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

You could have asked me...I didn't know they were posted on other forums. Well, I was aware some of them would be available elsewhere anyway.
Maybe you should skip this one though. Test it and you'll understand why.

 

Its in Windows OS section.
RS4 is a hit or miss but I needed WD bug fixes which were long overdue and its simply better than MSFT trying to force update every PC.

 

I meant maybe you shouldn't paste the link as it is, you understood me. You should be wondering if those people want it and also deserve it.
And maybe I should do it too. You know, the people of this forum are probably right not to tolerate unlegit software. If our admin is accepting this, it's partly because he's living in a country where counterfeiting is the least of their concerns.

 

its against the rules clear and simple.

 

hey guys!
Can you wake up your laptops via native keyboard? Could check it? Please put your laptop to sleep and hit spacebar(or esc and other) on the keyboard.

 

....anyone?

 

Did you use Arctic 1.0mm or 0.5mm thermal pads? I bought 1.0mm will it work??

 

0.5mm.

 

Now, finally I`ve done it, stable overclocking to 4GHz of my i7-6820HK and stable 1430/2700 of my GTX 980M 8GB without premod BIOS, only original BIOS modded by MaxwellBIOSTweaker
Here will be some guide
1) You`ll need software
https://ufile.io/soy7o
2)Then make backup of your VBIOS by GPU-Z(easiest way)
3)Open in MaxwellBIOSTweaker

First is to disable boost, all three options TDP Base entry, 3D Base Entry, Boost entry select Entry #0
4)Check voltages tab

and all from CLK0... up to CLK 49 make like this

second line marked red must be set as your overclocking voltage if higher that 1.174V

CLK 50 and 51 make lower limit 2-3 steps lower than your voltage used for overclocking and CLK 52 and 53 set lower limit as your overclocking limit
5) Now to Power tab, where all the throttling reasons are

103000 and similar looks like a power limit anyway this BGA are not desktop graphics cards and all power comes from one source just set all limits to 1000000 except this one
increasing this leads to loss of performance and decreasing leads to instability, just leave it as is.
6) Now to the Boost Table

Cell 53 is the maximum clock for GPU, mobile maxwells always run this clock, thats why boost is useless
just move slider in bottom to adjust Cell 53 with your overclocking clock
like mine 1430.5MHz

and copy this value to Common Tab here

and also to Boost States table here

7) Memory overclock
Just set your memory clock here

and here

8) Now boot into safe mode of windows, open folder with nvflash.exe, type cmd in adress and hit Enter. Comand Promt will open. First type
nvflash --protectoff
to disable protection
then
nvflash -i 0 -6 mod.rom
where mod.rom is your moded VBIOS
after you find your stable clocks switch protection ON again
nvflash --protecton

 

My Alienware 15 R2 is a bit modded for cooling and power
1)CPU and GPU repasted with Coollaboratory LiquidPro
2)Changed thermalpads which left from couple EK Waterblocks fullcovers
3)And custom made coolong pad with four 60mm FANs

 

And some benches
3DMark11 all stock

3DMark11 CPU overclocked

3DMark11 daily gaming

 

Hi Guys I recently purchased a 2nd hand alienware 15 R1, 4720HQ, R9 m295x 16gb ram etc, but the user did let me know I would probably need buy a new battery for it. What model battery should I be looking out for on ebay? I won't have laptop until end of june, as I purchased in the UK where im going go on holiday, it is much cheaper there than in south africa.

 

https://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=19700

https://www.ebay.com/itm/191YN-92Wh...884806?hash=item1c7e1c8dc6:g:akcAAOSwtfhYtTk0

or you can find it on local ebay from whichever country ur.. part number is 191YN.. its a 92WHR battery..

 

try laptopbatteryexpress.com

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/14-8V-92...980244?hash=item23981e55d4:g:KI8AAOSwbopZWgii

Thanx will save that listing, hopefully some stock left once I land in the UK.

 

My Alienware 15 R2 freezes on battery once I install an Intel graphic driver. without the Intel driver it works fine, irrespective of what other driver I install. But once the Intel driver gets installed, the screen starts to flicker then eventually freezes while on battery, if I plug it in, it resumes regular operation. I've left it on for over 2hrs on battery without the Intel driver and it worked fine.

What exactly can I do to resolve this?

 

There are random freezes on windows 10 v1709 and 1803 .
See if the undervolt is too high and try to reduce the undervolt to -100mV if you're using one!

 

The Windows version isn't any of these two (v1709 and 1803), and I also had not undervolted this system. To be honest, never messed around with the system settings, I ended up doing that with my R3.

