Humorously, one of the more recent posts I made on this blog was when I purchased my Asus RoG Strix Scar II in 2019, over four years ago. That laptop served my needs for those four years and was a major upgrade from my old Alienware m17. However, at the beginning of 2023, I started streaming on Twitch for fun, thanks to my XBox Game Pass giving me access to a large library of games that I previously would not have access to or would not otherwise want to play.
At the same time this began, my RoG developed a strange illness in which its power supply would randomly not charge the battery. This means that when you unplug the laptop from the power supply (even if the battery shows a charge), there is a 50/50 chance that it will die instantly. Furthermore, the Bluetooth module (which I use for my mouse and gaming controller) would randomly just disappear in Windows for no apparent reason. I usually had to fix this by completely opening the laptop, jiggling the Bluetooth module, closing the laptop, and hoping that it will work.
Thanks to a gift from Uncle Sam, I had some money ahead after the tax season, so my wife agreed to let me pick up a new gaming laptop within a certain price range. I spent weeks researching and ultimately decided to return to the world of Alienware. My first gaming laptop (as you will likely remember from a previous post) was an Alienware laptop, which lasted for a long time. Most of the top gaming laptops I researched (including the newer ASUS RoG, MSI Titan, and Razer Blade) have a very long delay for delivery – I am talking months before I could even get my hands on any of them. The few that I could order directly were lower powered than the Alienware or much more expensive (some topping out at $7k+).
So finally, I selected a very high-powered laptop that was custom made for me by Alienware and it has already been delivered! Here are the specs:
| Processor | 13th Gen Intel Core i9 13900HX (24 Core, 36MB Cache, up to 5.4 GHz). |
| Graphics | NVidia GeForce RTX 4090 16GB GDDR6 GPU |
| RAM | 64GB (2x 32GB) DDR5 4800 MHz |
| HDD | 2TB 2x1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD |
| Display | 18″ QHD (2560 x 1600) 165Hz DCI-P3 |
| Keyboard | Alienware CherryMX Ultra-Low-profile mechanical keyboard |
Suffice it to say, I am very excited to test out the capabilities of this monster! I have already done some testing with some of my favorite games and even completed a stream on Twitch with it. It has had no issues at all with what I have thrown at it.
If you would like to watch the stream where I unbox the laptop and share the story that got me here, please check out the YouTube video below!