I have one of these from a different generation (I'd have to check the specs, but case is slightly different in how you access the hardware, and battery is removable without opening the laptop up) if you're interested. One day when plugging in an HDMI cable I must have built up some static because when I went to do it, there was a spark from me to the ground on probably that HDMI connector, and laptop instantly shut down, never to power up again. I've never got round to opening it up again to have a look, could very well be something as simple as a fuse somewhere in there.
I have one of these... P18e the motherboard went out but I still have it and it's just like my Clevo P370EM it is one of my favorite comps, mine currently has a pair of GTX 980m 8gbs, and then an i7-3840qm, one nice feature about this aside from the built in RGB is that you can use the HDMI as a passthrough for anything you want to hookup to it, such as a PS3 or whatever you may have as a HDMI device, and as someone else pointed out it had a mini display port
i had the 17, just as hefty and i lugged that thing on the train to school in the city every day for 2 years, and i still use it for work to this day, i kinda got used to this compact tonne of brick in my bag and people are shocked at how heavy my bag is
This is the Alienware 18, not the M18. That was before this model. I had 3 of these, the last one was the top of the line i7-4940 and dual 980m GPU"s. It was the last true Alienware laptop, back when they went against the Trends and just created powerful beasts. Everything since then has just been the same laptop as everyone else with a different case around it. I loved these things.
I had a Sager/Clevo from this era that I was using daily until 2021. Upgraded the CPU to a 4940mx and replaced the weird 870m with a 970m and was playing AAA games just fine... until the motherboard finally burned out. I loved how easy everything was to upgrade/change.
When I was younger I saved up to get an alienware laptop almost identical to this one, it was some good times. I had gotten it brand new, and after about a month it began and stayed running quite hot. It eventually broke and I was to dumb at that age to figure out what was wrong with it, probably the battery in retrospect. It's weight was immense. The RGB keyboard was the first RGB PC thing I ever experienced though, and that was really cool to my younger brain. It was also the first time I ever experienced resolution above 800x600 and PC games beyond a zsnes emulator. Man. This video really took me down that memory lane. Good times.
Current laptop design moving backwards and away from modular is spot on. Too many brands are trying imitate Macbooks. At this point, I'm just happy to find a laptop that still has actual mouse buttons, and preferably a middle button, on the touchpad.
I got an Alienware 17R5 several years ago. I've upgraded it to over 6 TB of internal drive space. It has an 8GB 1080Ti built in. I got the Graphics Adapter for it and put in a 6GB 2060. I'd say that, other than ray tracing, both cards put out the same results, just swapping 2-3FPS depending on the game. Came with twin built-in coffee warmers. Often sounds like I live near an airport if I'm not wearing headphones.
What a difference ten years makes. You could almost completely tear this laptop down and upgrade all the major components. Nowadays everything is proprietary and soldered together making this nearly impossible. Strange how technology can move so far forwards and backwards at the same time.
I owned one of these m18x R1 edition with dual gtx 660s and it was awesome... upgraded the mxm gpus to 980s and it was still working up to last year as a basic gaming rig.
I have the 17in version and this was by far the best gen of Alienwares. The design looks amazing and even right now I am typing this, on it 10 years later.
That SATA port you see there is actually for MSATA drives. They were predecessors of NVME drives, and used to offer slightly better performance than the SATA drives.
If it is upgradable in any way with better parts, a part two upgrading this beast would make for a great video
I second this
Not sure about the support for those on BIOS level, but technicaly socketed Broadwells and MXM RTX 2000s exist. If they are not supported, it would become an expensive brick though
Seriously, I'd love to see someone just go Frankenstein on this thing and try to pimp my old laptop to see if it could run at modern standards.
Agreed!
I *definitely* want to see if he can bang a couple of 10 series MXM cards in there!
I thought this was going to be a video about the new 18" Alienware with the 4090 in it. This was somehow better, though.
