*OFFICIAL* Alienware 13 R1/R2 Owner's Lounge

I was really interested in the Alienware 13, but that thickness is unnecessary and only having dual core ULV CPU options are a deal breaker. Someone needs to be fired for that poor decision IMO. Hopefully AW gets their act together and does a revision to this model adding the option of quad core CPU's a bigger battery and trim the thickness down. I could overlook the thickness I suppose, but quad core and a higher capacity battery are must haves, especially with it's current thickness.

 

Yes, it's thick, but still light (4.5lbs). That 'thickness' is used to the design advantage that my 'thin' laptop can't provide. The keyboard's key travel is deeper than most, the speakers can fire out the sides instead of the bottom, and the RJ-45 Ethernet port has room on the side without a pull down extension piece. You can fit a 9mm hd in it if you remove some foam from the door.

I've put this laptop through some paces. I've been looking for the CPU to throttle, bottleneck, or affect what I'm doing in any way compared to my other laptop with a 4core 45TDP i7, and I haven't seen one hint of a slowdown. I didn't do video trans-coding or CAD 3d rendering so these things might be affected, but most high powered applications I run use the GPU which is very fast for a <5lb laptop.

I agree the battery could be larger without any problem for space with only a bit of added weight, but even with a bigger battery, games would still drain it fast and require a power supply anyway.

I don't think you'll find a more capable laptop in the 13" 4.5lb category than this one. 15" maybe, but 13" no.

 

Big benefit as well is good temps for actually using it on the lap without burning yourself. I played 2 hours of dragon age inquisition with no problem and my legs didn't burn off. Sure, you can use a laptop cooler, but then with the cooler, you're adding weight and substantial thickness anyway

 

The thing for me though, is that I do music production, and I run a lot of soft Synths and plugins, I worry that the CPUs in this particular laptop will be a problem for me. I'm also worried about longevity (CPU power wise). Other than my opinion of the thickness and the CPU and battery concerns I really like this laptop. I also feel that a laptop like this that has the ability to run a desktop GPU should have a more powerful CPU option.

 

has anyone updated the nvidia drivers 353.30 ,because i think overclocking is re-enabled ,could someone confirm?
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/86506/en-us

 

Overclocking was re-enabled in 353.00.

 

I didnt know, I had given up hope for some time, but now with oc i can play ac:u at low 1440p and witcher 3 med at 1440p too so yay...

 

I have the graphics amplifier, the drivers I downloaded off dell websites seems to not have updates

 

Hi All!!!
I just received my new AW13 and am in the process of getting it set up. My old M11x finally took a crap, so I figured the 13 might perform as good or better than the 11x did. I only had an issue with the lid hinge going bad and having to be replaced under warranty. Other than that, I loved my 11x!!
So....I'm fixing to upgrade the drivers, and I see that the Dell support page has quite a few upgrades listed for this computer. I'm worried about downloading something that might have known issues, and should be avoided until a new version is made available??? I'd really appreciate some guidance as to what might be the most important and worthwhile drivers/upgrades to focus on first? From what I've read, there may also be a certain order or priority to downloading and installing drivers and updates?
Here is my build (nothing special):
Processor: i5-5200U w/3M Cache, up to 2.0GHz
Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz
Display: 1366x768 TN-Panel Anti Glare 200-nits (non touch)
Hardrive: 500GB 5400rpm Hybrid w/8GB embedded flash cache
52 WHr 4 cell battery
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M w/2GB GDDR5 memory
Killer 1525 WIFI w/ 4.1 Bluetooth
WLAN Card DW1550 Driver
Windows 8.1
I'm not planning on any hard core gaming, just light gaming, surfing the net, etc.
Thanks for ay help to get me started in the right direction!!!!

 

So my AW13 with the Haswell i5 and 860M, 16GB RAM (if thats important info), and a 1tb HDD (no SSD), and 1440p touch display, has horrible battery life. I cant even get 4 hours of battery life and I see people with a broadwell i7 getting 6-8 hours of battery life, I get 3 hours of battery life using Chrome and minimum brightness... I checked batterybar and it says my discharge rate is at -20.094 mW. Is there a solution for this or do I possibly have a defective battery? I need to use this laptop 6 hours a day for school and I cant have it die on me all the time... I bought a battery bank for laptops, it powers it but doesn't charge it. Anyway is there a solution to get my battery back up to the advertised 6-7 hours?

