Dell Alienware 18 overclocked chip reaches speeds far exceeding 4GHz

Dell have over clocked the new Alienware 18 laptop, pushing the Intel Core i7 chip speed up to 4.4GHz, making it very attractive to gamers.

Although 4.4GHz isn’t an unheard of processor speed by any means, it is quite rare in laptops, due to overclocking being harder in the more compact and portable machines, as opposed to in desktops. Therefore, to increase performance, it became more common for manufacturers to just add more cores top prevent overheating and balance power consumption with system performance.

However, Dell have pushed the speeds on the Alienware laptops, the stereotypically high performing laptops preferred by gamers for running top quality games with intense graphic quality.

Previously, an optional Core i7-4910MQ in the Alienware 17 pushed beyond the 4.0GHz threshold, hitting speeds of 4.1GHz.

However, Alienware 18 is pushing it right up to 4.4GHz.

This extra bit of power may not seem like much, but hardcore gamers will definitely want that extra bit of performance.

Overclocked hardware can generate a lot of heat however, so a lot of tweaking was necessary to get it to fit safely into the frame of the 18″ laptop.

Hopefully, being overclocked by the manufacturer will limit the risks of damage to the hardware that overclocking is known for.

However, overclocking is common practice among the most hardcore game players, and so releasing a laptop (claimed to be “the fastest 18″ laptop in the universe”) with an emphasis on the overclocking, aimed at major game players, is somewhat pointless. On the other hand, the laptop is designed for it and so should be better equipped to deal with the potential overheating of the overclocked components.

The laptop is available now, with a variety of versions at a variety of prices and specs, ranging from £1,798.99 to £2,548.99 direct from Dell.