1610ftw

I mean just sell a chip that goes into a socket like with AMD and Intel desktop CPUs. Obviously this isn't going to happen in desktops but it would be a perfect solution for laptops to widen choices for the users and drastically reduce SKUs for the manufacturers

That was meant to be a soldered GPU as I just cannot see socketed happen at the moment and as you say prices more than likely would be so high that almost nobody would be interested. Options down to at least the 4070 and possibly 4060 would be nice for people who mainly want a flagship CPU in a portable form factor and often have to buy lots of memory, storage and/or GPU / screen just to get the CPU - it is ridiculous. If GPU manufacturers would sell their GPUs like Intel and AMD sell their CPUs then things would have the potential to be a lot more flexible. Not likely to happen any time soon but that would be very cool. .

I am not so sure that enough people care but it is hard to say really. A good test case would be one of the above mentioned companies putting out a model with a socketed GPU and graphics options that go down to the RTX 4060 accompanied by at least a nice priced QHD+ 18" screen. Add in 4 slots each for storage and memory and top notch connectivity and people may actually buy in bigger number as now they can finally afford such a laptop as it is not priced at 4k or more. Dell was mostly pretty good with offering more options but Asus and MSI were quite bad and not at all willing to offer lesser graphics or CPU options to save some money.

They are relatively powerful given their weight and volume but what about people who would be willing to carry 9 or 10 lbs from time to time? Clevo was the last manufacturer with a ca. 10lbs laptop (X170) but that was it. These days the problem with Clevo is that they do not have enough pull with Intel to support socketed CPUs for multiple generations and as for Nvidia they do not let Clevo have any MXM modules any more. I am pretty sure that Dell would have enough clout to build an Alienware with a socketed CPU that could be supported for more than one generation and the same goes for MSI and Asus at least as they also manufacture motherboards and not just laptops. Yet nobody seems to be moving in that direction - makes me wonder how bad those GX800, GT83 and Alienware 18 sales really were...

Thinner and a bit more narrow, too? In any case only the old Alienware 18 and the GT76 are as deep and it is just the GT83 that is even a bit deeper by 8mm. Due to the limited width the GT77 looks almost square though so that is a strange look and not very practical either. Indeed, no complaints from me about the CPU by itself, I just wish it was socketed. The GPU will probably give us the biggest jump in performance since the jump from GT980 to the GT1080. What is disappointing is that it could have been a lot better if Nvidia had offered the 4090 desktop chip and more power for laptops.

Most big laptops have at least two USB-C / Thunderbolt ports so it would be possible to do 2 x 240W this way. So that would not be an issue. The issue is of course that we are now stuck with 250W max combined power delivery. Makes no sense as obviously 7lbs laptops are good enough to allow for 250W so with 9 lbs 300W or more wouldn't be an issue especially with most of the added weight going directly to cooling. The easiest way to achieve something that is good for both the enthusiast and the thin and light crowd would be a chassis that allows for a slim AND a beefy cooling solution. Apart from the heat sink assembly only the bottom cover would have to change for that and the beefier version would get the higher TDP. And of course a socketed CPU would be most welcome - please do it in time for the next Intel generation as then it will last a few years with proper microcode support.

With 175W max TGP I have hardly seen high temperatures for either big Clevo or MSI DTRs as of late. That is as long as the fans run at full speed and from what I have seen this also goes for the top Asus ROG units. I would only expect issues if one wanted to game at max load and in a relatively quiet environment.

Here is some gameplay with two games being played without DLSS: Looks to be a bit too close and the fps with the two non DLSS games would imply that the 4090 mobile is performing closer to the 4080 desktop card than to the 4070 Ti desktop which I find hard to believe.

Imposter - I love it 😄 The X370 is lacking so much it isn't funny: socketed CPU? nope top of the line BGA CPU? nope socketed GPU? nope full fat vapor chamber? nope 4 memory slots? nope 4 storage slots? nope 18" screen? nope This generation the X370 could have everything but a socketed GPU which just seems out of reach to Clevo. Yet they decided to offer none of the things mentioned above - go figure. At least when MSI brought back the Titan they went with top of the line chips, connectivity, memory and storage options and before they just did not have a Titan for I think two generations - that is still disappointing overall because of the lack of thickness and modularity but at least they made an effort in some areas. Same with Dell - they bothced the heatsink design in the 7770 but at least it has a socketed GPU and a full complement of drives and up to 128GB memory even though that is only available at extortionary prices. Clevo on the other hand seems to be happy with only carrying over the X name and adding a third SSD slot. LOL @ 12lbs not being heavy, in fact we now have an issue with carry on luggage in planes imposing ever lower weight limits and on long flights you could not take a big DTR out as it would occupy more width than we usually get on planes these days - can't have it all I guess 😄

One thing's for sure - you will never run out of heatsinks 😄

Does anybody know if this will again have the rubberized surfaces that Dell likes to use? My lightly used palm rest in the 7760 already starts to look pretty bad while the plastic / metal surface in Clevos and MSI laptops hold up much better - hate that rubber stuff. I would probably put something on that if I got another laptop with it, I think brother @ssj92is doing that, too?

As this is an m chassis it will hopefully turn out to be thick enough to allow for double sided SSDs.

@DarginMahkum mentioned that previous Alienware laptops only allowed for single sides SSDs - in that case no SSD could be 8TB but I somehow doubt that they would be so stupid to mostly negate the benefit of having 4 SSD slots. As for the 2230 slots in most use cases 2 2230 slots are worth less than a single 2280 slot that takes dual sided SSDs.

Thanks a lot for the detailed post - the price and performance sounds great, the weight not so much. The increase in weight moves the X170 into P870 territory, but with only one GPU! Back to the time of the 11 lbs+ laptops when only real men could carry their laptops around 😄

There also is a video from LTT: No idea how this one ended up with the X370 name.

