Alien Autopsy: See Radical 'Element 31' Cooling Inside Alienware's New X-Series Gaming Laptops

Cooling is half the battle in gaming laptops and Alienware's new secret weapon is its mysterious "Element 31", which the company finally revealed at Computex 2021.

Element 31 – named after gallium's 31st place in the periodic table – is essentially an encapsulated gallium liquid metal and one of the exotic materials used by Alienware to make the stupidly thin Alienware x15 and x17 laptops.

Traditional liquid metals have been used by enthusiasts on desktop computers for quite some time, as well as high-end laptops for about two years, but they've always had drawbacks. Alienware actually looked at phase change materials, aluminum doped materials, organic waxes, graphite, and raw liquid metals, but decided that element 31 was the best answer.

Dell's Travis North said that while conventional liquid metal has great thermal conductivity, it also conducts electricity, which isn't great in a computer where it can potentially short out components.

"Also, fillers corrode in the presence of water vapor, so you get performance degradation over time and it's very corrosive in the presence of aluminum," North said in a press briefing. on the cooling of the new laptop.

Where Element 31 differs is ease and security of application.

"It looks like a grease, you apply it, compress the heatsink by screwing it in, it breaks the bonds of the silicone so we get liquid metal to die the contact points and at the base of the heatsink contact points ", mentioned.

Although Element 31 lacks the electrical conductivity of conventional liquid metals, North said Alienware still took the added safety measure of fencing off Element 31, which most manufacturers of laptops had to do with their liquid metals.

Element 31 also gave a significant performance advantage. North said the company saw a 7.5 degree improvement over the conventional thermal grease the company had previously used. North noted that the grease Alienware uses was already "best in class" and no slouch.

Gallium, North said, is an excellent thermal material because it has a very high heat capacity. If you think of heat capacity as a large pot of boiling water, he said, the dense nature of gallium allows it to absorb heat from a hot CPU chip so that connected vapor chambers can better dissipate it.

In the end, North said, Element 31 provided a 25 percent improvement over the thermal grease Alienware was using.

Fantastic

The other major cooling component of the Alienware x15 and x17 was the basic design around four fans. While North admitted that many will cling to "more fans means better," he said, it's not just the numbers, but the placement and the design. For example, North said, the company had to rotate the processor's position on the laptop's motherboard to get what it wanted to do. No, a five-blade razor...er, a five-fan laptop isn't necessarily better.

The Alienware x15 and x17 fans are strategically placed to create an internal air conditioning system inside the laptops. Two fans using Dell's dual opposed fan design are mounted in front of the two traditional fans in the rear. DOO fans feature much larger 30% larger impellers to create positive airflow pressure through heat-sensitive components such as M.2 and front voltage regulation than rear fans do not exhaust everything. Each of the fans now runs at 12 volts, which also increases efficiency, and each fan is independent of each other in terms of speed.

Finally, Dell also includes custom power profiles in the BIOS as well as user control over how the system should direct cooling. Want more games? You can manually offset it to give the GPU as much cooling. CPU-intensive encoding? You can manually move the cooling to the processor.

All of this, Dell said, contributes to better cooling in a gaming laptop that's as thin as possible and makes the Alienware x15 "the most powerful sub-16mm, 15-inch gaming laptop in the world." .

And yes, it's incredibly thin since laptops like Acer's Predator Triton 300 or MSI's GS66 Stealth measure between 18 and 19 mm. By the way, both are incredibly thin too.

Alienware x15 and x17 specs

The Alienware x15 R1 will ship with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H or 11th Gen Core i9-11900H processor with GPU options ranging from an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU with a 70 Watt TGP plus 20 additional watts of dynamic boost power. The Alienware x15 will also be available with a GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU with 90 watts TGP, plus an additional 20 watts of Dynamic Boost. There is also the 8GB variant of the GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU with 90 watts TGP and an additional 20 watts of Dynamic Boost.

Panel options range from a buzzing 1080p panel at 165Hz or 360Hz, and a 1440p QHD panel at 240Hz. Ports include one USB-A, one USB-C, Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, and 2.5GbE. And yes, there is no more Alienware amplifier port.

The larger Alienware x17 will offer the same 11th Gen Intel Core i7 and Core i9 processors and GPUs, but will hit higher marks.

The Alienware's GeForce RTX 2060 x17 laptop is rated at 115 watts plus an additional 15 watts of Dynamic Boost; the GeForce RTX 3070 laptop is rated at 125 watts plus an additional 15 watts of Dynamic Boost; and the 16GB version of the GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU is configured for 150 watts with an additional 15 watts of Dynamic Boost.

Panel options for the x17 range from a 17.3-inch 1080p panel with 165Hz or 360Hz refresh rates, and a 1440p QHD display at 120Hz.

For ports, the Alienware x17 will offer two USB-A, one USB-C, one Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, miniDisplayPort 1.4, one 2.5GbE and will also drop support for Alienware's Amplifier.

Both laptops will run off 240 watt power bricks using barrel adapters.

Dell will be offering both the Alienware x15 and x17 in limited configurations today with prices starting at €2,000 for the x15 and €2,100 for the x17. Full configurations of both models will go on sale from June 15.

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