 

Battery life is somewhat odd to manage with the laptop. You may have to do some restarts, unplugging and replugging the charger, or waking up before the battery consumption drops.
That said, 1440p will make a negative impact on battery life. MOst I ever saw on my laptop was 8.5 hours.

Are you starting from a fresh slate of Windows? Because if not, then the drivers on Dell's website aren't needed and you're good to go. You would need to get the latest from the company who made the driver on their website.

 

How did you manage to get 8.5 hours???? I cant even get 4 hours. That's very strange. Do you know how to fix this battery drain problem? I've seen other peoples battery drain around -8,000mW but mine is draining at -20,000mW. Is there an application I can use to check whats draining my battery so much?

 

It was a one-time moment. On average, I see 5+ hours. But it's been awhile since I've used the laptop on battery, so the average may be lower or higher. Most likely lower.
The theory is that the dGPU doesn't shut down correctly, and if the dGPU is active, more power consumption. If I ever get the time, I could do some guessing and testing to find another fix, but it'll take me a while since I have other priorities to get to first.

 

I leave mine plugged in most of the time too because it's hooked up to the graphics amp when I'm at home. I've never really timed the battery charge life from 100% to 0% while not playing games. When I'm gaming, I set it to High Performance power profile and use the 960M, so the battery only lasts about 1.5hrs. HW info program shows a battery wear level at 10% already, and I haven't even used it that much, so that worries me a bit. I should look for a battery monitor that keeps time/usage statistics to better understand the battery drain characteristics. The only advice I can give is to set up an aggressive power saving power profile, and keep the screen brightness low, and make sure the Nvidia control panel settings use the Intel on chip GPU for the programs you like to use if it will run them fast enough.

 

Game7a1: Yes, I'm starting with a spanking new AW13 straight from Dell. Ordered it on the 14th and received it on the 23rd. I haven't done much to it yet.

 

Then the only drivers needing updates are the Nvidia drivers and maybe the BIOS if you don't have A04. You could update the Intel Graphics Driver, but you would have to uninstall the Nvidia and Intel GPU drivers first. All the other drivers are fine.
Unless you have a fresh slate of Windows or are going to fresh install Windows, I wouldn't worry so much about getting drivers.

 

Right now as I'm typing this on Chrome, the discharge rate on Batterybar says -14,546 mW, I still don't know what could be causing the bad discharge rate. Does anyone know a good application that will tell me what applications that are running in the background that are draining my battery? On the NVIDIA control panel I have everything set to the Integrated graphics so I really don't know what else to do to even get 4 hours of battery life.. And my battery isn't even 1% worn down yet.

 

Well I'm currently using my 13 on battery. Battery consumption is about 6000 mW, so that should net me about 8.5 hours. Just doing some light browsing, video playing (well, music playing), and monitoring. I'm also on 1080p as opposed to 1440p, but I doubt that'll make a difference (maybe a few minutes since my panel consumes more power than the 1080p one.
I have a theory in which how to "normalize" battery life, but I'll need a few testing days to ensure it is reasonable enough to recommend.

 

I thought I read a while back that Google Chrome sucks the battery life on laptops... I also think it depends on how heavily you browse the Internet while on battery. I seem to get about 6 hours, if not more. The one thing I wish was fixed is when putting the laptop in Standby... I see no reason for the battery to drain like it does. One of the reasons why I almost went with a 13" MacBook Pro.

 

The problem is that the battery consumption can be very high even without using Chrome or heavy web browsing. I mean, if the problem is Chrome, it would have been found out by now.

 

There was a firmware update to my m.2 256 ssd. http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...165063&categoryId=SA&productCode=alienware-13

But when I downloaded the file all it is is an empty readme.txt and nothing else.... So weird. Says its supposed to improve compatibility with low power mode. Anyone know who to contact about that download being busted?

 

Try this one.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...de=alienware-13&languageCode=EN&categoryId=SA
EDIT: Never mind. This is for the 128 GB version.
I'll see what I can do with this. But I'm hoping this solves the battery life issues.