Thanks for the report - impressive temps! Can you please let us also have the weight of the stock heat sink for comparison? And I take it that this is in kg?

Indeed - Crucial hasn't been making my life easier with this announcement🙂 96 GB could almost be an acceptable amount of memory so the Alienware is on the radar again. Next thing will be to find out why Alienware only mentions a maximum storage of 9TB - I can get more on most laptops with two SSD slots.

Saw that a few days ago and thought about posting it but I kind of expect the same outcome as you so I did not even bother. It is sad that we have seen this so often that now we automatically expect the worst. M2 slots are a great example - we used to have an optical drive and 2 2.5" drives in top of the line laptops so now we should easily see at least 4 of those m2 slots, right? And for bigger workstation laptops maybe 4 x m2 slots and 1 x 2.5" slot for a cheaper 2.5" SSD, right? Nope - down to at most 2 x m2 slots by now for all but three laptops in this generation so far (1 x 4, 2 x 3) - pathetic.

We: WOW - we could see the return of desktop performance, more real DTRs, etc. Industry: Let's make everything lighter and thinner with the same mediocre performance. It already happens with vapor chamber designs - excellent technology but usually not used in top of the line notebooks. Reserving it to the slimmest of the slim is something that MSI has done last year and they continue to do so. Gone (for now) are the days where a Clevo P870 used a huge vapor chamber to dissipate up to 400W from two GTX1080. But yeah, this would have the potential to do great things, I also like the lack of dust buildup - that is definitely a big benefit with the average closed down BGA book. From what that guy said it will probably be only able to cool slim/ultrabooks this year- they are a very young company and after that little time it is great they can bring anything to market. In the long run if that catches on and the industry is uncharacteristically doing the right thing this could be exciting.

And don't forget that a carefully selected desktop chip with more performance per Watt can make a huge difference. If my system can only sustain 150W then I do not care what the performance would be at 250 or 300W! Not much fun being stuck with a stinker of a chip in a laptop as that will be it. Over in the Dell thread @MyPC8MyBrain went through a bunch of workstations with the 12950HX and the difference in performance was quite significant with his last unit being kind of a golden sample but I believe he went through 5 or 6 of them!

This is also my impression looking at the 12800HX, 12900HX and 12900K - very similar until the laptop CPUs top out at 150W to 200W depending on the circumstances one finds them in. Would really be cool to be able to swap CPUs in laptops again.

Efficiency in the low end indeed. I doubt that at the power levels that both achieve there will be that much of a difference between an average 13900HX laptop and 13900K desktop CPU. And no, there is no way that any current laptop can sustain 270W and I doubt we will see much more than 200W from any of them this generation with around 34 to 37K tops CB R23 in a single run and that will be with deafening fan noise and/or added water cooling.

It is rather strange that you would come to that conclusion as I would be perfectly happy to be able to select between maybe three DTR models from as many manufacturers - it is nice to have some competition like we had in the past with Alienware, Asus, Clevo and MSI. No offense but your second sentence is extremely ironic as it seems that you can only be happy with no single proper DTR in existence, why is that and why do you even care? Isn't it really you who is gatekeeping here and hopeing / insisting / explaining that not a single proper DTR shall exist? I would certainly not care much if somebody would like to see a number of thin and light 14" laptops with a 4090 as long as there are a few proper DTRs around but the mere thought of even one bigger and more powerful DTR existing seems to be a threatening thought for you. In the past when we had a handful of big DTRs this did not at all affect 99.9% of laptops nor would I care about them apart from a desire to not see that much disposable crap being sold with everything soldered down including network cards, memory and even storage. That will not make a laptop very big as you can see with that new Dell prototye or the framework laptop. HX and regular desktop CPUs are so similar that it does not make much of a difference to efficiency if you use one or the other. As for thickness it is not a quality in and of itself but even with the current 18" screens we will probably at least need 1.5" at the thickest part of the laptop to accomodate better performance unless we go back to wider bezels but that seems to be out of the question. Again with that I am talking about a handful of models at most and not more than one chassis per manufacturer. I was talking 250W and 300W GPU in that case as obviously we used to have SLI DTRs that could dissipate up to 400W GPU power alone in the past so 250W GPU with 350W combined TDP would be something to shoot for as a compromise.

It is a shame about the 4th SSD - I was hoping for a Titan 88 with more of everything not a 77 with one SSD less and still no QHD display and no 18". The Titan has quite stupid proportions as I have yet to find a laptop sleeve that is deep enough for it - would have been much better if it had been 1.5cm wider and 1cm less deep as then it could also easily have accommodated the new 18" screens. Imo CAMM is a promising concept in so far as with one form factor we would get the option for 128GB memory in a lot more laptops than now. Prices have to go down though and I would never have considered a Dell with their current highway robbery pricing. I am sure they will go down at some point now that it looks like we will see it in other laptops as early as next year: https://www.notebookcheck.net/SO-DIMM-laptop-RAM-form-factor-to-soon-be-replaced-with-Dell-developed-CAMM-standard.682337.0.html As for the thick Dell it is a very interesting idea in so far as it would allow for thicker laptops with little hardware changes if more manufacturers would go that route - imagine a thicker GT77 for example with more massive heatpipes or possibly also a vapor chamber design - just get a new bottom cover and upgrade the cooling! I could also see the added vertical headroom being used for stacked SSDs like HP does it - very smart concept but that would also necessitate a different mainboard whereas with a taller cooling section one could get away with just the cooling hardware and a new bottom cover - something that might even be done as an aftermarket solution.

Another successful screen upgrade on a GE76: