The last time I rocked an AMD laptop, it was the halcyon year of 2006. A Gateway laptop, powered by the AMD Turion, happened to fit into our budget, and it served us well. Fast forward to the year 2024, and my wife and I have become AMD enthusiasts, currently both on our 4th consecutive AMD desktop CPU. Our laptops, though, have been Intel since the Core 2 Duo era.
In 2017, we hopped on the Alienware train with the R17 model, and it served us well. However, it's time for an upgrade. This time, we chose an Alienware M18 R1. This beast is primarily for my wife's remote work needs, but hey, it doesn't hurt that it can game too.
We snagged this beauty from the Dell Home outlet. But because I'm a bit of a tech nerd (just like I'm sure many of you are), I couldn't resist making some tweaks right out of the box. No shade to Dell – I'm just a bit particular.
Here's what I changed:
- Swapped out the WD SN810 SSD for a pair of 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSDs in RAID 1.
- Replaced the included "Killer WiFi" with an Intel AX210 for smoother connectivity.
- Changed out the Element31 thermal compound with some Kingpin KPX.
- Performed a clean Windows 11 Pro Install.
The result? A beastly machine featuring 12 cores, 24 threads, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 6+ GB/Sec 1TB RAID 1 array, a 1600p LCD, and a mobile GeForce 4070. This thing doesn't just run; it absolutely screams! Special Shout out to Office 365 for making the profile backup and restore easy, and to my ISP for making it FAST
