*OFFICIAL* Alienware "Graphics Amplifier" Owner's Lounge and Benchmark Thread (All 13, 15 and 17)

Corsair VS isn't really good PSU. You need RM series for best performance and skip CX series as well. @judal57 has a NZXT PSU, I don't remember the model name.

 

Well this VS is better than the original one coming with AGA isnt it, i am not complaining about the performance, it is fine when it is working fine but it starts to work fine after i flash my bios, did a coupe of times and it worked, it cant be a coincidence?

 

I had a VS430 that performed great when my big cat decided to take a piss on my desktop and make its territory and PSU was dead and got a Seasonic 430 which worked great.

 

I only adopt female cats now for similar concerns lol

 

Tried to piss the same way as my other cat but I jumped and saved my PC.

 

The Alienware amp works great with the new RTX cards and very little bottleneck using the new cards. This AGA is one fantastic add on. I am very happy with my purchase. It has taken my laptop to another level that can’t be achieved with any other amplifier.


I am in the process of modifying the amp by changing out the stock fan with a Noctua NF-A9 FLX fan and then use the stock fan and attaching it to the side vent with glue on the left side of the graphic card to vent air out. Hopefully the stock fan will pull enough air out of the case and induce cooler temps for the 2080ti graphic card. Keep you posted

 

Whenever you get the fan setup, post up. I really want to swap out the noisy stock front fan. I had been leaving it out but the 1080ti gets pretty hot with no fan.

 

put the stock fan pushing out air, you just have to turn it, that works for me. and yes, you can change it with a noctua fan. also you can add more fans, my 1080ti have 3 inputs to add fans

 

The PSU vents blow hot air onto the backplate of the graphic card. I want fresh air to be push into the unit by the front fan and then utilize the one I have mounted on the side vent to draw the hot air out from the PSU unit and graphic card out. The con of Alienware amp is that there is no heat plate between the PSU unit and the backplate of the graphic card. The fan towards the front is too far of a distance to pull the air fast enough. This is ofcourse in theory Until I see the temps. I am waiting for delivery of my Noctua fan.

 

The Noctua NF-A9 FLX is direct replacement at 92mm. From all the reviews I have read on the fan, it’s much quieter than the stock fan. No modifications needed except connecting wires to the original wire. The Noctua fan comes with 3 wires. RED, Black and yellow. We Only use the black And red. Yellow is not used. If your going to use two fans just connect the wires in series.

 

The PSU vents out the back, the fan on the inside is an intake

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Yes I am aware of that after I posted that! I will see if that middle vent works to remove more hot air and lower my GPU temps. If not then I will remove it. My modification of fan was solely to change out the stock fan to a much quieter fan. Then I had the extra fan and it got me thinking to see what I can do with it! Lol

I like to tinker with stuff. You should see my car with nitrous and methanol injection!

 

Here is the final installation. Noctua fan is pretty quiet and nice quality. The colors on the fan is not my taste but whatever!



Before temps was 67-68c GPU

Temps now 64c.

Have to test the temps some more on games I usually play. Right now playing Assassin Creed Odessey the temperature of the 2080ti on 1440p maxed out settings is floating from 60-64c and no higher. The cut scenes raises the temps to 64c and then it drops back down to 61-62c.

Division typical temps are 67-68. After modification temps 64-65. Some slight improvement.

 

I have tested the extra fan I am using to ventilate air out of the AGA encasing and it works. Such a small enclosure removing hot air out is always a good thing. Best scenario would be leaving the cover open all the time to dissipate the heat generated by the card.
I am not sure if changing out the factory fan to a Noctua fan helped reduce the temps alone as I added both modifications at the same time and monitored the temps.

Right now I am VERY happy with the AGA. Anyone on the fence about purchasing the AGA, you won’t be disappointed. Just make sure you get either a GTX1080ti or at least RTX2080 and if you have extra money RTX2080ti to take advantage of it. There is very little bottleneck using the AGA with a 7700HQ. With the AGA enjoy all games on ultra settings without having to worry about your laptop temps!

LMAO My rig has a total of 14 fans keeping it cool! OMG. I guess I am a FAN-atic

Laptop internal fans 2
Laptop cooler pad 5
Opolar vent fans 2
AGA 3 fans
Nivdia RTX2080ti 2

 

I have a 6700HQ-1060 15R3, but I have a 2560x1080 75Hz Freesync ultrawide. Would it be worth getting an AGA and a RX580 for the Freesync? How would that stack up against the internal 1060 in terms of performance?

 

It will be comparable in performance but just that. You can use freesync ofcourse now but for 75hz thats not really a big benefit.

