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Looks like Dell has rather limited staying power this generation and unless they change their heatpipe / cooling assembly I do not see that change. The Titan is currently among the best solutions but really too slim for a Titan and it is so deep that it is not easy to handle anyway despite its rather light weight. Another pound of heatpipes and some added height would have helped. I think that for such a top chassis MSI did not want to reinvent the Wheel so quickly, maybe we will get some kind of 18" GT89 with the next generation and a jump to at least 300W system TDP would be in order to justify the Titan name. I also do not get the hysteria that laptops cannot have more than one power supply as that is rather inconsequential on the road as one could for example have 2 x 240W when stationary and 1 x 240W on the road or alternatively use one of those new 330W GAN chargers instead. Not to forget that in the next generation there could probably also be 240W USB-C charging. Lots of options there and only idiot reviewers will pretend that this is any kind of issue when it can be handled with the necessary flexibility. Rather disappointed that MSI went from 4 to 3 SSDs slots in the new GT77 - that is not helpful and imo not necessary given the area they have available. Instead we get a 1000 nits LED display - for those who like to be blinded when working indoors I guess - and probably again no QHD option.

150+ sounds about right for the Titan chassis when you get a decent one. I had one that could only sustain 125W over 10 minutes and another one that could sustain 160W. Of course noise is rather horrible but that comes with the territory I guess. Not sure how much power could be sustained with some good but also reasonably quiet external cooling solution and some optimization to the cooling / vent system. Maybe 110W to 130W.

Intel and Nvidia want to sell - obviously Nvidia can set a max TGP and Intel will not change their chips for manufacturers but I doubt that Intel will dictate to manufacturers that their CPUs can only get 75W in mixed usage - it makes Intel look bad when the GPU gets max power and their CPUs are operated at much less power than they need so why would they want that. In any case I cannot see Intel as the bad guy here in so far as they obviously allow up to 200W for their CPU - not like Nvidia who don't care how good your cooling is - even if you are below 60 degrees at max power you cannot supply their mobile cards with more than 175W which is ridiculous especially when dektop GPUs can be supplied with power way beyond their very generous TGP. Yes things used to be better. I have a GT83 here right now that pulls about 400W I believe in a Time Spy run with GTX 1070 SLI - has two 240W power supplies and the bigger version with the 8950HK and 2 x GTX 1080 pulled up to around 500W iirc. I would guess that all the later SLI designs and then the first single CPU designs with the 9900K or 10900K all could sustain at least 300W and often more - one 330W power adapter was not enough back then. About the current 250W: Which manufacturer is the third one, do you have a link? I have only seen MSI openly mentioning it, Alienware definitely is not very vocal about it.

The predecessors 12800HX and 12900HX with the same exact nominal max TDP could easily go up to 200W and more, I think I tested up to 220W. You are right about 175 + 75 - they all max out the GPU while limiting the CPU to less than half of its nominal max TDP and less than 40% to its usable max TDP of 200W. As for Intel deciding this it seems to me more like the gentleman's agreement between German car manufacturers Audi, BMW, Mercedes and VW who limit their high performance cars to a top speed of 250 km/h but then we will never know exactly if that was the case here. In any case 250W just isn't enough to do justice to both CPU and GPU when they are rated at 175 + 157 got a total of 332 which by the way is very close to the combined TDP that Clevo gave for the X170 (325W).

Asus actually is 240W, so only MSI and Alienware seem to do 250W. That Intel CPU can easily pull 200W so 250W certainly is not enough and I cannot believe Intel would limit total TDP like that. I would have expected Alienware to claim at least 275W if not 300W with that kind of weight and chassis.

Yes I know, the 51m R1 was the last Alienware with 4 sodimm slots, seems to be a thing of the past now. I need more than 64GB now and I would not want to wait around for MAYBE 64GB dimms popping up and then they never arrive. I am also not at all impressed with the shared TDP of 250W between GPU and CPU as per ultrabookreview, looks like for such a heavy system with only two dimm slots and a vapor chamber it should be able to do better than an MSI GT77 or GE78 that weigh about 2 lbs less: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/60886-alienware-m18-m16/ On the Intel side, expect up to Intel Core i9-13980HX + RTX 4090 16GB configurations. Alienware didn’t go into specific details on the power settings applied to the components here, and only mentioned up to 250W of crossload CPU + GPU power. That should translate into up to 175W TGP on the 4090/4080 models, with the rest going to the CPU, and I’d be surprised to see a higher-power GPU given what we already know from the other brands. Similar settings should be possible on both the m16 and the m18, but with arguably better thermals on the m18, due to its larger chassis.

