*OFFICIAL* Alienware 15 R1/R2 Owner's Lounge

I second that.

If anyone get a good unit with 2 good fans, then no worries. I suspect most people do, just be weary of them otherwise when placing order, it is possible and there is a chance you could end up with a bad one.

Don't worry about the temps, Dell are letting this laptop passively cool the processor to a certain extent. For me this the best thing ever, no more freaking loud or whooshing fans when not actually required.

There is to much complaining about the fan profile from A02. I stress tested mine and I had no throttling even when I overclocked it. It does what it needs to do and does it well without tons of unnecessary noise.

 

I would have preferred a tad bit more power from the fans. I live in a cold place and 65C on idle is just not cutting it for me. keyboard part get quite a bit toasty (Compared to other laptops i came from MSI gx660, MSI gt60, Lenovo Y510P. All those hover around 35-40C on idle and the fans are fairly silent most of the time.) I opted for this laptop vs other thinner laptops because i was expecting a good cooling system on the new AW15, I would have gotten the thinner ones if i knew the temps would be the same or worst.


Can i flash back to BIOS A00 and expect a better fan profile? Any input would be great!


On another note. I installed Motionjoy + Better DS3 and got bluetooth working. My main problem is after shutting down or restarting, the bluetooth wont work again and I have to uninstall the drivers then reinstall the official bluetooth driver then reinstall motionjoy drivers again. Can anyone point me in the right direction so that i could use my ps3 controller on bluetooth? thanks!

 

Keeps your Hq processor max turbo on all 4 cores in Wprime 1024 stress test with 8 treads?

 

Don't upgrade to A03 bios guys. Horrible temps with horrible battery life. Downgraded to A00 and back to normal.

A03:
Idle CPU temp: 53
Battery life watching video at half brightness: 244 minutes

A00:
Idle CPU temp: 47
Battery life watching video at half brightness: 336 minutes


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And what about max temps under stress of CPU and GPU with BIOS a03?

 

Can you link me A00 bios ? and how to downgrade. Thanks!

Im on A03 bios and idle temps are at 65C

 

I'm gonna do a clean install,

What version of windows 8.1 will i use ? (It just says Windows 8.1 when i check the version, i need to know the version so that my Serial key will accept my installation)

i don't want any Alienrespawn and stuff. This bloat makes this thing like a netbook. One of the worst bloats I encountered in all the laptops i have.
5400 just doesn't cut it for all the startup programs that AW put in it. (will wait for my m.2 SSD)

Also, can anyone help me connecting my ps3 controller to this laptop? I made a new post in this forum, but it seems nobody is interested or no one is using a controller on their AW's.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/new-aw15-17-killer1525-ps3-controller-via-bluetooth.774920/

 

I don't have a link handy but it's quite easy to find. Go to dell support page and key in your service tag. Then under drivers and software click bios. Select other versions and you will have options to download A02 and A00. After downloading, open the exe file and acknowledge the warning about degrading. It should flash the bios within 5 minutes. It's simple really.




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Thanks! already got it(will flash later and monitor the temps). Whats making the laptop lag? Is it Optimus? Sometimes it performs okay (for a 5400) but sometimes its just super slow :[ . Thats why im opting for a clean install.

 

A00 bios is 10C cooler on my AW15
a03 bios is 10C hotter and throttles a lot . ( Like a lot. )

gpu stays at 60C+ on load . will repaste this ones my paste arrives (IC Diamond) will update you with my temps! and thanks sir mehtenj94 for the heads up

 

I always format the drive on all my computers and make a clean install. I hate to have stuff i dont want on the laptop and also extra partitions that are crap. I'm a bit control freak and want to make my own backup images and such so i always recommend clean installs
This way you know exactly whats on the laptop and not.
For backup i would recommend this:
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
I used to use Trueimage but got tired of their pricing and constant upgrade costs. Reflect is much better i think.

 

Guys I just updated to ao3...and I see people going back to a0...so confused. I have the Alienware 15 with the 980m. Been over a month, so far so good. Should I down grade my bios?? Also how do you check if it is throttling?

 

Hey has anyone with the 1080p played Ultra Street Fighter IV?

How's the screen and input lag, acceptable?

 

I updated Ao3 BIOS and my idle temps were too high 65C-70

downgraded mine yesterday and got around 55C idle. big difference. Im on 970M btw and i7

Can anyone help me connect my ps3 controller to my aw15? ANYONE PLEASEEE. Im desperate :/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...controller-via-bluetooth.774920/#post-9988277
made this post but no one is answering :|

 

Does anyone know how to remove that giant speck of dust in the circle? How does dust even get into the webcam?

