UPGRADE ALIENWARE 17 CPU and GPU...

Hello!  So first off the CPU looks to be soldered on the motherboard and is not upgrade-able.  That being said even if you could, you wouldn't see much of a performance increase for the money you would have to spend.  That and I'm not sure the chip-set or socket for the CPU is compatible with Skylake CPUs, but don't quote me on that.  As for the graphics card you can technically upgrade it however you need to find an MXM graphics card with the same or less wattage requirements as the one you have.  A very quick search for 980m cards seemed to go for around 700+ USD which is half the cost of a new updated alienware computer with a 10 series card.  

BeamerMT79 - he has a MQ CPU not a BGA.

Your have never been able to upgrade from one "series" CPU to the next, that only happens in desktops

A i7 4940XM will smash most 6th and 7th gen CPU's unless they are very high end (4940XM will Turbo upto 4.1GHz without O/C)

AW 17 R1 was the last real gaming laptop dell released.

BGA jokebooks were not released by Alienware till after the AW 17 R1, that's the rubbish you cant upgrade.

This can be upgrade to a 4940XM and get a extra 10% at least. Anything in the "4" series i7 will fit this laptop

You can install a 8GB GTX980M without much issue and there is a guy on NBR who is perfecting the installation of the new GTX1070 in his AW 17 R1 (Upto 40% better than 980M)

There are hundreds of tutorials on how to upgrade to a GTX980 in AW17 R1, people have been doing it for 2 years.

As this laptop already has a GTX880M the heatsink can be used on the replacement 980 if needed.

forum.notebookreview.com/.../page-12

As for price, shop around. I picked up a 1 month old 980M some time ago for $500US including shipping to AU so they should be a bit cheaper now if you look around NBR forum sale yard is a good place to look