*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge

So, it looks like Dell announced the new Alienware 17 r2 at CES today, and there are some nasty changes!

There's some good things - an extra 5 macro keys to the left of the keyboard in addition to the 4 above the numpad from the 17r1, a connector for an external GPU like the AW 13 has (it's an external enclosure with a PSU and a physical x16 PCIe slot, 4x electrical iirc), and 1080p by default. You can also upgrade to touch for some reason, but I really don't see many doing this. There are also 4 m.2 drive slots for you to expand into. And, of course, it is significantly slimmer and lighter - 1.35' thick (down from 1.9') and 8.1lb (down from 9.1lb in the 17r1), which is not insignificant.

But the bad changes really add up. There is now only one 2.5" drive bay and no DVD drive, and only 2 sodimm slots - limiting the AW 17r2 to 16GB max ram. Because seriously, no one would ever mind halving the maximum ram, right?

And as the real kicker, it appears that the video card is NOT an MXM card, and is instead part of the "system board" which also seems to contain the CPU. And the CPU is now a BGA part (socket FCBGA1364) which means it is soldered in-place and non-upgradable. So all of the 'interesting' components are part of the same board, which is unique to the Alienware 17r2. To me, this kills any interest I had. Because seriously, what's the point of an Alienware that can't be upgraded?

AW 17 r2 Reference Guide
AW 17 r2 Service Manual

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*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge