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

A fun fact is that it often even doesnt work on Aorus and gigabyte laptops. Need a specific bios and software combination. How is that a good thing?

 

Is this the same as the software can not be used? They have at least tried. Dell is not interested. Are not familiar with Aorus/Gigabyte software. But when it works, it must be a hell lot better than that OEM's give a damn to create software people ask for. My AW17 and Hotwell Extreme would have been useless without Hwinfo fan control. It is better the OEMs make software for this, than the same OEM force you over to 3rd party software. I will think that home made software is a safer alternative than anything else, when it comes to user error.

 

When I used silent fan modes on my old Gigabyte. The speeds would be lowered. So I couldnt use a lower fanspeed. Even with the highest it would throttle. So I disabled turbo boost. So yeah you have fanspeed settings (when they work) but in the end you have to put it as high as possible anyway. A few prebuilt in fanspeed curves could be nice. But I can understand why they dont want users not to mess with fanspeeds.

 

The image doest work

I jsut saw the number highest core temp of above 80s. If that is now lower in the 70s then you are okay I think.

 

But the AW reps recommend 3rd party software for fan control. This message comes from Dellienwares engineers, LOL. I have it on paper one place But where? I complained so many times that they had to go further up in the system. And it was not just me.

 

Agree, this feature has been on the #1 list ever since Hotwell systems come out. Dell / AW keep silent and doing nothing!

 

@rinneh: You can refer this image for better clarity. For some reason, multiple images was causing a problem.

 

ah thsoe temps are pretty good! Actually lower than mine.

 

@rinneh: DELL Technician opened my lappie for me and was about to put new heat sink fan w/o cleaning stock spilled and air bubbled paste. I told him NO and I cleaned it with tissues and applied Arctic Silver Ceramique 2 which is better than stock paste but little worse than metal paste, which everyone from @Team_LHz will agree. Anyway, with Fan performance or CPU OC mode turned ON (Either one will be fine but I prefer CPU OC mode because its fan profile is near silent at idle and aggressive as you reach 60C and I'm amazed with AW fans in keeping the system cool) Sorry for the long rant. If I undervolt to -120mV as per @judal57 suggestion, I'm seeing 5-6C drops again.

 

Ceramique is an okay-ish paste. It's old but it'll do proper thermal transfer if you don't plan on overclocking.

 

With the Alienware Amplifier, do you need the larger AC adapter for the laptop?

Also, without the Amplifier, will having this larger AC adapter increase performance of video card that's currently in it? GTX 970m.

Thanks in advance

 

The AGA comes with separate AC adapter to supply the required power. For optimal performance, connect to eGPU's HDMI/DP/VGA port.

 

i7 6700hq is locked, so no OC'ing. For better thermal solutions MX4, GC Extreme, TG Kryonaut and metal pastes are better than AS Ceramique 2.

 

wonder how long it'll last though

 

Only time will tell. In my experience I need to repaste every two years while cleaning out fans which is okay most of the time, don't you agree? @Mobius 1

 

Actually with liquid metal is better to let it sit, it'll penetrate the micro pores of the copper and lower the overall thermal resistance.

 

I visited Thermal Grizzly website only to find that Kryonaut is preferred for OC'ing, is this correct? Even removal of metal paste is tricky, you must use sand paper.

 

For Sub Zero temps!!

 

Metal paste can remove using light grit sandpaper yes, not very difficult to.


Grizzly Kryo is better for extreme oc using LN2 since liquid metal will change material states under 10C

 

I totally forgot about material states that vary across temp. A basic high school physics. Thanks for reminding me!

 

To @rinneh: Use ThrottleStop and activate Intel Speed Shift and notice the difference in temps up to 5C.

 

Thanks. Gonna check it. Undervolting with xtu unfortunately doesnt work when using the graphics amp.

 

@rinneh @Mobius 1 @judal57 @Papusan
How to check if my display is calibrated properly, how to test it w/o expensive kits like Spyder 4 or similar? Are you guys having horribly huge battery drain after running on battery for too long? The wear level increased by 3% after I drained it to 100-10% only twice. So, now the wear level is 7.3%. Is everyone with 15 r2 have 96Wh battery instead of 92Wh, mine is listed as Designed Capacity 96881mWh in HWInfo64. After a little wear, its 89Wh.

 

Without a colorimeter it's impossible.

