steelersnut86

Coming from the A51m that was running an i9-9900k and 2080 GPU, everything about the GT77 is faster. The fact that the GT77 hasn't throttled and is lighter and slimer while also not requiring 2 power bricks makes it a good upgrade for me.

The noise on the A51m R1 could get fairly loud, depending on the game or when doing video encoding. I will say that the GT77 fans get louder than the A51m R1, but I have as of yet to see any noticeable throttling on the GT77. I'll take louder fan noise over throttling any day. Frankly, the fan noise on the GT77 doesn't bother me, as I have the laptop tucked in under my TV and connected to the soundbar. I game in my living room on my OLED and soundbar, so I can turn up the volume if needed. I have the fan on auto, so they will ramp up and down as needed, and I find that they do a good job of anticipating when to go up or down. But, if I wasn't gaming on my TV and soundbar, I'd use a good set of earbuds or headphones, because don't think the volume of the laptop speakers would be enough to drown out the fans. For me, it is finally nice to have a system that handles everything I throw at it with room to spare. Another thing that bothered me about the A51m R1 is that Dell put in a I9-9900K and a GTX 2080, but capped the RAM speed at 2400Mhz. You could buy faster RAM, but it would clock down to 2400Mhz. That RAM speed was unacceptable even for the time when the laptop was released. The A51m R1 was designed and developed with almost no room for thermals, so I guess they figured they could give some thermal headroom by clocking down the RAM. This was even more obvious when they started dropping BIOS updates that purposely throttled at ridiculous levels. And folks that bought the A51m R1 after they started BIOS throttling were in for a big surprise, since Dell didn't disclose this throttling when selling the laptop. They knew they had a problem...

I was a previous very early (1st month of release) owner of an Alienware Area 51m R1, and now I own the Titan GT77. In reality, both a 51m and the GT77 are both non CPU and GPU upgradable, since Dell scrapped plans to provide upgrades to the 51m. This fact doesn't really bother me, since I usually buy the top model and hold onto it for years. I will say that the GT77 is still more upgradable than the 51m ever was due to the additional DIMM and NVME slots, and the Gen 5 nvme slot on the GT77 is also a nice touch that has upgrade potential. The GT77 is also lighter and uses only on power brick. I have used the GT77 for about a month now, and I have to admit it is better in every way than the 51m was I am new to MSI laptops, so I am figuring things out as far as tuning goes. The BIOS on the GT77 is infinitely more configurable than the 51m ever was, which for a new MSI owner is fun to figure out. I didn't get throttling on the 51m because I stayed on an old BIOS, and I have yet to get any throttling on the GT77 with games cranked up to high or ultra on 4k.

I was a long time viewer/lurker on the Alienware Area 51m owners lounge thread on the old notebook review forum. I was a very early adopter (1st month of release) of the 51m. I have made the plunge over to the MSI Titan GT77.