Alienware 15 R3 mini Review [wednesday/thursday]

Hello, should receive my Alienware 15 soon, I was a little disappointed that early adopters didn't post some tests (they're too busy having fun with their laptop I understand ), so I plan on doing it.
My configuration is in the signature but the core is :

Intel 6700HQ (I prefered the cooler CPU compared to the 6820HK)
Nvidia GTX 1070
16GB DDR3 2600Mhz
SSD SATA + SSD pCIE
99whr battery

Will only do it when Nvidia will whitelist the drivers , guys this has been confirmed in the alienware AMA that finished few minutes ago that it wasn't intentional just waiting for a whitelisting this week

Barebone :

Screen :
Minor lightbleeds, right corner. This is sadly frequent now...only my dell xps 13 with a sharp IGZO doesn't have lightbleed since the bezel is not glued to it...

Good contrast
Refresh rate of 60Hz, We can begin seeing tearing with 80+ fps clearly, use Vsync.
Well lit and it's clearly a high end FHD panel.
No dead pixels.

Benchmarking :

3DMARK driver 375.57
with a persistent (Good ol' powershell script) undervolt of -105mV
GPU MAX 67°C
combined score 5507 (sorry it's below the hwinfo tab)




Unigine Heaven 4.0

Games reviews :
(Vsync OFF to see where the max temps and fps of course, might not test with undervolt will see depending on the benchmarking temp results)

Witcher III
Battlefield 1 (october 21st)
Civilization VI (october 21st)
Overwatch
Rise of tomb raider
Rainbow six Siege
COD 4 Remastered (early november)
COD Infinite Warfare (single player campaign - early nov.)

Thermal endurance test :
Unigine valley for dozens of minutes to see where the temps stabilize in a demanding games

 

Can you please give us screenshot of CPU-Z Memory and Motherboard session?
I am curious to know how fast 2600MHz RAM runs on 6700HQ

Thanks!

 

Should receive it tomorrow if UPS is doing its job seriously ^^.

 

wickette if you want me to pull some stuff from other games like WOW, The Division I can as well and throw up on here. Just been super busy with work so I have not had time to do any testing myself.

 

Same work + studies --'...but for two weeks will have some free time .
Feel free to share anything you want that would be great !

 

Thanks, Wickette. Please run tests. I look forward to it.

 

AW arrived today !
Thank god/allah/buddha or whatever you believe ^^ it works, no problems, no apparent throttling.

idle <50°C
Heavy CPU load ~50% CPU usage : <73°C

SSD installed easily, that thing is built like a macbook pro. It's so so HIGH END, I used to own MSI and clevo notebooks but man, those things feel so much premium.

Will wait today later or tomorrow for gaming , because that's when Nvidia should allow us to install the stock drivers !

here : answer to @GTO_PAO11 who keeps asking umar (thanks !!)
https://twitter.com/aw_umar/status/788538681673981952

If I test now i will be disappointed by the performance and will have to do all the benchmarking again...

 

Can you post photo's and actual measured HxWxD dimensions? If you have a good digital scale that too. I don't trust Dell with a tape measure.

And since you are not using it for gaming, can you post a battery runtime? Video playback and Web-browsing 50% brightness?

 

Grats! My temps are roughly that gaming. I have some paste coming in today, but I'm effy about doing it.

 

will do for measurement , I'm charging the computer right now.

I usually wait several months (except for clevos) before repasting and removing stock paste, that way I'm more familiar with the computer, and I know it works great (after several months you have time to test).
I also have IC diamond 7 in my drawer, but will wait at least 3 month.


It does have optimus, but you can FN+F7 it and remove it. Since I don't have a GSYNC screen will keep it. If you want to play VR I think you should bypass optimus also.

 

I'll ask again Umar at 2pm PST to check status. Nvidia needs to step up.

 

Thanks i need those driver ...

the CPU was pushed at 90%% with multitaksing and it was <76°C. . So far so good.

