*OFFICIAL* Alienware 15 R3 Owner's Lounge

Not sure if you are in the US or not (not sure if it matters), but once you get the laptop you can create a clone of the entire drive on an external device with Macrium Reflect Free > create a live boot disc > install the new SSD (SATA or M.2) > boot to the live disc and restore the backup to the new drive. This will work (i have done it myself on two laptops), unless you are trying to do a clean windows installation in which case.... i have no answer for that haha

 

Just saw that it is back. Can't fathom the dell's configuration website. It is too unpredictable.

 

Greeting AW R3 owner. How do you manage your stuff like game, video, music and other bulk in this laptop storage.

 

i really need a hand picking out a proper 1 tb hdd for this laptop , i want to pull the 1 td 7200 and use a ssd drive as my seccondary drive .

please help me choose as theres so many options and i am lost with these ssd, m.2 ,mSATA, M.2 2280

looking at these 4 /

#1
http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A9219396

#2
http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A7954709

#3
http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A9010216

#4
http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A8351731

 

Just got my 15 R3 ruined by a tech. Since my CPU had uneven core temperatures, I requested for a heatsink replacement. Here's what happened:

After the tech came more than 2 hours earlier than previously agreed upon, I was forced to leave him unattended to attend class. After 2 hours, I come back to a laptop missing a screw and with screws placed in the wrong holes. What's more: my GPU is completely useless at this point. Slight load gives me thermal shutdown as its temperature rises uncontrollably to 100 C.

 

Its like they pick any random bloke off the street, give them $50, and tell them to fix a laptop. Seriously, who hires those people. More horror stories about techs than I can count. You learned the hard way to never let a tech touch anything unsupervised. Next time send them back if you can't be there.

 

I wouldn't suggest buying parts like these from Dell. Even just comparing to prices on Amazon, they're a lot more expensive:

Crucial MX300 1TB: https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX30...9437483&sr=8-1&keywords=Crucial+MX300+SSD+1tb
Sandisk Ultra II 960GB: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultr...437543&sr=8-1&keywords=Sandisk+Ultra+II+960GB
Samsung 850 Evo M.2 1TB: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-...479437592&sr=8-2&keywords=Samsung+850+Evo+1TB

If you're planning to replace your 1TB HDD, you'd want to go for a 2.5-inch form factor, like the Crucial MX300 or Sandisk Ultra II. Since it'll be a storage drive, you could try a cheaper option like the ADATA SP550 or Mushkin Enhanced Reactor. These drives can be found for 200-250 USD.

However, if you want to go all out, you can just buy another M.2 drive as the Alienware 15 actually has 3 M.2 slots. One accepts shorter lengths than the other two, so you'll have to check before purchasing.

 

I'm trying to find out out which model of the SSD drives are the best as I have a coupon to use at Dell so like to get there

Sent from my SM-G935W8 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, I really regret it, should've known better when the tech didn't even know how to open the bottom plate of the laptop... I called support and requested for a replacement laptop, hope it gets approved.

 

Oh, I see. Well, between the Crucial MX300 and Sandisk Ultra II, I think the Crucial MX300 is better. It's a newer drive (2016 vs 2014) and comes with a feature called "Momentum Cache" which boosts speeds. See the Amazon page's reviews for users' opinions.

Between the two Samsung drives, the mSATA drive should be slower. There's actually a comparison review on Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9023/the-samsung-ssd-850-evo-msata-m2-review. Seeing that the price difference between those two is $5, I'd go with the M.2 (MZ-E5E1T0).

 

Ok thanks so just go ssd and not m. 2?

Sent from my SM-G935W8 using Tapatalk

 

And where are the Fix on the heatsink + thermal problem Dell aka Mr. Azor and Mr Umar talked about? Ask Dell support about the new fix!!

Info for you http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...scussion-thread.794965/page-328#post-10390333

See the link I posted. The almost 5 year old mobile *socket* i7 beat the newest from Intel.

 

And thats why syntetic benchmarks doesnt mean ****. Hell ,the diference can be because the +100mhz on the older one...