The new one is a downgrade in terms of build quality and upgrades, everythingis soldered except the ram and ssds, the bugs is not unlocked,.... and it is also only 18 inches not 18.4 inches on the old one, don't get me started on the sound and speakers... the old one shown in the video obliterates everything to this day with its klipsch speakers and subwoofer even a MacBook pro stands no chance... I am currently working 9n a project to modernize mine with a custom motherboard and newer hardware..... it will be a fun adventure
@@razor-reaper I'm impressed with how dedicated and passionate you are to this laptop, I saw your other comment saying you put Quadro RTX 5000 MXMs in it and was impressed. Laptops nowadays aren't built like they used to be, I wish mine had an MXM gpu. I've got an MSI GS66 Stealth with an i7 10750h and an RTX 2070 MaxQ (shunt modded, of course) and was planning on swapping the 1080p 240hz display to 1440p 165hz. There is one panel on panelook that matches all the same signal types as my original display so hopefully the swap should be straight forward assuming there is no bios limitation. Good luck on your project!
@@razor-reaper I mean speakers haven't improved much. The new one has the standard 16:10 screen that are currently famous among laptop screens. That's why it's 18 inch instead of 18.4 inch since it's not a 16:9 screen. But unless you really want to do a change of build every 3-5 years, I think that product is more than a great upgrade. If you want upgradability, the older Area 51m might be up your alley.
It looks like there was an issue with the second GPU with battle field. The utilization was like 10-15% where GPU 1 was at 99%. Maybe that’s why there wasn’t an increase in performance.
"4090" FTFY
I bought one these new. It has SLI 860m. It was put away after I built a newer desktop. Covid hit and my nephew borrowed it for school. Years passed and he has new laptop and desktop. During Thanksgiving I inquired about it. They dug it out of a closet. I just finished doing a fresh Win 10 install and games/clients. I'm surprised it's handling GTA V and Farcry 4 as well as it does. I'm going to load it with kids games and have a little gaming/youtube kids station for my oldest kid. I absolutely forgot how massive it is. They even had the big alienware backpack I had it in. Great video!
3:21 I have to correct you on this. That is NOT a firewire port. That is actually a Mini DisplayPort. Even the symbol suggest that too.
I wondered why there was a FW on a laptop that late, because FW was Core2Duo era - lol -.
i saw that too, its def a mini DP
Yeah I was gonna say the same thing. Although to be fair, I worked on a Sager Clevo laptop with a 3rd gen i7 and a GTX 675MX card that still had a 1394 mini port on it. That was probably the last year anyone included those ancient ports.
@@SidneyCritic my desktop motherboard has a firewire from about the same time
Wanted to say the same thing it is a mini display port.... which with a good splitter dongle you can attach 3 4k displays assuming you have dual high end gpus inside with at least 8gb vram each or even better wit quadros.... a perfect scenario for productivity
to be fair, 20-40% FPS increase with a second GPU in SLi is about what you got back then. I had 2 780Tis from this generation and I remember playing Shadow of Mordor and going from 40-50FPS on high settings to about 60-70 when SLi was enabled. The real limitation youre probably hitting is the amount of VRAM.
and that's with games that support it sadly🤣🤣🤣
I was surprised at his gains, because when my fried ran twin GTS8600 on SLi it was closer to 10% on his racing games.
@@raven4k998 Assassins Creed 3 supported it and it more or less halved my FPS. It was so wildly unpredictable if it was going to work from game to game that even before it died off I went back to a single powerful gpu and never looked back.
Overclocking results will be doubled as well
thats it. the vram. on the video there were two more available slots on the vram..... maybe its is possible?
5:29 Facts. I love how easy it is to open a laptop before. Now, tons of screws and you have to pry the lid.
That SSD-slot at 5:11 is for an mSATA-SSD. Fourth gen Intel (aka Haswell) was the first plattform supporting the NVMe protocoll, but it was not very common in laptops yet.
I bought a Dell XPS 8500 desktop with an on board msata SSD at a thrift store over the weekend. I didn't realize msata made it to desktops.
@@davemiller262 You practically never saw it on DIY boards but it was a thing in OEM machines. The reason being that ssd were faster to install in a manufacturing facility than 2.5" drives. Less screws and cables made them way faster to install.
mSATA was origionally only made for early Ultrabook and other Thin-and-light notebook for which 2.5"-SSDs were simply to bulky. My Samsung Ultrabook used one of them.
I have a Gigabyte BRIX with the a8-5557m - it uses mSATA as well. Great form factor at the time for miniaturization, and it helped keep the thing cool without a 2.5in drive clogging up the airflow.