 

I just bought a certified refurbished Alienware 15 from Dell for $778 plus tax. It is the base model with I5 and 965M but that is all I need being a light gamer. I mostly play RPGs like Divinity, Grim Dawn, Pillars Of Eternity and the system requirements for these type games are usually on the low side. I will add an SSD at some point. Sounds like I will be spending quite a bit of time deleting bloatware too...Very pumped about having an IPS screen...

 

That is a very good deal. The certified refurb probably is one of those that had little or no issue at all but the person wanted to return it, most likely.

 

Guys, if you want lower temps in idle, I suggest to unisntall Dell Support Assist and Support Assist Agent. This helped a lot... You can also remove Alien Respawn (however this is not such bloody malwer as working only just after system starts)

 

So you think that you get lower idle temperature all the time if you unisntall Dell Support Assist and Support Assist Agent? This software are garbage but it does not create more heat constantly when you use the laptop. This is nonsense.

 

It is working as service and all the time checks your HW. My HDD was working all the time when this was installed. Right now it works much less (almost twice). Just read what sort of problems ppl get with this garbage.

 

Man, after gaming, I've noticed that my Alienware 15 actually charges for a while, which makes me think that the 980m is using so much power, that it has to pull from the battery because the 180W AC Adapter is not sufficient.

 

Anybody having issuing running GTA 5 on the AW 15? Every time I run the game I get a graphics card failure message, but then the game runs fine afterwards. I'll capture the error message next time and post it here, but I wanted to see if anyone else was seeing this. I should mention that I am using the 350.12 GTA 5 drivers direct from Nvidia via GeForce Experience.

 

I'm running the same drivers and I've never had an issue launching the game. Maybe you should try uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers.

 

Yep, they designed it that way. There's plenty of threads discussing the issue. If you're in the US you can contact them and try to get a free 240W PSU. Some have had success with that and some haven't.

 

HI guys i would like to know anyone experience DPC Watchdog Violation and blue screen?
After install fresh windows or in general ?

 

Hello all, just to let you know that my recently arrived Alienware 15 had a noise on the left fan, it was a "trrrrrrrrrr" , very annoying. Anyway, I called support yesterday, and today a nice technician came by and replaced the fan, now the noise is gone.

He also told that he had to change 5 Alienware fans in the last weeks.

 

Just scheduled an appointment with a technician. Today, I noticed that only one of the speakers is working. Quite funny because it had been that way from day one but I didn't notice because of the volume levels this thing has. Dell support was very helpful, honestly .


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Just ordered mine Friday..should have it Thurs(30th). $1430 i7/16gb/128gb/1tb/ 980m/ 1080pscreen. Pretty excited. Gonna replace my desktop i7 920/gtx770 and surface pro 2 which I just sold. Gonna be nice to have a true desktop replacement as well as the option of the amplifier in a year or so when it will start to become necessary. I'm gonna peruse the forum a bit more.. but will I regret not paying the extra $400 for the 4k screen? I'm hoping it's a good quality 1080p screen... seems like from what I've read it is. Also will I need to plan on harassing Dell on the 240w adapter or are they shipping these with them now?

 

Hi can anyone comment on the Creative Soundblaster soundcard, can it output virtual 7.1 to headsets?

I'm picking up my AW15 in a couple of weeks and I'm trying to decide on what headset to get!

Cheers!

 

Nice deal you got there. TBH, I don't think 4k is necessary for a 15 inch laptop. You might be able to play games now at 4k, just looking down the road it might affect performance (that could be fixed with the amplifier). Also, scaling sucks in Windows but who knows, maybe that'll be fixed in the future (don't count on it though). The 1080p screen should be great, according to many reviews, just look out for backlight bleed and ghosting. Not sure about the power supply, I'm interested in the 970m model so I never looked into it.

 

Are you Kidding. the difference between 1080p and 4k is very noticeable! I can tell you that Skyrim look way better on 4k!

 

The 4k probably does looks better, but really, windows laptops aren't fully ready for 4k just yet, IMHO. If you have the cash, go ahead. But the drawbacks in performance, battery life, windows scaling, etc really put me off at least.

 

Yeah I was very much on the fence spending the extra 400'ish and I would have prefered to have the 4k even with the possible scaling issues, but most of the time my desktop is connected to the tv playing Borderland2/presequel or to my Ultrawide playing newer'ish game and to be honest it'll be really difficult getting past the 21:9 aspect. I'll likely be getting a 4k tv in the fall so I'll be playing Skyrim and other casual games on that, in fact it will be great re-visiting some of the great older games on the 4k tv.. such as some Bioshock 1/2/3, Fallout3/nv, Battlefield4,diablo3,batman games, star wars the old republic etc.... all of which should easily be 60fps at that res and look fantastic. Just so great being mobile now with the gaming pc.

