Alienware’s Concept Polaris is a brave new technology from 2018

During CES 2022, Alienware has announced a surprisingly new concept called Polaris, an external GPU enclosure straight out of 2018.

As far as we can tell from the flashy concept video and images we were privy to, this external GPU enclosure seems to be exactly that, a run of the mill external GPU enclosure with few brand new revolutionary features which would demand this concept stay a concept. 

Unlike most companies, which create concepts to showcase all the bold incredible technologies they could almost feasibly create, Alienware has instead decided to play it safe, by designing a device which they definitely could make, quite easily probably, but seemingly they’re just not going to. 

To make the device a little more daring than just a standard PCIe slot, Alienware’s Concept Polaris does at least have a fairly nifty mechanism to move your graphics card in and out of, as well as a somewhat fetching pill-shaped design which is, of course, accented with programmable RGB.

Alongside a plethora of ports, which includes USB A’s on the front and USB C’s on the back, the ‘selling’ point of the Concept Polaris is the two 330W or 425W AC adapters, which can power even the latest and greatest GPU’s such as the newly announced Nvidia GeForce GTX 3090 Ti. Personally, however, we think that powering GPUs is the least that can be expected from an external GPU enclosure.

Since Alienware is announcing Polaris as a concept, there’s no word on when, or indeed if, Alienware will ever decide to make it a reality, so don’t expect to see it on store shelves alongside other GPU enclosures anytime soon.