@@davemiller262 I purchased a new in box, Dell XPS-8700 from Fry's about a decade ago. It came with a brand-new OS installed -- Windows 8. It didn't come with the mSATA SSD installed. So, when mSATA SATA 2 drives became dirt cheap, I bought a new old stock 80GB Intel mSATA drive from eBay. It was in in the machine until a couple of weeks ago when I replaced it with a 1TB, SATA 3 drive from Kingston. (They had the drives on sale.) The 80GB drive was just too small to handle the cache/temporary files from a new video app and was put into an enclosure to make a portable drive.
I use mSata on my Dell Vostro 3560. It's a very good Samsung Evo 860.
I remember the pre-Dell Alienware, those systems were pretty awesome if you could afford them. Spoiler: you probably couldn't afford one
From overpriced awesomeness to overpriced garbage. Corporate really ruins everything...
Yeah, pre Dell Alienware was actually some awesome stuff. Crazy and cool cases too.
Their stuff today is just plastic on an office PC with an alien head logo.
@@volvo09 Don't forget the proprietary motherboard!
They only still do good monitors, but dHell killed Alienware spirit...
@@pascaldifolco4611 yeah the monitors seem to get lots of good reviews
I have the duel 780m version of this, incredible machine. Bought the alienware backpack(the only bag it would fit in) so I could bring to and from work, ended up having to reinforce the straps because it was too heavy and they started to tear off
did you have to go see the chiropractor afterwards?
jk
Not gonna lie this thing design and upgradability is nothing short of amazing... wish they still made laptops like this one nowdays... would really like to see a second video were you try to upgrade it 😃💪
well for a laptop yes it is amazing
Framework are working on it
Dual GTX 1050Ti in MXM form factor with the same SLI bridge is a distinct possibility and wouldn't break the bank. The CPU could also be upgraded with a top-tier 4th Generation. I would love to see this too.
Framework is the best you can get today, and they've been doing a good job. Their next generation prototype has my juices flowing.
Except if you ever owned one of these (and I did), you would know how bad they were. The cooling issues were crazy & the thottling would get just nasty. And lets not talk about the issues with the power supply
Would LOVE to see this laptop upgraded to the max, just to see what difference that could potentially make.
We have one, my wife had till recently used it as her WoW machine. We upped the GPUs to 2x 980M and the CPU to an i7-4940MX. 32gig fo memory, removed the blu-ray addded more storage and it now has a 128gig boot drive with a 3Tb raid. This beast flies !!!! It is quiet (for waht it has under the hood) The ony reason we replaced it for the Alienware A51s was Nvidia and Microsoft stopped support for the SLI and when you update the drivers it is a pain in the bum hacking SLI back into it as it breaks the next time ther eis a driver update. If however you want a Take anywhere (with a pickup truck) retro gaming, emulation , cool looking laptop this is peek gaming. Sadly our is now sitting in the corner of the spare parts room along side her Toshiba Quosmi gaming machine from the before times, awaiting sale (im holding off doing this cos I love it too much) . Oh and all told the machine cost us £4500 in total when fully upgraded so £6,445.92 today or $8,030.88 !!!!!!!!!! WAnna buy it ? comes with 2 extra 880m GPUs ;)
You may have to see about getting the new Framework gaming laptop and see how that performs.
Those Frameworks laptops do remind me a lot of laptops 20 years ago. If it gets a wide adoption rate it could become a standard again of being able to upgrade your laptops.
@@JobeStroud its a common trend i've noticed recently, adopting old trends in tech as modern. folding phones being another example.
Framework 🤢🤮 overrated
@@olsirmonkey folding phones Are not popular at all, that’s why everyone is failing like Motorola version of the flip, even samsung can’t sell its flip phones
Only boomers want that garbage iPhones better
Samsungs are so garbage you can buy a flip 4 for $700 can’t say the same for a iPhone 13-14 which hasn’t really lost its value like Samsung🤢🤮
@@Replyingtoclowns why do you think that? I am not saying that their designs and prices are perfect. But even if the only thing we get out of this is convincing the other PC manufacturers to bring back mor modular PCs I think that is a good thing
Correction it's a Alienware 18 not the m18x. The m18x is older but way cooler in my opinion with no power limitation, you could attach dual 330w PSU pushing 660w into it overclock the heck out of it.
The Alienware 18 won't draw more than 330w it is hardlimited.