 

Slightly higher processor frequency is not everything as you should know. IPC is increased with each new gen processors. For example the older Haswell provide worse than the Skylake by the same processor clock speed. This means.. Although the 5 year old tested processor has slightly increased clock speed... Should Skylake lying ahead even with lower clock speed. Remember we compare the newest gen i7 with a almost five year old medium quality mobile i7

 

You mean like this? http://www.3dmark.com/fs/10073378

 

To those that lose at them consistently and need to justify the existence of wimpy BGA turdbooks they mean nothing. To those that enjoy the glory of wining synthetic benchmarks which are, for all intents and purposes, the technical equivalent of extraordinarily demanding game, they do matter. Saying they don't matter is just a seriously worn out excuse. Newer often means inferior. Sometimes newer is better, but it is frequently inferior.

 

That's kind of the point, that there current models are not only soldered, but worse than predecessor models. A lot of laptops come with 6700HQs and cannot be changed due to the solder, and the CPU is decidedly very weak. On the other hand, if it wasn't soldered, you could drop in say... a 6820MK if it existed aftermarket and run it at 4GHz+ daily (power draw and notebook cooling permitting).

Pairing a 6700HQ with any pascal laptop as a default is a kind of crime in my eyes, but it's more so because you can't simply swap it out for a better mobile CPU.

Also, I have a sort of renewed distaste for soldered components since my PRIMARY 780M died on me a few days ago. I simply swapped it out for my slave and put the now-defective primary in the slave slot for safe keeping and disabled SLI. If I had that ASUS GX800 or the upcoming Acer Predator SLI model and I was 2 months out of warranty like I am right now? I'd have a paperweight that cost me about $3600.

 

How did you break the 780m?

If it's soldered you wouldn't be able to remove it and futz around with it, reducing the chance of failure.

I've only had LGA parts fail, never had a soldered GPU/CPU fail.

If it happened, it would suck, especially out of warranty, but such are the 1st world problems we all must bear as part of the joy's of modern life.

I turn over hardware too quickly to run into much non-warranty work.

 

First world problems exacerbated by third world garbage (BGA). We rise no higher than their level of incompetence.

 

what is the latest nvidia driver for the 15 r3 with gtx 1070 i have 369.32

 

375.86

 

375.86 is Crippled. And Nvidia have already pushed out a new Hotfix driver http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/geforce-375-95-hotfix-driver-download.html

 

I think crippled might be a little hyperbolic. I'm running it on my desktop with no issues but if there's a newer version it's obviously better to install that.

 

I was literally playing a game and in the middle of the match I started getting a ton of artifacts. After this, I noticed other games performing badly. The card artifacts Overwatch and a couple other titles and generally hits "99% util" while clocked up but only performs around 60% of the second card's clocked-up util. In other words, it basically acts as if it's constantly downclocked. Also, NVENC fails to encode anything on it either. It's pretty terrible. It's probably just its time.

I never removed it before this point, so that's a moot issue. The first and last time I ever took my cards out of the slot were when I had to swap them to see if the slave working in the primary slot would cause no issues (I'd already tried SLI off system-wide and still noted terrible performance and artifacting in Overwatch).

I have seen soldered stuff fail. Not my own, but I have. It's... a very sad day when you have to toss out an entire system as a result.

I don't think I can classify someone's machine giving up the ghost as a first world problem. Everywhere in the world people spend more on their hobbies and cars and whatever than I ever spend on PCs, even if I were indeed to build that $15,000-$20,000 desktop I really want to do. Dead hardware is still dead hardware.

I wouldn't mind doing such a thing, honestly. But that remains to be seen when I get some form of income =D.

 

He s Right... it is crippled. A lot of gpus don't run with full memspeed. And newer isn't always better

 

ok i have a 15 with i7 non k gtx 1070 8gb 8gb ram 4k screen

what settings are people using for battlefield 4&1 only games i have installed yet

1070 cant seem to handle 4k even everything on low yet look on you tube and people getting good fps on a 1070 its just choppy and slugish

 

I did not think I had a problem, I have been playing Battlefield 1 without problem or noticing any issues for the last 5 days. The machine does sound like a vacuum cleaner, but I thought that was maybe just how noisy the machine is.

Yesterday however the machine shutdown while playing Assassins Creed Syndicate (on ultra). I checked and the windows log reports "The system was shut down due to a critical thermal event." So I then hit google and found out there could be a problem in general. I did the dell stress test and then talked with dell support today. They claim I do not have a problem and that temps of 98 degrees while playing battlefield 1 is normal.

