Alienware M15 (Brand New Slim Model) - Gamescom 2018

I think you should view it from another perspective. It tuns out that Dell currently is third times larger than any other manufacturer out there. This week they actually for the first time released the numbers.

This means they are something right, people just dont want to buy big and large, even though if the CPU performance can be like 20% better (gaming performance is pretty much the same and thats what people buy it for). I stay with my original standpoint that these are great products for the current market. FOr me reliability is the most important part and thats something that all manufacturers have to look at. My Alienwares have been fairly reliable but thats because of my own repaste jobs etc.

Alienware then and now still designed their own laptops, they where just manufactured by the mentioned manufacturers. Origin is just a Clevo reseller (And in some cases MSI) their chassis quality and of any other Clevo reseller cant hold a candle to what Alienware is offering and I think this is the strenght of Alienware, they have really well made chassis constructions that only a small amount of manufacturers can touch (EVGA and Razer come to mind). This doesnt mean the internals are good or bad but it helps so much for the product feel.

Pretty much any laptop released stock now is fairly hot and this hurts reliability in the long run and I want to see this fixed from any manufacturer out there.

 

We are on the same page, the M17x R2 and M18x R2 were the same laptops as the R1s just with updated chips on the board (and a GORGEOUS screen on the M17x R2). All fantastic machines. I enjoyed my M18x a lot as well (not as much as the M17x though - the M18x was stupid to disassemble, a trend that has only gotten worse). The BGA thing, that is just howling at the moon, Intel drove that when Ultrabooks became a thing and everyone had to either go with Intels BGA or AMD CPUs (lol). It does seem (sadly) that Dell has been working to just make the Alienware brand a notch above XPS with lights everywhere now which is sad. I have looked at Origin but just cannot bring myself to invest in so much gloss and plastic (really a Clevo problem) and I hate their keyboard (also Clevo). I will very likely be buying the new m15 and will share my thoughts on it just as I did with the new Razer Blade 15" back in June. One thing that DOES keep me coming back to Alienware/Dell is that they actually do have good customer service (in my experience) and have been good about working with me until a problem is solved.

 

I view things from my own perspective and make buying decisions on that basis. I don't really care about their perspective because it doesn't serve my interests. Their perspective is not important to me, and due to the fact that they don't take the interests of people like me into account there is no basis for doing business with them any more.

Because they are larger and more capable, we should expect better rather than status quo (or less). Being smaller and lighter doesn't excuse sloppy engineering and not addressing design defects that are carried from one generation to the next. Yes, smaller and lighter will run hotter, but they should learn from their mistakes and get better. Instead, they just keep slopping out the same broken trash. They still make a sturdy chassis, which is nice to have, but not necessarily the most important consideration. Their build quality is less than it used to be, but it may be one of the only reasons many people buy one. It doesn't help their reputation when Alienware notebooks under-perform, throttle more than most and cook their SSDs. As @Papusan said, it is getting harder to tell the difference (at least with your eyes closed) between an Alienware and a Dell XPS turdbook. They're ignoring a whole segment of notebook enthusiasts and trolling for the lowest common denominators, and I'm sure they're making more money doing so. If they're not making more money, then they're doing more things wrong than just building castrated trashbooks.

 

I've accepted laptops have moved on to BGA, what I have NOT accepted is the ridiculous price they charge for a lesser form factor. Alienware has cheapened their materials to the point where I feel uncomfortable using them. I sold off both my 17 R2 and 15 R3, and will not even entertain this mockery "m15" when I know the M15x was such a better machine. Solution? I bought a razer blade pro 2017 FHD for ultra cheap on the second hand market, at a price point I feel is fair for a BGA machine. It's solid, looks good, runs was well as could be expected. Support is absolute garbage.

The only thing Dell has going for the Alienware series now is outstanding customer support, which is second to none in the industry, and the AGA, which is a great innovation, to be used in CONJUNCTION with MXM cards, not instead of. Oh well.

