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Hardware

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

By Mark W. Kaelin May 16, 2008, 5:44 AM PDT

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Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Shiny

Shiny

The Area 51 m15x notebook is latest in a long line of quality portable computers from boutique manufacturer Alienware. The m15x is also one of the most powerful notebook computers we ever had the pleasure to review. Of course, we couldn’t resist cracking open the m15x to see what makes it tick.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Touch of class

Touch of class

The m15x comes wrapped in a velvet sleeve to keep it all shiny.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Touches

Touches

Selling to the enthusiast market means adding little touches to the overall PC purchasing experience. Alienware included a hat and documentation in a nice binder.

The folks at Alienware also sent us the optional spare hard drive and batter pack.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Pretty colors

Pretty colors

Again, part of the “experience” are the color LEDs that light up the keyboard, touch pad, buttons and the LCD bezel. Software is installed that allows you to change colors to your liking.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 1

Benchmarks 1

The setup for the first benchmark run using 3DMark06.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 2

Benchmarks 2

The score surprised me – I was expecting it to be higher.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 3

Benchmarks 3

As you can see, the m15x did not land very high on the comparative scale. Something was amiss.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 4

Benchmarks 4

The setup for benchmark run number two — I added anti-aliasing.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 5

Benchmarks 5

The extra work lowered the score.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 6

Benchmarks 6

And again the comparison suffered.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 7

Benchmarks 7

The key was the resolution. The other PCs in the comparison were running at a resolution of 1280 X 1024. I ran the previous two tests at 1900 X 1200.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 8

Benchmarks 8

At the lower resolution we achieve a much more reasonable benchmark.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 9

Benchmarks 9

And a much more favorable comparison.

Let there be now doubt, the Alienware Area 51 m15x is a very powerful computer. These benchmarks compare favorable to premium desktops. That’s a lot of performance in a 15 inch notebook.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Benchmarks 10

Benchmarks 10

For additional comparison, consider this chart. The mark for the m15x is 9239, which is much closer to the 11934 that my dual-graphic carded, Quad CPU desktop scored than it is to what the Alienware m9700 scored a couple of years ago.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Geek heaven

Geek heaven

One of the most pleasing gaming geek features of the m15x is the HDMI out. Who can resist the allure of playing computer games on a 42-inch LCD in full 1080p high definition glory!

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

My that is a big cable you have

My that is a big cable you have

It is sort of strange to see a HDMI cable of this size extending out of a notebook PC.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Ports 1

Ports 1

Unlike the Apple MacBook Air, the Alienware m15x does not skimp on the number of available ports. You have the standard card readers, HDMI out, USB and Firewire.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Ports 2

Ports 2

On the other side you have a plug for the AC adapter, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two more USB ports, and jacks for headphones and a microphone.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Blu-ray

Blu-ray

The optical drive is a blu-ray DVD reader/writer. This slot can also hold the optional battery pack or a second hard drive. Very clever construction.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Name plate

Name plate

This Alienware Area 51 m15x is officially designated for TechRepublic, both in earth-bound English and some form of extraterrestrial language.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Well packed

Well packed

There is very little wasted space inside our m15x. Note the two fans and two large heat sinks.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Keeping cool

Keeping cool

Heat dissipation is obviously important.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Speed to burn

Speed to burn

The 8800M GTX is the current performance champion for mobile computers.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

All that can be seen

All that can be seen

Because of the limitations of the 32-bit version of Windows Vista, 3GB is really all we need in our m15x.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

200GB

200GB

Although, with 200GB already installed, I am not sure we need to add anything.

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Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Alienware

Image: Sarah Tew/CNET

Alienware

The label says it all.

Image: Sarah Tew/CNET
Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

More video

More video

Over here we have a second video system from Intel. Using this system should save your considerable battery life, but you won’t play many games with it.

Cracking Open the $5000 Alienware Area 51 m15x notebook

Put together

Put together

The Alienware Area 51 m15x is another marvel of engineering. Like other modern notebooks we have Cracked Open, the designers and engineers have done an excellent job of getting some extreme performance from a very compact compartment.

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By Mark W. Kaelin
Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the information technology industry, gadgets, finance, accounting, and tech-life for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has been a regular contributor to BreakingModern.com, aNewDomain.net,
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