 

I had optimus based issues on 1703 and it was fixed when intel released their 4983 driver and after upgrade to 1803 the issue is back.

 

@Vasudev @Papusan @judal57 look at new razer cooling system, now compare this with the alienware v2.0 BS heatsink.. Razer is BGA but atleast stepped up in other departmnts, like offereing thin bezel + 144hz 99%SRGB screen and a decent individual lit keys with thin profile.. and see the components getting cooled with HS.. PCH too.. now thats what i call a heatsink.. no no tri pod legs.. and proper fit design..

 

Welcome to yesterday’s news http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r5-owners-lounge.815492/page-58#post-10732894

 

Hey all!

I have a late 2015 model with the GTX 980m 4GB. The graphics card works smoothly at arount 40%~60% load, but at over 80% load it starts throttling after about 3 minutes. Core frequency drops from 1126 MHz to arount 800MHz, and memory frequency from 2505 MHz to 1500 MHz. It has been bugging me for months. Has anyone seen this issue before? Is there anything I can do other than flashing a modded vBIOS?

 

Doesn't matter because RAM,SSD and WLAN will be cooking itself w/o more space for effective airflow. The Heatsink looks excellent, just like 15 r2.

 

At least it doesn’t throttle as Hell like the new AW models. Near 4.0GHz vs. 3.5GHz clock speed from the Coffee chips in the new thicker, bigger 17,3 inches Alienware’s. But still no go.

 

i should really call this new models as turdbooks like in yo signature, innovation level 9999 from alienware team.. now i know why these local support team behaves like this.. if the main alienware team itself doesnt respond or have no answer to throttle, / other issues, how come a tech guy who learns everything from their guidebook can understand anything out of book at all... frank at his finest.. and i just calculated the average VID of 6700HQ chipset from all my R2 motherboards.. its way overkill for a 3.1GHZ max turbo.. 1.175 on average.. lowest i got on stock was around 1.165.. and max of 1.210 on four cores.. 1volt is enough for these 3.1 to be honest.. and it will be stable atleat for 90% of chips produced even the ones with bad yeilds.. i dont understand the logic of overkilling the procesor with extra juice.. i got temps anywhere between 8-18c undervolting from 125-175mv negative.. next is the amount of restrictions they put on subcomponents..

 

At 3,1GHz mine uses 0.95V and on AVX2 it uses 1.01-1.1V, a stress test I created.
Dellienware don't care anymore, they get more money for their filth BGA and nothing more! Razer's cooling system is superior to latest AWs.
I prefer to buy Clevos any time and day no question asked. I need great SW support and BIOS now. Build quality and keyboard are sidelined in favor of highest performance and I feel Prema Partners simply deliver what I want.

 

0.95 on 3.1 stock VID ?? or undervolted.. Yes we need more transparency on BIOS.. its like we are paying a hefty amount for a closed system.. waiting for something good from AMD side.. intel hexacores are nitemare.. and nvidia is just making gaming industry one sided with their 1180 teasers and rumours..

 

AMD Ryzen TR2 and possibly Intel/AMD on my future laptop.
-125mV undervolt on AC and -145.5mV on battery.

 

wish there was someone to unlock DELL signed BIOS.. hardcoded i guess.. Same here but im not gonaa slide towards intel anytime soon..

 

Talk about Dell support and how good they know their own products... Read this and next posts.

It's amusing to see that Razer who is known for ****y cooling can hold the stock BGA clocks in some bench tests, while the bigger Alienwares 17,3 models you can see the processor throttle down and barely can hold 3.5GHz in same tests.

Nothing wrong with the new Coffee lake hexacores processors. Stock clocks run cool.

The problem is the "Coffee BGA" and the OEM's who prefer to kill the cooling capacity due their "shrinking thickness notebook philosophy".

And what can we expect with next gen processors + continued shrinking the thickness of the notebook chassis? See the link in my post above.

 

Yes the OEMs are the issue here.. not designing a capable board / heatsink.. btw why are u still on windows 8 ?? any reason ?

 

You havent even owned a Clevo and used one in your climate........

The support could be much better in India for sure.

But you will get hit hard when you start using a BGA Clevo in the same climate or any Clevo for that matter. You are measuring results compared to people living in northern Europe for example with a 20c ambient temperature.

The latest AW's run hot because those Intel chips are a step too far by design from Intel. Even 4 dedicated heatpipes in Asus latest DTR cannot keep it under 90c at stock clocks! Compared to that the latest AW's are actually doing quite favorably if you consider the thickness.

Stop the fanboying please. Be realistic.

AMD is only decent in the desktop space but **** in laptops. they havent have thermals and power draw under control yet.