Dawid, I'd really love to see a video of you upgrading the MXM graphics card(s) in this old beast and see what it can do with something significantly newer. The NVIDIA Quadro P4000 mobile seems to be quite an upgrade, while costing not nearly as much as a Quadro P5200. Additionally, seeing the CPU upgraded to a 4940MX would be mildly interesting (as the CPU in this laptop was already upgraded to the 4700MQ). I'm not sure what RAM comes in the laptop, but perhaps upgrading that as well could be interesting.
All together, it would show upgradability is important and how large the difference in performance can be with said upgrades. Just a cool idea.
Edit: also, did anyone see that little subwoofer at 5:42? 10:13 shows the laptop had Klipsch speakers, which must be pretty impressive! I'd love to hear those laptop speakers!
For the MXM ff, I believe that I have seen a few 2070's around on Ebay. Maybe worth a video?
I'd recommend dual 8GB GTX 980M cards for it. If you tried anything newer it either doesn't support SLI or the MXM board components (like the VRMs and mosfets) won't line up with the original heatsinks.
The klipsch speakers still obliterate everything available in modern laptops hands down.... they were just that good 👍 and about the GPU upgrade I believe the wattage per GPU on this one is about 150 watts but the laptop is limited to 100 watts per module and the mxm quadro rtx 5000 is 100 watts max which perfectly fits within the limits of the 100wats gpu heatsinks....
MXM RTX cards from HP and a few obscure venders are known to work aside from needing to mod the drivers. The HP mxm cards do require some heatsink modding but beyond that they work pretty well and have been demonstrated to work without much of a fuss.
There is 1 thing im missing with in your old hardware videos - overclocking. Im pretty sure you can make those 765m's run significantly higher clocks with this kind of cooling. I managed to get extra 20% of performance just by overclocking 7600 in my retro gaming laptop.
I had the 14in base model of this Alienware laptop generation. It was my daily driver in high school. What a throwback!
Looking forward to Dawid learning about GTX 1080 SLI laptops, that would be a very cool video!
That port you called firewire is actually Mini Displayport!
Also- you have to upgrade this as far as you can now....
13:30 worth noting SLI isnt really working in this specific case. 2nd GPU is only running at 135mhz and drawing less than 10w
But i guess it makes sense as SLI was probably already dead and buried by the time BF V released
Also Vram limited
I would love to see the GPUs be upgraded in a future video… just a wild idea
DAM THIS WAS EXPENSIVE WHEN LAUNCHED! And here we are thinking today's GPU prices were crazy
Yeah a soldered on P.O.S PC of today beats a $4k desktop replacement laptop from ten years ago. BTW given that most users (not you and I but most) don't replace their components and in fact destroy (battery or keyboard) their laptops within five years, it "makes sense" for manufacturers to solder everything.
They are crazy prices today. This would cost 6-7k now a days there is 2 graphics cards on it if they didn't discontinue making more than one in a computer anymore not even desktops use two Gpu's anymore in a prebuilt
It has to be expensive. It weighs so much and thick that probably the Roman soldiers can use this laptop as a shield in combat.
High end laptops aren't cheaper now. I'm typing this response on a $4,699 MSI laptop.
@@imtoxicAF custom builds don’t use sli either
David, the SSD Slot is for M.Sata SSD's. Not many OEM or motherboard manufactures adopted that type of slot.
you could theoretically install an RX5700 XT MXM GPU in there, which that thing is no slouch. This alienware should have been the beginning of what future laptops should have geared towards. Instead we get shovelware chromebooks and throwaway soldered garbage fires.
Haven't seen one of those on eBay at all and almost daily search for years. Instead I've been daily using an mxm rx580 8gb.
CPU would bottleneck it hard.
Absolute GEM of the video, thats some good clean fun right there, I hope you make part 2 video where you upgrade everything as much as posible (balls to the wall, i belive is the expression)
I have this laptop. Still works today. It's a beast. I upgraded the GPU's from dual 780m's to dual 980m's in SLI. The processor can be upgraded to but I already had the highest spec available for it with the 4940mx. This was back when AW used to make amazing laptops. I also have the previous model of this the AW M18x R2 with also upgraded CPand GPU's.
Any suggestions for sites or channels or forums for this? I have a 17r - something (it's upstairs and I'm lazy) that my son has used all these years and just now replaced with a desktop. So I'm inheriting it. I need to clean it up and replace the coin battery, he's been F-12ing it. I don't even know where the battery is on this sucker and I hope it doesn't require flipping over the motherboard.
the 2015 alienware were great.
