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

Which cell the battery is using acc. to the sticker?

 

They're both 62 wHr batteries, so 4-cell. As for the brand, they don't say.
However, looking at my original configuration on Dell Support, the old battery is from Samsung? Something about "Samsung Power Division".

 

Oh!! What's the current cell on new battery?

 

No concrete idea. I tried checking through Dell Support and Support Assist, and nothing came up. Looking at HWInfo, it says Compal, but I highly doubt the cells are from them that given Compal wasn't one of the three brands you mentioned, but I could be wrong.
It's still a 4-cell battery, though.
EDIT: After looking into the battery more, there are some differences between it and my old battery. The new one has an "LG" print on it, but the old one has a "SUINING" print on it. The mAh are different as well (4125 vs 3875), and the voltage as well (18? vs 17.6).

 

So I'm not sure what causes this, but this happened on both of the batteries I have. Once the battery gets to about 20% of capacity, it shuts off. Upon turning it on, I see it has about 4% capacity (so 16% just drained instantly or the laptop is misreading the actual battery capacity) and more wear than usual. Battery plan doesn't seem to affect the outcome, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on.

 

Disable desktop mode completely. It destroys battery and calibration meter is way-off with desktop mode.
You can uninstall AW OSD or disable Desktop mode power. After that, drain the battery to 20% and charge it to 100% whilst the PC is powered off.

 

Huh, I thought I disabled Desktop mode, but I guess I didn't. Just disabled it. Will drain the battery soon.

 

Make sure it looks the same like the screenshot

 

Drained the battery to 13% (because I was busy), and everything went as expected. No more shut down at 20% or at 13%.

 

How is the battery wear level?

 

8.7%. Not what I'd like, but I can deal with it until I can get a new laptop.

 

wear level should be normal now w/o desktop charging.
Didn't dell inform you about desktop mode not needing these days. I thought AW mods already knew that!

 

Oh, I knew about Desktop mode being bad. I just didn't think that not touching it (or rather, not selecting Enable) equals defaulting it to on. That's why I thought I disabled it before.
But now I know what to do next time I get a laptop with Desktop mode.

 

Newer laptops doesn't have it at all. You see, I installed 15 r3 and r4 drivers on 15 r2 and Desktop mode was present on echo and older models since BIOS enables that settings.

 

Hey r1 users that have the oled panel. How is the screen holding up?

 

@Vasudev @Game7a1 Can I ask why desktop mode is bad? I have been using it for 3 years now. I can remember when it was 2 years old I did a complete drain to my laptop then charge it back to 100% without using it then I noticed the battery wear level was from 3% to 7%. After that full drain and charging back to 100% it caused my battery wear level to increase.. Does it have something to do with desktop mode? As of the moment I am still using desktop mode and my battery wear level has not changed then.

 

It was just a nuisance for me. The moments I woke up the laptop after it had reached low battery levels (say 10%), the battery was somehow near 0% and had more wear on it. Happened on two batteries.
Granted, I don't have my 13 R2 with me anymore, so desktop charge mode doesn't concern me.

 

Thats wierd then.. Mine is not like that.. Guess it worked for me.. As of the moment it is not increasing my battery wear levels.. Thanks for the info.. ^_^

 

Battery wear level increase when you drain it below 10% or 30% and then full charge because of high wattage almost 75W on standard charge or 80-90W on express charge.If you use battery regularly then desktop mode is useless otherwise you can use desktop mod though I had similar issues like Game7a1. Windows don't charge battery until it falls below 94%.

 

Hi Guys!

Does anybody have the part number for the M2 bracket for the Alienware 13 R1 please? ("NGFF" card)

I've got a mechanical HDD on it and I need to put 2x SSD 860 EVO 1TB inside....(hope it works)

Thanks for your help!

 

Dell Alienware 13 R2 ANW13 M2 M.2 NGFF PCIE SSD Bracket Adapter LS-C902P G8C4P

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Alien...705984?hash=item2abaafbdc0:g:tV8AAOSwhxNbkKlg

 

Thanks for your answer but I need th R1 version (your link isn't compatible with the AW13 R1)

 

I am very much interested in this info too, hopefully no one has OLED problems. When I have a grey page open (please see pic.) I see some vertical wide stripes.

 

Just around the border? Hard to tell on my phone.

 

@propeldragon thanx for answering. This thread is full of busy and happy OLED people, obviously lol

No. The outside 5mm border is from making the screenshot with Sniping tool.

It is possible that only I can see the vertical (20-30 mm) stripes as the picture is one perfect solid grey color and stripes can not be (maybe) seen on another monitor. I would have to take a picture with camera.

Simply, if you can produce similar grey colored and solid, say, desktop background on your OLED and if you see some darker and lighter stripes, then you might reproduce it better.

To say at least ... this 'problem' does not bother me as it is only with this shade of solid grey when I see the slight shift in colors.

EDIT. I took a picture (of the gray picture showing vertical stripes) with phone camera, so the stripes can be 100% seen on any monitor now.

 

I can see it. It almost looks like its even vertical lines. That's odd.