 

/shrugs

Also, I'm curious as to how accurate HWMonitor is in accordance to battery wear. I've had the laptop for about a month and it shows that it has 11% wear already...

Edit: Just found this, in case anyone is using Chrome: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/06/better-battery-life-for-your-laptop.html

 

Have you switched to standard charge in the BIOS?

 

Yes, running A04.

 

Either you had done heavy use of the battery or you have a bad battery. The most I've had was 3.5%, and that wear was technically reserved battery capacity. Took that away, and have had no wear.

 

Hey guys does anyone have experience with cleaning the keyboard? I shoulda been more careful but got some crumbs into the keyboard. I was just wondering I it's easy to pry out the individual keys? or should I be cleaning the keyboard another way? If the individual keys can be pryed is there a direction? Thanks in advance!

 

I've been told they are going to fix this problem and update the driver to its correct form.

 

That's awesome news! I hope it solves some of the battery issues.

 

I also have bad battery wear after about 1 month. HW info said 11%. I downloaded some other battery apps and all the info like battery discharge, time remaining ect. seems to match each other. After using some of these other apps, the wear level went down to 9% on HW info and all the others. I turned off high speed charging a few weeks ago after I noticed it in the BIOS settings, but I'm not sure it made a difference, because it charges really fast. I haven't done any calculations yet, but I know charging any battery too fast can damage it.

 

How do you 'take away' 'reserved battery capacity'?

Do you mean it says it's empty when it's not?

 

I'm not convinced that BatteryBar's (or other battery apps, even the OS battery display) can accurately calculate and display the correct discharge rate. I tried running some battery apps and monitoring the discharge rate while doing various things that take more and less power. The numbers for discharge don't change, or change very little when going from using the 960M and not. I'm confirming the HW usage with other performance monitoring SW like GPUz and task manager. I change from High Perf. to power saver power profiles ect and the discharge number stay high and don't change.

I just don't believe any of the numbers from the battery stat apps. Has anyone tried to use actual electronics test equipment to verify what these programs are saying?

 

Has anyone noticed that the Dell (alienware) system SW includes some resource hogs? It takes forever to boot, and the disk usage is at 100% for several minutes sometimes. I looked at the task manager and saw the disk being used by some 'agent' SW that has to do with backups.

Is there a guide or suggestions about what 'support' SW I can remove? I thought Samsung was bad for this, but now Dell too? It's got to be some attempt at making more money, but I can't figure out the developer's motivation for this overloaded c**p.

 

I forgot who told me, but when I mean "take away", I mean being able to regularly use the reserve battery capacity. It's not as if there is hidden capacity; it would be that some of it is reserved just in case.
Battery plan -> advanced power settings -> battery -> reserve battery level

They aren't, and I think it's at a hardware level. Batterybar worked on my HP Pavilion, m14xR2, and m15x just fine. The AW13, though, does not comply. Same goes with using HWInfo.
HWinfo, though, does report voltage changes, if that matters. Windows will catch on at some point, but since it's barren of information, then it's hard to give it some credibility.
The programs will work within the first few minutes, but after a while, they stop.

You mean Alien Respawn / Dell Backup and Recovery? If you don't use that, then uninstall it. I would also look at some things you don't need at startup.
I also don't have any "SW", and boot ups on my SSDs are fine and problemless for the most part.

 

I was using SW as a short for SoftWare, or application, or program. I don't have an SSD so my boot times are longer, but it's still slow for an HD.

I'm not sure what 'processes' are associated with things I can uninstall.
How do I know if I 'need' them if I don't know what they do? (Except slow down my computer, and discharge the battery faster. I know they do that.)

Ok, so do you know of any power consumption benchmark or stats programs that work for the AW13?
Do you know if I can even trust the time remaining numbers from the OS battery icon?
I guess it's time to get out the stop watch.

 

Well, it would be a good step forward to disable startup programs that you don't use through Task Manager. That includes things like the Graphics Amplifier Software if you don't have one. There are some programs that can't be disabled through Task Manager like Alien Respawn (for some odd reason).
If you don't use it or don't see a need for it, then disable it.
I think PCMark has a battery benchmark.
The Windows battery icon is somewhat credible, but since it's so barren with information, it's not reliable. I'm using Throttlestop as an alternate battery monitor to see if it can detect anything beyond a few minutes on battery. Doubtful, but I'll see.