 

Alienware (post Dell, so the M17x onwards) can do their own chassis design BECAUSE of the size and scale and resources that Dell brings to the table - and I agree, for the most part they have been awesome. Many of the old Alienwares were just Clevo and others' with a new lid. My first high-end notebook was an Arima W840di Whitebook sold by OCZ but made by Flextronics. You may know it be another name, the Alienware M17. The prior gen version was the Aliewnare m9750. I actually bought a m9750 lid and put in on my W840 to have the cool alienware ribbed look - it was a straight ODM machine. A friend in college had an Alienware 17" TANK from the 2006 era, it was a straight up Clevo. They were not engineering their own custom notebooks, and if they did it was rare, because they simply did not have the size and resources to do so.

 

Yes, MXM cards are what made the past Alienware models awesome, you could actually upgrade them (if you could find one)! It was sad when that went away. Even in the new Precisions, they have dropped MXM for a stupid proprietary daughterboard set up. I hope there is a valid reason for this like it allows for thinner laptops and it is not stupid corporate greed like "we want it to be impossible to upgrade so you have to buy a whole new laptop to get that new gen chip"

I am not optimistic for which is driving design decisions.

I do like the AGA, a lot. I actually have nearly $1k in stuff besides the actual GPU coming or already here to mod mine to the moon haha (will have AGA with water-cooled GPU, external 5.25 ODD, and a TB3 dock with 10 Gbps NIC all in one enclosure). That is part of why I will continue to maintain interest in Alienwares for the foreseeable future.

 

Talk about reliability. My Clevo from 2010 who still kicking (now late 2018) is opened up two times... A few screws and pop up the backlid for upgrade of graphics and repaste. Two times.

My Clevo P870 is opened up 3 times (upgrades 6700K-7700K and 6 cores 8700K). How many times the AW BGA owners have done it(opened up and fully dismantled the whole).. Only to fix flaws. Check the threads and the web. Awful reading!

 

I feel the current chassis quality is still excellent, Metal top (and not just thin aluminum sheet metal glued onto plastic like MSI etc), aluminium bottom, aluminium motherboard tray and copper keyboard deck covered in some kind of ABS composite with the soft touch finish. The internal are solid too as long if you take the time to repad and repaste the machine. This is really my beef with all machines these days. You cant buy them and expecting not to service them before using them. But yeah I cant just stay with a desktop because I need to travel with my machine.

As far as I know it was like a collaboration. Clevo manufactured it for them but there was apart from some branding no exclusivity in place? Might need to be corrected on that, not sure if there are any old skool Alienware employees on this board?

 

The same needs to be done with all current Clevo's or any othe rbrands. I was reading up on some reviews of the XMG branded Clevo's and they had the same crap throttling out of the box and hot thermals. While you for example have great thermals (thanks to LM also) no majo rmanufacturers offers LM out of the box so yeah you have to open them up. BUt apart from that. After my pad research etc I dont need to open and disassemble my machine anymore. Yeah I can blow out the dust out of it if there is any but in general it is solid.

 

Stocks Clevo’s need lots of love also like all the BGA machines. Either fix it yourself or pay someone like HIDevolution to tweak it for you. Very rare for ANY high performance laptop to be plug and play nowadays.

 

It's despicable and inexcusable no matter how you slice it and that's why I am done wasting my money on expensive laptops. When you buy a new product it should need nothing to function properly. Some try to mask the issues by offering lame excuses such as it "functions as intended" LOL. What that means is, "we don't care that our products malfunction" in practical application.

At least they (Clevo) have potential and respond favorably to TLC. As for all of the other broken junk, the harsh reality is that you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. You can make it less smelly and shave all the hair off of it, but it's still a sow's ear.

 

I agree it sucks and poor business to expect the end user to deal with their inadequacies as a designer/engineer and company. Sadly some people still need powerful laptops for some functions in their daily life. I for one have to have both powerful desktops and laptops for what I do for a living and for pleasure/hobbies. I dislike BGA but is ubfortnauly is here to stay until history repeats itself again and we see better stuff. I have to make a deduction on what is easiest for me to deal with at this point with my needs.

 

I obviously don’t know what your needs are but HP make some absolutely beastly mobile workstations.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I still have the hat, leather manual and name plate lol. Ah those were good times.

 

I still have a nameplate and hat, too. And, yes... they were great times. They're gone for good, too. There's not a snowball's chance in hell they will ever be that great ever again.

 

Note my avatar I used to be scook9, changed it to reflect the name plate since it is awesome haha (hard to get a good picture of though!)

