Super Spartan

I bought a new Alienware 38 Curved Gaming Monitor AW3821DW and an Alienware keyboard which I have hooked up to my Dell XPS 13 laptop. Now I want to get a new gaming laptop or desktop and hook them up to that monitor and keyboard but I am thinking, why buy a desktop in today's age when no upgrade is guaranteed anyway since CPU and GPU form factors are changing all the time there is never a guarantee to upgrade even a desktop. With that said, and for someone who wants to stick to Alienware rather than building his own custom PC due to easy of warranty and on-site support from Dell here, my choices are either to wait a few months for the new Alienware 12th GEN CPU laptops to be released or get an Alienware Aurora R13 with their new Cyrotech cooling and an 12900KF / RTX 3090 What are your thoughts? what is the benefit of a large desktop in my case vs a laptop that has everything in a smaller package?

How can one connect 4 monitors to a laptop? A laptop with the ne w RTX 30XX series that is. What would be needed or how would this setup look like? Via Thunderbolt? Display Port? HDMI? or is a docking station needed?

I use F-Secure Antivirus (not the full internet suite). Very light, no toolbars, no stupid system optimizer, software updater, registry cleaner, yada yada yada like a lot of AVs now have. See where it ranks in terms of lightness here = Comparison - AV-Comparatives (av-comparatives.org) My second choice would be ESET NOD32. the others each come with their problems such as toolbars or software installed without your consent (ie, Kaspersky installs a VPN for you which is limited to 200MB per day then it prompts you to upgrade your subscription)

Still after 2 weeks. I think it's the best laptop I've owned. A laptop is not just about benchmarks as you say. I type a lot and watch movies and this has one of the best keyboards in terms of key travel, tactile feedback and the quality of the keys is phenomenal not plasticy like other brands. The screen is great but wish it could be a tad brighter. The 300hz refresh rate is insane. Once you go 300hz you ain't goin' back trust me. The laptop is very quiet compared to other gaming laptops and rarely do I hear the fans spin up. Couple that with Dell's excellent warranty and driver support. It's a winner.

Benchmarks AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark AS SSD Benchmark - 2x Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 [64K Data Strip Size] AS SSD Benchmark - Single Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSD CrystalDiskMark- 2x Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 [64K Data Strip Size] CrystalDiskMark - Single Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSD CINEBENCH R20 Fire Strike Time Spy PCMARK 10 Latency Test:

Area-51m R2 BIOS Screenshots

https://youtu.be/Xs0CYdekTW8v Specs: Base: Alienware Area-51m R2 Processor: 10th Gen Intel® Core™ i9 10900K (10-Core, 20MB Cache, 3.7GHz to 5.3GHz w/Thermal Velocity Boost) Operating System: Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit, English Video Card: nVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2080 SUPER™ 8GB GDDR6 Memory: Kingston XCCT36-MIE 32GB Dual Channel DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz LCD: 17.3" FHD (1920 x 1080) 300Hz 3ms 300-nits 100% sRGB color gamut + Tobii Eyetracking technology Hard Drive: Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSDs 2TB (2x 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD) RAID 0 [Boot] + 2TB (2x 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD) Non-Raid [Storage] Power Supply: 240W+ 330W Adapter Wireless: Killer™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2x2) 802.11ax Wireless and Bluetooth 5.1 Keyboard: Alienware mSeries per-key AlienFX RGB keyboard with numeric keypad Primary Battery: Lithium Ion (90 Wh) Battery with Alienware Battery Defender technology (Standard) Color: Lunar Light with High Endurance Clear Coat Service: 4 Years Premium Support Plus Accessories: Alienware 610M Wired/Wireless Gaming Mouse Alienware Area-51m Elite - White Limited Edition

They have an international warranty option you can upgrade to, that would cover shipping costs both ways if you ever need to send the laptop back. They will even send you the courier guy to your house to pickup your laptop. If it's just a small part that you can replace yourself, they will send you that and they pay for shipping. See: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hidevolutions-warranty.784735/

- Alienware m15 (Had this laptop a while back from HIDevolution and bought it with their upgraded thermals, Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads, with that upgrade which reduces temps by 15C, the laptop performed like a champ and never overheated, plus I got the 90WHr version so it had superb battery life, and power, all in a very portable and sturdy little package) - MSI GS65 If you email donald@hidevolution.com , you might be able to get a small discount. He's the salesman I dealt with when I ordered my laptops and what I like about him is that he never tries to over-sell you on anything just to make a bigger sale but treats you like a friend and gives genuine advice. He even saved me a few bucks sometimes when I chose upgrades that I didn't necessarily need.