 

What is the 'CPU OverClock feature' and how do I use it? (Are you talking about the automatic 'power boost' tech in the CPU?)

 

No, I was talking about the OC feature in the BIOS (under the Graphics Amplifier Section in Advanced); however, I never got it to work. In theory, it would have given the CPU a Level 1 OC (200 MHz). Thus, it would match the speeds of pro version of the CPU, minus the pro features.
i5-4210u -> i5-4300u
i5-5200u -> i5-5300u
i7-5500u -> i7-5600u
I heard it works for the i5-4210u, but the same can't be said about the Broadwell CPUs.

 

Also by using GPUz, sensors tab, the dGPU (960M) is showing no activity, but the discharge rate doesn't change.
I think the 'airbag sensor' is broken, but the 'airbag' is still ok.

 

As I said earlier, I think whatever senses/calculates the battery discharge will stop working correctly after a few minutes on battery. I don't think it has to do with the GPU anymore but how the computer interacts with the battery. It could be a hardware problem.

 

Yeah, I saw that setting in the BIOS and couldn't figure out what it was supposed to do.
I thought maybe it would allow overclocking the CPU through some application, or maybe it would allow the desktop GPU in the GA to be overclocked with an app. I tried a GPU overclock app (MSI) with and without the GA, and the OC was allowed with the GA (EVGA GTX 960, 4GB), but not without it on the 960M.

By the way, I was using GPUz sensor graphing tab while playing a game (Shadow of M.) and noticed the operating freq. of the 960M was not going over about 850MHz, but the temps never got over 60°C. Am I seeing thermal throttling of the GPU? I would think this would only happen at >70°C

 

The GTX 860m / GTX 960m can be overclocked with the 353.xx drivers. Are you using an older driver?
I would disable the overclock settings in the BIOS and install the latest Nvidia drivers.

 

This is sooo frustrating. What is the actual battery life of this thing while not gaming? I need to know so I can use the awesome keyboard and light weight to haul it around and do some coding and notes in classes after work. My classes are 4 hrs long and I really don't want to carry around a power supply 1/2 the size of the laptop.

 

Yeah, I'm using the most recent Nvidia drivers along with GFE. I have to if I expect gamestreaming to my shield tablet to work. What a nightmare that's been. I don't really need to OC the GA with Gtx 960 because it's so fast already, and factory OC'd by 100MHz anyway.

 

Umm... I know you're exaggerating, but the charger is definitely not half the size of the laptop. As thick, sure, but half the size? No. You can wrap the one of the cables with the rubber on the charger to shrink the overall size.
I cannot come up with an average for the battery life. I suspect between 6 to 7 hours, dipping into 5, but that's with my edited power savings plan.

Never mentioned OC for the GTX 960. I was talking about the 960m.
I don't use Afterburner, so I don't know how it works. I use Nvidia Inspector for overclocking.

 

I found the culprit(s). It was the Support Center and Support agent that was using the disk so much. I uninstalled that with some other stuff and it now boots and runs much better now. I got it down from over 100 running processes to about 90. Did you have any luck with Throttlestop?

 

Ayayayayayayaya.... (broken).
I'll just wait for you to post all your replies.

 

Yes, I'm exaggerating (whew, that word is almost as big as the PS), but it kind of defeats the purpose of my goal of a lighter load when I'm hauling a backpack and computer up and down a million stairs at school. (there I go again)

I'll have to try Inspector. I was just mentioning the OC works on the GA, but that I don't really need it.

In the end I think I like this laptop for what it can do and how it does it for the most part. I just wish it was a bit cheaper. The cost is the only reason I'm being so picky and bothersome on these forums.

 

Sorry, bored at work just before a vacation - I'll stop now.

 

It's fine. It would just be redundant if I responded to you after you just responded to me. Now then.

I haven't spent much time with Throttlestop as a battery monitoring, but it picks up things that Batterybar does not.

I never found trouble carrying my laptop place to place at university, but then again, I have a tablet, and my courses don't require me to use my laptop/tablet. And I very carefully plan my class schedule to eliminate as few consecutive classes as possible (a break between them all). I only being the laptop if the tablet is dead or I need to do typing (writing, coding, etc.).