I do still have my M18x manual as well, that thing is awesome - an actual book with "leather" covers

 

Yes, I knew it was you, bro. I recently reposted some of your chest freezer photos in one of the threads around here.

When I sold my M18xR1 and M18xR2, the original boxes, caps, mouse pads and leather-bound manuals went with them. So did a closet full of spare parts and my dual 330W AC adapter setup. But, I had an extra cap and I put my generic nameplate (M18x) on them rather than my Mr. Fox nameplate. Those were some awesome products with memories of a better day for the once great Alienware brand. Too bad it didn't last longer. Such a tragic death it was.

Spoiler: Good times...

Benching on AC in hotels

Revision #1


Revision #2

On the rack, ready for some benching on AC at home

 

Watching the AMA video on this specific notebook - you get to hear directly from the product manager for the m15. And that is something to pay attention to, because that is the key person making the important decisions. Typically they will have several choices for each part / element. And their attention to details will be more biased in certain directions than other ones.

Now whilst it's without doubt a bad brand, so to speak. Given the persistent heatsink issues on the larger alienware notebooks... that does not necessarily mean that the product manager specifically chose to use the same guys to make the new heatsink assembly for this specific model. It seems very much (after watching the AMA interview video). That the product manager had choices available coming from a pool of supply choicing coming from both either alienware or Dell (and access from all the other kinds of Dell notebooks and AIOs etc). Plus also as is typical some harder from scratch options. For those pieces that simply dont yet exist on other notebooks and/or had to be specially made.

So 'no'. Its not a slam dunk that this think will be as deficient and have the same set of problems as previous existing alienware or dell laptops. Although if the product manager is the same [as a past product] then they tend not to change their general priorites from project to project. And I honestly don't know if they have worked on other existing Alienware products before. Because it's also quite common for people to be hired and come in from entirely different companies. So it could equally be his very first laptop working with Dell. I have absolutely no idea of that. It would require further research or asking the representative.

But what i do know is that: making products like this is very difficult. And being brand new, its still unproven. In all likelihood there could [probably is quite likely] to be other brand new issues with this machine. That they won't have the opportunity to address until further revisions.

So being wary is not unjustified. But claiming that you think their thermal solution is very bad already, before the laptop is not even available. That is not really justified either. Because the assumption that the heatsink is in anyway related to the bigger alienware 15 is also entirely not clear. That is also conjecture because the product manager has the power to insist that somebody else to make the heatsink assembly, as one of their multiple options for sourcing components.

And really that is the only big question mark. Because the magnesium alloy chassis is like i have seen on other Dell notebooks. Including one in our house. And it's pretty decent.

For general thermals. Then the main other notebook, to compare to is the tongfang GK5CN6Z link here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/tongfang-gk5cn5z-and-tongfang-gk5cn6z.815943/

Because the venting is similar. One of the asus you might be inclined to compare to also (just for thermals). However the ones with the hinge and the gap underneath i would not. Because that whole mechanism IMHO is really just not as durable and robust as a traditional chassis. And for that I don't regard it as being someting you can just throw around like the m15 or the tongfang.

Finally more of an open question really:

Does the top side venting permit casual use (web browsing etc), for situation when the whole of the bottom venting is blocked up? For example on the bed, on a duvet. Which would otherwise be an issue because having bigger rubber feet for extra clearance really isn't going to help there with the fans sucking in at the duvet covers.

Again, that is another thing that we simply are not going to know the answer to. Until this until the laptop is properly out / available in the world. Which could be as long as another 2 months for some of regions. So don't bother answering that one either.

 

I solved the bed problem with a lap desk that is well ventilated. Also provides me a place for my mouse when playing in bed

 

4 times. 4 ****ing times, on a laptop I paid $3,500 CDN for. This is why I left AW behind and built my own desktop.

 

If you do it once it should be good forever ofcourse. the thing is that a lot of peopple do it half assed.

Still no excuse that the QC with laptops these days isnt good.

 

took a lot of "fixing" to get the heatsink to sit flat on the die. As I'm sure you know, the 15R3 has some severe core temp differentials. I was able to eliminate the problem, it just took multiple tries.