I have an m17x r3 and I can upgrade it to an 8 gb graphics card that's incredible
always a good day when Dawid uploads some more crazy tech shenanigans lol
Now, now, don't you go baffling Dawid with science or technical detail! It'll only end in tears.
I agree. Taking apart my new MSI GF63 Thin to upgrade to a dual channel 16GB kit and add a 2.5" SSD and I had about 10 million screws and needed the jaws of life to get the back off.
The 2 bench reps were mighty impressive. I hope one day to attain your levels of strength.
Hahahaha POWERRRR
What we didn't see was rep #3 where the power BRICK slides off and mashed Dawid in the groin
@@markfriesen1435 Precisely what I was waiting (and maybe, secretly hoping) for.
and remember, it is a massive laptop with a gravitational field
5:14 That SSD slot is mSATA, which was/is commonplace amongst laptops back in that era. It was a way of allowing a compact size SSD alongside regular 2.5in HDDs, since NVMe was not a thing then for SSDs.
Release the unedited rant footage!
I had the alienware 14 of this same generation and i actually liked it a lot. It ran cool and quiet and performed very well for the hardware it had!
Would love to see you try to upgrade both gpus! That'd be an awesome video. I'd pay for a patreon for that!
Do what I love to do when I get an older laptop like this. Get all the best parts you can to upgrade it to the maximum setup it can handle. Hopefully they are cheap now instead of what they cost brand new.
I got a laptop, the HP Zbook 15 that has the same cpu, 24gb of ram and a k1100m, the upgradability, including socketable cpus is amazing.
Edit: I have the 4800mq cpu.
Bro stole my laptop 😢
I have the i7-4800MQ with 12GB RAM and a GT 730M in my ThinkPad T440p
Finally bro, I have been waiting for you to do a video on these laptops, I have a similar Alienware laptop from years ago and I think it's suffering from the over heating. Thanks so much for the video content buddy , really appreciate it 😊
3:26 that looks like a mini display port not firewire.
Yup.
Battlefield 5 doesn't fully support SLI & requires a custom nvidia inspector SLI profile to work in SLI mode.
For upgradability, you can go up to SLI GTX 980M's or single GTX 1070 MXM.
CPU highest is i7 4910HQ.
Anybody else notice the dent to the laptop in the glam shot? Refurb? Yikes!
I definitely did also !!!
I mean it was mentioned in the video...
all to scale measurements are best done with loot lord plushie as reference. good video :)
Would be fun to see you upgrading it however you can, maybe getting a better CPU or MXM GPU, would be neat to see how far you can take this laptop!
i have this exact same laptop but without the SLI configuration! the 765m has around the same performance of a gt 1030 nowadays. this one is really well taken care of, the sides and the top housing of mine are turning into goo.. temps are supprisingly good after a quick thermal paste replacement! great vid as always
When Dawid was bench pressing that laptop that power brick was getting really close to sliding off and likely ending his family line.
I think that's the reason why it was not filmed, camcorder was put down to save the family line XD
Used to work for Dell, working on these laptops was nice and easy and changing parts didn't need special tools VERY nice wor work on !! Wish newer laptops were nice to work on !!
Upgrade the two GPU to the best you can! And try to upgrade a cpu if the motherboard allow and of course update the bios first!
Would be a great video!!!
This was a great vid, Dawid! I have an old System 76 Bonobo Extreme gaming "desktop replacement" with a GTX 680 with option to add another one for SLI. It's just as easy to strip down (I have to make time to replace the old paste and pads) as the Alienware unit you showcased. I only use it as a back up PC when the other one is in use. Fun times!
Did it survive your vivisection? While they're not as popular as they should be there are MXM GPUs out there in RTX 20 series and GTX 10 series and I for one would be curious to see if you could force an upgrade to a modern laptop GPU
Framework is planning on launching a laptop with an upgradable cpu and gpu late 2023. Not the same as mxm though. I assume it’s going to be more midrange options to start
@@Spork0 I did see that, the only question is to frameworks connector (or rather pinout since the connector existed already) being adopted as a standard and whether or not it would have even needed it if not for the death of MXM. That's the thing I hate most about the concept of a "desktop replacement" really is that they mostly are stuck in the configuration ordered to start, framework's effort to turn that around is appreciated.