 

Wow, you really are a big fan of fans, lol! My Zotac gtx1080ti Blower plus stock AGA fan seems to keep things from getting to hot to touch but I might look at adding one of those noctua fans like you did. I also have a i7 7700hq in my 17r4 (w/gtx1060) and it's interesting to hear that with the 2080ti it does not seem to be a bottleneck.

Did you need to go to the latest 1.5.0 bios and nvidia 416.xx drivers in order to get your AGA to support the 2080ti? Thanks.

While I really like my AGA I still kinda wish I had just got my 17r4 with an internal gtx1080 but still bought an external gaming monitor to only project to. My only real complaint with my AGA is that while I get a huge performance improvement with non-VR games/apps (+2x) I do not get nearly as much performance improvement with VR games/apps with my Oculus Rift. Probably at best ~25-30% better. Still a significant improvement though and it does allow me to raise Super Sampling values up a bit.

I'm not sure but I think the problem with VR is that not only do things need to be rendered in you external monitor (which I only project to) but VR processing need to go back/forth to the VR headset via the AGA cable. I don't know, but I suspect that I would have gotten a larger VR performance boost had I just got a built-in gtx1080 to begin with. Plus, that would have cost me a lot less (~$3-400) than my AGA + 1080ti.

 

I didn’t need to update the bios 1.5.0 to work with the 2080ti. It works with the previous Bios before 1.5.0.

 

That's interesting since it seems like a big sell from Dell saying if you want to use a series 20 gpu you need to use this latest bios. Also, what nvidia driver are you using? Maybe they help sort the 20 series/AGA issues? Thanks.

 

v416.81 for the graphic driver.

As for the BIOS I am not sure. Can you show me where you read that from.

 

I just looked for the 13R3. There is no new update for it. Same as the one I have 1.4.2.

 

It works from what I read also with older bios versions. The crappy thing is that Dell is always extremely vague about fixes in bios updates.

 

Just wondering, which 2080 Ti did you use? I currently have a 1080 Ti, but the upgrade is kinda tempting....

 

I went with the Nivdia RTX2080ti FE version. I didn’t go with the other AIB cards because many AIB cards are wider and I wanted to be sure the AGA cover can close. So far so good after 200+ hours of gaming on it.

When I initially bought the AGA I tried the GTX1080 and then tried out the RTX2080 and finally settled on the RTX2080ti. I did see noticeable gains going from each card! Most noticeable was obviously the 2080ti but that comes with a premium price unfortunately.

 

Cool, and it just fits not case cutting or modding?

 

Yes it fits perfect. No modifications needed. Plug and play

 

Hi Folks, I just bought a 17" R5 and and AGA with an RTX 2080 and I can't get the AGA to work. Dell have suggested that the problem could be the 2560 x 1440 G-Sync display on my laptop not working with either the AGA or the RTX card. I haven't tried using an external display yet because there will be times when I won't have an external display and I want to prove that the whole system works. Does anyone have an RTX card and a G-sync display working?

 

If your laptop has a gsync display you cannot use the AGA to drive it as it’s connected directly to your laptops GPU.


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Ahhhhhhhh. It is only taken me a week to find that out. If I had come here first rather than talking to Dell I could have saved myself a lot of time. Thanks. Do you know if it is possible to disable the G-Sync display via the Nvidia control panel? Every time I try and turn it off it keeps turning itself back on.

 

So is it possible to run a non G-Sync external display from the AGA if my laptop display is G-Sync?

 

You can run whatever you want from the AGA.

Just so you’re clear - gsync models are not able to use Optimus / the intel GPU so battery life is considerably shorter. That’s not an issue for some but just giving you a heads up.


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The nvidia control panel is the only way. Strange that it keeps turning itself back on. I’ll play around on my R5 and see if I’m getting the same behavior .


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Use nvidia inspector and nvidia inspector profile.

 

You cant turn it off and bypass it. The screen is hardwired to the Nvidia GPU and you can onyl get the AGA to work with an external screen.

 

Ya, unfortunately you need to use an external gaming monitor in order to get things to work properly with your AGA and only project to this external monitor. If I were you I would email dell support and continue to ask them for help.

 

There is no other way of taking advantage of the AGA other than external monitor. The performance decrease is huge. For the instances where you don’t have external monitor, I guess you just have to be happy and use your internal card which will be almost identical to the performance you get from AGA with internal screen. Bottleneck is the internal screen with AGA

 

What is it you think they can do to help?


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deleted post

 

I’m not the one asking about using.

Just curious why you’re telling him to keep asking Dell for support when the system is functioning as designed and cannot be changed.


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Ya, I see your point, sorry about that.

 

In continuing with my fan fascination I saw this YouTube video with someone adding a additional fan in back of the stock fan to draw more air further into the enclosure. Look at the video at 1:51 mark of video. I ordered another Noctua fan and installed it like the video below. Would you believe it works! Assassins Creed Odessey maxed out settings GPU now hovers around 56-58c! Now I have total of 15 fans cooling my rig!