 

When i repasted my friends their AW17R4/15R3s i could do it in 1 go with a repad. My own machine i first didnt opt for a repad because i wasnt going to overclock. But thats was one bgi headache because the pads where never allow to lets the heatsink sit level on the chip die. Repadding with Gelid pads and instantly it was all good. If i did that from day one it would be 1 try as well.

 

First review.

 

i used to trust on him, not anymore
he say good thermals .... but how ? at least i agree that the glossy bezel sucks lol

 

That and doesnt seem to think about how dust will naturally gather there.

 

It's a royal pain in the ass. My T61p has perforated top-side grille, it looks nasty after a couple years (note: I'm an extremely sanitary person. I clean my computers once a week, do not eat anywhere near them, etc), and it is a absolute ***** to clean.

 

Not so nice thermals at all 80C on shared heatsink at 20C ambient is worse. 90C+ on 30C ambient temps if fans don't spin as fast like older AW.

Remember he got so many trolls when he said Thermal issue on MBP r series with 8950HK.
If my big cat was alive he'd have pissed on m15 like a boss.

 

NOW i look like a sick man lol...... i clean mine every day. in fact i carry another microfiber cloth only to clean the surface where the laptop stand lol

 

Me too. The more I clean the more dirty it becomes because of my oily skin.

 

Its a laptop, easy enough to just take outside and blast with compressed air every couple of months. Of course it still remains to be seen whether the top grill is actually functional / justified. But we shall find out eventually, with the proper reviews.

 

I hope it is functional, the bottom grill on the current models are very easy to block. If you have a softer surface like a leater desk cover from Ikea, it just fully blocks the intake and raises the temps by 5c on a minimum. 2mm higher feet on the current models would help the airflow so much.

 

100C ain't nice.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m15-owners-lounge.825553/page-5#post-10813605

Seems 100C is the target.

 

they are just following Intel on this, which they shouldnt imo. Because Intel now states that no turbo boost is still within specs.

 

From my post... "Therefore Dell engineering optimized the system to tolerate higher temperature from design perspective". What is optimized? The cooling so the chips can run hotter? Less noisy fans?

And they don't follow Intel in everything they do. They (Dell) go outside Intel's specs for their chips and even brag about higher performance vs. what you really should get. Hit up my posts about the XPS.

 

I think they used chokes etc that are made to tolerate higher temepratures and moved temp sensitive chips out of the way. But thats jsut my best guess. There is by far not any credible info out there yet. Will await the NBC review and the results of when I can test one myself.

 

'optimized' usually means hotter temps in favour of a bit slower / quieter fans. Which is why I said it was most like the HP Omen 15 DC, in that regards.

But what you really want to know is if it will throttle down the GPU during longer gaming sessions. Since some of the heatpipes are shared with the GPU chip. It might drag up the temprature causing some amount of downclock. As per the nvidia boosting algorithm.

 

But this doesn't help a ****y (for their customers) as long the processor throttle down the speed and cripple the Cpu performance. No point in let the Cpu run hotter. This will only gain Dell.


If Dell prefer to put their own Power limits. Then they can't put the blame (overheating and throttling mess) on Intel. Increase the Power limits = They have to increase the cooling capacity as well. Not only say higher temp is ok.

 

Its what people have been asking for, a lighter and thinner gaming laptop and this is what they get. Still I will await rel reviews to base my conclusion on though. But based on Dave2d his video it seems to perform in line with the MSI GS65 etc.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it can do better than the GS65, with good heatsink contact. The fans look like they are a little larger, which should mean higher CFM.

Still I hope that the introduction of these new models does not mean they neglect the existing 17Rx, 15Rx lines. There is literally no reason why they couldn't have added that 144hz IPS as a non-GSync option to the 15R4 yesterday.

 

The current lineup doesnt have optimus at all which is pretty crap. No optimus is no go for me.

 

Yep. I am not sure what happened there but if the PCB space for the mux went to an extra CPU VRM phase to help with the coffee lake refresh then I guess its a fair trade.

I really hope these new models have some newer generation thermal pads that can cope with the manufacturing variances on the heatsinks. If I were the product manager for these models this is the biggest thing I would be pushing for. Honestly such a change could benefit everything in Dell's lineup, from Inspiron to Precision.

 

Found this, seems that thermals are not that bad afterall.

