Image: DellĬoncept Polaris can house a full-size, 16-inch desktop graphics card like the Nvidia RTX 3090, and with the right card, it should be able to deliver vastly increased graphical performance to laptops that support eGPUs. The Polaris is built to fit full-size, 16-inch graphics cards. That’s a big change from previous Alienware eGPUs which relied on proprietary port to connect to older Alienware laptops. That means it could also, theoretically, work with laptops from other makers. Thunderbolt 4 would make perfect sense given that its new laptops, including the Alienware X14, have at least one of those ports. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of an eGPU, it’ll help you boost the graphical power of your laptop, provided it has the right ports and assuming you can actually get your hands on a powerful desktop GPU to put in a separate enclosure.ĭuring our in-person walkthrough of the product, Alienware’s team stated repeatedly that the Polaris will connect to laptops via Thunderbolt 4, though the company’s press release that we were given ahead of CES dances around its connectivity altogether. Alienware doesn’t yet have a price, though its specs and design might make paying a premium worth it for some people. It’s a concept for a liquid-cooled external graphics card enclosure with an estimated launch window of early 2022. That unique port gave the enclosure more bandwidth than your standard Thunderbolt-powered external GPU, but it also meant it only worked with Alienware laptops that sported the proprietary port.We eulogized the end of Alienware’s graphics amplifier in mid-2021 when Dell discontinued it, but the company is returning to the space with Concept Polaris. The Alienware Graphics Amplifier was a similar enclosure featuring an older design and a proprietary graphics connection. These external adapters could have as much as 425 watts of power each.Ĭoncept Polaris isn’t Alienware’s first attempt at external graphics.
How? Well, Alienware has removed the internal power supply out and replaced it with two AC power adapters.
#EXTERNAL GPU ENCLOSURE FOR DESKTOP FULL#
It looks even better here than it does in full towers like the Aurora.ĭespite being fairly small, it can fit a full-length desktop graphics card, even something as enormous as an RTX 3090.
The chassis has all the now-classic design elements we’ve come to expect in a modern Alienware product: White paint job, round edges, honeycomb cutouts, and the glowing white alien head, of course. Still, Concept Polaris is just a project. Buying exorbitant prices for GPUs that will only be bottlenecked over the bandwidth of Thunderbolt sounds silly. The scarcity and skyrocketing price of graphics cards in recent years thanks to the GPU shortage, has made it a complete nonstarter. But now probably isn’t the best time to talk about it. The idea of connecting an external GPU to your laptop over Thunderbolt has always been a neat but niche idea. Fitbit Versa 3Īt CES 2022, Alienware has unveiled Concept Polaris, an external GPU enclosure with an undeniably cool look.
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