 This video from CES is brought to you by dbrand. Their prism screen protectors and grip cases protect your phone. That's pretty much all there is to it. Check them out at the link in the video description. So let me put it this way. This is the Alienware Area 51m and in the words of our Alienware rep, which if he wasn't such a nice guy who's very credible, I would find very hard to believe, Yes Linus, it has a full f***ing Core i9 9900K processor in it. And I went, Really? Because everything that I know about size and heat and how much you need to get rid of how much of it a 9900K would produce would indicate that that sort of thing would be basically impossible. And that's even ignoring the rest of the completely over-the-top specs of this thing. So it can be equipped with up to a an RTX 2080 Ti graphics card with 6 gigs of GDDR6 memory. That's GDDR6 right? Yes. It's got what I'm assuming dual NVMe boot drives and RAID 0. Do you have a two and a half inch expansion drive in here? Surely not. There's two and a half inch drive in here. Okay, it's got a 1080p 144 Hertz panel, which might not be that impressive today, but it's thin bezel and there's a plan for later this year to upgrade it to 240 Hertz and they've done all of this within like I would say a fairly slim desktop replacement form factor. But, it gets even crazier. Because while desktop replacements are kind of a replacement for the performance of a desktop, they have never been a replacement for the upgrade ability of a desktop and that is where they really surprised me. They're actually gonna allow me to open this so I need my tool kit. Where'd it go? Got it. And they're gonna let us crack it open to see how they have achieved upgradable graphics on this machine. Actually, we're gonna move over here. So a couple things jump out at us right away. That's a 90 watt hour battery. So in spite of the size, we are still getting right up against the limit to what you are allowed to put in a laptop in order for it to be able to be carried on an airplane. There's that two and a half inch drive bay that we talked about before. They somehow managed to put four dim slots on the bloody thing, even though with 32 gig dims upcoming, that's not even entirely necessary. We've got M.2 expansion slot right here, number one, and then I don't see number two. Here's an M.2.5 something label. I don't know what that's to do with but I guess we'll find the other one a little bit later and we've got cooling fans. I think we're gonna have to go deeper. So Dell says I actually won't need help with that because they've provided a handy-dandy little key here for all the screws that I need in order to remove this What what is this called again? The rib cage. Okay, cool. So we need 14 L8s. Here we go. One. Ah ah ah. Two. Ah ah ah. Okay, so now we're pulling off this back shroud here that covers up the rear I.O. as well as these incredibly beefy looking heat sinks. So you can see they've got support for their external graphics, not that there's anything much more powerful than what's already in here. External display, Ethernet, dual power inputs because hey, that's a thing. Let's go ahead and remove some more screws get that rib cage off. So we're disconnecting the battery now, this is an important first step. So we just pulled this appears to be what the display output for the built-in display? I don't know. I'm kind of guessing at this point, but we're actually getting very close to being able to get a better look at where we're going with this here. Okay, so these Wi-Fi antennas. Do I need to pop these off? Yeah, it looks like I might be able to hold on a second. This one though, this one's got to go. Shoop. Hard drive. Okay. This one we're good. This one I'm getting caught, but it's on this. I think we're good on that. This guy's got to go. Webcam. Oh, we're getting close. I can feel it. Oh, this hard drive cable management actually has to come out. There we go. These Wi-Fi antennas, we may end up needing to remove those, but not a hundred percent sure yet. I think that's all that's holding us in right now. Yep. Okay. Well, there goes the cable management for that. Sorry guys. If it helps at all, I feel really, really bad. No, I don't. That was a lie. There's lies, damned lies, and then there's what I just said. And there it is. So this right here. Thank you. So this right here is the secret sauce. So here is, and this is not a standard desktop socket. Did you guys create this socket standard? This is a standard socket under here. It looks so low profile. You're sure, right? This... No, no, yeah, no, the LGA standard, yes. But this retention mechanism, this is not standard. It's a veritable bounty of exciting tech things. So first of all, I don't know what I was expecting. Well, I do know what I was expecting because we've seen desktop processors in laptops before and typically they have just used the same mounting mechanism as desktop motherboards because it's a lot of work to engineer your own. And Dell actually, the folks that I'm talking to here don't actually know if they made their own mounting mechanism, but I can tell you right now that that is not a standard one. And so that would lead me to believe that it is entirely possible that they have actually created their own hold down for it here. Now the LGA itself, so that's the little socket that the CPU sits into, that is standard. So theoretically, there is nothing that would prevent someone from buying a lower-end processor out of the gate and then actually upgrading it down the road. A service that Dell plans to provide either themselves, like you'll have to pay extra obviously, but where they come to your house and install it for you or as a kit that you can actually do by yourself. This is a really different way of thinking about laptops. You coming out, baby? Yeah, you are. You want to? Yeah, I got it. All right, here we go. I was totally wrong. So it's just this arm that's been changed. I guess they just wanted to save a little bit of space here. So that is a standard desktop socket and check this out. So all these thermal pads around here, those are for the VRM, because as you can imagine, cramming the right kind of power delivery for this is a, like, Intel has 95 watt processors and then they have 95 watt processors. Cramming the kind of power delivery you need for a proper desktop CPU into something like this is not trivial. And of course, you're gonna need all of that cooled by the same heat pipes, beefy fans, and beefy heatsinks that you have for the CPU itself. But this, this right here is the proverbial money shot because I think that most people over the next few years are not really gonna need to upgrade a Core i9-9900K for gaming. But graphics cards, those keep moving and that's where you're gonna see, you know, a 30% or 40% uplift in performance, generation over generation, that is as long as Nvidia has their way. And this is the piece that Dell says they would like, obviously, bad stuff can happen. The spec could change to such a degree that it's impossible, but that they would like to be user upgradeable in the future. Now, if you're familiar with notebook graphics, you will already know that this is not an MXM module. So that was the previous standard for upgradeable or modular graphics in laptops. But Nvidia in their infinite wisdom is trying to kill it, or not trying to kill it, they have killed it. So Dell actually leaned on the engineering prowess of their precision team to just go, well, if you're not gonna support the standard, then damn it, I guess we'll do it ourselves. So the idea here is that you could remove this with a couple of screws and not only, you remove this right here, and not only would you be able to change the performance, you could even change the outputs on this thing, so you could support future display standards like HDMI 2.1, for example. Pretty flippin' cool. Now all that's left is to leave you guys to put this back together because I've got another appointment. Thank you guys. And also to tell you guys about our sponsor, dbrand. So dbrand is sponsoring our trip here to CES 2019. Their grip case is, as you can imagine, very grippy. It's Linus proof because otherwise realistically they wouldn't let me endorse it. And it's got their super clicky buttons as well as their trademark customizability. So you got your precision cut, true texture 3M vinyl skins, and pretty much any color you could want. The other big thing this year is their Prism screen protectors. They've got an applicator, so it goes on super easily, you get a perfect fit every time, and the impact resistance of this thing is quite frankly, it's, you have to see it to believe it. You put this thing on, you hammer a nail into a piece of wood with the face of your phone, you take off the prism, you've got a dented-ass prism, but you've got a pristine screen. It's pretty much unreal. You can check them both out at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching guys. We are on our way to the next suite here at CES 2019. Don't miss any of it by being subscribed to Linus Tech Tips.