,

I'm getting curious about this new model, wonder if they will sell it with better GPU than the 1070max-q. A 1080 max-q might suffice for my traveling needs, since i use the laptop only when traveling.

 

No, thermals might be as bad as the MSI GS65 Stealth. As someone pointed out earlier curing the CPU portion of the firestrike test, where the frequency fluctuates between around 3.3 and 3.9 ghz. Wheras it stays around 3.9ghz the most rest of the time, which is during the graphics parts of the test.

But you know... the thermals and general performance could nevertheless still be improved 'somewhat' by repasting, spacers behind the heatsink, etc. Plus all the usual silicon lottery, and undervolting etc. But even despite that, it's still pretty unlikely to be 'as good' as the tongfang GK5CN6Z at this point. After having seen that. Unless the fans were running stupidly slow (which again, we simply don't know either). But that would be pretty silly though... almost as silly as not publishing any of those specific test conditions in the first place.

 

Thermals are pretty Bad. At least if dave‘s Model wasnt an engineering sample (and even if its terrible, because i dont think they would change much for consumer)...
Look at the physics temps.... they are at 100c and the cpu score is way lower than average 8750H CPUs.

 

Hi there. We now have some more early testing videos. This seems to be a late engineering sample. Just be aware of that, in case they might change anything in future revision(s), but probably not.

https://www.youtube.com/user/maoshen1234/videos

He has put up 3 useful videos there.

Looking at the heatsink assembly itself, here is a quickly annotated picture, taken from his dissassembly video:

[edited, link removed]

Sorry but I didn't draw on the locations of the heatpipes quite in the right places. Got confused, it was a low quality image.

Anyhow, it still seems to me like a reasonable enough explanation as to why the CPU is not doing so well in terms of it's overall temperature, being in the 90's (90C and above). The heatsink design. However I still cannot explain why the CPU freq is jack rabbiting around all over the place after some minutes into the test. It just 'goes crazy'. All over the place. Fluctuating between 2.5 and 3.5 ghz. I cannot explain this because the VRM looks like it is being cooled well enough, and with a good contact pressure onto the heatsink. Don't understand / don't like. Can't explain it.

 

Single pipe over the cpu die, nice. And the heat from the Gpu running over the Cpu vrm area in half sized pipe who probably hamper the vrm cooling, nice done Dell.

 

That is a reasonably accurate statement, yes.

If the GPU maximum temperature is only 72^C. Then I see not reason to expect that should be any huge problem when the cpu VRM is driving a load of less than 70 watts. It does not / should not generate very much heat. And can tolerate much higher temperatures itself (the cpu vrm mosfets). So no, sorry but I don't really agree with that statement very much. Because there is no direct [unambiguous] evidence of it causing the issue. There is only the ambiguous evidence. But it would still be a good idea to check on that cpu vrm anyhow. And be really sure it's allright. By putting thermocouple(s) over the cpu VRM. And doing a proper VRM analysis (the chips used, their quality, efficiency, etc). That is so often being missed on many of these notebooks. Which is why we have to rely on such superstitions / hearsay. Rather than fact.

There could be other issues for the cpu freq jack rabbiting after some way into the benchmark. Like a firmware or drivers, or software related issue. Some kind of a bug that is not yet fixed. Or even windows 10 doing something silly in the background.

 

Honestly I think it would be ok with 8750h and 1050Ti maybe 1060 Max-Q but I probably wouldnt want for a 1070 max-q

My friend was somewhat interested in this unit until he saw the glossy bezel, that was a mistake on Alienware's part I think. That and the keyboard vent. I understand why they did it but I hope people dont use a vacuum for it lol

 

Well no. This laptop could even take something even slightly higher than the 1070 max-q. Because it's GPU cooling is pretty good. The problem is entirely with the CPU cooling. Which is not sufficient even for the 8750h.

Yeah the guy on youtube I linked above, he also remarked that the 'top vent does not seem to affect the airflow'. And he left the plastic sticker on the top vent. Not sure myself. Because if he never removed it, how does he know it does not matter? Does not really make sense unless he put it back on afterwards. But then why would anybody want to do that?

The glossy bezel might be OK if D-Brand make a skin that covers it up. Which they probably wil.l Because they already make ones for other alienware laptops. Which can be found in their 'alienware' section on their website.