🛠️ How to open Alienware 16X Aurora (AC16251) - disassembly and upgrade options

Hey everyone, today we are taking apart the Alienware 16X. This is a premium gaming machine, so we are excited to see the engineering inside. You can find the full review with test and benchmarks on laptopmedia.com. The link is in the description. Let's dive in. To access the internal components, we need to unscrew 10 screws on the bottom panel of the laptop. We are using a JIS number one screwdriver for this task. The screw in this corner is captive, meaning it unscrews but doesn't fall out. It is designed to lift the panel slightly, creating a gap to help us open the device. There is a second captive screw located in the opposite corner that does the same thing. Here is the location of those captive screws. Be very careful here. The radiators are located right behind these gaps. So, do not push your prying tool inside. You can see the radiator fins here. Your tool should only work on the edge clips and must not go deep into the chassis. Here is a bit safer, but we still need to be gentle to avoid damaging any internal components. Since the captive screws have already popped the corners open, we will continue unclipping the panel in the middle section between the laptop hinges. We carefully pop the rear clips between the hinges. We repeat the process along the sides of the chassis. We finish unclipping the panel, placing the laptop in a position that gives us better leverage. With all clips released, we can now lift the bottom panel away. Now we will remove the battery. But first we must disconnect its connector from the motherboard. We carefully peel back the protective tape covering the battery connector. Under the tape, there is a locking mechanism. With the mechanism unlocked, we can pull the connector straight up to disconnect it. When reassembling the laptop later, do not forget to engage this lock again or the battery might disconnect. Don't forget to visit and see our top 100 laptops with the best battery life ranking page. We unscrew the screws holding the battery in place. This laptop is powered by a massive six cell 96Wh battery unit. Don't forget to visit our top 100 laptops with the best battery life ranking page on laptopmedia.com to see how it performs. Next, we will remove the primary SSD. It is covered with an electromagnetic interference shield that also acts as a heat sink along with a thermal pad inside to dissipate heat. Here is the drive itself. Note that this laptop uses the smaller M.2 up to 2230 form factor rather than the standard long drives. We are placing it back into the slot. We peel off the sticker on the Wi-Fi modem. This is a MediaTek card supporting Wi-Fi 7 and the 6 GHz frequency band. Right next to it, you will find the second M.2 slot. Moving to the memory, we peel back the protective foil covering the RAM area. We have two so dim slots here. The installed memory is DDR5 running at 5600 mega transfers per second. The platform officially supports up to 64 GB. And here is the other slot. It is great to see fully upgradeable memory on a modern gaming laptop. We stick the shielding foil back in place to protect the modules. Here is a look at the cooling system. And here is a quick look at the touchpad from the inside. That was the internal tour of the Alienware 16X. It's a robust build with great upgrade options. If you want to see how this laptop handles tests or check out the display quality, head over to the full review on laptopmedia.com. Thanks for watching and see you in the next one.