 

Can you run firestrike and tell me peak CPU temp mine hit 93 but normal gaming it's 50-65

 

I got u.

You got a sleeve on your AW?

Sent from my E6853 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks ^^ a lot .

I will buy a sleek sleeve but not now, near christmas when I'll travel.

I'm installing Firestrike will tell you how it goes. But you should not be worried about those temps if in gaming it's perfect like that . The 6820HK heats A LOT because Intel applies too much voltage on it, feel free ton undervolt it with intel XTU !

edit : same here max 93°C after 2 runs of 3D mark and max 68°C GPU that's great !!
In game remove 15 to 20°C to the CPU lol.

Don't worry about temps

 

I am actually going to do some re-pasting tonight. Anyone else try this yet?

 

As I said, I will wait several months before repasting, but feel free to share your experience, follow thoroughly Dell service manual !!!

Unigine Valley Benchmark and 20minutes running :
max CPU temp 88°C on the core next to the IGPU, 78-82°C on other, this is the max temps, average temps is 10°C lower.
GPU : 68°C...this is freaking awesome.

Will post screenshot of score and hwinfo temps with the latest nvidia drivers

 

In managed to undervolt it to -155 mv, temps went down a lot, just hate to have to set it every restart.

 

I just got the paste in, but I'm nervous to tear it apart. Take some pictures of the process and some before and after temps. Please and Thank You!

 

you're using xtu ?

I applied -80mv, I'm below the 87°C mark no need to undervolt personnally speaking .

 

Yes when I reset it goes back to -0 on the voltage.

 

Create a new profile and save your settings.
In my case my undervolt persists but yes sometimes it's reset I saw that on my xps.

 

Thanks for the results so far! What was your firestrike score?

Would be good to see results from someone with the 6820 too.

Looking forward to your gaming benchmarks!

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/15420046
Here is mine with +200 GPU +400 Mem -150mv.

 

My scores hover between 11900 - 12095 (no throttling in any case) . I could run it and take a screenshot once i finish installing everything : witcher 3, rainbow six siege, some steam games, league of legends, war thudner, FF XIV etc. ^^.

 

Thanks! What kinda temps you seeing during this?

 

with those settings, the gpu was about 68 and cpu was in the mid 70s but spiked to 83 a couple times during physics. The fan profiles have a slow reaction to rising temps. A engineer from alienware said they are working on a bios to adjust it.

 

You said it all !!!

After hours of stress testing all those pikes I'm saying a really rare (average are 15°C lower !!) and once the fans kick in the temps are very very well maintained ! So clearly the cooling system was very well engineered since it can easily handle the temps but the fans reaction times are really slow . So you see a pike if the task go to 100% in let's say 30ms and the fans kick in 30 (well certainly less) seconds after that !

Thanks for the info regarding the upcoming bios update, looking forward to it ! This is the only thing needed to make this cooling system flawless :good response time.

 

Oh btw for the AW whitelisting @GTO_PAO11 we will have to wait for the nvidia battlefield 1 game-ready drivers coming thursday/friday IMO.

 

Yeah, Umar replied. Probably Tom or Friday. I wonder what's the delay....

Sent from my E6853 using Tapatalk

 

probably like op said earlier, the release day drivers for Battlefield come out friday, they probably dont want to release drivers twice in a week.

 

Is it this Friday? Thought it came out yesterday?

Sent from my E6853 using Tapatalk

 

the pre-beta beta came out yesterday (early release). The rest of world gets the game this friday.

 

Congrats on having these new beasts

@quickie @wickette
could you post some pics of the system and is it possible to toggle on/off the lights at sides of the laptop and the touchpad light

Also what led colour did u order or pink is default ???

 

I'll post some pics in the AM, yes you can turn off those lights, I left the side ones on but turned off the trackpad, then set all the lights to dim so they weren't so bright at night.