Sadly it wouldn't work, usually these laptops that supported MXM gpu's only ever accepted cards from the same generation, and in the "best" case scenario they'd take one generation later if the cards were roughly similar in architecture. So in this case I'd image something from the 8** line (which was a thing for laptops, if I recall) would maybe work, otherwise you'd want to go for a 780m.
Found a 1070 mxm on Amazon😬
This and the 17 in equivalent take 1070 mobile mxms no problem. Not sure about SLI with those. And its dependent on which screen you have and your knowledge on altering drivers to make it work. I have a maxed out 17 inch with a 980m in it currently.
Daily drove the 17" version of this for about three and a half years. Thing is built like a battleship. Dropped it off of the pavement and the only thing I had to do was go in and reseat the GPU and I was good to go for another year and a half.
Ended up retiring it due to not needing a laptop at my new job, but it has been collecting dust(And needing a repair).
That being said, I wish you showed off the HDMI-In feature these two laptops, and nearly no others, had. Such an interesting feature(And honestly one I wish more PC manufacturers used, though AFAIK only Dell can as they bought the patent off of Clevo.). I've used it a few times and it is genuinely useful, turning the laptop's relatively nice screen into a spare monitor.
If you don't make a video upgrading this laptop I swear I will unsubscribe
Great video! We all want to see you upgrading the MXM gpus btw
Hey is the increase in system RGB luminosity only for new subscribers or what? I've been subbed for ages and my RGB is just as luminous as it always has been.
I love the set up on this thing! It'd be super cool if newer laptops were as modular and user friendly to work on!
1:00 330W power supply, bloody hell!
1:44 watching those lifts ……. Was soooo waiting 👀🍿with baited breath to see that power brick slide down and hit poor Dawid in the “eagle eggs”🥚🥚👀 causing him to whimper back home to mama 😅😂🤣😅😂🤣
The port you called firewire is actually a mini displayport (you can tell by little dp logo) and that tiny ssd slot was for msata drive which was a predecessor of m.2 form factor.
didn't know Dawid was an AquaFps enjoyer. Even more respect to the man!
1. These laptops largely suffer from the same surface coating breakdown as you would expect on a logitech peripheral. 2. SLI was essentially worthless EOL even when this was new, it really was not relevant since 5 or 6 series. 3. Firewire was also dead at this point as well. I would have considered one of these if they went to 8th gen, but I ended up going with a single card config Clevo P870TM, as SLI was definitely dead at 10 series, the 1080 I got is still competitive compared to modern stuff
A part 2 that consists of upgrading this to its max supported specs would be a great vid.
I upgraded my dad's old Alienware M17xR2 to an i7 920xm and added another Radeon 5870. Was hell with those ribbon candles and I was pretty clueless at the time. Amazing upgradability even if the crossfire was only supported in a handful of games. Thing was so heavy. This was a nostalgic blast😂 Great stuff Dawid
I used to always drool over these and the ROG Desktop replacement laptops. I never ended up affording one, but the dream was there.
just when i thought UA-cam contents were getting monotonous, Dawid came to rescue. been enjoying your contents lately. You sir are genius and crazy, love your humour 🤣
1:45 the moment before the powerbrick hits you right in the crown jewels.
Jupiter been really quiet when this dropped
I miss those older systems that had more upgradeable parts than just RAM or storage. I still remember seeing the OG Alienware systems (pre-Dell) that had the same kind of swappable video cards, it blew my mind. Wish more manufacturers would make their systems more modular.
Hi Dawid, I have one of these from a different generation (I'd have to check the specs, but case is slightly different in how you access the hardware, and battery is removable without opening the laptop up) if you're interested. One day when plugging in an HDMI cable I must have built up some static because when I went to do it, there was a spark from me to the ground on probably that HDMI connector, and laptop instantly shut down, never to power up again. I've never got round to opening it up again to have a look, could very well be something as simple as a fuse somewhere in there.
I have one of these... P18e the motherboard went out but I still have it and it's just like my Clevo P370EM it is one of my favorite comps, mine currently has a pair of GTX 980m 8gbs, and then an i7-3840qm, one nice feature about this aside from the built in RGB is that you can use the HDMI as a passthrough for anything you want to hookup to it, such as a PS3 or whatever you may have as a HDMI device, and as someone else pointed out it had a mini display port
I keep rewatching Dawid videos and can't stop
i had the 17, just as hefty and i lugged that thing on the train to school in the city every day for 2 years, and i still use it for work to this day, i kinda got used to this compact tonne of brick in my bag and people are shocked at how heavy my bag is
01:45 Dawid edited out the part where the power brick falls on his groin.