Here is a bunch of QHD 165 Hz screens: https://www.panelook.com/modelsearch.php?op=advancedsearch&order=panel_id&inch_low=1730&inch_high=1730&resolution_pixels=8380&vertical_frequency=165 You can also filter for 240 Hz. Forum member @JeanLegi successfully made the switch to QHD with one of the above screens:

Not sure if it would have been so easy for them to get access to those panels but it looks like they are going for thin and light anyway so a bigger panel would not have helped with that. Even back when Alienware, Asus and MSI still had 18.4" panels Clevo did only have 17.3 panels so I am not sure they would be willing to go that route even with a heavier model - missed opportunity in any case. You can also see the level of excitement for it when you look at its thread in the Sager / Clevo section - oh wait, nobody bothered to start an X370 thread...

It would be nice to get those 64GB memory sticks but I will not bet the house on it 🙂 Alienware did away with 4 slots after the first 51m so I would be very surprised if they returned. For my work I prefer 4 SSD slots, 4 memory slots and RGB lighting on the keyboard in order to color code certain shortcuts and currently only MSI produces such a machine and sadly with the new GT77 starting in February they will drop the 4th SSD slot.

It would be more honest to just retire the X-series. This is insulting.

Oh, I overread the A - those indeed would not help!

There were some last year but you had to sell a kidney to get them new, I think it got as high as the RTX A4500? If you got one then that means you will not be able to buy a 4090 MXM this year as that one will cost you two kidneys 😄

So let's make it 250W TGP with air and 300W with watercooling - will be a lot more than we have now. As for TIM many manufacturers already offer liquid metal or phase change pads, that helps, the next step would be vapor chambers and bigger ones at that. It can obviously be done as laptops from the past did better even without vpor chambers and technology for cooling has improved since then. The next Intel socket that should be introduiced towards the end of this year should be good for about 2 or 3 CPU generations and AM5 for 4 or 5 - you obviously want to introduce a socketed CPU at the right time and not at the end of a cycle and like motherboards there would have to be some support. Benefits for the end user would not just be to have a socketed CPU but to choose which CPU to use. Want a lesser CPU with a 4080 or 4090? Not possible at this point with most manufacturers, same for a big CPU with a lesser GPU. That could easily be addressed and would really help those of us who do not need the top CPU AND GPU as especially the big GPUs cost a lot and are somehow forced on the buyer as he has to buy them together with a high end GPU.

Question is how much more it would have to cost. Something like the MSI GT77 is not that far away and would only need a CPU socket and vapor chamber cooling for substantial improvements and a slightly larger chassis for an 18" screen. A halo product has positive effects in and of itself so there would be some trickle down effect having the greatest and the best. Die size works for us - a 4090 desktop die has an almost twice as big die size as a 1080 and that was cooled quite well even going up to 200W. With close to twice the die size and advancements in cooling it would most probably be easier to cool a 4090 die at 300W TGP than a 1080W running at 180W TGP due to reduced thermal density. Nobody is really expecting to run a 4090 in a laptop at 450W but even 300W would be feasible with proper cooling design although a more realistic goal would probably be 250 to 275W with the 4090 desktop die and a total of 400W between the GPU and CPU. Even at 250W I would not be surprised if the 4090 die would give about 50% better performance than the current 4080 die used in the laptop 4090. Or the simplest approach with still very good results would be to "only" go with a socketed CPU and allow a power limit of up to 250W for the current 4090 chip - even the 4080 chip can do a lot more if we give it more power as currently it is only getting a bit more than half of its designed TGP. So there are options and I do not think that they would be that expensive as a socketed CPU has ben offered by Clevo in a 15" chassis and that cannot have been too successful and MSI had those , too some years ago and neither were they extremely expensive nor sold in a way that even made the customer aware they existed. So there is some room for improvement with some marketing and costs can be exaggerated for the sake of not having to answer the real reason for these not being released which is that the industry does not believe in high performance any more but mostly in slim and light even in their top models. Has been done by Asus and Tongfang/Uniwill and I have not heard of too many issues with the second approach, Asus I do not have much experience with and it was also impractical due to size.. Also with the Uniwill approach it is just tacked on to a normal system - all it does add if you do not use it is a little height and weight, probably 2 or 3mm and about 100g. It is a simple and very effective solution for people who want to use it but it can also not be used/offered for people who aren't that extreme and a very powerful system could still be offered without it.

