New alienware 17 modularity

Hi folks,

I've got a question to ask for a freind of mine before he goes off buying a new alienware 17.

up to now, alienwares are easy to dismantle & upgrade and this is a big advantage over Asus & Msi & others imho.

however, I haven't seen any video on dismantling the new alienware 17. Has alienware stayed true to their modular & easy to dismantle design ? Is it easy to replace all components (graphic card,wifi, etc...) as it is for the older m17x or m18x ?

Thank you for your replies....

P.S.: Still looking for a good deal on an M18x R2 barebone for me

 

No, because they're not so easy to dismantle. they're more throwaway than anything else with how they are designed.

The last decent laptop was the AW17R1 which is upgradable.

You're looking at the wrong brand if you want a laptop to be upgradable!

 

There's a small hatch that allows you to swap/change the HDD/SSD and RAM. That's it.

They're nothing like previous AW machines, where two screws gave you access to practically everything. And the CPU+GPU are now BGA (soldered directly to the motherboard).

 

Here's sort of a teardown of the 15 which shares the same motherboard as the 17 from what I read.

http://laptopmedia.com/news/inside-...assembly-internal-photos-and-upgrade-options/

EDIT: BTW, this belongs in the 2015 AW 13/15/17 forum

 

The new Alienwares are non-modular, save for the Alienware 18, which is a rehash of the 2013 model. On the 13/15/17, the graphics and CPU are soldered. RAM, HDD/SSD, and wifi modules can still be changed out.

 

i like being able to make it my own though...

 

As a former owner of the M17x R4 and current owner of the 2017 17 R3, i can tell you that AW as a modder friendly brand doesn't exist anymore.

Let me give you a small example:
On the M17x R4, if i wanted to clean dust from the fans and heatsink all i had to do is remove the battery from the bottom, unscrew 2 screws to allow me to simply to slide off the whole bottom, then i unscrew both fans and unplug their power, i blow away the dust, then put everything back, simple and easy.

On the 17 R3, you gotta first remove the first smaller bottom cover that let you access the hard drives and battery, which you have to remove and unplug, then you gotta take out the second bottom cover, then you remove the wireless card and cpu fan, unplug the display and remove the card reader, then you unscrew the cpu fan, then you remove the heatsink and the motherboard (so now you gotta repaste) and finally you have access to the gpu fan screws.

Not as simple anymore, and of course not to mention that both the CPU and GPU are soldered to the mobo, so no upgrading whatsoever, and expensive to fix outside warranty.