I put battlefield 1 in windows mode while chatting to the guy from Dell. And took a photo of the temps to show him. His words were, "Das ist normal würde ich sagen" (That is normal, to me).

Here is the screen shot. https://goo.gl/photos/pASKLA5p1C2BVxdy5 Is this normal? Do I just need to turn down the settings for the games?

Full specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
2x 8Gb DDR4 (2400 MHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

 

I have the same set up but not the 4k screen and Battlefield 1 plays amazingly without jitter on Ultra.

 

No, This mess isn't normal. 98C is only 2C degrees before thermal shutdown. And 96C is already over thermal throttling point.
Maybe @hmscott can chime in as well.

 

Thanks. I thought so, I don't get why the guy from dell was trying to tell me everything was fine. He said that laptops just get that hot. Grrrr.

So the recommendation is a return or a repair?

 

Return and a new replacement machine or refund. With a replacement you will risk the same happening again!! Several have experienced that.

 

I don't think any of these Alienware laptops fall into the "factory overclocked" category so it's a non issue for the topic of this thread.

 

also getting issues when i change to 1080p just sluggish something somewhere is seriously wrong

 

98 is hot no matter what, I repasted my 6700 and have it set to -200mv and I'm gaming wow in the low 60s once and while it will spike to 83 due to the uneven core. They might have a bad paste or uneven heatsink.

 

hmmm is this the cause of the problems is this what others had with core temps very different ?

 

No worries. Just clone the drive with any good cloning software. Samsung lets you download it to migrate everything to their SSD's.

 

Do some research here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssds,3891.html

 

Has anyone added copper shims to help with contact between the CPU and hsf?

 

Good god that's a bad difference. Call Alienware not dell and send them that screenshot they will send anew one.

 

not sure i really want another pile of junk really should be sorted in factory by now if it is just a thermal issue

also have a r13 r3 hope that wont have the same issue

 

I think it's going to be worse with the 15 the single screw on the heatsink is in he middle on the 13 it has 3 screws also, but it's on the right side not the middle so it might be a lot more uneven.

 

Thanks for the tips everyone.

I reduced the voltage to -0.12, upgraded the bios and the machine is now a LOT cooler, it is about 18 degrees down.

A huge drop in temps. My question is though, is this sustainable long term or should I still send back the unit? Does undervolting effect the long term life of the cpu?

Here is me playing battlefield 1 on ultra after an hour or so... There is still a difference of 11 degrees between the hottest and the coolest core.

https://goo.gl/photos/fAESri4VKyUL66GS7

For the amount of money I have spent I would not expect to be having these problems.

 

All undervolting does is a stop wasting electricity it doesn't need. Since it's not using as much it doesn't heat up as much. It's like a copper wire, put 9v through the wire it works but it's warm, bump it up to 24v and it can still pass the voltage but it's hot to touch now. The more electrons flow through stuff the hotter it will get. It actually will prolong your CPU life due to not getting as hot. From looking at your temps you still have a 11c difference. Call dell and see if they can replace your heatsink. If you like the screen keep the laptop, but if you got light bleed and uneven temps tell them you want a new laptop they will send you one and then you send the old one back. Sorry for the long post.

 

You still have a 11c difference between the hottest and the coolest core. Not acceptable

 

Hey Guys, since I'm waiting for my liquid metal paste I try to undervolt my CPU to -150 and the temperature doesn't go over 90 at 10min stress test. But when I turn to play BF1 (game run on external SSD) the fps is on 60 with Nvidia driver 375.95 and it will lag sometimes is that my CPU problem?

Laptop spec:
6820HK, 1070, 8GB ram, 1TB HHD sata,

 

Thanks for the advice, you two. I am really happy with the laptop in general, and I don't mind that it sounds like a vacuum cleaner as I am mostly wearing headphones. I will get in touch with dell then on Monday and see if they will replace the heatsink.

Thanks again!

 

Find out by running CPUz in the background, see if it throttles when you are in game. I expect its either the external drive or the CPU getting hotter than 95 C.

 

Anyone here from Switzerland who manage to get in contact with dell for coupon ?
The live chat doesnt work and I cant call them
.

 

What are the normal thermal numbers for the cpu under full load? 75C? or more? less ? i know there are bad ones more then 95, but thats not normal right?

 

Everything up to 83-85C should be approved. 90C or higher... No thanks Colder the better