About the hideous surcharges for the top cards: For gaming on the road a 4070 should easily handle a QHD screen as it should offer slightly above 3080 Ti performance. QHD is about the amount of detail one can resolve without the nose glued to the screen, even at 18". That leaves 1300 Euro in the above case that can be used towards upgrading the desktop PC - not too bad 😄 Of course we can expect or already know that many of the higher end laptops will not even offer a 4070 option but only the 4080 or 4090 - so much for laptops not needing to be modular. For my X170KM-G I could choose the fastest CPU with only the smallest CPU and there were three of them to choose from - not any more I guess...

The tragic thing is that we have a lot of capability these days but no ambition - not from Nvidia, not from the manufacturers and not from the customers most of all. If you look at a few tech channel guys around youtube you will now find them mentioning 6 to 7 lbs laptops as super heavy and huge when in weight they are below former 15" DTRs and in volume they are probably smaller, too. Before it was important to have a powerful laptop now it is about holding it with one hand apparently, no idea what this is all about: So not much is coming out of the capability to build a really good 8 to 9 lbs DTR with a vapor chamber and possibly water cooling when people mainly buy 14" and therefore companies innovate in those market segments? I will give it to MSI that they are the only company that still has good performance and most if not all DTR features in a less gamey chassis with the GT77 but I would much have preferred a GT88 with a socketed CPU now that socketed GPUs are obviously off the table and most of all with a bigger than 250W combined power limit - looks like this is a new invisible barrier nobody dares to cross.

It should be great - except if you need 128GB memory. Where else are we supposed to get that if not in the biggest DTR of this generation? Looks like the MSI GT77 and its Creator variant will remain the only high performance options with 4 memory slots but they don't have an 18" screen...

Thanks, I think I know that user from German forums. I can only remember one user who I believe was from Hungary - triturbo. Probably not the same guy as I only remember that he had the HP Elitebook 8740.

Glad you found it - do you have the name of the thread and the subforum for me? We also have a T-shaped heatsink and a 2080 🙂

Shouldn't it be in the NBR Archive? Can you remember where it was posted so that we can look for it?

That power connector is a mystery - it is obviously very shitty and falls off all the time yet it has been used in several Clevo, MSI and I am sure other laptops, too. The new connector on the other hand that is used by Clevo for the X170 and by MSI in newer units, too is a lot better and does not come out as easily any more - real progress for a change.

It is not like you missed much - as has been predicted we got a bunch of "behemoths" with an 18" screen that are mostly less big and powerful with regard to cooling capabilities than 17" laptops used to be and at least on paper they do not look like cooling has improved much over the last generation. Actual performance that will of course still be higher due to increased CPU and GPU performance. Still it is quite funny that with the extremely power hungry Intel GPUs a combined load of 240 to 250W is considered acceptable which leaves only 65 to 75W for the CPU when 175W is going to the GPU. The only company that could possibly offer more performance is Dell with the Alienware 18 that is about one third heavier than the competition so possibly some of that is going into a higher performance vapor chamber that might dissipate closer to 300W.

I can definitely understand - not something that I would long to do myself 🙂 There are more things you can do that may add up: Tweak the fit of the heatsink use a cooling pad lift the back of the laptop with a stand adjust undervolting reduce clock speeds If you gain a little with each option that may already be enough.

Biggest laptop disappointment of CES. It is probably the X370 which I would call an imposter as it is so inferior to the original idea of the X series. Let's look what features it offers that could be associated with the top of the line status of the X-series or ported over from the X170: 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 X-name to impress the gullible? Check! That water cooled Tongfang / Uniwill actually looks a lot more tempting if I was only looking for 2 + 2 memory + storage and a 17" screen.

@win32asmguyshould at least get a member of the month award for that find - lots of users now with more GPU power 🙂