 

Ahh I thought Windows Calibration tool was sufficient.

 

using human eye is the 1st step to messing up the colors even more

 

lol. So true but each persons perception to what is acceptable is unique. One might look at it as terrible while another will say it so nice. So there are really no set values

 

You need a screen calibration tool for that unfortunately. You can come close if you have a good reference monitor and calibrate the colors based on that, but you do need a reference.

My battery health is still 1.8%. But I only have 15~20 full cycles. Its 1.8% since day one. But it can be a recalibration, so it was already near 7% and after a full cycle it readjusted.Mine is also 96Wh. 94wh left.

 

In total I've done only 6 full cycles its down to 7.3%. From the factory it was 0.8%. I will try drain it to 5% for total recalibration.
@rinneh: Is your 15 r2 plugged in to AC when you're in office?

 

Yeah my AW15R2 is pretty much all the time plugged in at home and office. Use it about 12~16 hours a day. Sometimes when I want to watch a movie with my girlfriend I just hook it up to a TV without a charger though. Express charging is disabled.

But mine was repasted since the beginning so the thermals where always a bit better than stock.

 

What was charge rate in terms of Watts? Mine is showing 44.5W as reported by TS 8.4 and HWInfo64.

 

Hmm i never paid attention to that. have to check that later.

 

I've used a freeware called Calibrize. (Google it). It isn't perfect, but it certainly gets in the ballpark and the colors in the images on my screen pretty much match the color in the same images I print at Costco (W*lm*rt is a completely different story)

 

For photos you want D50K.
For standard web content you want D65K.

 

I tried it, but reverted to Dell stock profile after the screen was calibrated way worse than Dell. I've a lot to improve on.

 

I tried to update BIOS today, it says ROM image unable to load and does not update the bios.

Anybody have this issue?

 

Try to update in steps. Or start the update in bios from an usb stick.

 

Check the hashes of downloaded BIOS file, use HashTab or HashMyFiles for checking file hashes.

 

What do you mean by update in steps?

What should I be looking for?

Thanks

 

If your bios is in 1.2.x version update to latest version of 1.2.x version and then move to latest version which 1.3.10. This was suggested by ZeneticX.
Disable your AV before flashing.

 

Ok so currently I use 1.3.6 and I think the one I am trying to upgrade is 1.3.10

I should do the ones in between first with my AV turned off. I'll do that and update it here

 

A new TB controller driver has been posted for Echo models 15 r2 and 17 r3 http://www.dell.com/support/home/in/en/indhs1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=J95RR

 

OH nice, this might enhance compatibility with TB3 external GPU enclosures.

 

@Mobius 1: I ran OCCT to test mu CPU with AVX and Linpack, all of a sudden after a minute or two the test gets aborted because my core 0 or core 1 get 88C to 90C. In fact while gaming CPU sits at 60C and GPU at 75C. I even ran unigine heaven at extreme settings and AV scanning together to simulate intensive test and max temp of CPU is 70-85C and GPU was 60-75C.
In OCCt default CPU test which I reckon is simple one, temps was never beyond 60C even with passive cooling.
So my question is can I trust Linpack and AVX version of OCCT for CPU stress test?
My CPu is 6700HQ.

 

You can increase the default temp limit in the test. Or use Prime95 v28.9

 

OCCT will stress the CPU at a worst case scenario while not letting down on CPU utilization (100% all the time).

Games, AV, etc etc, they don't exactly run the most intensive load on the CPU and isn't consistent on the utilization.


I don't recommend increasing the temp limit @Papusan , it's put there for a reason.

 

I know Mobi. But this was only a suggestion so he could see that OCCT functioning as intended

 

@Papusan: Temp limit of CPU or limit set by occt?
@Mobius 1: Does metal paste bring down the temp under 90C on 100% load? I accidentally turned off HWinof fan profile and completely forgot to switch on default profile, the cpu temp went up to 97C(passive colling) causes thermal throttling. I noticed that fans wasn't running, as soon as I fired up HWinfo the temp was brought down to 75C. I ran prime95 for 1 hr and temp was around 70-80C. Is that good? ( I used default AW fan profile)

 

temp limit set by occt

LM will bring down temp to under 90c if the heatsink is making proper contact with the die surface and the heatsink has enough air flowing through the fin array

 

@Mobius 1 : How do i do that in occt? Does 70-80C in prime95 looks good according to you?