I almost titled this video the best gaming laptop money can buy but I just
can't do that it's infuriating because the cooling the screen the keyboard and
the build quality almost everything about this new Alienware X17 is
exceptional except for one massive flaw that makes it perform worse in this
Lenovo that's $600 cheaper
side by side it is hard to tell the difference between the outgoing m17 and
the new X17 but the first couple things
I noticed weren't great the numpad is gone which isn't fantastic on a modern
desktop replacement and the trackpad has become smaller I was in the process of
angrily typing about how alien wear is going backwards but then the fans on the
m17 kicked in while I was installing a program at which point I realized the
X17 had yet to make a sound this is when
I started to appreciate just how much cooling there is in this laptop like
look there's vents vents vents uh vents
back here and vents down here like how else are you going to cool 165 wat RTX
380 in a laptop that's this thin without
starting a fishing reaction I've said in previous videos that because turbo boost
has gotten so good if your laptop isn't thermal throttling you're leaving
performance on the table but Alienware has done something incredible with this
X17 giving the RTX 380 and the 8 core i7
every single watt it possibly could and we're still not seeing 100° on the CPU
even more impressively the X17 manages these temps without sounding like an
audio immersion mod for flight simulator I can confidently say that this is the
best cool laptop on the market that isn't as chunky as thick and nugget so
it should be able to handily outperform the identically spec Lenovo Legion 7
should in practice it's more of a mixed
bag with the legion and the alien wear trading blows in our gaming benchmarks
even more humiliating the X17 was unable
to consistently beat the m17 it's supposed to be replacing now to be clear
it isn't like the X17 is slow the gaming experience on this thing is Sublime but
for the exact same spec this one's $600
less and I want the performance to be able to back up the price tag on this
thing so why isn't this laptop that's
clearly better cooled and just running faster not running faster in games well
it all comes to a little do hookie called a Muk switch see in laptops with
both a discret GPU and a CPU with integrated Graphics the discret GPU
signal is routed through the igpu before being routed to the display this allows
the CPU to decide whether or not it needs high efficiency or high
performance but well this is great great for saving battery life it also results
in a 5 to 10% performance hit a Muk
switch performs the same basic function but without requiring the dedicated GPU
to be routed through the igpu eliminating that performance hit while
keeping the battery life benefits and also allowing you to use g-sync as a
cherry on top clearly you want a mck switch in your laptop not so clearly
Alienware has only included one in the 1080p 360 HZ screen option for the X17
the leaving the 165 HZ and 4K panel options high and dry normally the reason
to not include a Muk switch is cost but Dell this is a
$3600 laptop give it aing Muk switch I
retested the games connected to an external display and yep 5 to 10% more
performance making the X17 the Undisputed King by the way if you want
to look like a king check out our new dad hats they're brand new but they look
like they're dropped in the ocean LTD store.com anyway the main reason I'm so
annoyed about a relatively small amount of performance is that everything else
on this machine is nearly perfect the X17 is undeniably wellb built magnesium
chassis is just incredibly stiff and their silky smooth
finish it really lives up to its name even if it is a bit of a fingerprint
magnet sure rigidity alone does not justify the premium but this keyboard
just might in here we have the optional Cherry mechanical keyboard and it is
fantastic like it is a $50 add-on but if
you're looking at this laptop you're clearly not concerned with getting the
most bang FB we've already done a full video on this keyboard so I won't Rave
about it for too long but simply put this is the first mechanical keyboard in
a laptop that is actually good there's
loads of travel a very distinct tacti bump and the keys are shockingly well
supported like it's a gaming laptop but you could totally right an novel on it
the trackpad on the other hand is just fine it's glass topped RGB the feel
while using it is incredible but I just wish we had more of it I understand they
had to do this for the sake of cooling but it just can't compare to the
zephyris M16 another area I was concerned Alienware had fallen behind
the pack was the screen I absolutely love 16 X10 displays for productivity
especially on smaller laptops but the 17-in size on here more than makes up
for it and with a 4 K 120 HZ panel it is
possibly the most immersive gaming experience I've ever had on a laptop
there are only a handful of laptops out there where this panel makes any sense
you need the grunt from a proper 165 wat
RTX 380 to get modern games past 60 FPS
at 4K and a laptop and if you plan on
getting super sweaty just get the 360 HZ
panel but man with this GPU this 4K
panel it looks so good good from here we
don't really have a script but I want to do crab
raave yeah it's not as
good yeah that's way better D just take
the speakers from this one and put it in this one what are you doing I honestly
thought it would be better moving on the io that you get in this guy is very
solid like there's nothing that I really want back here except for just knowing
what is back here it's really difficult to reach around and plug in your stuff
and Lenovo has a really simple solution for this where they just simply have
some text that lights up that allows you to know exactly where to plug in your
stuff excellent solution I want to take it apart now
though I haven't cuz I'm a bit scared of the insides the first bit of disassembly
is super easy eight Phillips head screws and boom bottom panel comes off and we
have access to two RAM slots and two
ssds awesome love to see it that's
realistically all that I'd expect to be able to upgrade in something like this
oh and the battery 87 wat hours which is
good for maybe 5 hours if you're lucky I
do wish that they had an AMD CPU option cuz then probably get like two maybe
even three more hours and like 9 hours
of battery life is way different feeling than five let's disconnect the battery
speaking of that Dell was so proud of the cooling that they put in this like
you can see these four fans the heat sinks go all the way along the side and
they're up here and apparently with some cfd stuff they
optimized it so that the air flow would not just go over these fins but also
around all the components in here so your RAM and ssds and vrms and such are
also pretty well
cooled two more fillip screws and this comes off with a bit of effort if the
laptop is not on and the b-roll shots you now know
why that was in no way easy but it is
really convenient that Dell has only two types of screws in here and it's m2x 4
and m2x 3 and all of them are marked
oh we have done it and oh that's not
what I was expecting at all but that is really impressive holy frig look at
those heat pipes so I think that we have like Vapor chamber Vapor chamber and
then big chungus maybe there's like 12
mm heat pipes uh one two three four of
them plus five one on the other side for
some probably vrms this is why I'm so
annoyed they have this beautiful cooling system four fans 12 phase vrms for the
GPU this is seriously impressive crap
and then they just don't have a Muk switch on it alien wear come
on so then in almost every way the
Alienware X17 is the best gaming laptop
money can buy and you can tell your friends all about the keyboard and the
screen and the chassis and the cooling system but you'll have that one friend
that watched this video and knows that you paid a metric buttload of money for
a laptop that could have easily been 10% more powerful if Dell had just simply
included a freaking mck switch well
would be even more embarrassing is if this
thing right here ends up being more powerful it's a blade and Alienware
ripoff but it does have a Muk switch and an AMD CPU so get subscribed I'm
starting to work on this tomorrow what can't wait until tomorrow
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store only thanks for watching this video if you're still unsure what laptop
to get check out a review of the zephrus g15 it's not quite as powerful but it's
way easier to live with every day