This is the Alienware 18, not the M18. That was before this model. I had 3 of these, the last one was the top of the line i7-4940 and dual 980m GPU"s. It was the last true Alienware laptop, back when they went against the Trends and just created powerful beasts. Everything since then has just been the same laptop as everyone else with a different case around it. I loved these things.
I really like the music you use before you start testing anything very 80s after school special lol
Wow, the teardown of this laptop is does very easily, a very rare thing in 2014 laptops.
Dawid has become my primary source for tech youtube these days
Whoever designed that laptop deserves a reward; I've never seen such a user-friendly design before.
Dawid - we need to get you a samurai sword so you can do these box openings with some dignity for a change.
I Remember back in like 2013 when my dad got one of these lmao, I was mad asf when he gave it to my brother and not me
Wow! -That RGB Luminosity went right through the roof!!
I had a Sager/Clevo from this era that I was using daily until 2021. Upgraded the CPU to a 4940mx and replaced the weird 870m with a 970m and was playing AAA games just fine... until the motherboard finally burned out. I loved how easy everything was to upgrade/change.
I had the smaller 17.3 inch and a little newer version from 2014. No SLI. Mine had HDMI in/out !!! still works.
That kinda remind me of the interior of the Dell Rugged line of laptop, which are pretty lovely.
When I was younger I saved up to get an alienware laptop almost identical to this one, it was some good times. I had gotten it brand new, and after about a month it began and stayed running quite hot. It eventually broke and I was to dumb at that age to figure out what was wrong with it, probably the battery in retrospect. It's weight was immense. The RGB keyboard was the first RGB PC thing I ever experienced though, and that was really cool to my younger brain. It was also the first time I ever experienced resolution above 800x600 and PC games beyond a zsnes emulator.
Man. This video really took me down that memory lane. Good times.
Now we need a Video of you upgrading the hell out of this thing
01:44 missed opportunity to use Rocky's training theme
We need a video of you upgrading it all ways possible.
Hey Dawid! Big fan! Anyway I have a Alienware 13 OG, no r1, r2... Love keeping the old systems going!
That power brick looks like it could be an actual brick.
Also, man, I remember when everyone was going gaga over dual GPUs and SLI.
Current laptop design moving backwards and away from modular is spot on. Too many brands are trying imitate Macbooks. At this point, I'm just happy to find a laptop that still has actual mouse buttons, and preferably a middle button, on the touchpad.
this starcraft zergling sound in the beginning xD love
gotta see a part 2 where you throw the biggest, meanest parts in this thing. It would scratch the brain very good Dawid. Please and Thank you :D
LOL Dawid I love your humor. I just bought one of these off ebay. Can't wait to take her for a spin!
I have a 2005 Alienware laptop that I use for windows XP gaming. It’s construction is very solid still.
I got an Alienware 17R5 several years ago. I've upgraded it to over 6 TB of internal drive space. It has an 8GB 1080Ti built in. I got the Graphics Adapter for it and put in a 6GB 2060. I'd say that, other than ray tracing, both cards put out the same results, just swapping 2-3FPS depending on the game. Came with twin built-in coffee warmers. Often sounds like I live near an airport if I'm not wearing headphones.
Fascinating. An MXM-type laptop with an SLI construct.
What a difference ten years makes. You could almost completely tear this laptop down and upgrade all the major components. Nowadays everything is proprietary and soldered together making this nearly impossible. Strange how technology can move so far forwards and backwards at the same time.
I owned one of these m18x R1 edition with dual gtx 660s and it was awesome... upgraded the mxm gpus to 980s and it was still working up to last year as a basic gaming rig.
Did you drop that power brick on your stomach while benching that Mothership??? 😂 thanks for good videos bro 😊
hoping we kind of see a rennaisseance of sorts with framework doing repairable and upgradable laptops again
subscribed, and i can confirm my computer's RGB immediately became 39% brighter
I have the 17in version and this was by far the best gen of Alienwares. The design looks amazing and even right now I am typing this, on it 10 years later.
1:44 I found where they got the Dark Souls 1 sound effects from
That SATA port you see there is actually for MSATA drives. They were predecessors of NVME drives, and used to offer slightly better performance than the SATA drives.