 

This question has been nagging me a lot people say that the 6700hq wil Bottleneck 1070 so a 6820k does or does not bottleneck the 1070 and theoretically will it bottleneck the say titan x on the aga ?

 

Normally Games are gpu depending so that neither the 6700hq or the 6820hk will bottleneck. Howevee there are a few ones that are CPU depending and those will propably be bottlenecked

 

i m not into rts or mmo so im on the safer side ???

Also will tge 6700hq be a bottleneck for a titan pascal. In the aga ?
My point is how much the cpu will hold back / bottleneck the gpu since im planning to keep this laptop for atleast 3-4 years and might use the aga for add. Gpu power

 

Thank you . My laptop came with a default BLUE color.
You can turn off ALL lights if you wish with the AlienFX software : trackpad, side logo etc.

Hard to answer, you will be bottlenecked but you will reach like 150FPS before feeling the CPU bottleneck, you know what I mean ^^ ? The CPU will bottleneck the GPU but in a way that won't affect you at all because you will reach a lot of FPS before feeling the bottleneck.

For my part maybe a 1080Ti in the GA if I buy a 4K 50'' display ^^. but a Pascal is too expensive IMO and an overkill.



Nvidia will release new drivers soon Battlefield, Civilization 6 game-ready I think. Those should work for us. Normally they're released on friday/thursday afternoon. BF1 and civilization VI official release is october 21st

 

Tnx mate for the clarification

 

I do have to say one thing about the computer and hopefully its the video driver issue. When I scroll through websites with videos, like Facebook. As I scroll the video shows up with a lot of artifacting, even though it doesnt play audio till i click it, I hear crackling in the speakers like they are trying to play.

 

Can anyone tell what is the the model used in the new alienware 256gb pcie ssd?

 

Mine was toshiba TB 300-xxxxxxxx something like that . the serial was huge and i couldn't find a clear reference.

edit : I think it's a toshiba q300

 

Q300 is a sata ssd

 

oh sorry, not really familiar with nvme pcie ssd
it's toshiba 100%, because I saw it when I opened it.
here's the exact reference.
pcie nvme thnsn5256GPUK

 

Bumping for pics!

 

Thanks, #wickette.
I just checked up the drive, it has 1170 read and 330 write speeds.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9360-QHD-i5-7200U-Notebook-Review.178844.0.html

I found on this reddit blog that both the 15 UHD and FHD panels have backlight bleeding.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/58d3m8/new_alienware_15_4k_screen_big_disappointment/

Notice the bleeding at the bottom panel in the FHD, close to the left corner


Does your FHD panel have any bleeding of this kind?

Can u just checkup the model name of the panel in Device Manager and tell me what it is ? .Thanks

 

hey,

I have light lightbleeding on the right corner, it's clearly not as much as the UHD panel i saw. I come from a Clevo P650SG that had F.ckin lightbleed so, I don't know if that's significant but for me it's nothing. Heck I just realized I had lightbleed because you asked me to check ^^




here are the screen infos :


I have a ton of work for the weekend and next week so I won't have time for a full review, will post however benchmark and temps for specific tests and games once the updated drivers are out.

20 minutes on the witcher III 1.31

settings : everything ultra, Truehair set on 'geralt only'

CPU : 90°C Max, but average 78°C ~ 80°C, the problem was explained above, the fan react slowly, but once they reach the desired speed temps are more correct.

GPU 72°C Max average slightly below, high 60s .

FPS : 55-60.

 

Mine has a tiny bit of backlight bleed, it doesnt bother me though. I just took the laptop part. I got down to removing the cover over the motherboard. I followed all the steps on Dells website. but it was stuck in there still, I tried moving it around to wiggle it out and it wouldn't. So now I put it all back together and I will wait for the Dell tech to come in and fix the keyboard to see if he can put some new paste on for me.

 

Hi TS,

may i request cpu-z screenshot please? I would like to know what speed does the RAM run.
Thanks!