At CES 2022, Alienware is showing off the future of eGPUs in the form of Concept Polaris, a beastly new chassis that rewrites the Alienware Graphics Amplifier into something much more accessible.
Unfortunately, since Concept Polaris is in fact a concept, its fate is up in the air. There's no word on price point or the potential release date of the product. However, Alienware has stated that many of the features will evolve and change.
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Alienware Concept Polaris
Of course, the biggest change from the Alienware Graphics Amplifier to Concept Polaris is the design, as this model takes on the Alienware Legend ID, sporting a soft-touch white chassis accented by gorgeous RGB infinity loops. It's pretty bulky, but that's a given considering that it needs to lug around Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs.
The eGPU can take full 16-inch desktop gaming graphics cards without an issue. But what about the heat? Well, Concept Polaris is liquid cooled with a 240mm Cryo-Tech cooling solution. That gives you the ability to overclock the GPU natively with the Alienware Command Center.
Polaris has a ton of ports, providing connectivity via Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, USB Type-A, USB Type-C, and 2.5GB Ethernet ports.
Right now, all we can really do is ogle at the Alienware Concept Polaris until we can get more hands on time with this machine to benchmark its potential. I'm curious to see how well its optimized to work with gaming laptops that don't just come from Alienware but also other manufacturers.
If the Alienware Concept Polaris manages to stick to an affordable price point, I can see this being a viable option for many gamers stuck on older gaming laptops.
