Alienware X51 Graphics card upgrade

if card is  overheating ever try pulling it  out and   cleaning   it out?   just a thought.....

price range?    what psu do  you have whats current specs?   need  info.. cause you  can go all the  way from a 1050 to a 1080 .. depending on that you want to do  and spend..  I'm running a 1070 in my R3 .. the last of  the X51 ..

Dedusting the computer is done monthly 

I believe its the R1 model but if there is a way to find out for sure Ill gladly do that ?

Processor is i7-3770. Current Graphics card is a Geforce GTX 555

If you have the R1 with the 330 psu you can go up to 1080 (very difficult), the safest route is the GTX 1060 with reference blower because is just plug and play and do not need any mods on the case, you also have the i7-3770 that is ivy bridge and supports better cards. For GTX 1060, you can choose the PNY or ZOTAC edition with the reference blower, and for a better quality build the Nvidia Founder Edition also fits. FE.

If you want the 1070, you must have the 330 psu and the power board of the X51 R2 (that you can buy from Dell or Ebay), to then remove the front fan and cut a little the case to fit the cables. Also the card must be reference type, dont forget a double six pin to 8 pin adapter.

And for the 1080, with our X51 R1 is a difficult process that i don´t know very well, even though there is some success online.

The simplest option is the 1060, just install. And the 1070 gives more power but trickier.

It´s a shame that the R1 do not support the Alienware Amplifier, another option is to wait if Nvidia develops a new card with lower consumption and better capacity with the desired x51 size specs.

Sorry if this necros an old thread, but as an X51 user, this seems to be really helpful.

Hi Fabio,

The above is really helpful, created an account so I can find out if it's still relevant several months down the line.

I'm currently using a GTX 960 in my Alienware X51 (R2 I believe) desktop which has slight overheating issues. I'm monitoring using EVGA's monitoring tool and try to keep it as close to 60 degrees as possible, but playing games such as Fallout 4 and Killing Floor 2 starts to push the card up to 70+ and the fan makes a lot of noise (read: jet engine!)

Would the GTX 1060 be a "cooler" running card, as well as offering a little more oomfph? Are there any other cards that fit X51s that people would recommend for cool running?

NB: I used to use the GTX 970, whether the card was faulty or not, it stopped working and appeared to be an overheating issue. Whenever the card got to 65 degrees it would immediately turn the whole PC off to "prevent overheating"... Would like to avoid this in future either with my current card or a new one.

Hi there, I had an X51 R3 and earlier this year I upgraded from a GTX960 to a GTX1060 6GB, all that had to be done was remove the fan that was behind the GTX960 in order to fit the GTX1060. I bought a blower/reference design 1060, went with the cheapest at the time ( Amazon.com: ASUS Geforce GTX 1060 6GB Turbo Edition VR Ready Dual HDMI 2.0 DP 1.4 Auto-Extreme Graphics Card (TURBO-GTX1… ). Up to you which blower style to get though. Thermals over the last ~9 months have been fine and ran into no issues either.

The 960 would run closer to 80 degrees, while the 1060 during the same game stays closer to 70 degrees, while also being all around quieter. They use similar power, although the 1060 is far more efficient with it.