 

Did you try playing with aspect ratio on intel gfx settings? I think you should use Scale full screen for all apps under Display section.

 

I can now confirm my Alienware 13 R1 from late 2014 can run games with an RTX 2070 card. I don't know what to do with this newfound power.

 

RTX (I really mean raytracing reflections) on OLED must really look awesome.

 

No, I don't have OLEDs. I had the cheapest model at the time.

 

UPDATE: Luckily, false alarm. This 'problem with vertical stripes' LUCKILY only shows in Google Chrome, where I have installed Dark Reader Extension (to make internet pages as dark as possible with white letters).

I just tried to set any shade of grey as backgruond in my desktop and also similar shade to the one above and there are absolutely no stripes.

 

I'll bet!.... AW13R1 with AGA+1070 on my end

 

It's been a while, but I have been contemplating on picking up an AGA for my 13R1. However, I was just going to use one of my R9 cards, but it looks like running AMD drivers with NVIDIA drivers can cause some headaches. I was able to play and complete Resident Evil 2 on my current config at 1920x1080p with medium/high settings. Not too shabby for an old spec system. About to play it the second round with Claire and would like to try 1080p with 60 FPS. If I lower the resolution to 1280x720, it's doable, but of course, it is not as pretty. Any input?

In addition, anyone have any suggestions for replacing the battery? Looks like my battery is going to kick the bucket soon and would love to replace it with the 62 wHr battery that came in the R2s. TIA.

 

You can use AMD in AGA. The thing is your internal dGPU goes into Ghost protocol mode and only R9/any GPU in AGA is active.

 

So, I tried RE7 with the graphics amplifier and it runs. I tried RE2 remake, and it keeps using the Intel Graphics driver. The laptop specs are below. The video card I have in the amplifier is an R9 290. I have installed the AGA driver, restarted, and then installed the AMD drivers for the card and rebooted. I can see the card in Device Manager, as well as, within the AMD software. Any ideas?

 

Crimson driver or Relive driver?
I'd recommend putting every game in Windwows graphics settings list to use radeon 290. Often it switches to Intel video which produces 1-3 fps and works like crap.

 

Whatever driver comes with the Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.1 package. And what is this Windows Graphics Setting list that you speak of? First time I have heard of it. I know with NVIDIA, you can go into the NVIDIA Control Panel and configure applications to use NVIDIA over the IGP, but could not find out how to do the same with the AMD graphics. Not only that, but when I actually went into Device Manager and disabled the Intel Graphics, Resident Evil 2 tried to run completely off the CPU /facepalm

 

Watch this video:

 

Yea, I figured it out last night and just forgot to post on the forum <refer to avatar>.

Thanks. It seemed to do the trick. However, performance was not exactly as stellar as I had hoped. But from what I have read, I have two things that are going against me. 1st, I know my CPU (i7 5500) is bottle necking me. 2nd, I believe, although I could be wrong, that there is a performance degradation having the image transfer back to my laptop screen rather than an external monitor.

 

Yes there is some loss in outputting the image back to laptop screen which needs Intel GPU to be enabled. On external monitor you'll get good performance. Mind you, RTSS or MSI AB overlay kills FPS on AMD GPU. So, its better to use Relive OSD for FPS and recording.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I normally just use the Steam FPS counter or the in FPS counter. I will mess around with it some more. But so far, I've been enjoying the nice little boost and graphics performance. It is definitely nice having this functionality/option. Because of this, I will definitely be getting another Alienware laptop in the near future. Preferably something with a quad/hex core processor. My current laptop is great, minus the CPU. Too bad I can't just easily swap it out. Oh well.

 

Look at 15r2/r3 refurb with 6820HK and 970M/980m/1070M. That extra 2 cores will help you push more FPS.

 

Yea, I kind of knew, going into this, that the CPU was going to be the bottleneck. Just looking for a little more oomph to keep the laptop going for a little bit longer (at least until May 2020/5 years old). Aside from gaming, this laptop has exceeded my expectations in build quality and performance. Until I get to a time and place to where I can invest more time and money into PC gaming, this will suffice. Otherwise, for gaming needs, I can always revert back to console gaming (equips flame suit) until I can get a better, overall build.

 

Anyone have a bios dump for the Alienware 13 r1?

 

How would you do a BIOS dump anyway? Just download the BIOS drivers from Dell.

 

I’ve gitten another motherboard placed in and the keyboard works in the bios but not working within windows .

 

That's odd.

 

Anyone knows the part number for R1 battery? Is it the same with R2?
How about the palm rest/frame?

My 13 R1 batteries bulged quite badly, left side actually popped the palm rest. Assuming this is dangerous I would like to replace it however I am not sure what exact part number is or where to buy to be honest.

 

Go to partspeople.com and enter your service tag and it will show you compatible parts

 

Just finished ordering a battery from Dell for my r1. Since I wanted a longer battery life I ordered the battery for the r2 62wh from Dell for about 80.00USD installed it and it works fine. Except for windows saying that it will be 4 min until full charge. Program battery bar gives correct times.