 

I said it before, you are running a fairly cherry picked CPU with LM and comparing it to stock machines with **** paste. Even the biggest machines cant cool the latest i9 which is running at stock faster than the 8700K mind you. ALso with 20c only ambient temps.

Its a nice result, no doubt about it but skewed in comparison.

I do think the latest Intel i('s are their worst CPU's to date. For that extra few 100mhz's on each core the powerdraws grows astronomically for no reason. Over 160watts when pushed to 5ghz.

 

I already have couple of BGAs so they might suffice for work and not for gaming/heavy rendering. Sure, I'm not a fanboy and I never said I will run at 5GHz like Papusan does on his Clevo when I get mine since my ambients are too high, so I might run it at 4.5GHz on all active cores with LM delid and normal paste on IHS.
BTW, you missed my point completely why I'm going to Clevo, its better BIOS support (Prema) and SW mods from j95 which is a deal breaker for me because I don't have too big of a budget every year to spend on newer products.

 

What do you thikn the bios will do? This is the first time the Prema bios actually adds extra CPU support.

 

CPU microcode fixes, Updated OROMs for AHCI/SATA/RAID, updated Network ROM, MEI FW, unlocked menu and optimised settings for OC or no OC BGA/LGA etc...

 

Does that really, really matter? I couldnt care less about the updates to be honest

 

Yeah

I know because you buy new HW every 2 yrs. I have an AGA that's lying on my table w/o a GPU for a year since I'm content with 980M.
I rarely upgrade since I use the PC for 4-5 yrs and then buy new one, so those *updates* really matter!

 

The so called upgrades in hardware I quite overstated. As said in another topic in another discussion, i say it again, you can only update the CPU within the same architecture. This is the first time but probably also only time you can do a decent upgrade from a quad to sex core in a DTR laptop but apart from that the jumps where never big and you could never go for lets say a sandy bridge to a haswell or Skylake. So no your laptop does not stay actual in terms of CPU power for 4-5 years.

The GPU is uncertain. Some MXM boards work, others do not, standards are not fully adhered too and in some cases you even need to cut into the frame. Also in general these MXM boards are the costs of half a laptop. So in my opinion a better built laptop is more important and thats where Clevo barebones and MSI barebones often lack. They arent durable and they arent well made. Pretty much all the Clevo promoters on this forum have it tuned extremely well and in extremely cold environments. In hot climates those systems start too fall apart as well and when they break, goodluck with getting any support as well.

I hate to say it but gaming laptops in general are flawed, each and any one of them. All need work and pretty much all work only well in a certain context.

 

comparing a apple to orange is not fair we know.. we are not bashing alienware, but i owned three alienware before, so i def can see the quality going down.. and they lack innovation. forget clevo. yes its not portable.. how about razer.. they have bad history. but they came up with something nice. whether it works or not.. its called effort.. i use to replace my desktop every 2 years for past 10 years.. but im done with those things.. you know every country has its own climate shift.. according to that and emission noms motorbikes / cars are designed, they are bit nerfed.. but they function properly.. only laptop industry runs like this.. how many users you have seeen posting a positive review on their systems.. and how many issues people have reported.. and how many of those who are sitting in home using this laptop for just browsing and making excel sheets.. they wont even realise anything until they test out the sytem to the extreme.. im just saying.. on 15 R2 using CPU performance mode + undervolting helps a bit.. but can u figure out why the BD proc is triggerd ?? or did anyone from alienware ever replied to this BDPROC throttle issue ?? nope.. cause they dont care...

 

hey guys, does anyone have a uneven Cpu core temps on the 6700HQ 15 r2 due to the uneven copper heatspreader on the cpu ? does lapping makes any difference ?
also, what about limiting the battery charge level ?

regards.

 

I had, had to replace the heatsink and thermal pads for it to fix. Not need lapping. Just the gpu componrnt thermal pads are pushing one side higher of the heatsink. Using a copper shim is also possible.

 

You know I have owned 3 units as well. And I saw quality going up.

-The chassis became better and more on the level of the older M15X series. The first 2 echo's had a good quality chassis, well made but wasnt as good as the M15X, more composite materials where used instead of aluminum. So I certainly dont agree with that the quality going down because the 15R3/R4 vs the R1/R2 definitely have a better made laptop chassis.

