I would REALLY love to hear how you got an RTX 2080 to work in an Alienware 18 R1!

I have an AW18 R1 produced/purchased August 2013.  At the time I got it 'Maxed out', with an overclocked 4th Gen I7 4930MX, 32GB Dual Channel DDR3L, Dual GeForce GTX 780M in SLI, and an 512GB mSATA, and 750GB 1200RPM 'Spinner' Hard Drive, all running Win7 Ultimate 64Bit.

I have been researching an upgrade to dual GTX 980M's for a while know, and have found that it seems to be about a 50/50 proposition as to whether it 'just works', or it turns out to be one problem after another.

I am already prepared for it to be a total pain, and if I go the Eurocom route, I'm already looking at somewhere around $1,500.00.  They also offer a 1070 Mobile card (just the card) for a little over $800.00.

If I could get an RTX 2080 to work in this beast (as you have), it would be years ahead of what it is now.  I would jump ahead 4 generations of NVidia technology, and end up just one generation short of what is currently available (The 3080s).

The only thing lacking would be the CPU at 4th Gen, vice the current 10th Gen's.

I even found an upgrade for my AC7260 WiFi/Bluetooth card to an Intel AX200NGW 802.11ax using an NGFF M.2 to Mini PCIe slot adapter.

Any help and advice you could offer would be GREATLY appreciated.

PS: I'm not afraid of performing a little technical surgery if appropriate and required.

Thanks in advance!