 

Wanted to get an idea if my AW 15 (980m w/ FHD panel) is performing correctly. Playing Far Cry 4, and in the early game's free roam, I'm averaging high 30's with frequent dips into high 20's. I'll see 40's maybe 50's while inside buildings and when there's very little to render on screen.

Using 240w adapter. Everything ultra except Post FX on high, Water on high, and no trees relief. Its the only program outside of Steam and Uplay that is running.

Does this sound about right?

 

You'll be fine with the 1080p panel. I returned mine to get the 4k one since I wanted to go all out and I don't regret it one but. GTA V looks absolutely glorious in 4k with a few settings turned down. The only thing I hate is the scaling and having to log out every single time I change the DPI. My reasoning for getting the 4k panel was since the AMP can power to internal screen, I can hopefully max games at 4k using whatever GPU has out 2-3 years form now. Still, the 1080p panel is just fine and you won't have to worry about any scaling problems on that screen.

 

Which screen and video card are you using?

 

Sorry, 980m on the 1080p screen.

 

Hi,
Assuming that you have everything on ultra,

Try

- SSBC
- shadow ultra
-SMAA
- terrain or geometry in very high (don't remember wich one..)
- post FX ultra

You should get 50-60fps
On my rig (17r2 4980/980) the PCSS shadows and higher AA settings kills the framerate.

In addition an o/c on the 980m helps, I use +130/+180 on mine.

Best

 

I'll switch to SSBC, already using SMAA. I cant OC higher than +115 on the core, maybe even less, otherwise I get artifacts. Thanks for the tip!

 

If i remember properly the soft shadows pcss from nvidia and the and the anti aliasing are quite critical
pcss kilked all the fps for me

 

Nice deal for those specs! Where did you order it from at that price?

 

Dell outlet had 25% off. I've bought from the outlet before and haven't had any issues thus far.. I'll find out Thurs.
The 13 was very tempting.. with 512gb ssd and 960m and 8gb for around half of what I paid.. but I know I'd regret that low voltage u processor in the long run. Also the bottom line i7 alienware 15 could be had for 700-800 but with the 965m and a standard hardrive.. tempting but woulda been a bit lackluster. I know I'll have this dog for likely 5 years especially with the gfxamp option in a couple years. I had my same i7 920 desktop for more than 7 years and have only upgraded the vid card twice.

 

After weeks of going back and forth with dell support, they finally sent me a 240W adapter. They initially wanted me to try to upgrade the BIOS first, but I said hell no After seeing so much complains re A02 and A03 on this forum.

The 240W adapter is big but the weight feels the same. I like the blue LED light on the connection point. Will run some test later and they better be higher than with the 180W =). Let see how far this i7 / 980m duo goes.

 

Kinda sucks that I will likely have to deal with this.. do you have any idea if they ship current ones out with the 240w adapter? If it makes a marked improvment in your testing I'll have to start planning my calls/chats.

 

No... Dell is not going to do this.

 

Yep I don't think dell will ship the 240W by default, it looks more expensive than the 180W - will save them a lot of $$$. And guess what? They have even asked me to do a 1-to-1 exchange of the 180W right when they delivered the 240W and I politely declined. I said I needed more time for testing.

 

Yes, I kept my 180w as my travel adaptor and my 240w stays plugged in at home...

Fyi I have the i7/16gb ram/512gb SSD/ 1tb HDD/ 980m / 4k screen and my 180w PSU has shorted over 3 power boards now at different locations when under full gaming load..

 

I just got my AW15 today, and I'm a first time alienware owner. The temps go up to 70 to start up. Then it idols around 50 but internet browsing creeps up to the 60s. I know some of you are downgrading your bios, but how or where would I do that? I've got another, much cheaper, non-AW machine with similar specs that barely even goes into the 40s, maybe 50s after 8 hours of gaming, so not sure why my brand new AW is creeping that high with what appears to be an awesome cooling system.

Also, I'm used to running windows as clean as I can. Which bloatware do you feel should be deleted? Maybe thats the issue? Any advice would help. Thanks!

 

First time Alienware owner myself and just received my AW15 today...I am not as hardcore as many of you guys on here and went for an i5 with the 965M for $775 plus tax from the Dell Outlet. This should be plenty of power for a light gamer like myself. The first thing I noticed is that it looked brand new - not a scratch anywhere. There was a dell refurbished sticker on the bottom and it easily came off. Based on the feedback in this forum, I immediately downgraded the Bios from A02 to A00. There was not much bloatware also. I uninstalled McAfee, Cyberlink Media essentials and MS Office. All that's left basically is Steam, Alien Respawn, Alien Autopsy and Command Center. Not a single Dell program...I am installing Pillars Of Eternity now and am going to give it a go tonight but first impressions are very positive.

 

The main problem is that Dell use crippled fan profiles. So it's with the previous versions of AW laptops also. Dell want their gaming laptops shall be quiet and not make noise.