Its easy to say Razer is making an "Effort" but it is to design large oversights that go much furthers than just bad thermals. But device breaking flaws such as the chassis itself bending (Gigabyte also had this issue which I experienced myself) and burning out VGA bioses due to chip placement etc. Flaws always can occur in devices with a few hundred important parts if not thousands. But a systematic failure rate definitely points out a design oversight. On which the AW15R1/R2 where bordering by the way with the which we both experienced, burning DC-in cable. Which was a combination of a bad bios, express charging and an overclock. Manufacturers at the bottom of the pack can make bigger strides than the ones at the front that have to catch all the wind.

and why your BD prochot gets triggered? Hard to assess from a distance and not knowing the full environment details, but could be a powerdelivery that gets too hot, CPU itself, PCH etc .Never experienced throttling with my R1 and R2 ever but thats also because again I never used those systems in extreme environments.

My point is, a lot of people here follow the opinions from some forum veterans such as Papusan and Mr Fox which have an excellent repsheet by the way on this forum and rightfully so but forget they have extremely well tuned machines in ideal environment with the best silicons. The other 90% of units that are available are not that great at all as seen in various reviews. If you would expect a perfect experience you might hit the same wall, which is in your case the extreme environment wall. Just as that in my case the AW15R3 performs wonderfully for the same reason. Used in well cooled conditions, good paste, got a good unit out of the box etc.

 

its not one system.. i had more thn 14 motherboard with more or less the same BDProc issue, R1 had power throttling which was fixed by BIOS / adapter, that is completely differnt, im not relying on anyones influence here, just my personal thoughts about this company, yes there are 1000s of parts which has to be designed perfectly, which is why we are paying such premium, almost twice the cost of desktop rig, its not extreme ambient, 23-30c ambients are pretty normal ones, Previous models had issues as well, from my m11x r2 had hinge issues, BCLK issues, that was fixed in a month or so.. im not here to bash anyone, or extremely support anyone, i liked alienware, i stil like how compact it is comparing other manufacturers, but recently i just feel they are not catching up with the market, a good screen, good overall heatsink, better bios, individual backlit keyboard, a bigger touchpad..

 

close to 30c is pretty extreme ambient temperatures. thats depending on the humidity near out of spec.

For example when i am in the Netherlands the humidity is fairly low in spring and the temperature in the office at 22c. This gives me temperatures of 80c CPU/70C GPU under load. Even if I turn the aircon on and set it on 22c in Japan due to the very high humidity during rain season the temperatures are still 5c higher. When I have the aircon on 25c with the same humidity the laptop is working even harder to keep the internals cool. This is what I experienced with all my laptops that I owned when traveling back and forth. 30c in a subtropical country is killing for any laptop out there and it an extreme situation.

You had 14 motherboards but if the issues are caused by temperatures it wont be fixed by swapping out motherboards if they are all identical. You can only fix it by lowering your ambient temperatures. I have been following so many cases on this forum and reddit and by far the most issues from users seem to come from India. I dont have a clue how popular Dell is there over there and how many systems are sold. But I do know the climate is one of the most extreme climates on this planet. Those 14 motherboards you had would probably all worked perfectly in Europe for example. CAn you really blame Alienware for that? Yes and no I think. It is true system designers should keep other regions more in mind. But also they build everything according to the reference specs from Intel. So in the end you should blame Intel for that. Sucks that there isnt any form of competition in the laptop space.

The screen panels are the same as any other brand out there, depending on the supply chain ofcourse. There arent enough panels so they use multiple manufacturers. As any other brand.

The heatinks itself are pretty good, the fitting can be horrible though, but as I have shown in other topics thats a common industry thing that needs to be fixed by the industry as a whole.

Not to disregard your opinion, Just i believe you are blaming the wrong party. Or are pointing out the wrong cause.

Keyboard lights and trackpads are personal. I myself couldnt care less about individual lit keys, even though I have a mechanical keyboard at home that has it. Never really used it. large trackpads are nice if the palm rejection works flawlesly, unfortunately it often doesnt.


edit: I by the way heavily blame intel for the current state of the laptop market. If I hard 3000 euro now and where allowed to choose any laptop on the market. I still couldnt choose one. All the hexacore laptops with the latest Intel CPU's are not what I believe reliable and well cooled machines. Alienware, Asus, Msi etc all should have taken a stance agaisnt this disgusting state of Intel. Work with Intel on an efficient mobiel CPU as a replacement.

 

what about slimming down the pads ? or replacing them with some paste ?
and do u know about the charging limit ?

 

Cant be made thinner. They have some sort of fibreglass weave on the inside. The pads arent silicone based and the is too high for paste.
What do you mean by charging limit?

 

yeah that messy small threads holding it together.
what i mean is limiting the battery charge level to a certain percentage (e.g: 80%) to prolong the battery life.

 

You cant limit the battery charge percentage. You have desktop charge mode but it is unreliable.

 

actually desktop charge mode isn't working at all. it needs to be controlled from the bios itself (correct me if im wrong).