Avoid Razer if you want something that work with half decent customer service! I suggest you one of the below: - Alienware m15 (Had this laptop a while back from HIDevolution and bought it with their upgraded thermals, Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads, with that upgrade which reduces temps by 15C, the laptop performed like a champ and never overheated, plus I got the 90WHr version so it had superb battery life, and power, all in a very portable and sturdy little package) - MSI GS65 - ASUS Zephyrus - EVOC P70TM-R (That's a Clevo model, HIDevolution is a PREMA Partner and that guy named PREMA is a BIOS wizard who creates custom BIOS for most Clevo laptops that unlock all the potential of the laptop giving you more options for overclocking, undervolting, disabling certain drives from the BIOS instead of having to physically remove the drive which is recommended when installing Windows for example to prevent Windows from placing the boot files on your second drive, etc. Prema BIOS Benefits: Restores user ability to overclock or underclock the CPU Restores user control over CPU power settings (voltage, watts, amps) for optimal performance and/or thermal efficiency Restores ability to control non-turbo CPU core ratio Restores ability to control CPU c-states and p-states Restores ability to control BCLK (northbridge) and FCLK (System Agent) frequency Restores ability to enable Intel Speed Shift Technology functionality Restores ability to disable Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) functionality which is intended for software developers who want to use that feature and causes erratic system behavior Restores ability to control RSR, Watchdog Timer, ASPM, ACPI sleep and hibernation functionality Restores ability to control RAM timings, clock speeds and enables the utilization of XMP profiles Restores ability to control selection of Legacy, UEFI and CSM to install whatever operating system is desired Restores ability to control CPU-based DEP, AES (encryption) and Virtualization Restores ability to control GPU scaling, PCIe speed and power management features Restores control over Thunderbolt and USB 3.1 configuration Restores control over SATA port configuration and Intel LPM. Having the ability to disable drive ports allows exclusive control over what drive receives the BCD/boot sector, system and recovery partitions during Windows Setup and eliminates the need to physically remove non-OS drives when installing a new OS. If you email donald@hidevolution.com , you might be able to get a small discount. He's the salesman I dealt with when I ordered my laptops and what I like about him is that he never tries to over-sell you on anything just to make a bigger sale but treats you like a friend and gives genuine advice. He even saved me a few bucks sometimes when I chose upgrades that I didn't necessarily need.

Checkout the MSI Alpha 15, it's a steal for the specs you get. When you're in the laptop customization page, I recommend that you choose "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads." That reduces your CPU/GPU temps by as much as 15C which is a must in today's laptop which sport fast CPUs/GPUs to prevent over-heating and thermal throttling. https://youtu.be/fezhS4SBuWA

Here are my recommendations: 1) MSI Alpha 15, superb specs for the money, decent cooling and performance, will do exactly what you mentioned above. 2) MSI Prestige 3) Custom Built MSI GS65 8SE Stealth-1402 - 15.6" FHD 144Hz - i7-8750H - RTX 2060 When you're in the laptop customization page, I recommend that you choose "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads." That reduces your CPU/GPU temps by as much as 15C which is a must in today's laptop which sport fast CPUs/GPUs to prevent over-heating and thermal throttling. If you email donald@hidevolution.com , you might be able to get a small discount. He's the salesman I dealt with when I ordered my laptops and what I like about him is that he never tries to over-sell you on anything just to make a bigger sale but treats you like a friend and gives genuine advice. He even saved me a few bucks sometimes when I chose upgrades that I didn't necessarily need.

You don't need to buy everything at once. Just go with one of the listed models that suits your budget then upgrade it slowly when you are able to. the most important is to get the basics right like the upgraded thermal paste + thermal pads so you can use our laptop without it overheating then adding RAM or SSDs later is easy.

Out of all the laptops that I've owned, I loved the Alienware m15. It is super thin yet packs a lot of power. I got it from HIDevolution with their thermal upgrades so it never overheated the build quality is superb. Not to mention, I specced it with the 90WHr battery so it gave me 7 hours of battery life doing light work like browsing the web and watching YouTube. Check the models here: Alienware m15 When you're in the laptop customization page, I recommend that you choose "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads." That reduces your CPU/GPU temps by as much as 15C which is a must in today's laptop which sport fast CPUs/GPUs to prevent over-heating and thermal throttling.

I recommend the ThinkPad X1 Extreme or the MSI Prestige or the ASUS Zephyrus When you're in the laptop customization page, I recommend that you choose "Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads." That reduces your CPU/GPU temps by as much as 15C which is a must in today's laptop which sport fast CPUs/GPUs to prevent over-heating and thermal throttling. HIDevolution offers a prepaid shipping service which basically covers shipping costs both ways should you ever need to send them your laptop for repairs. They will send you a courier person to your home to collect the laptop, have it delivered to them then after fixing it they'll ship it back to you and all of this is paid by them.