It’s Fan-tastic how cool my rig is without being watercooled!

 

There seems to be a growing concern of mine that I might have a problem with tinkering and adding fans to my AGA!!! I think I have too much time on my hand! On top of adding the additional fan in front of the factory fan, I decided to add another 92mm fan that is mounted directly facing the graphic card’s aluminum backplate. This fan pushes fresh air directly over the back plate of the RTX2080ti. I fabricated a plastic divider to channel the air flow of the two fans in the front of the AGA to blow towards the graphic card area and the fan that is facing directly on the backplate of the RTX2080ti. Hot air rises and with this divider the hot air will be vented out from the fan that’s on the right side vent. I have this fan setup for airflow out. It seems to work quite well! After playing Assassin Creed Odessey for over two hours the GPU temps now hover around 56-58c!! Who said more fans can’t work! I have added a total
Of 3 extra 92mm fans to AGA!

That fan I have mounted on the right side of vent when the AGA cover is closed is on the other side of the divider which sucks any hot air that rises to the top of the AGA which is not already vented by the PSU fan.




This setup vents the entire enclosure from front to back which is why I think I am seeing such drastic temp reductions of my GPU. I was afraid of negative pressure that I will induce with all these fans and by no means am I am expert in airflow mechanics but what I did works!

 

Negative airpressure has 1 downside, it will attract dust from every hole in the chassis. While positive aipressure in general from the side where the most air is pulled. But apart from that if your temps are good, they are good.

 

Yes the front of the AGA which has two fans to pull fresh air in has the most dust buildup. The other fans have very little dust so I would say there is very little negative pressure in the enclosure. I guess I got lucky with the air flow mechanics! Playing AAA games on ultra maxed out settings and having temps hover 56-58c without being water cooled is beyond good for a 2080ti card. I have seen others average 75-78c. This is also attributed to undevolting GPU also but temps recorded before this additional fan and divider mod the GPU was also undervolted and everything else remained the same settings except temps dropping 4-5c which is huge

 

Temps are good, but with that many fans, how is noise?

 

Tolerable. The Noctua fans are pretty quiet. The Nvidia RTX2080ti fans are much louder than the fans I have added but now that the temps are much lower the fans on the card doesn’t ramp up as much as before. When it use to reach 70% rpms it was loud like a hair dryer. I know it is kind of hard to believe that four 92mm fans spinning is quieter than two fans spinning on the graphic card, but it is indeed true.

The AGA form factor is nice and compact but the casing with just one fan pulling air Into the chassis, IMO is not enough. I was regularly seeing 74-77c on the card even with undervolt of 831mv. Without undervolt the temps were 80-81c and the fans were like spinning like a jet! These new high end cards produce so much heat that the casing design IMO cant dissipate the heat fast enough or draw enough cool air in as seen by my original temps without modifications of the fans.

 

Then it is a victory lol

On my todo list is watercooling my 1080 Ti with a 2x120mm radiator and accompanying fans. We will see how quiet those fans and a pump are....lol

 

Yeah watercooling would the best solution, but to get it into the AGA and being able to close the lid, will take some inginuty on your part. I am not sure if the small water loop will cool the GPU enough if you manage to keep the system within the AGA casing.

I am not comfortable with watercooling so I will stick to fan cooling! Please post your setup when your done as well as the parts used.

 

You cannot fit enough radiator into the AGA case. Would need to have it externally mounted at a minimum. I am going a bit different route, I have transplanted my AGA PCBs as well as some other stuff into a Corsair 450d case that is kind of my mega-docking station. So far, it contains a Corsair RM550x PSU, AGA boards, Sonnet Echo Express SE1 with Intel X520-DA1 10 Gbps NIC (adapted to draw power from the RM550x 12V bus), BluRay writer, BluRay UDH Writer, and a little USB hub to connect the SATA->USB adapters for the BluRay drives as well as pass through the front USB ports from the case. That hub is plugged into one of the AGA USB ports, I have a 13 (?) port USB 3 hub on my desk as well that is plugged into another one.

Sadly, Dell was stupid and still requires a PSU connection and does not feed laptop power through the AGA port. So I plug 3 things into my laptop - 240w PSU, AGA Cable, TB3 cable.

So all of that is a very long winded way to say, yes I figured out the space problem for water cooling I now have a ridiculous amount of space to work with. Currently I actually have no fans in this setup except the built-in ones in the GPU and PSU. The front fans in the case are not plugged in. I was annoyed that I could not find a smaller case suited to the task but this is not terrible, I did have a full tower desktop for years so am used to it being there.

 

Wow. That’s awesome. I wonder if you can do SLI on that setup and would it work?