AW 17 R5 - Final Assembly in USA again?

I've got an order in for the 17r5 i9 / 1080 and the expected ship date is November 7th. I asked my rep if that could be pushed up and he's saying it should actually be shipping by the 19th of October. Hungry for more good news I asked if it would be leaving China on the 19th (and take another week or more to get to the States) of if it would be handed over to UPS / Fedex on the 19th for next day delivery - his response was that it would be shipping from Tennessee.

I thought final assembly was done by Compal in China - are they back to doing final assembly in Tennesse again?

Follow up question for those that recently received the 17 R5 i9/1080 config - how long did it take to receive it once you put the order in?

 

No. computer is 100000000000000000000000% made and assembled in china. memphis tennessee is the regional fedex hub. fedex is dell's courier of choice

 

I'm familiar with the global supply chain and that's why I mentioned final assembly. UPS And FedEx both have their world hubs in TN but Dell also has assembly lines (unless they've been shut down?) there where Alienware used to be made before it was offshored. Maybe i'm reading too far into this - it just seems to good to be true for a 2-week build time when the website indicates new orders will take a month to ship.

 

Hey cruisin - mine took about two weeks. They estimated 17 or 20 days originally but it was exactly two weeks.

 

They have a plane deliver all dell units from chines to Tennessee. Then they distribute them out from there. All made in China 100%...

 

Wouldnt be possible either to assemble it in Tennessee because they also sell those in Europe etc. sending it back and forth is too costly and to be honest current day assembly lines are way better than those in the US when costs are similar.

 

This is what I had assumed - a cargo / charter cargo flight would deliver an Alienware shipment as freight to FedEx world hub and from there FedEx would deliver each individual item.

I’ve seen reports lately from people posting their shipment originated in other US states which puzzles me. My last Alienware purchase sure seemed like it was shipped from China via cargo shipping but I don’t remember how I came to that conclusion.


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Dell have manufacturing facilities in many countries and I think it was just a few years ago that I read they were expanding their Nashville, Tennessee facility. They make their servers in Austin and Mexico and as far as I know some desktops are still assembled in Nashville.

I haven’t a clue why all Alienware production was shifted to China - although i have also read posts that some Alienware laptops are labeled as Made in Malaysia.


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Yep I was surprised to see mine originate in my own state! I think what happens is, they're embedded with FedEx to such a degree that the origin scan starts at the more regional FedEx centers, instead of Nashville. Maybe that first leg is logged internally and doesn't make it to the tracking info. I was totally expecting to see Tennessee as the starting point also.

 

It’s possible they keep a stock of preconfigured computers in the USA. When I CTO’d my M17X R3, the outer shipper box said made and assembled in China.

 

Im work for a firm as designer that does manufacturing etc and I often hear a lot of ins and outs regarding supply chaisn and manufacturing. But in general it is just too costly to produce them directly in the US or Europe, China currently has more laborers with the necessary skill to do these kind of jobs and their factories are very high tech for minimizing product varieties and problems.The ironic thing is, the stuff that are done by hand and very suspectible to variations are still areas where it can go wrong (assembling the cooling unit comes to mind). But to reach at least the level of CHina, the costs would go up tremendously and it isn't even better.

 

Yep that's the truth. If people really wanted iPhones to be made in U.S.A., they'd better be prepared for them to cost $5,000 or more!

 

The unfortunate side affect of cheap labor and keeping costs down is the QC suffers in the end. Pay people small wages for assembling premium products and we get problems like we have now with overheating due to poor paste /pad placements. While the paste isn't the best it is adequate if everything is put together properly, which isn't being done.

 

I agree, but I think you have to admit, lots of the assembly process goes great also... no stripped screws, misaligned parts, my spare drive cage had its cables neatly taped for safekeeping (I didn't get second HDD), etc.

My issue is, I do believe they COULD prioritize the assembly line step of the pasting on THESE machines especially considering their premium nature. It would only cost a few bucks more even if the worker spent an HOUR pasting it! Maybe post-build testing is too much to ask for, sure. But they could even upcharge $50 for a "premium cooling assembly (read as pasted properly)" option.

From seeing the many (many, many, too many!) videos of disassembly and re-pasting, it definitely looks like what they do is take some sort of rubber stamp, have some tray probably to dip it in (like for a paint roller I imagine), stamp the chip, stamp the GPU, then assemble. I only say this because when people remove the heatsinks, there always seems to be a very sharply outlined square shape to the factory toothpaste on the die. I could be totally wrong! Maybe they do apply it like anyone else does but they don't use the perfect amounts/pattern to apply it.

For the price these consumer gaming laptops go for though, I think they could really do some post-build benchmarking.

On the other hand, I wonder what percentage we on the forum who do complain and re-paste are of all the Alienware customers. To be honest, if I didn't know or care as much (never did with Macbooks, they were probably running slow for the CPU installed, but they worked well otherwise), and just bought this to play games, not any pro-level work, I might not even care. Games do play ok. Fan comes on but it's going to anyway in a game with GPU working hard. I wonder if maybe most buyers are like that and don't even care. Maybe we're not that much of a thorn in Dell's side.

 

Kinda makes me miss the old Vaio Z line. Had a couple of those and they never disappointed me. Manufactured and assembled in Japan instead of China/Taiwan. They where super expensive but there where very consistent and The last one I had worked for 5 years while taking it everyday with me, overclocking it very heavily and just using it very heavily. Still my favorite 13inch laptop with a discrete GPU even.

But I digress, to get better assembly quality you indeed have to expect a 1000usd premium on top of already an expensive product. In some cases it's worth it, if it is a niche product for a very demanding market and era. But the US and Europe currently dont even have the knowhow to create assembly lines that are up to todays standards for small electronics.

 

This is so crazy. I had a Vaio VGN-AR730E 17” laptop with one of the first blue-ray drives available in a laptop. I think they called this a “studio laptop” and it was an absolute beast at the time.


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Me too - not that model, but way back in 2000 - that computer was one of the best, honestly! It never quit. Was excited when they started again a few years ago, then they kind of stopped permanently, I think.